Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Action needed to avoid world water crisis, U.N. says

By Patrick Worsnip UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The world needs to act urgently to avoid a global water crisis due to increased population, rising living standards, dietary changes and more biofuels production, the United Nations warned on Thursday. By 2030, nearly half of the world’s people will be living in areas of acute water shortage, […]

Global warming will render half of world's inhabited areas unliveable

Parts of China, India and the eastern US could all become too warm in summer for people to lose heat by sweating, expert warns by David Adam in Copenhagen Severe global warming could make half the world’s inhabited areas literally too hot to live in, a US scientist warned today. Parts of China, India and […]

Mass fish dieoff in Hanoi rivers and lakes

VietNamNet Bridge – Fish are dying en masse in the Nhue River and the lakes of Hoan Kiem, Linh Dam, Dinh Cong, and the West Lake, causing terrible smells and causing concern for local residents. The incident has been happening in Nhue River for four days. Dead fish covers up to a kilometer of the […]

US freshwater turtles near extinction

  TUCSON, Arizona, March 11, 2009 (ENS) – Conservation and health groups today filed emergency petitions with eight midwestern and southern states, seeking to end the commercial harvest of freshwater turtles sold for food in the United States and abroad. Not only are the turtles vanishing into extinction, but consumers are eating meat from turtles […]

Graph of the Day: Weekly Unemployment Claims, 1971-2009

From Calculated Risk. I’d like to try fitting a curve to that nonlinear growth post-Jan 2006. Parabolic? Exponential? The DOL reports on weekly unemployment insurance claims: In the week ending March 7, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 654,000, an increase of 9,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 645,000. The […]

Graph of the Day: China Monthly Exports and Imports, 1990-2009

From Calculated Risk: From Brad Setser: The fall in China’s exports caught up with the fall in China’s imports, at least for now After soaring for most of this decade — the pace of China’s export growth clearly turned up in 2002 or 2003 and then stayed at a very high pace — China’s exports […]

Climate change reduces nutritional value of algae

Micro-algae are growing faster under the influence of climate change. However, the composition of the algae is changing, as a result of which their nutritional value for other aquatic life is decreasing. And because algae are at the bottom of the food chain, climate change is exerting an effect on underwater life. This is the […]

Virus, crisis: Perfect storm hits Chile salmon industry

By Simon Gardner PUERTO CHACABUCO, Chile (Reuters) – A deadly fish virus and scarce credit have clobbered the salmon sector in Chile, the world’s No. 2 producer, and industry workers like Cecilia Leue are panicked. Packing choice cuts of bright orange Atlantic salmon at a plant in the town of Puerto Chacabuco in Chilean Patagonia, […]

British garden birds suffer worst breeding season ever recorded

Robins, great tits and garden warblers had their worst breeding season ever recorded last year as a result of the bad weather, the British Trust for Ornithology has said. The three birds were among 11 of the 25 species monitored by a ringing scheme over the past 25 years which saw their productivity fall significantly […]

Global warming to kill 85% of the Amazon rainforest

by David Adam in Copenhagen Global warming will wreck attempts to save the Amazon rainforest, according to a devastating new study which predicts that one-third of its trees will be killed by even modest temperature rises. The research, by some of Britain’s leading experts on climate change, shows that even severe cuts in deforestation and […]

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