Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Graph of the Day: Icelandic stock market index, 1993-2008

Here is today’s snapshot of the Icelandic stock market. It has dropped even lower, if that’s possible, down 1.1% today. I really hope we don’t have to evacuate Iceland to avert mass starvation there. Technorati Tags: Iceland,financial collapse

Bolivia water crisis looms as glacier melts away

Tom Clifford, Foreign Correspondent LA PAZ // The Bolivian capital and its twin city of El Alto are facing a water crisis this year, a leading climatologist says. Demand for water is likely to exceed supply in 2009, with the entire Chacaltaya glacier, which supplies nearly two million people, set to disappear within 12 months, […]

Animal death toll from Australia bushfires may be in the millions

MORE than a million native animals may have been killed in the Victorian bushfires, a wildlife expert says. The massive effort to rescue animals caught in the fire has begun with triage centres set up to assess injured wildlife at staging posts at Kilmore, Whittlesea and Redesdale near Bendigo. The animals are then being treated […]

Animal refugees emerge from the Victoria fires

[This is the first great climate disaster of the 21st century. –Jim] Video By Megan McNaught IT is not just humans who are emerging from the ashes after amazing feats of survival in the Victoria fires. Animals of all shapes and sizes are starting to limp, stagger or be carried from the worst-affected fire areas. […]

Australian fires ‘devastating’ to wildlife

Overlooked amidst the human tragedy, thousands of animals — kangaroos and koalas as well as cattle and sheep — also perished in the scorching fires that have swept through southeast Australia. At least 130 people died in the flames, official figures showed, but nobody was prepared to venture an estimate on the animal losses. "It’s […]

Australian bushfires: when two degrees is the difference between life and death

Scientist Tim Flannery recalls the long, wet Victorian winters now replaced by a drier and dangerous climate by Tim Flannery The day after the great fire burned through central Victoria, I drove from Sydney to Melbourne. For much of the way – indeed for hundreds of miles north of the scorched ground – smoke obscured […]

California agriculture threatened by drought

By JIM CARLTON MENDOTA, Calif. — Dwindling water supplies are compounding economic woes in California’s Central Valley, causing farmers to leave fields fallow and confront the prospect of going under. The state’s water supply has dropped precipitously of late. California is locked in the third year of one of its worst droughts on record, with […]

'This is the worst recession for over 100 years'

Ed Balls, the PM’s closest ally, warns that downturn is ferocious and says impact will last 15 years By Nigel Morris, Deputy Political Editor, and Sean O’Grady, Economics Editor Britain is facing its worst financial crisis for more than a century, surpassing even the Great Depression of the 1930s, one of Gordon Brown’s most senior […]

Photo gallery: bushfires in Victoria, Australia

The state of Victoria in southern Australia has recently been hit with hundreds of bush fires during a record-breaking heatwave – temperatures well above 38°C (100°F). Unfortunately, these fires have proved to be the deadliest in Australian history, with at least 166 deaths reported so far. The fires mostly appear to have been started by […]

China declares an emergency amid worst drought in 50 years

The worst drought in half a century has parched fields across eight provinces in northern China and left nearly four million people without proper drinking water. Not a drop of rain has fallen on Beijing for more than 100 days, the longest dry spell for 38 years in a city known for its arid climate. […]

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