Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Climate change causing dead zones along US west coast

Scientists believe climate change is the cause of stronger winds that drive upwelling of nutrient-rich deep ocean waters The spectre of an ocean floor littered with dead shellfish, rock fish, sea stars and other marine life off the Oregon coast spurred Mark Snyder, a climate change expert, to investigate whether California’s coast faced a similar […]

Plight of the humble bee

Native British bees are dying out — and with them will go flora, fauna and one-third of our diet. We may have less than a decade to save them and avert catastrophe. So why is nothing being done? Richard Girling Midwinter. In a garden not far from the sea in Plymouth, there is a splash […]

The vanishing marshes of Mesopotamia

  MARSHES, Iraq (Reuters) – Miles of reed stalks and baked mud are all that can be seen of much of Iraq’s ancient marshes this year, as a lack of water threatens to turn one of the world’s most important wetlands to wasteland.  Thought to be the biblical Garden of Eden, Iraq’s marshes have for […]

Rising sea salinates India's Ganges: expert

   KOLKATA, India (Reuters) – Rising sea levels are causing salt water to flow into India’s biggest river, threatening its ecosystem and turning vast farmlands barren in the country’s east, a climate change expert warned Monday. A study by an east Indian university in the city of Kolkata revealed surprising growth of mangroves on the […]

Graph of the Day: Restaurant Performance Index, 2002-2008

From Calculated Risk: Note: This is a new “record low”, but the index has only been compiled since 2002, so this is the first recession for the index. From the National Restaurant Association (NRA): Restaurant Industry Outlook Softens as the Restaurant Performance Index Fell to a Record Low in December The outlook for the restaurant […]

"Doomsday" seed bank threatened by financial crisis

One third of the world’s plants are threatened with extinction By Georgina Cooper ARDINGLY, England (Reuters) – A seed bank that is trying to collect every type of plant in the world is now under threat from the global financial crisis, its director says. The Millennium Seed Bank Project aims to house all the 300,000 […]

Second wave of African armyworm imminent

Richard Van Noorden Liberia prepares for second plague of caterpillar pests. A plague of crop-eating caterpillars has struck Liberia and a second wave could spread across West Africa in the next few weeks, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has warned. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Liberia’s president, has declared a state of emergency […]

Graph of the Day: Rapid melting of North American glaciers, 1984-2006

A global glacier index update Sat, 31 Jan 2009 13:59:31 GMT Technorati Tags: glacier,deglaciation,global warming

3 billion people at risk of famine caused by global warming

David. S. Battisti1 and Rosamond L. Naylor2 Higher growing season temperatures can have dramatic impacts on agricultural productivity, farm incomes, and food security. We used observational data and output from 23 global climate models to show a high probability (>90%) that growing season temperatures in the tropics and subtropics by the end of the 21st […]

California faces historic drought: snow study

By Clare Baldwin SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A new survey of California winter snows on Thursday showed the most populous state is facing one of the worst droughts in its history, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said. The state, which produces about half the United States’ vegetables and fruit, is in its third year of drought and […]

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