Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Minnesota's iconic moose are dying off

Scientists eye climate change as the primary reason the beloved animals are disappearing By Tim Jones | Tribune reporter 9:30 PM EST, December 27, 2008 It wasn’t long ago that thousands of moose roamed the gentle terrain of northwestern Minnesota, affirming the iconic status of the antlered, bony-kneed beast from the North Woods. In just […]

UK's holiday waste smashes all records

Christmas packaging, millions of trees and up to a billion cards are heading to landfill – even though much of it could be recycled By Rachel Shields Sunday, 28 December 2008 This is a toy story, but it has no happy ending. As millions of households wade through crumpled wrapping, plastic ties and discarded boxes, […]

Nepalis face 16-hour daily power cuts by February

KATHMANDU (Reuters) – Nepal’s crippling electricity shortage is set to worsen, with the Himalayan nation facing power cuts of 16 hours a day by mid-February, officials said on Friday, in a fresh blow to the Maoist-led government. Power generation has fallen because mountain snows are not melting fast enough in winter and river levels are […]

Erratic weather 'harms wildlife'

UK wildlife is struggling to cope as erratic and unseasonal weather has taken its toll for a second consecutive year, the National Trust says. It says birds, mammals and particularly insects have all suffered from a cold, late spring, a wet summer with little sunshine and a long, dry autumn. The trust says species under […]

Himalayan villagers on global warming frontline

KYANGJIN GOMPA, Nepal (AFP) – Standing in the Himalayan valley of Langtang, Rinjin Dorje Lama remembers where he used to play as a child in the 1960s. "When I was a kid, it was a lot longer," said Lama, pointing at the Lirung glacier surrounded by snowy peaks on Nepal’s northern border with Tibet. "We […]

From prognosticator to witness: Dmitry Orlov

Here’s what Dmitry Orlov has to say about the accelerating collapse: I haven’t been posting of late, mostly because I feel that my job is more or less done. I called it as I saw it, and, unfortunately, I seem to have called it correctly. The US is collapsing before our eyes. Stage 1 collapse […]

Greenland's glaciers melting 3 times faster than last year

Columbus OH (SPX) Dec 23, 2008 – Researchers watching the loss of ice flowing out from the giant island of Greenland say that the amount of ice lost this summer is nearly three times what was lost one year ago. The loss of floating ice in 2008 pouring from Greenland’s glaciers would cover an area […]

Hadley Center study warns of “catastrophic” 5-7°C warming by 2100 on current emissions path

From Climate Progress: Dr. Vicky Pope, head of climate change predictions at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre, writes in the UK Times that In a worst-case scenario, where no action is taken to check the rise in Greenhouse gas emissions, temperatures would most likely rise by more than 5°C by the end of the century. […]

Fiddling with words as the world melts

Global consensus on cooling the planet looks maddeningly elusive—but individual states and regional blocks may be stepping into the breach The Economist, Dec 18th 2008 IMAGINE that some huge rocky projectile, big enough to destroy most forms of life, was hurtling towards the earth, and it seemed that deep international co-operation offered the only hope […]

Heat waves and crop losses predicted for California

Global warming will likely put enormous strain on California’s water supply and energy systems and have a devastating impact on certain crops. Stanford researchers predicted outcomes based on projections from two different emission scenarios. One assumes a continuing moderate increase in greenhouse gas emissions until 2100; the other assumes emissions would increase until mid-century and […]

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