Desdemona Despair – Page 158 – Blogging the End of the World™

Energy consumption and income inequality in the Philippines, 1990-2015. Data: McGee and Greiner, 2019 / Energy Research and Social Science. Graphic: James P. Galasyn

July 14, 2019

Shifts to renewable energy can drive up energy poverty, study finds – “We don’t think of energy as a human right when it actually is”

By Cristina Rojas 12 July 2019 (PSU) – Efforts to shift away from fossil fuels and replace oil and coal with renewable energy sources can help reduce carbon emissions but do so at the expense of increased inequality, according to a new Portland State University study. [Data available here: Renewable energy injustice McGee and Greiner […]

Ohio statewide butterfly population trends of nine resident species with annual variation. Plotted are model predictions for each year based on the fixed effects of year (solid line) and annual random effects (dots) to show annual variation about the trend line. Shading shows 95 percent confidence intervals based on bootstrapped model fits in the poptrend package for the temporal trend and for the annual random effects. The first year’s estimate is set to a value of 1 as a baseline for relative population changes. Graphic: Wepprich, et al., 2019 / PLOS ONE

July 13, 2019

Decades-long butterfly study shows 33 percent population loss – “These declines in abundance are happening in common species”

By Steve Lundeberg 2 July 2019 CORVALLIS, Oregon (Oregon State University) – The most extensive and systematic insect monitoring program ever undertaken in North America shows that butterfly abundance in Ohio declined yearly by 2%, resulting in an overall 33% drop for the 21 years of the program. Though the study was limited to one […]

A worker fills a tanker train with water, which will be transported and supplied to drought-hit city of Chennai, at Jolarpettai railway station in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, India, 11 July 2019. Photo: P. Ravikumar / REUTERS

July 12, 2019

Water train set to relieve drought-hit Indian city – Doctors forced to buy water for surgery – “We won’t be able to supply water even to the people who can pay a huge sum for a tanker of water”

By P. Ravikumar 11 July 2019 JOLARPETTAI, India (Reuters) – Indian authorities on Thursday filled tanks with water and loaded them onto a train in the southern state of Tamil Nadu to supply its manufacturing capital Chennai where reservoirs have run dry. Technicians in the railway station at Jolarpettai, located over 135 miles (217 km) […]

Satellite view of Tropical Storm Barry, 12 July 2019. Photo: NOAA

July 12, 2019

Devastating floods possible as Tropical Storm Barry sloshes into Louisiana – “It doesn’t matter what the storm is called. We are still expecting a major rainfall flood event.”

By Bob Henson 12 July 2019 (Weather Underground) – Residents of southeast Louisiana need to finalize preparations for widespread and severe flooding this weekend with the approach of Tropical Storm Barry. Packing top sustained winds of 65 mph, slow-moving Barry will push its way onshore Saturday, possibly as a Category 1 hurricane. What matters most […]

Screenshot of the Desdemona Despair page on Twitter. Graphic: James P. Galasyn

July 12, 2019

Desdemona is live on Twitter

12 July 2019 (Desdemona Despair) – Desdemona readers have been requesting this feature for years, and it’s finally here: Also, you can check out Desdemona on Facebook: See you in the social media trenches. Aux barricades!

Estimates of rainfall rates in the Washington, D.C. area on 8 July 2019 from NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory. Graphic: NASA

July 10, 2019

Wettest 12 months in U.S. history, yet again

By Bob Henson 9 July 2019 (Weather Underground) – Topping a remarkable record that was set just a month earlier, the year-long period ending in June was the wettest 12-month span in U.S. records that go back to 1895. For the 48 contiguous U.S. states, precipitation averaged 37.86” over the period from July 2018 to […]

Total U.S. managed honey bee colonies loss estimates 2006-2019. For the entire survey period (1 April 2018 – 1 April 2019), beekeepers in the U.S. lost an estimated 40.7 percent of their managed honey bee colonies. This is similar to last year’s annual loss estimate of 40.1 percent, but slightly higher (2.9 percentage points) than the average annual rate of loss reported by beekeepers since 2010-11 (37.8 percent). Graphic: Bee Informed

July 10, 2019

Nearly 40 percent decline in honey bee population last winter “unsustainable” – Trump administration cuts funding for bee research

By Julia Jacobo 9 July 2019 (ABC News) – Scientists are researching the potential consequences of the rapid decline of the honey bee population in the U.S. and how to mitigate its effects before it causes dire problems for crop management and production. Honey bees are essential for the pollination of flowers, fruits and vegetables, and support about $20 […]

U.S. greenhouse gas emissions under current federal and state policy, net emissions (million metric tons of CO2e). Graphic: Rhodium Group

July 9, 2019

Taking Stock 2019: U.S. on track to miss Paris Agreement climate goal by wide margin

By Hannah Pitt, Kate Larsen, Hannah Kolus, Shashank Mohan, John Larsen, Whitney Herndon, and Trevor Houser 8 July 2019 (Rhodium Group) – For the past five years, Rhodium has provided an independent annual assessment of US greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and progress towards achieving the country’s climate goals. Given the current state and federal policy […]

Estimated precipitation from radar combined with rain gauge data during the record rainfall in the Washington, D.C. region on 8 July 2019. Data: Pivotal Weather. Graphic: The Washington Post

July 9, 2019

Record downpour paralyzes Washington, D.C. with flash flood – “This event goes off the scale”

By Jason Samenow, Ian Livingston, and Jeff Halverson 8 July 2019 (The Washington Post) – A month’s worth of rain deluged the immediate D.C. area early Monday, resulting in one of its most extreme flooding events in years. The record-setting cloudburst unleashed four inches of water in a single hour, way too much for a […]

Example of coastal flooding in Alamitos Bay, California with 0.25 m of sea level rise and storms. This example illustrate that there are locations with significant flood risks for small amounts of sea level rise when storms are considered. Graphic: Barnard, et al., 2019 / Scientific Reports

July 9, 2019

Trump officials deleting mentions of “climate change” from U.S. Geological Survey press releases – “It’s an insult to the science”

By Scott Waldman 8 July 2019 (Science) – A March news release from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) touted a new study that could be useful for infrastructure planning along the California coastline. At least that’s how President Donald Trump’s administration conveyed it. The news release hardly stood out. It focused on the methodology of […]