Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

After the Tiananmen Square massacre on 3 June 1989, protesters display photos of bodies at a morgue. Photo: Jeff Widener / AP

Tiananmen Square’s haunted silence, 30 years later

By Ishaan Tharoor 3 June 2019 (The Washington Post) – China’s democratic dream was snuffed out as night fell on 3 June 1989. In mid-April, thousands of idealistic university students had gathered in the heart of Beijing to mourn the passing of an admired Communist Party official who had championed liberalizing reforms. In the weeks […]

Student mows green message for Trump visit to UK: “Climate change is real”

3 June 2019 (BBC News) – A student has attempted to catch the eye of Donald Trump by mowing an environmental message into grass under the flight path of Air Force One. Ollie Nancarrow, 18, cut an image of a giant penis, a polar bear and a climate change message on his family’s land close […]

A farm field is flooded by waters from the Missouri River, in Bellevue, Nebraska, on 29 May 2019. Photo: Nati Harnik / AP

Flooded farms in the U.S. Midwest can’t plant crops – Corn and soybean acres not planted at record high – “The frequency of these disasters, I can’t say we’ve experienced anything like this since I’ve been working in agriculture”

By Michael J. Coren 30 May 2019 (Quartz) – The angst on farmer Twitter is palpable. Across the Midwest, torrential rains have soaked the fields, leaving the sodden soil unsuitable for planting millions of acres with corn, soybeans, and other crops, presaging a terrible harvest. Seeds are usually in the ground this time of year. […]

Global average abundance of atmospheric carbon dioxide in 2018. Graphic: NOAA

Graph of the Day: NOAA Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, 1700-2018

30 May 2019 (Desdemona Despair) – Last week, the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory posted its annual update to the NOAA Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI), which measures the climate-warming influence of long-lived trace gases, including carbon dioxide and methane. To nobody’s surprise, the AGGI continued its inexorable rise in 2018 because, for another year, […]

Historic flooding on the Arkansas River in Oklahoma and Arkansas – “This is the culmination of a flood that is now in its fourth week”

By Dr. Jeff Masters 28 May 2019 (Weather Underground) – Torrential rains in Oklahoma over the past two weeks have brought the Arkansas River in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma to its highest water level ever recorded. Near the Oklahoma border at Fort Smith, Arkansas (population 300,000), the river rose to two feet above its previous […]

Last male Sumatran rhino in Malaysia dies, eliminating chance of saving the species in the country

By Julia Jacobo 28 May 2019 (ABC News) – The last male Sumatran rhinoceros in Malaysia has died, eliminating the likelihood of saving the species in the country, according to animal conservationists. Less than 100 Sumatran rhinos are left in the world, according to the Borneo Rhino Alliance (BORA). They are scattered across the wild in Indonesia […]

Zonally averaged methane (CH4) growth rate versus sine‐of‐latitude (equal area) and time for 2005–2018. Graphic: Nisbet, et al., 2019 / Global Biogeochemical Cycles

The methane detectives: On the trail of a global warming mystery – “The bottom line is that methane is going up and doesn’t look like it will stop anytime soon”

By Jonathan Mingle 13 May 2019 (Undark) – Every week, dozens of metal flasks arrive at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, each one loaded with air from a distant corner of the world. Research chemist Ed Dlugokencky and his colleagues in the Global Monitoring Division catalog the canisters, and then use a series of […]

A mother elephant and her baby are attacked by villagers with fire in India. Photo: Biplab Hazra / The Independent

Image of the Day: Mother elephant and her calf attacked with firebombs as deforestation drives them into the paths of humans

26 April 2019 (The Science News Reporter) – Due to the deforestation across India, numerous elephants can be seen wandering in the villages and communities. [Sadly, this is very common, cf. Photo of baby elephant on fire after being attacked by mob wins international award – “The calf screams in confusion and fear as the […]

Luxury condo buildings sucking twice as much power as older ones – “There seems to be a disconnect between what their perceived energy footprint is and what their actual energy footprint is by living in one of these high-rises”

By Sean Boynton 12 April 2019 (Global News) – If you live in a newly-built luxury condo building, you may be enjoying some of the perks being offered: swimming pools, fitness centres, even movie theatres and bowling alleys. But a new report from BC Hydro says those amenities come at a cost — and it […]

Map of the 105,000 square miles of coal-rich outback land known as the Galilee Basin in Queensland, Australia. Graphic: The Times

Australia plans coalfield the size of Britain in climate change U-turn

By Bernard Lagan 25 May 2019 SYDNEY (The Times) – Climate change was supposed to have won the Labor Party the Australian election. But yesterday, after having been routed by voters, its panicked leaders backed the mining of a coalfield bigger than the UK. Fearing a wipeout in state elections next year amid a rise in […]

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