Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Iceland will allow more than 2,000 whales to be killed within next five years

By Lauren Kent23 February 2019 (CNN) – Only two whaling companies remain in Iceland. It’s a small industry that conservationists say is inhumane, has minimal economic benefits, and defies the international ban on killing whales. But this week the Icelandic government announced it will allow up to 2,000 whales to be killed in the next […]

Trump wins 2018 Rubber Dodo award as top eco-villain – “From wildlife to public lands to climate, Trump has wrecked, poisoned, and polluted our environment on an unprecedented scale”

TUCSON, Arizona, 15 February 2019 (CBD) –  President Trump is the winner of the Center for Biological Diversity’s 2018 Rubber Dodo award. The statue is awarded each year to the person or group who has most aggressively sought to destroy America’s natural heritage or drive endangered species extinct. “From wildlife to public lands to climate, Trump […]

Great Barrier Reef threatened by dirty water from recent floods – Floodwaters thought to contain dangerous chemicals are triggering algal blooms

By Liam James 15 February 2019 (The Independent) – Months after scientists warned it is at greater risk than ever, the Great Barrier Reef is facing a new challenge: dirty water. Run-off from the recent floods in Australia is spreading from the coast with the potential to reach the fragile reef. The floodwater is thick […]

Major northeastern snowstorms expected to continue with climate change – “The big nor’easters are not just going to go away”

By David Hosansky 23 January 2019 (NCAR and UCAR News) – Even though climate change is expected to reduce the total amount of U.S. snowfall this century, it’s unlikely to significantly rein in the most powerful nor’easters that pummel the East Coast, new research indicates. The study finds that smaller snowstorms that drop a few […]

Potential service interruption

18 February 2019 (Desdemona Despair) – Blogger, the venerable blogging platform, has been Desdemona’s home since the first post, in November 2008: Rising CO2 accelerates coral bleaching. Blogger has been a good and faithful host of Desdemona’s content for more than ten years. But due to a confluence of technical issues, Desdemona has decided that  […]

Highly unusual upward trends in rapidly intensifying Atlantic hurricanes are caused by global warming

By Dr. Jeff Masters 13 February 2019 (Weather Underground) – Atlantic hurricanes showed “highly unusual” upward trends in rapid intensification during the period 1982 – 2009 that can only be explained by including human-caused climate change as a contributing cause, according to research published last week in Nature Communications. The study, led by NOAA/GFDL hurricane […]

Global insect population faces “catastrophic” collapse – “If we destroy the basis of the ecosystem, which are the insects, then we destroy all the other animals that rely on them for a food source”

12 February 2019 (University of Sydney) – A research review into the decline of insect populations has revealed a catastrophic threat exists to 40 percent of species over the next 100 years, with butterflies, moths, dragonflies, bees, ants, and dung beetles most at risk.Author of the review, Dr Francisco Sanchez-Bayo, an honorary associate with the […]

GoFundMe: Protect the National Butterfly Center from Trump border wall – $82K of $100K goal raised – UPDATE: Goal reached!

10 December 2018 (National Butterfly Center) – Congress funded 33 new miles of Border Wall in the 2018 omnibus Appropriations Act  and contracts for the first 6 miles have been awarded to SLSCO . The real kicker is, the border wall is not being built on the border, but over 2 miles inland, moving the […]

U.S. wealth concentration returns to levels not seen since the Roaring Twenties – The 400 richest Americans own more than bottom 150 million – “For the rich, wealth begets power”

By Christopher Ingraham 8 February 2019 (The Washington Post) – The 400 richest Americans — the top 0.00025 percent of the population — have tripled their share of the nation’s wealth since the early 1980s, according to a new working paper on wealth inequality by University of California at Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman.Those 400 Americans […]

Lawmakers tell Pentagon: Revise and resubmit your climate-change report

By Paulina Glass 5 February 2019 (Defense One) – The Pentagon’s latest climate-change report was so bad that it didn’t even meet legal requirements, say House lawmakers who on Wednesday ordered the military to redo the document by 1 April 2019.The report “lacks key deliverables,” according to the 25 January 2019 letter from House Armed […]

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial