Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Across the Arctic, lakes are leaking dangerous greenhouse gases – “These lakes speed up permafrost thaw. It’s an acceleration.”

By Chris Mooney 25 September 2018 (The Washington Post) – “The lake, about 20 football fields in size, looked as if it was boiling. Its waters hissed, bubbled and popped as a powerful greenhouse gas escaped from the lake bed. Some bubbles grew as big as grapefruits, visibly lifting the water’s surface several inches and […]

Spike in whale deaths off New England coast in September 2018 – “We’re definitely seeing more whale mortalities than we have in the past and it’s definitely concerning”

By Andres Picon 17 September 2018 (The Boston Globe) – At least four whales, including one that washed up in New Hampshire on Monday, have been reported dead around the Northeast since 9 September 2018, adding to the unusual mortality event that researchers say is affecting several whale species. “We’re definitely seeing more whale mortalities […]

Hurricane Florence dropped 8 trillion gallons of rain on North Carolina

18 September 2018 (NWS Raleigh) – Here’s the unofficial, radar-estimated storm total rainfall from Hurricane Florence over all North Carolina (actual gauge-measured amounts not included). Using the average rainfall over the state, Florence dropped about 8.04 trillion gallons of rain on NC.Note: these radar estimates are off by roughly a factor of 2 (too low) […]

Erosion of a culture – “Once we have cut down all the big trees, part of our punishment will be to live in a world without any big trees”

By Rheta Grimsley Johnson 22 August 2018 (The Bitter Southerner) – I am leaving my skiff at a funky little marina on the swamp’s west side, an access point to the Atchafalaya in the deep Cajun parish called St. Martin. Boat docked, I head to my pickup. […]It is the largest swamp and wetlands area […]

Could billionaires end society’s biggest challenges?

24 August 2018 (Self Lender) – Citizens around the globe are facing a myriad of complex challenges that feel almost impossible to solve. Problems like rising real estate costs, the extraordinarily high cost of healthcare, and rapidly increasing credit card debt feel inescapable due to both the critical thinking and the collective capital needed to […]

Walking on Venezuela’s last glacier – “It’s a little bit like losing a species: once it’s gone, you never realize that it is missing”

By Kathryn Hansen 27 September 2018 (NASA) – The retreat of Humboldt Glacier—Venezuela’s last patch of perennial ice—means that the country could soon be glacier-free. We featured the glacier in August 2018 as an Image of the Day showing how it changed between 1988 and 2015.Satellite images can tell you a lot about a glacier, […]

Kerala floods one month after: Destroyed by floods, Chengannur cries out for help

By Anu Kuruvilla and Anuja Susan Varghese 17 September 2018 CHENGANNUR (Express News Service) – “Child! Do you have water in your car? Or can you spare me some money? If not money, maybe some clothes or food? Don’t you have anything in your car?” asks 65-year-old Ponnamma, a spinster who lives alone in her […]

Study highlights loss and damage in mountain cryosphere caused by global warming

By Andrew Angle 13 September 2018 (GlacierHub) – Few areas of the planet have been more affected by climate change than the mountain cryosphere, where negative impacts like glacier recession far exceed any positives like short-term increases in glacial runoff. These adverse changes make highland environments ideal for examining the policy concept of Loss and […]

“Surge in financing” of up to $7 trillion per year needed to finance world sustainable development goals: UN chief

24 September 2018 (UN News) – A “surge in financing and investments” is needed to achieve the 2030 Agenda, the United Nations plan of action agreed by Member States, to transform the world, the Secretary-General said on Monday.António Guterres was speaking at the opening of the High Level Meeting on Financing the 2030 Agenda, at […]

Image of the Day: Satellite view of sediments and pollutants flowing from hurricane-flooded rivers in North Carolina to the Atlantic Ocean, 19 September 2018

By Kasha Patel and Mike Carlowicz 22 September 2018 (NASA) – The National Weather Service office in Raleigh offered a preliminary estimate that nearly 8 trillion gallons of rain fell on North Carolina from 13 to 17 September 2018. That led to catastrophic flooding across many parts of the state.Before and after Hurricane Florence swept […]

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