Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

India suffering worst water crisis in its history – New Delhi and 20 other cities to run out of groundwater by 2020 – 600 million people already face high-to-extreme water stress

By Rahul Bedi 19 June 2018 New Delhi (The Telegraph) – An Indian government think tank has warned that New Delhi is set to run out of groundwater within two years as climate change and dramatic population growth hit supplies [Composite Water Management Index – June 2018 –Des].Based on data collected from 24 of 29 […]

Earth Overshoot Day 2018 is August 1, the earliest date since ecological overshoot started in the early 1970s – “Our current economies are running a Ponzi scheme with our planet”

OAKLAND, California, 13 June 2018 (Global Footprint Network) – On August 1, humanity will have used nature’s resource budget for the entire year, according to Global Footprint Network, an international research organization that has pioneered the Ecological Footprint resource accounting metric. The Ecological Footprint adds up all of people’s competing demands for productive areas, including […]

Youth Climate March in the U.S. on Saturday, 21 July 2018

20 July 2018 (Zero Hour) – Zero Hour is not mobilizing just for the sake of mobilizing. We the youth are demanding an end to business as usual on climate change, so we have created science-backed demands for both our leaders, and the general public to take action on. On July 19th youth are taking […]

Wildfires rage in Arctic Circle as Sweden calls for help – “This is definitely the worst year in recent times for forest fires”

By Jonathan Watts 18 July 2018 (The Guardian) – At least 11 wildfires are raging inside the Arctic Circle as the hot, dry summer turns an abnormally wide area of Europe into a tinderbox.The worst affected country, Sweden, has called for emergency assistance from its partners in the European Union to help fight the blazes, […]

Video: Footage of sole survivor of Amazon tribe emerges

By Dom Phillips 19 July 2018 Rio de Janeiro (The Guardian) – Remarkable footage has been released of an uncontacted indigenous man who has lived alone in an Amazon forest for at least 22 years. Semi-naked and swinging an axe vigorously as he fells a tree, the man, believed to be in his 50s, has […]

All-time records melt in northern Scandinavia – Extreme heat grips Japan and Korea

By Bob Henson 18 July 2018 (Weather Underground) – Temperatures soared into the nineties Fahrenheit north of the Arctic Circle on Tuesday and Wednesday, as 2018’s parade of exceptional heat continued marching across the Northern Hemisphere. This week has been northern Scandinavia’s turn under the sizzling klieg lights, including Lapland (Sápmi), the region of northern […]

Poachers damage sea turtle nests on Florida beach – Golf cart driven through multiple nests

NOKOMIS, Florida, 11 July 2018 (WWSB) – Mote Marine Laboratory says a sea turtle nest was damaged on 5 July 2018 by suspected poachers. According to Mote Marine, three suspected poachers dug into the nest and left one broken egg on its surface.Two members of Mote Marine Laboratory’s nighttime sea turtle tagging team say they […]

June 2018: Earth’s 5th warmest June on record

Dr. Jeff Masters 16 July 2018 (Weather Underground) – June 2018 was the planet’s fifth-warmest June since record keeping began in 1880, said NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) on Monday. NASA rated June 2018 as tied for third-warmest June on record. NOAA found that the only warmer June months were 2016, 2015, 2017 […]

Sweden battles wildfires from Arctic Circle to Baltic Sea, issues record number of public warnings

18 July 2018 (BBC News) – Forest fires raging across Sweden as far north as the Arctic Circle have prompted authorities to ask for international assistance. On Wednesday afternoon, 44 fires were burning from Lapland in the far north to the southern island of Gotland. Hot weather and persistent drought are the main causes, and […]

New study quantifies the link between smoggy air and diabetes: air pollution triggers diabetes in 3.2 million people each year

By Laurel Hamers 9 July 2018 (Science News) – Air pollution caused 3.2 million new cases of diabetes worldwide in 2016, according to a new estimate. Fine particulate matter, belched out by cars and factories and generated through chemical reactions in the atmosphere, hang around as haze and make air hard to breathe. Air pollution […]

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