Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Liver cancer death rate in U.S. rose 43 percent in 16 years

By Maddie Bender 17 July 2018 (CNN) – Death rates from liver cancer increased 43 percent for American adults from 2000 to 2016, according to a report released Tuesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. The increase comes even as mortality for all cancers combined has declined.Liver […]

Wildfires in the U.S. are getting bigger

By Maggie Koerth-Baker 17 July 2018 (FiveThirtyEight) – A California wildfire that started on Friday doubled in size over the weekend, killing a firefighter and threatening Yosemite National Park. And it’s not the only blaze burning. It’s looking like 2018 could be another big year for wildfires in the United States: 3,362,431 acres have already […]

Trump administration deletes 20 years of critical online medical guidelines – “There is nothing else like it in the world”

By Jon Campbell 12 July 2018 (The Daily Beast) – The Trump Administration is planning to eliminate a vast trove of medical guidelines that for nearly 20 years has been a critical resource for doctors, researchers and others in the medical community.Maintained by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ], part of the Department […]

FEMA admits shortcomings in 2017 hurricane response

By Joel Shannon 12 July 2018 (USA TODAY) – The Federal Emergency Management Agency admitted Thursday that it drastically underestimated the devastation that Hurricane Maria was about to unleash on Puerto Rico in 2017, hampering the agency’s ability to react to the worst natural disaster to ever hit the island. The findings are in FEMA’s […]

Orcas of the Pacific Northwest are starving and disappearing – “It’s an ecosystem-wide problem”

By Jim Robbins 9 July 2018 SEATTLE (The New York Times) – For the last three years, not one calf has been born to the dwindling pods of black-and-white killer whales spouting geysers of mist off the coast in the Pacific Northwest. Normally four or five calves would be born each year among this fairly […]

Russia asbestos company makes Trump its poster boy – “Donald is on our side!”

By Olivia Rosane 11 July 2018 (EcoWatch) – Asbestos killed at least 45,221 Americans between 1999 and 2015, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention found. But President Donald Trump has long expressed his support for the dangerous mineral currently banned by 65 countries.”If we didn’t remove incredibly powerful fire retardant asbestos & replace it […]

Cape Town’s harrowing journey to the brink of water catastrophe

By Brett Walton 12 July 2018 CAPE TOWN, South Africa (Circle of Blue) – This is what a water panic looks like in a major global city.People hoard water. They queue for hours, well into the night, to fill jugs at natural springs. Like mad Christmas shoppers, they clear supermarkets of bottled water. They descend […]

Inflation hits 6-year high, wiping out wage gains for the average American – “The U.S. is now ensnared in a three front trade war which will in the near-to-medium term result in higher prices”

By Heather Long 13 July 2018 (The Washington Post) – Prices rose at their highest clip since 2012 over the past year, the Labor Department reported Thursday.The 2.9 percent inflation for the 12-month period ending in June is a sign of a growing economy, but it’s also a painful development for workers, whose tepid wage […]

How climate change in Bangladesh impacts women and girls

By Kareeda Kabir 16 July 2018 (Teen Vogue) – When people think about the impact of climate change, many consider the physical damage: homes destroyed, communities forced to start over, maybe even a number of bodies discovered after an intense weather event. But sometimes forgotten are the social consequences the physical destruction leaves in its […]

NASA expedition: Study spruce beetle infestations in Alaska

By Adrianna C. Foster 16 July 2018 This summer a team of scientists from NASA Goddard, American University, and the Forest Service are conducting joint field work and flights with Goddard’s LiDAR, Hyperspectral, and Thermal Imager (G-LiHT) within south-central Alaska to study the ongoing spruce beetle outbreak and develop methods for early detection of beetle […]

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial