Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Cambodia forest protectors slain after confronting loggers – “The three were killed not by robbers or a guerrilla group but they were shot by government armed forces who backed the illegal timber cutting”

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, 31 January 2018 (AP) – Soldiers in northeastern Cambodia, an area where illicit logging and smuggling are rife, killed a forest protection ranger, a military police officer and a conservation worker in apparent retaliation for their seizure of equipment from illegal loggers, officials said Wednesday. Keo Sopheak, a senior environmental official in […]

Esmond Bradley Martin: Ivory investigator killed in Kenya

5 February 2018 (BBC News) – One of the world’s leading investigators into the illegal trade in ivory and rhino horn has been killed in Kenya. Esmond Bradley Martin, 75, was found with a stab wound to his neck at home in the capital Nairobi on Sunday. The former UN special envoy for rhino conservation […]

La Ruta De María: A journey along the path of the hurricane – “This is a territory in limbo – neither state nor nation”

By John D. Sutter 1 February 2018 On the path of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico (CNN) – Each morning before work, Héctor Luis Rodríguez Nieves showers with a garden hose behind his tattered home. He uses the jungle as his restroom.He sleeps on a mattress in what once was the kitchen. Above the bed, […]

The 5 most alarming climate events in a near-record warm 2017

By Angela Fritz and Jason Samenow 18 January 2018 (The Washington Post) – Near-record warmth in 2017 helped fuel extreme weather around the planet that caused catastrophic destruction, human suffering, and loss of life. NOAA and NASA both reported Thursday that last year ranked among the three warmest on record. All four of the hottest […]

Shale powers U.S. oil output to heights of 1970

By Ed Crooks 31 January 2018 NEW YORK (Financial Times) – US oil production has returned to its record high point, 47 years after the previous peak during the final days of the last Texas oil boom, as the shale revolution that was temporarily set back by low crude prices has reignited.The government’s Energy Information […]

Declining trust in government is driving declines in democracy globally – U.S. is now a “flawed democracy”

25 January 2017 (The Economist) – America, which has long defined itself as a standard-bearer of democracy for the world, has become a “flawed democracy” according to the taxonomy used in the annual Democracy Index from the Economist Intelligence Unit, our sister company. Although its score did not fall by much—from 8.05 in 2015 to […]

The temperature in Siberia rose 100 degrees, and the northern U.S. may pay a frigid price – Temperature anomalies are “off the charts”

By Jason Samenow 31 January 2018 (The Washington Post) – As an antidote to the report of minus-88 degree weather in the Siberian outpost of Oymyakon earlier this month, we give you this: The temperature in a settlement just to its east was an astonishing 126 degrees warmer two weeks later.The mercury in Omolon, Russia, […]

Graph of the Day: Arctic Sea Ice extent, 30 January 2018

30 January 2018 (Zachary Labe) – Arctic sea ice extent had not reached 13 million km2 by 30 January 2018, which is a week past the previous record. In the 1980s, this was normally surpassed in mid December. Zack Labe on Twitter

Photo gallery: Billion-dollar U.S. weather disasters in 2017

By Judson Jones 8 January 2018 (CNN) –  These images represent the 16 different weather disasters which topped the $1 billion mark in 2017. [more] Billion-dollar disasters in 2017

Rare, venomous sea snake found slithering on Southern California shores. Are more coming?

By Louis Sahagun 11 January 2018 (Los Angeles Times) – A rare venomous sea snake found slithering on the sand in Newport Beach earlier this week was one of a growing number of the serpents apparently drawn far north of their usual habitat by the spread of warm ocean temperatures, a biologist said Thursday. The […]

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