Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Drought pushes Kenya pastoralists to the brink – “I think pastoralism will be finished because of the droughts. All the animals are dying.”

By Anthony Morland 16 October 2017(IRIN) – Even at the best of times, the people of Turkana live on the edge. Almost all of the 1.3 million inhabitants of this arid county in northwest Kenya endure extreme poverty.Malnutrition rates are among the highest in the country. Since much of the land here is unsuitable for […]

World leaders urged to act on “post-antibiotic apocalypse” by England’s chief medical officer – “We risk the end of modern medicine”

By Ella Pickover 12 October 2017     (The Independent) – England’s chief medical officer has warned of a “post-antibiotic apocalypse” as she issued a call to action urging global leaders to address the growing threat of antibiotic resistance. Professor Dame Sally Davies said that if antibiotics lose their effectiveness it will spell “the end of modern […]

Doctors fear deadly disease outbreak in Puerto Rico – As officials try to assuage fears, Christian Romero says his brother has already died from leptospirosis

By Carolina Moreno 20 October 2017 CAROLINA, Puerto Rico (Huffington Post) – Christian Romero sat in near darkness in the stairwell of his apartment building. The glare from his phone illuminated his face, as he swiped through photos of his late brother Romsy. “I feel like a part of me is missing,” Romero, 28, told […]

Canada methane emissions far worse than feared – “This is a really big deal. If we thought it was bad, it’s worse.”

By Ashifa Kassam 17 October 2017 TORONTO (The Guardian) – Alberta’s oil and gas industry – Canada’s largest producer of fossil fuel resources – could be emitting 25 to 50% more methane than previously believed, new research has suggested.The pioneering peer reviewed study, published in Environmental Science & Technology on Tuesday, used airplane surveys to […]

Temporal distribution of insect biomass at selected locations in nature protection areas in Germany, 1989-2016. (A) Daily biomass (mean ±1 se) across 26 locations sampled in multiple years (see S4 Fig for seasonal distributions). (B) Distribution of mean annual rate of decline as estimated based on plot specific log-linear models (annual trend coefficient = −0.053, sd = 0.002, i.e. 5.2% annual decline). Graphic: Hallmann, et al., 2017 / PLOS ONE

Three-quarters of the total insect population lost in protected nature reserves – “Whatever the causal factors responsible for the decline, they have a far more devastating effect on total insect biomass than has been appreciated previously”

18 October 2017 (IWWR) – Since 1989, in 63 nature reserves in Germany the total biomass of flying insects has decreased by more than 75 percent. This decrease has long been suspected but has turned out to be more severe than previously thought. Ecologists from Radboud University together with German and English colleagues published these […]

Typhoon Lan rapidly intensifies in Pacific on its path toward Japan

By Angela Fritz 20 October 2017 (The Washington Post) – Typhoon Lan is growing more powerful in the very warm waters of the tropical Pacific. It has more than enough energy to draw from over the next 48 hours, and will in all likelihood reach Category-4 strength on Friday or Saturday. The storm is tracking […]

Siberia village besieged by polar bears as hundreds of terrified walruses fall 38 meters to their deaths

19 October 2017 (The Siberian Times) – Around 20 beasts have surrounded  Ryrkaypiy, with one bear cub trying to get into a house through the window.The polar bears were attracted by 5,000 walruses that appeared this year at a special protection zone in Chukotka.Many of the frightened flippered marine mammals fell off cliffs at Kozhevnikova […]

Puerto Rico representative to Congress calls Trump comments “shocking” – “This is not the time to be talking about withdrawing the help”

By Edward-Isaac Dovere 17 October 2017 (Politico) – Just before the interview starts, Jenniffer González-Colón tries four different numbers she’s been trying to reach back home in Puerto Rico. She gets the same error message for all of them. Can’t connect.One call that does come through is from the White House, which is trying to […]

Murdered Maltese journalist’s final written words: “The situation is desperate”

By Luke Harding, David Pegg, and Juliette Garside 17 October 201 (The Guardian) – In her last blogpost, published the day she died, Daphne Caruana Galizia signed off with a sentence that seems particularly chilling now.“There are crooks everywhere you look. The situation is desperate.”Caruana Galizia, 53, felt she had good reason to feel pessimistic […]

Hurricane Ophelia: Ireland recovers from worst storm on record that killed three

By Danny Boyle and Chris Graham 17 October 2017 (The Telegraph) – Three people are dead and hundreds of thousands still without power following Storm Ophelia; the worst storm in recorded history on the island of Ireland.The storm force winds cleared Ireland’s coast by midnight, but people were warned to remain cautious in the aftermath […]

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