Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Stop hoping we can fix global warming by pulling carbon out of the air – Scientists warn of “dire consequences for food production or the biosphere”

By Chelsea Harvey 22 May 2017 (The Washington Post) – Scientists are expressing increasing skepticism that we’re going to be able to get out of the climate change mess by relying on a variety of large-scale land-use and technical solutions that have been not only proposed but often relied upon in scientific calculations. Two papers […]

Sky-high carbon tax needed to avoid climate catastrophe, say experts

By Phillip Inman 29 May 2017 (The Guardian) – A group of leading economists warned on Monday that the world risks catastrophic global warming in just 13 years unless countries ramp up taxes on carbon emissions to as much as $100 (£77) per metric tonne.Experts including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and former World Bank chief […]

Miles of Antarctic ice collapsing into the sea – “I don’t think the biblical deluge is just a fairy tale”

By Justin Gillis 18 May 2017 (The New York Times) – We went to Antarctica to understand how changes to its vast ice sheet might affect the world. Flowing lines on these maps show how the ice is moving. Ice sheets flow downhill, seemingly in slow motion. Mountains funnel the ice into glaciers. And ice […]

Forests in eastern U.S. are moving westward in response to precipitation changes – “Empirical data reveal the impact of climate change is happening on the ground now”

WEST LAFAYETTE, Indiana, 17 May 2017 (Purdue University) – After analyzing extensive data collected on 86 tree species in the eastern United States, a research team led by Purdue University professor Songlin Fei found that over the past 30 years, most trees have been shifting westward or northward in response to climate change. “Trees are […]

Water is streaming across Antarctica – New survey finds liquid flow more widespread than thought

19 April 2017 (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory) – In the first such continent-wide survey, scientists have found extensive drainages of meltwater flowing over parts of Antarctica’s ice during the brief summer. Researchers already knew such features existed, but assumed they were confined mainly to Antarctica’s fastest-warming, most northerly reaches. Many of the newly mapped drainages are […]

Record monsoon in Sri Lanka causes massive flooding and landslides, with 151 dead, 112 missing, more than 440,000 affected

28 May 2017 (Daily Mirror) – The number of deaths reported in floods and landslides was increased to 151 while 112 people had gone missing, the Disaster Management Centre (DMC) said on Sunday.In its latest situation report, the DMC said the adverse weather condition had left 52 people injured. In total, 442,299 people of 114,124 […]

Former Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich claims, erroneously, that poor nations “get crushed” by deals like Paris climate accord

By Max Greenwood 28 May 2017 (The Hill) – Former Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) argued on Sunday that international agreements such as the Paris climate deal ultimately harm developing countries that cannot afford to implement environmental regulations. “The working poor and the very poor on the planet get crushed by these kind of agreements,” […]

Brazil Senate reduces protection of 597 thousand hectares of Amazon forest

By Fabiano Maisonnave 23 May 2017 MANAUS (Folha De São Paulo) – Unchanged, the Senate ratified on Tuesday (23) two provisional measures that reduce the protection of 597 thousand hectares [1.48 million acres] of protected areas in the Amazon, equivalent to four municipalities of São Paulo.Provisional measures 756 and 758, which paved the way for […]

Vietnam makes a big push for coal, while pledging to curb emissions – “If the entire region implements the coal-based plans right now, I think we are finished”

By David Brown 26 May 2017(Mongabay) – Shaken by news that Vietnam had confirmed plans to build another 40 gigawatts worth of coal-fired power plants by 2030, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim ad libbed a few lines into a May 2016 speech to an audience of government and business leaders. “If Vietnam goes forward […]

Leaked documents reveal counterterrorism tactics used at Standing Rock to “defeat pipeline insurgencies”

By Alleen Brown, Will Parrish, and Alice Speri 27 May 2017 (The Intercept) – A shadowy international mercenary and security firm known as TigerSwan targeted the movement opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline with military-style counterterrorism measures, collaborating closely with police in at least five states, according to internal documents obtained by The Intercept. The […]

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