Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Puget Sound has new climate refugees: white pelicans – ‘It’s like seeing aliens arrive’

By Katie Campbell29 August 2016 (KCTS9) – American white pelicans are conspicuous birds. With their long orange bills and their nine-foot wingspan, they stand out, even at a distance. Sue Ehler easily spots a squadron of them through her binoculars from over a mile away, coming in for a landing on Puget Sound’s Padilla Bay. […]

Designers propose memorial to shorelines past in Washington, D.C.

By Sara Peach2 September 2016 (Yale Climate Connections) – Sea level rise will have a significant impact on coastal communities as the world warms in the coming decades. But it happens too slowly to easily see. Now, designers Erik Jensen and Rebecca Sunter want to give people a tangible way to mark the change. They’ve […]

Sea Shepherd returns to ‘The Cove’ in Taiji, Japan

By Captain Paul Watson 31 August 2016 (Huffington Post) – Since 2009, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has been on the ground in Taiji, Japan, documenting and bringing to light the atrocious dolphin drive hunt taking place from September to March. Originally dubbed Operation Infinite Patience, this Sea Shepherd campaign has volunteers on the ground enduring […]

‘Like it’s been nuked’: Millions of bees dead after South Carolina sprays for Zika mosquitoes

By Ben Guarino 1 September 2016 (Washington Post) – On Sunday morning, the South Carolina honey bees began to die in massive numbers. Death came suddenly to Dorchester County, S.C. Stressed insects tried to flee their nests, only to surrender in little clumps at hive entrances. The dead worker bees littering the farms suggested that […]

China’s trans-Amazon railway stokes forest fears

By Jan Rocha29 August 2016 SÃO PAULO (Climate News Network) – China’s fast-rising population and its burgeoning economy make steep demands on natural resources, so steep that Beijing is searching constantly for supplies from overseas. And it wants to obtain them, naturally, as cheaply as it can. Now in prospect is China’s trans-Amazon railway – […]

‘Raging Grannies’ arrested for blocking oil and coal trains in Washington State

By Jonathan Glover31 August 2016 (The Spokesman-Review) – Police arrested three protesters calling themselves “Raging Grannies” for standing on railroad tracks Wednesday when they refused orders to stop blocking oil and coal trains in east Spokane. The women – all grandmothers – were3 the last of about 20 protestors who blocked rail lines near Trent […]

Catastrophic decline of Africa elephant population revealed by most comprehensive survey ever

By David McKenzie and Ingrid Formanek 31 August 2016 Linyanti Swamp, Botswana (CNN) – Scanning Botswana’s remote Linyanti swamp from the low flying chopper, elephant ecologist Mike Chase can’t hide the anxiety and dread as he sees what he has seen too many times before. “I don’t think anybody in the world has seen the number […]

More U.S. parents believe vaccines are unnecessary

By Dennis Thompson29 August 2016 (HealthDay News) – Pediatricians are encountering more parents who refuse to have their children vaccinated, mainly because they don’t see the point of vaccines, a U.S. survey found. In the survey, conducted in 2013, about 87 percent of pediatricians said they had encountered vaccine refusals, an increase from the 75 […]

Study reveals surprising role of haze in the warming of China cities

By Timothy Brown23 August 2016 (Yale) – A new Yale-led study published in the journal Nature Communications sheds light on the surprising role that haze in China plays in promoting the urban heat island effect [UHI], a process whereby city centers tend to be significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas. Scientists have always suspected that […]

350: Exxon killed the reef

25 August 2016 (350) – The seas of dead coral are a crime scene. This year, the world witnessed the most devastating mass coral bleaching event ever recorded which left behind dead reefs in at least 38 countries. Many of these reefs will never recover. The immediate cause is clear: the ongoing rise in global […]

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