Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Global warming has dropped off the political radar – Was the Paris agreement the zenith of climate action?

By Ed King19 February 2016 (Climate Change News) – “After Paris, what now?” is a comment increasingly heard in conversations with civil society activists, diplomats and government officials. A senior figure involved at the Paris talks asked me recently if I’d heard what plans NGOs had to keep the pressure up on leaders through 2016. […]

Why are the lost tribes now emerging from the Amazon?

By Angus Macqueen20 February 2016 (Guardian) – Footage of a man handing bananas to two naked men in the middle of an Amazonian river went viral in late June 2014. At the time, the Brazilians claimed it was a once in a generation event – that the moment of “first contact” was caught on camera. […]

UN human rights expert: ‘Migrant-bashing has dangerously become the norm’ in Europe

18 February 2016 (UN) – As the European Union summit starts in Brussels, a United Nations expert on the human rights of migrants warned today that it has become impossible in Europe to have a meaningful discussion about migrant’s rights, diversity, and integration. “Europe has always been a strong advocate of human rights in Europe […]

UT Poll: Vast majority of Americans back action against climate change

By Bill Dawson19 February 2016 (Texas Climate News) – Coming just a few weeks after nearly 200 nations agreed in Paris on a sweeping international plan to combat climate change in December, the latest University of Texas Energy Poll has found extremely wide support for such climate action in the U.S. The results were released […]

CSIRO cuts to climate science are against the public good

By Roger Jones4 February 2016 (The Conversation) – CSIRO (the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) is facing another round of job losses to basic public research, with the news that the organisation is making deep staffing cuts to areas such as Oceans and Atmosphere and Land and Water. Internally, there are signals that Oceans […]

Robert Scribbler: No winter for the Arctic in 2016 – NASA marks hottest January ever recorded

18 February 2016 (robertscribbler.com) – The Scientists are floored and we should be too. The global heat and especially the extremely high temperature departures we’ve seen in the Arctic over the past month are flat-out unprecedented. It’s  freakish-strange. And what it looks like, to this particular observer, is that the seasonality of our world is […]

Global list of water-related conflicts grows – ‘By any measure or any method, there are too many people who are facing water scarcity’

By Ian James 18 February 2016 (The Desert Sun) – Violent conflicts over water have been flaring in places from Yemen to Peru, and an updated global list shows a sharp rise in the number of water-related clashes reported over the past three decades. The Pacific Institute, a think tank that focuses on water issues, […]

EU review finds European governments failing in fight against multi-billion euro trade in illegal wood

18 February 2016 (Global Witness) – EU member states are failing to enforce laws designed to protect the world’s forests from illegal logging, according to a European Commission report published today [EU Timber Regulation: First two years show progress, but more effort needed from Member States and private sector]. The first review of the EU […]

Seven million hectares of forests have been lost in Argentina over the past 20 years – ‘We are facing a serious forest emergency’

By Ruxandra Guidi 19 February 2016 (mongabay.com) – Agriculture in Argentina has expanded at an accelerated rate in the past twenty years due to technological advances, the use of genetically modified crops, and, in particular, to the cultivation of soybean. The South American country is the first global exporter of soy, and the biggest provider […]

Drought ends in São Paulo but future still uncertain

By Caroline Stauffer; Editing by Brad Brooks and Bill Trott 18 February 2016 SÃO PAULO (Reuters) – Water levels at the main reservoir in Brazil’s largest city of São Paulo have more than doubled since the El Niño climate phenomenon ended a two-year drought, although industrialists and activists warn fresh shortages may be just a […]

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