Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Biggest Brazil metro area desperate for water – ‘If deforestation in the Amazon continues, São Paulo will probably dry up’

By Adriana Gomez Licon8 November 2014 ITU, Brazil (AP) – It’s been nearly a month since Diomar Pereira has had running water at his home in Itu, a commuter city outside São Paulo that is at the epicenter of the worst drought to hit southeastern Brazil in more than eight decades. Like others in this […]

A year after Typhoon Haiyan, 1 million Filipinos still live in dangerous conditions – ‘It is now abundantly clear that all countries need to transition to a low-carbon energy future’

6 November 2014 (Oxfam) – There are 205,000 families living in ‘unsafe’ areas and only 1 percent of houses are built, said a new report published by Oxfam today called, In the Shadow of the Storm: Getting Recovery Right One Year After Typhoon Haiyan. Oxfam said that significant progress had been made in the aftermath […]

Plastic microfibers from clothing comprise 85 percent of human-made material on shorelines worldwide

By Mary Catherine O’Connor27 October 2014 (The Guardian) – Ecologist Mark Browne knew he’d found something big when, after months of tediously examining sediment along shorelines around the world, he noticed something no one had predicted: fibers. Everywhere. They were tiny and synthetic and he was finding them in the greatest concentration near sewage outflows. […]

As wildfires worsen in the U.S., calls for change in tactics – ‘Over the past decade, wildfires have increased in size and intensity, and the fire season now extends 60-80 days longer than historic averages’

By Alan Neuhauser 5 November 2014 (U.S. News & World Report) – Smokey Bear may not know the half of it. As one of the longest and costliest wildfire seasons in U.S. history comes to a close, a new study asserts the way we’ve been attempting to prevent forest fires is “simply wrong.” “We don’t […]

Australia is ‘holding back’ fight against global warming – ‘You could make the case that we were once doing our fair share, now we are not’

3 November 2014 (BBC News) – Australia is a drag on international efforts to tackle climate change, says leading economist and former government adviser Professor Ross Garnaut. Prof Garnaut said the country had failed to make its “fair share” of greenhouse gas cuts. Earlier, Prime Minister Tony Abbott reiterated his position that coal was the […]

Europe has 421 million fewer birds than 30 years ago – ‘The way we are managing the environment is unsustainable for many of our most familiar species’

LONDON, 3 November 2014 (AFP) – Europe has an estimated 421 million fewer birds than three decades ago, and current treatment of the environment is unsustainable for many common species, a study released on Monday said. The population crash is related to modern farming methods and the loss and damage of habitats, according to the […]

Across America, science center offerings on global warming are often scant

By Chris Potter 2 November 2014 (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) – Nine out of 10 scientists believe that humans are causing global climate change, surveys suggest. But only about one out of two science-education facilities are discussing it at all. “I would say about half of [U.S. science facilities] have addressed the issue one way or another,” […]

NASA bombshell: Global groundwater crisis threatens our food supplies and our security

By Joe Romm 31 October 2014 (Climate Progress) – An alarming satellite-based analysis from NASA finds that the world is depleting groundwater — the water stored unground in soil and aquifers — at an unprecedented rate. A new Nature Climate Change piece, “The global groundwater crisis,” by James Famiglietti, a leading hydrologist at the NASA […]

Confessions of a former climate change denialist – ‘I took online courses. I listened to podcasts. Every myth in my head popped and floated away.’

By Kasra Hassani28 October 2014 (CSWA) – I, a scientist with a PhD in Microbiology and Immunology, was a climate change denialist. Wait, let me add, I was an effective climate change denialist: I would throw on a cloak of anecdotal evidence and biased one-sided skepticism and declare myself a skeptic. Good scientists are skeptics, […]

Global warming: The Weather Channel position statement – ‘The bottom line is that with the rate of greenhouse gas emissions increasing, a significant warming trend is expected to continue’

29 October 2014 (weather.com) – The scientific issue of global warming can be broken down into three main questions: Is global warming a reality? Are human activities causing it? What are the prospects for the future? Warming: Fact or Fiction? The climate of the earth is indeed warming, with an increase of approximately 1 – […]

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