Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

With dry taps and toilets, California drought turns desperate – ‘You don’t think of water as privilege until you don’t have it anymore’

By Jennifer Medina2 October 2014 PORTERVILLE, California (The New York Times) – After a nine-hour day working at a citrus packing plant, her body covered in a sheen of fruit wax and dust, there is nothing Angelica Gallegos wants more than a hot shower, with steam to help clear her throat and lungs. “I can […]

Greenland Ice Sheet more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought – ‘Extreme meteorological events, such as heavy rainfall and heat waves, can have a large effect on the rate of ice loss’

Contact: Sarah Collinssarah.collins@admin.cam.ac.uk44-012-233-32300University of Cambridge@Cambridge_Uni29 September 2014 (University of Cambridge) – A new model developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge has shown that despite its apparent stability, the massive ice sheet covering most of Greenland is more sensitive to climate change than earlier estimates have suggested, which would accelerate the rising sea levels […]

Image of the Day: Super Typhoon Vongfong viewed from the International Space Station – “I’ve seen many from here, but none like this”

9 October 2014 (NBC News) – NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman tweeted an image of Super Typhoon Vongfong in the western Pacific Ocean from the International Space Station on Thursday commenting, “I’ve seen many from here, but none like this.” The most powerful storm of 2014 continues to swirl towards Japan with maximum winds of 165 […]

The most ambitious environmental lawsuit ever: Oil and gas industry should pay for destruction of Louisiana coast – ‘What took 7,000 years to create has been nearly destroyed in the last 85’

By NATHANIEL RICH     2 October 2014 (The New York Times) – In Louisiana, the most common way to visualize the state’s existential crisis is through the metaphor of football fields. The formulation, repeated in nearly every local newspaper article about the subject, goes like this: Each hour, Louisiana loses about a football field’s worth of […]

Summer’s over but heatwave pushes southern California toward meltdown – Temperature hits 104F in San Fernando valley

By Rory Carroll6 October 2014 Los Angeles (theguardian.com) – “Stay safe!” went the mantra, as tens of thousands of cyclists zipped around Los Angeles this weekend for CicLAvia, an event to celebrate public spaces. Fellow riders, pedestrians and police shouted it as much in greeting as exhortation since clearly the safest thing was to be […]

BP asks judge to reconsider ‘gross negligence’ ruling in Gulf of Mexico oil spill

By Terry Wade; Editing by Clarence Fernandez2 Oct 2014 HOUSTON (Reuters) – BP Plc (BP.L) on Thursday asked a U.S. court to reconsider a September ruling that found the company “grossly negligent” for the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a finding that boosted its potential liabilities by about $18 billion. The motion […]

Canada federal government puts polar briefings on ice – Tories have been thwarting scientists’ efforts to keep Canadians informed on Arctic ice levels

By Margaret Munro18 August 2014 (Postmedia News) – Federal scientists who keep a close eye on the Arctic ice would like to routinely brief Canadians about extraordinary events unfolding in the North. But newly released federal documents show the Harper government has been thwarting their efforts. In 2012, as the Arctic ice hit the lowest […]

Limiting global warming to 2°C – Why Victor and Kennel are wrong

[For background, see 2 bold proposals emerge to change climate negotiations.] By Stefan Rahmstorf1 October 2014 (RealClimate) – In a comment in Nature titled “Ditch the 2°C warming goal”, political scientist David Victor and retired astrophysicist Charles Kennel advocate just that. But their arguments don’t hold water. It is clear that the opinion article by […]

Image of the Day: 35,000 walrus haul out in northwest Alaska

By Dan Joling30 September 2014 ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Associated Press) – Pacific walrus that can’t find sea ice for resting in Arctic waters are coming ashore in record numbers on a beach in northwest Alaska. An estimated 35,000 walrus were photographed Saturday about 5 miles north of Point Lay, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric […]

Climate change affecting Canada’s northern forests ‘faster than the global average,’ says government report

By Tim Naumetz30 September 2014 PARLIAMENT HILL (Hill Times) – One day after a world conference on climate change in New York City last week that Prime Minister Stephen Harper declined to attend, his Cabinet minister for natural resources quietly tabled a report providing detailed background on the effect climate change is wreaking on Canada’s […]

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