Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

16-foot waves measured in Arctic Ocean where once there was only ice

By Jane J. Lee30 July 2014 (National Geographic) – Sixteen-foot waves are buffeting an area of the Arctic Ocean that until recently was permanently covered in sea ice—another sign of a warming climate, scientists say. Because wave action breaks up sea ice, allowing more sunlight to warm the ocean, it can trigger a cycle that […]

World’s top PR companies rule out working with climate science deniers – ‘We would not knowingly partner with a client who denies the existence of climate change’

By Suzanne Goldenberg and Nishad Karim    4 August 2014 (theguardian.com) – Some of the world’s top PR companies have for the first time publicly ruled out working with climate change deniers, marking a fundamental shift in the multi-billion dollar industry that has grown up around the issue of global warming. Public relations firms have played […]

Why California could run out of water in two years if the drought continues – ‘Pray for rain’

By Todd Woody 4 August 2014  (TakePart) – If anyone knows how dire the drought is, not just in California but throughout the Southwest of the United States, it’s Jay Famiglietti. A senior water cycle scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a professor at the University of California, Irvine, Famiglietti is frighteningly familiar with […]

A brave call from the ‘Dalai Lama of the Amazon’ – ‘Large-scale mining seems like a big monster that wants to destroy the earth, to destroy nature

By Leila Salazar-Lopez11 August 2014 (Amazon Watch) – Recently I had the great honor of meeting Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, a shaman and internationally renowned spokesman for the Yanomami people of Brazil, while he was on a global speaking tour with our friends at Survival International. It was disturbing to learn that Davi had been receiving […]

Derelict fishing nets have turned the bottom of the sea into a death trap

By Gwynn Guilford13 August 2014 (Quartz) – Each year, at least 640,000 tonnes of nets and other fishing gear goes overboard and never comes back. But just because it’s lost to the sea doesn’t mean that derelict gear stops doing its jobs. The lobster pots, crab traps and dense thickets of nets that litter the […]

Humans have tripled mercury levels in upper ocean – Pollution may soon overwhelm deep seas’ ability to sequester mercury

By Anne Casselman6 August 2014 (Nature) – Mercury levels in the upper ocean have tripled since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and human activities are to blame, researchers report today in Nature. Although several computer models have estimated the amount of marine mercury, the new analysis provides the first global measurements. It fills in […]

Cusco Running Club: Global warming and Peru

My guest post is up at Cusco Running Club: Global Warming and Peru. Check it out if you’re interested in the effects of abrupt climate change in the rural Andes: Global warming is real You may have heard that global warming isn’t happening, or that it’s a hoax, or that it has “paused” in recent […]

Japan whale poachers end Pacific slaughter with 115 whales dead

By Reissa Su30 July 2014 (International Business Times) – Japan has wrapped up its whaling campaign in the Pacific with 115 whales caught and killed in its two-and-a-half month operation. It is the second whaling hunt of Japan since the United Nations’ international court had ordered Japan to stop catching and killing whales in the […]

Climate disinformer Roger Pielke, Jr. out at Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog

By Laurence Lewis28 July 2014 (Daily Kos) – When Nate Silver’s new FiveThirtyEight blog hired climate disinformer Roger Pielke, Jr., there was a fierce backlash from climate scientists and activists. As I wrote, in an extensive post: Climate change is the most important issue humanity has ever faced. On the questions of whether it is […]

Climate models on the mark, Australian-led research finds – ‘We’re still setting records even during the cold phase because we’re still warming’

By Peter Hannam, Environment Editor21 July 2014 (Sydney Morning Herald) – A common refrain by climate sceptics that surface temperatures have not warmed over the past 17 years, implying climate models predicting otherwise are unreliable, has been refuted by new research led by James Risbey, a senior CSIRO researcher. Setting aside the fact the equal […]

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