Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Seattle smashes record for all-time wettest March

By Scott Sistek   28 March 2014 SEATTLE (KOMO News) – We all know it’s been a soggy month of March. Now we have the trophy to prove it. The rains Friday were enough to set the record for the all-time wettest March in Seattle history. That’s not just Sea-Tac Airport,which goes back to 1945, but […]

RCMP descend on native community on central coast of British Columbia in herring fishery conflict

By Larry Pynn29 March 2014 Vancouver (Vancouver Sun) – The federal government has chosen a remote stretch of B.C. coastline to square off against aboriginals in a fight over an imminent commercial roe-herring fishery. Federal fisheries minister Gail Shea is being blamed for an escalating conflict over a forthcoming commercial gillnet fishery that has resulted […]

Study blames BP oil spill for heart defects in fish – ‘They can’t swim as fast, so they are either going to get eaten or they won’t be able to eat enough. That leads to reduced survival.’

By Arielle Duhaime-Ross24 March 2014 (The Verge) – Last December, scientists announced that dolphins in Louisiana were experiencing lung diseases and low birthrates in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that released more than 636 million liters of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Now, researchers have also found evidence […]

Frack the USA: New map shows 1 million oil, gas wells

By Bobby Magill27 March 2014 (Climate Central) – If you’re wondering where oil and gas production and hydraulic fracturing are happening near you, FracTracker has a new mapping tool that will help you find out. Researchers at FracTracker, an independent oil and gas research group that started as a mapping project at the University of […]

Facing rising seas, Bangladesh confronts the consequences of climate change – ‘There is no doubt that preparations within Bangladesh have been utterly inadequate, but any such preparations are bound to fail because the problem is far too big for any single government’

By Gardiner Harris28 March 2014 DAKOPE, Bangladesh (The New York Times) – When a powerful storm destroyed her riverside home in 2009, Jahanara Khatun lost more than the modest roof over her head. In the aftermath, her husband died and she became so destitute that she sold her son and daughter into bonded servitude. And […]

Climate change may make terrible mudslides more common – ‘The slide is about a mile wide. Entire neighborhoods are just gone. When the slide hit the river, it was like a tsunami.’

By Eric Holthaus26 March 2014 (Slate) –  The death toll from this weekend’s mudslide through Oso, Wash., is still climbing, with more than 100 still listed as missing. The stories emerging are the definition of heart-rending. Here’s one, from the Seattle Times: One volunteer firefighter who had stopped working around 11:30 p.m. Saturday night said […]

California drought: How water crisis is worse for almonds – ‘I think we’re going to see a lot of trees die. It’s going to break a lot of farmers.’

By Peter Fimrite 24 March 2014 Atwater, Merced County (San Francisco Chronicle) — A huge shift away from annual crops to nut trees has transformed the California farm belt over the past two decades and left farmers perilously vulnerable to the severe drought that is currently gripping the state. California farmers have spent past years […]

‘The polar bear is us’: New U.N. report warns that the effects of global warming are already being felt

By Lindsay Abrams24 March 2014 (Salon) – The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is at it again, as over 60 scientists and representatives from about 100 nations gather this week in Japan to finalize an authoritative report on the impacts of climate change. This time, the group’s focus moves beyond melting glaciers and threats […]

Australia scientists resign ‘living dead’ species to extinction, call for triage debate – ‘I’m afraid to tell everybody we’re in a terminal situation. We’re confronting a whole raft of species about to go over the extinction cliff.’

By Margot O’Neill20 March 2014 The dramatic ongoing loss of Australian animal and plant species has prompted influential scientists to call on governments to start making tough decisions about which ones to save – and which species should be left to face extinction. The proposal to triage Australia’s unique species comes from some of the […]

WMO: Global warming not stopped, will go on for centuries – ‘The laws of physics are non-negotiable’

By Robert Evans; Editing by Robin Pomeroy24 March 2014 GENEVA (Reuters) – There has been no reverse in the trend of global warming and there is still consistent evidence for man-made climate change, the head of the U.N. World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said on Monday. A slow-down in the average pace of warming at the […]

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