Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

The dark money in climate change

[cf. Graph of the Day: Total foundation funding distribution to U.S. climate change countermovement organizations, 2003-2010] By George Zornick 27 December 2013 (Washington Post) – In his speech at Georgetown University this year, President Obama made it clear that tackling climate change will be one of the key priorities for the remainder of his term. […]

U.S. military wraps climate change response into master plans – ‘We are going to integrate climate change considerations into the normal processes, the day-to-day jobs of everybody’

By Cheryl Pellerin26 November 2013 WASHINGTON (American Forces Press Service) – The effects of climate change are already evident at Defense Department installations in the United States and overseas, and DOD expects climate change to challenge its ability to fulfill its mission in the future, according to the first DOD Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap [pdf]. […]

Graph of the Day: Total foundation funding distribution to U.S. climate change countermovement organizations, 2003-2010

20 December 2013 (PhysOrg) – A new study conducted by Drexel University’s environmental sociologist Robert J. Brulle, PhD, exposes the organizational underpinnings and funding behind the powerful climate change countermovement. This study marks the first peer-reviewed, comprehensive analysis ever conducted of the sources of funding that maintain the denial effort. Through an analysis of the […]

FAQ: Radiation from Fukushima

By Ken Buesseler28 August 2013 (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) – On 11 March 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake—one of the largest ever recorded—occurred 80 miles off the coast of Japan. The earthquake created a series of tsunamis, the largest estimated to be over 30 feet, that swept ashore. In addition to the tragic human toll […]

Madagascar forests vanish to feed taste for rosewood in West and China – ‘We don’t have yet a legal government, so everyone is taking advantage of the situation and they are doing what they want’

By Tamasin Ford, with additional reporting by Iloniaina Alain Rakotondravony23 December 2013 CAP EST, Madagascar (The Guardian) – Blood-red sawdust coats every surface in the small carpentry workshop, where Primo Jean Besy is at the lathe fashioning vases out of ruby-coloured logs. Besy and his father are small-scale carpenters in Antalaha in north-east Madagascar, and […]

Mass starvation of penguins on Cape Denison, as iceberg blocks access to ocean and food – ‘The most eerie thing about the rookeries is how quiet they are’

By Alok Jha and Laurence Topham24 December 2013 (The Guardian) – Every coast or sea we have visited in Antarctica, we have seen penguins. They come to the shoreline to investigate our ship as we sail past, they hop on and off ice floes, flocks of them fly in formation through the water. Night or […]

1,000 dolphins dead along U.S. East Coast in virus epidemic

By Barbara Liston23 December 2013 ORLANDO (Reuters) – More than 1,000 migratory bottlenose dolphins have died from a measles-like virus along the U.S. Eastern Seaboard in 2013 and the epidemic shows no sign of abating, a marine biologist said on Monday. The death toll exceeds the 740 dolphins killed during the last big outbreak of […]

Record high temperatures in New York, Philadelphia – Washington D.C. ‘about 40 degrees warmer than normal’

By Victoria Cavaliere and Edith Honan in New York, Tim Ghianni in Nashville, and Kevin Murphy in Kansas City, Missouri; editing by G Crosse23 December 2013 (Reuters) – A band of severe weather from tornadoes to icy blasts left at least seven people dead as winter storms and severe weather pushed up the East Coast […]

UK government under fire for rejecting EU food bank funding –‘Conservative anti-European ideology is being put before the needs of the most destitute and deprived in our society’

  By Nicholas Watt, chief political correspondent 17 December 2013 (The Guardian) – The government has been accused of putting “anti-European ideology” before the needs of the most deprived people in society after Britain rejected help from a European Union fund to help subsidise the costs of food banks. David Cameron, who was heavily criticised […]

Graph of the Day: Low and high temperature extremes across North America, 3–10 December 2013

16 December 2013 (NASA) – While the continental U.S. shivered through an abnormally cold spell in December 2013, Alaska experienced record-breaking heat. Both extremes were caused by an unusual kink in the northern hemisphere’s polar jet stream, which caused frigid Arctic air to move south and warm air to head north. The jet stream is […]

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