Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Mass starvation of Australia sea birds as 25,000 wash up dead on Sunshine Coast – Up to five million birds may have died, unable to find baitfish to eat

By Bill Hoffman28 November 2013 (Sunshine Coast Daily) – Lindsay Dines has been watching dead mutton birds wash in at Teewah for more than a month. He knows death is part of their migratory fate. Their long, figure eight of the Pacific that starts in Tasmania, touches the northern hemisphere Aleutian Islands, and then California […]

Bloomberg: Five bad arguments from the coal industry

[Desdemona strongly supports the War on Coal: Earth’s greatest mass extinction caused by coal: study] By the Editors11 November 2013 (Bloomberg) – The logic is pretty straightforward. Carbon dioxide emissions are threatening the planet. In the U.S., coal plants are the second-largest source of those emissions, after transportation. Therefore, the Environmental Protection Agency should impose […]

China will get old before it gets rich – Precipitous decline in ratio of working-age people to total population

By Quoctrung Bui15 November 2013 (NPR) – China’s decision to (further) relax its infamous one-child policy is, as much as anything, an economic decision. China put the one-child policy in place decades ago, when the country feared a destabilizing population boom. It benefited in the short run — the country slowed its population growth and […]

After changes, how green is The New York Times? Climate-change coverage fell after environment desk killed

By MARGARET SULLIVAN23 November 2013 (The New York Times) – Early this year, The Times came under heavy criticism from many readers who care deeply about news coverage about the environment — especially climate change. In January, The Times dismantled its “pod” of reporters and editors devoted to that subject. And in March, it discontinued […]

Heartland Institute distorts results of American Meteorological Society survey on global warming

By Keith L. Seitter, AMS Executive Director27 November 2013 (AMS) – Earlier this week, the Heartland Institute appears to have sent an extensive e-mail blast with what is more or less a press release for a paper that will appear in an upcoming issue of BAMS titled “Meteorologists’ Views about Global Warming: A Survey of […]

Scientists observe lowest-ever spring plankton bloom in Northeast Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem

By Doug Fraser25 November 2013 WOODS HOLE (Cape Cod Times) – A marine ecosystem expert is warning that the effect of changes in water temperature and plankton blooms may have ripple effects up the food chain. “We believe that the changes in the timing of warming events have affected plant and animal reproduction,” wrote oceanographer […]

Global boom in coal plants: Nearly 1,200 coal-burning plants are on the drawing boards

By John H. Cushman Jr.22 November 2013 (InsideClimate News) – The smoldering debate over whether coal has a future in a low-carbon world has flared up with new intensity in Warsaw, the site of this month’s annual United Nations negotiations toward a global climate treaty. With world coal use growing at a staggering pace, top […]

New Zealand denies climate change asylum bid

26 November 2013 (BBC News) – The New Zealand High Court has rejected a bid by a man from the Pacific island nation of Kiribati to stay in the country as a climate-change refugee. Ioane Teitiota – whose work visa had expired – had said rising sea-levels meant there was no land in Kiribati he […]

Plague of cicadas in Provence, caused by global warming, could destroy lavender fields in 20 years

By Kim Willsher25 November 2013 PARIS (theguardian.com) – Deep below the once purple but now wintering and dormant fields of Provençal lavender, something is rotten. It will not make itself known until spring and summer, when the cicadas – another symbol of this picturesque region of southern France – are ready to emerge from the […]

New study identifies the top 90 producers of industrial carbon emissions

By Peter Frumhoff, director of science & policy 21 November 2013 (UCS) – Today’s publication in the journal Climatic Change by Richard Heede on Tracing anthropogenic carbon dioxide and methane emissions to fossil fuel and cement producers, 1854–2010 provides a robust scientific basis for motivating fresh thinking and dialogue about responsibility for taking action to […]

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial