Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Going to seed: Climate change could spark small mammal invasion

By Henry Gass 8 July 2013 (Scientific American) – Invasive animals are a scourge the world over, and on many islands they have decimated local plants and animals. New Zealand has contended with such losses for centuries as rats and stoats (short-tailed weasels) from abroad have helped to wipe out 19 bird species. These small […]

Arizona horses dying as Navajo Nation declares drought emergency – ‘We've been in a drought for eight years’

5 July 2013 (ICTMN) – The horses, desperate for water, had come to drink from a pool of rainwater that had run off a hill and flooded land on the Navajo reservation. What they got was a mud bath that turned deadly as they became trapped in the bentonite clay of the Chinle Formation, which […]

Global warming and economists – SuperFreakonomics is SuperFreakingWrong

By John Abraham    7 July 2013 (The Guardian) – Perhaps I have been naïve, but for many years I have held the view that economists were good decision makers and that part of being a good decision maker was to seek out good information. Well-informed decisions, I thought, allowed people to earn better returns, to […]

As Arizona fire rages, scientists warn of more unpredictable blazes – ‘These huge fires are the new normal’

By Julie Cart3 July 2013 BOISE, Idaho (Los Angeles Times) – Early morning is a frenetic time at a wildfire command post. Biologists, meteorologists, foresters and firefighters hustle into tents and grab laptops to review overnight reports, prepping for the day’s assault. Fire behavior analysts run computer models that spit out information crucial to putting […]

Waterways warmed by climate change will increase electricity prices in southern Europe

By Jonathan Tirone; Editing by James Hertling8 July 2013 VIENNA (Bloomberg) – Waterways warmed by climate change will increase electricity prices by as much as a third in southern Europe as producers struggle to cool power stations, a study showed. Countries from Romania to Bulgaria and Slovenia face the biggest price increases, according to research […]

Australia heatwaves ‘five times more likely due to global warming’

Tim Radford for Climate News Network8 July 2013 (The Guardian) – Global warming has increased five-fold the probabilities that Australians will bake in record hot summers, according to new research from the University of Melbourne. And human activities – including greenhouse gas releases from fossil fuels – must account for at least half of these […]

Sumatran orangutan beaten to death, reports conservation group

Jakarta, 2 July 2013 (AFP) – Indonesian villagers have beaten a Sumatran orangutan to death, an animal protection group said Tuesday, the latest case of one of the critically-endangered primates being killed by humans. The adult female died Thursday after being rescued from a village in Aceh province with numerous injuries by the Sumatran Orangutan […]

Image of the Day: Satellite view of Kedarnath after June 2013 flood

By Raju Gusain29 June 2013 Dehradun (India Today) – New satellite images of Kedarnath clearly indicate the devastation which has taken place there. The images, taken by US based NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite on 23 June 2013, when compared with old National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) images provided by the Uttarakhand Space Application Centre, show […]

Brazil confirms Amazon deforestation increase

6 July 2013 (mongabay.com) – Data released by the Brazilian government Friday confirms an increase in Amazon forest loss. Brazil’s National Space Research Institute, INPE, updated data from its near-real-time deforestation tracking system, known as DETER. The system showed a near five-fold increase in forest loss during May 2013 relative to a year earlier, from […]

Photo gallery: Oil train explosion in Quebec town of Lac Mégantic – ‘Everything that was there is gone’

Smoke rises from railway cars that were carrying crude oil after derailing in downtown Lac Mégantic, Quebec, Saturday, 6 July 2013. Photo: Paul Chiasson / THE CANADIAN PRESS Train Derailment Sparks Explosions in Quebec Huge fire erupts in Lac-Mégantic, QC, Canada, as an oil train derails. All of downtown is burning right now. Vers 1:20am […]

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