Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Agriculture under assault as climate heats up – ‘We are in the midst of dramatic assault on the security of the food supply’

By Bill Briggs16 May 2013 (NBC News) – American eaters, let’s talk about the birds and the bees: The U.S. food supply – from chickens injected with arsenic to dying bee colonies – is under unprecedented siege from a blitz of man-made hazards, meaning some of your favorite treats someday may vanish from your plate, […]

Leaked papers show UK government will backtrack on tar sands extraction being classified as highly polluting

By Lorna Howarth17 May 2013 (The Ecologist) – The UK government has come under fire this week from both NGOs and scientists for rejecting an EU proposal to classify tar sands under the European Fuel Quality Directive (FQD) as ‘highly polluting’ – despite the fact research has shown that oil produced from the Canadian tar […]

Obama tweet gives Australia climate researcher 31 million reasons to celebrate – ‘Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: climate change is real, man-made, and dangerous’

By Peter Hannam, Carbon economy editor17 May 2013 (Sydney Morning Herald) – It’s the social media equivalent of hitting the jackpot: having your study tweeted by US President Barack Obama. Australian researcher John Cook, an expert in climate change communication, was inundated with requests for interviews by US media outlets after Obama took to Twitter […]

With rising seas, America’s birthplace could disappear – ‘We were thinking it’s another 100 years, another 150 years. You know, it could be much closer.’

By Christopher Joyce14 May 2013 (NPR) – By the end of the century, the birthplace of America may be underwater. The first successful English colony in America was at Jamestown, Va., a swampy island in the Chesapeake Bay. The colony endured for almost a century, and remnants of the place still exist. You can go […]

Climate change brings disease threat for polar bears – ‘There are a number of diseases now observed in Arctic animals that were not previously seen’

By Shaoni Bhattacharya 15 May 2013 (New Scientist) – With its habitats shrinking and food supplies dwindling, the fate of the polar bear looks grim in the face of climate change. Now comes news that the iconic Arctic mammal may face another potentially devastating threat: it may be particularly vulnerable to new pathogens moving northwards […]

Germany can’t stop euro zone from sinking into longest recession – ‘Any recovery is going to be excruciatingly slow’

By Robin Emmott, Sarah Marsh, and Mike Peacock, with additional reporting by Gavin Jones in Berlin and Ingrid Melander in Paris; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt15 May 2013 BRUSSELS/BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s economy crept back into growth at the start of the year but not by enough to stop the euro zone from contracting for a […]

10 places President Obama should visit to see climate change in action

By Brenda Ekwurzel15 May 2013 (UCS) – November, President Obama suggested that we needed a wide-ranging national discussion about climate change. But where to have that conversation? There are so many stories from communities that are on the front lines of climate change, grappling with ways to cope and looking for options. Here are ten […]

Graph of the Day: Continental scale reconstructions of surface temperature for the past two millennia

By Darrell Kaufman21 April 2013 (RealClimate) – In a major step forward in proxy data synthesis, the PAst Global Changes (PAGES) 2k Consortium has just published a suite of continental scale reconstructions of temperature for the past two millennia in Nature Geoscience. More information about the study and its implications are available at the FAQ […]

America’s first climate refugees: Alaska native villages threatened with coastal erosion – ‘It’s real, global warming, it’s real’

By Suzanne Goldenberg in Newtok, Alaska13 May 2013 (Guardian) – Sabrina Warner keeps having the same nightmare: a huge wave rearing up out of the water and crashing over her home, forcing her to swim for her life with her toddler son. “I dream about the water coming in,” she said. The landscape in winter […]

Scientists find extensive glacial retreat in Mount Everest region – Glaciers have shrunk by 13 percent in the last 50 years and the snowline has shifted upward by 180 meters

By: Sudeep Thakuri, Graduate School of Earth, Environment and Biodiversity, University of Milan, Milan, MB, Italy, and Water Research Institute, National Research Council , Brugherio, MB, Italy and colleagues Contact: Sarah Charley, +1 (202) 777-7516scharley@agu.org13 May 2013 Cancún, Mexico (AGU) – Researchers taking a new look at the snow and ice covering Mount Everest and […]

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