Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Antarctic melt shakes up food chain

By Tim Barlass7 April 2013 (Sydney Morning Herald) – Major changes to the food chain, weather, and landscape of Antarctica have provided stark evidence of the impact of global warming, a report on a polar expedition has revealed. The preliminary report on the research by scientists from the Australian Antarctic Division and the Woods Hole […]

Movie review: SWITCH

By Ray Pierrehumbert 2 April 2013 (RealClimate) – This year, the Geological Society of America is rolling out their Switch Energy Awareness campaign. The centerpiece of the campaign is a documentary film, Switch, which purports to be about the need for a transformation in the world’s energy systems. Recently, I attended the Chicago premier of […]

Angry summer down under: Murdoch paper hosts op-ed that attacks scientists while Australia sizzles

By Brenda Ekwurzel, climate scientist 5 April 2013 (UCS) – You know something really weird is happening when in a single season more than 123 records are broken. That was the news from my home country, Australia, last month. The Australian Climate Commission, a government-sponsored science group, released a report confirming that the country’s climate […]

Argentina politicians jeered after flash flood ‘catastrophe’ – Flood called the largest weather-related disaster in the history of Buenos Aires province

By Michael Warren and Almudena Calatrava in Buenos Aires 4 April 2013 LA PLATA, Argentina (AP) – Argentine police and soldiers searched house to house, in creeks and culverts and even in trees for bodies on Thursday after floods killed at least 57 people in the province and city of Buenos Aires. As torrential rains […]

Sahara went from green to desert in a flash

By Becky Oskin, LiveScience5 April 2013 (NBC News) – From lakes and grasslands with hippos and giraffes to a vast desert, North Africa’s sudden geographical transformation 5,000 years ago was one of the planet’s most dramatic climate shifts. The transformation took place nearly simultaneously across the continent’s northern half, a new study finds. The results […]

Amazon faces renewed risk from cattle – ‘Trade is emerging as a key driver of deforestation in Brazil’

5 April 2013 (Reuters) – Rising foreign demand for beef and soybeans will tempt Brazil to clear more of the Amazon rainforest, in a reversal of recent success in slowing forest losses, a study said on Thursday. About 30 per cent of deforestation in Brazil in the decade to 2010 was due to farmers and […]

Report: Asian carp may have reached Great Lakes

[Des called it for the Asian carp back in 2010. Here’s more evidence strengthening the case, unfortunately.] By JOHN FLESHER4 April 2013 TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) – At least some Asian carp probably have found their way into the Great Lakes, but there’s still time to stop the dreaded invaders from becoming established and unraveling […]

World Bank chief says global warming threatens the planet and the poorest – ‘If we do not act to curb climate change immediately, we will leave our children and grandchildren an unrecognizable planet’

By Howard Schneider2 April 2013 (Washington Post) – World Bank President Jim Yong Kim on Tuesday said climate change was a “fundamental threat” to global economic development as he called for a major new push to reduce extreme poverty over the next 17 years. The bank is in the middle of an internal debate over […]

Short on graves, China turns to sea burials

By William Wan3 April 2013 BEIJING (Washington Post) – In this country of almost 1.4 billion people, life is an unending struggle for resources — money, property, even spouses. And it doesn’t get easier in death. Prices for graves are skyrocketing, driven by decades of unbridled development and scarce city land. The government’s answer to […]

Economist warns millions at risk from climate change – ‘We haven’t been above five degrees Celsius on this planet for about 30 million years. So you can see that this is radical change way outside human experience.’

WASHINGTON, 3 April 2013 (AFP) – The author of an influential 2006 study on climate change warned Tuesday that the world could be headed toward warming even more catastrophic than expected but he voiced hope for political action. Nicholas Stern, the British former chief economist for the World Bank, said that both emissions of greenhouse […]

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