Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Australia’s summer is hottest on record – Average temperature breaks previous summer temperature record, set in summer 1997/1998

By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer1 March 2013 (LiveScience) – Australia’s summer of 2013 is the hottest on record so far, the country’s Bureau of Meteorology announced today (March 1). The country’s average temperature this summer has been 83.5 degrees Fahrenheit (28.6 degrees Celsius), 2 degrees F (1 degree C) above normal. That breaks the […]

For New York Times environmental reporting, intentions may be good but the signs are not – ‘They’ve made a horrible decision that ensures the deterioration of The Times’s environmental coverage’

By MARGARET SULLIVAN5 March 2013 (The New York Times) – Judging by appearances, things are not looking good for environmental reporting at The Times. In January, The Times dismantled its environmental reporting “pod” – a group of reporters and editors solely devoted to that subject who worked with one another to develop stories and projects. […]

Arctic ice loss amplified Superstorm Sandy violence

By Blaine Friedlander4 March 2013 (Cornell Chronicle) – If you believe that last October’s Superstorm Sandy was a freak of nature — the confluence of unusual meteorological, atmospheric and celestial events — think again. Cornell and Rutgers researchers report in the March issue of Oceanography that the severe loss of summertime Arctic sea ice — […]

How a drought in China may have helped spark the Arab Spring – ‘We will have more droughts, more floods, and they will be more severe’

By Raveena Aulakh Environment Reporter5 March 2013 (Toronto Star) – Drought in eastern China. A shortage of wheat. An uprising in Egypt. On the face of it, the three don’t seem related. But two years after revolutions swept through the Arab world, a new study argues that climate change played a significant role in the […]

Flooding complicates clean-up at Fukushima nuclear plant – ‘Every day we have approximately 400 metric tons of groundwater’

By James Topham and Mari Saito, with Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Robert Birsel8 March 2013 TOKYO (Reuters) – Tokyo Electric Power Company is struggling to stop groundwater flooding into damaged reactors at its wrecked Fukushima plant and it may take four years to fix the problem, possibly delaying the removal of melted uranium fuel. The […]

Climate change and deforestation threaten the ecological stability of Lake Tanganyika

By Lisa Borre7 March 2013 (National Geographic) – Tropical lakes in East Africa don’t grab headlines the way polar bears do, but climate change is having an effect on them, too. Although the changes are not as visible as melting polar ice caps, they are no less real. As in many lakes around the world, […]

Infographic: How climate change is destroying Earth

14 February 2013 (LearnStuff) – Thanks to extensive research and noticeable changes in weather and storm prevalence, it’s getting harder to turn a blind eye to the reality of climate change. Since the Industrial Age spurred the increasing usage of fossil fuels for energy production, the weather has been warming. In fact, since 1880, the […]

Climate change forcing thousands in Bangladesh into slums of Dhaka

By Raveena Aulakh 16 February 2013 (Toronto Star) – Masud, 19, lives in Korail, Dhaka’s largest slum. Its roughly 70,000 residents dwell in the shadow of the affluent Gulshan neighbourhood, with its mansions, restaurants, and western-style shopping centres. Masud, her husband Mohammed, and their year-old daughter Karima share a one-room shanty that can be crossed […]

Canada glaciers face ‘big losses’ – ‘The processes that are currently ongoing will continue and be re-enforced, so the mass loss will increase in time’

By Jonathan Amos, Science correspondent7 March 2013 (BBC News) – The glaciers of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago will undergo a dramatic retreat this century if warming projections hold true. A new study suggests the region’s ice fields could lose perhaps as much as a fifth of their volume. Such a melt would add 3.5cm to […]

Keystone XL pipeline: US government report drew on analysis by oil consultants

By Lisa Song for InsideClimate News, part of the Guardian Environment Network 6 March 2013 (guardian.co.uk) – The State Department’s recent conclusion that the Keystone XL pipeline “is unlikely to have a substantial impact” on the rate of Canada’s oil sands development was based on analysis provided by two consulting firms with ties to oil […]

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