Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

U.S. Navy ship ignored warning before ramming protected coral reef – Minesweeper abandoned, taking on water – Phillipine anger grows

By Craig Brown21 January 2013 (Common Dreams) – The US Navy minesweeper that smashed into the World Heritage-listed coral reef off the Philippines coast last week ignored warnings to avoid the area, according to a Philippine government official. The comments from the superintendent of Tubbataha Marine Park, Angelique Songco, added to growing anger in the […]

Joe Biden to climate activists: ‘Keep the faith’ – ‘There is science in the White House’

By ANDREW RESTUCCIA21 January 2013 Vice President Joe Biden reassured environmentalists Sunday night that the Obama administration would not let climate change fall by the wayside in the president’s second term. “I’ll tell you what my green dream is: that we finally face up to climate change,” Biden said during a surprise appearance at the […]

US climate fears mount, but political action wanes – ‘We still do not see any prospect for major legislation in Congress’

By Jean-Louis Santini20 January 2013 But despite President Barack Obama renewing his early promises to act, experts said political opposition would make it at least as difficult as during Obama’s first, failed push to get new legislation through Congress, and said decisive measures will remain unlikely. “All the public opinion polls show a better understanding […]

Koch-funded study finds 2.5°F warming of land since 1750 is manmade – ‘Solar forcing does not appear to contribute’

By Joe Romm 20 January 2013 The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study (BEST) has finally published its findings on the cause of recent global warming. This Koch-funded reanalysis of millions of temperature observations from around the world, “A New Estimate of the Average Earth Surface Land Temperature Spanning 1753 to 2011,” concludes: … solar forcing […]

Smoke haze greets Melbourne at dawn – ‘To think that in 24 hours this fire went from nothing to 40,000 hectares is quite staggering’

By  JASON DOWLING and BENJAMIN MILLAR 21 January 2013 (Cootamundra Herald) – Victoria is about to enter its most dangerous month historically for bushfires with the deadly Gippsland blaze still a major threat, Premier Ted Baillieu has warned. ”This is a big fire and it is likely to burn for some time,” Mr Baillieu said […]

U.S. plants flower nearly a month earlier than they did a century ago

By Joseph Stromberg16 January 2013 Compared to extreme drought, blistering heat, massive wildfires and tropical cyclones, the latest indicator of climate change is unexpectedly attractive: early spring flowers. According to a study published today in the journal PLOS ONE, unusually warm spring weather in 2010 and 2012 at a pair of notable sites in the […]

Graph of the Day: World Energy Consumption by Source, 1820-2010

By Gail the Actuary11 January 2013 Most of us have heard that Thomas Malthus made a forecast in 1798 that the world would run short of food. He expected that this would happen because in a world with limited agricultural land, food supply would fail to rise as rapidly as population. In fact, at the […]

Video: On Victoria’s bushfire front – Blaze expands from 950 to 20,000 hectares – ‘It was unbelievable to see the whole sky light up’

19 January 2013 (10 News / Sydney Morning Herald) – Bushfires in Victoria’s east blaze out of control as one man dies, homes are lost, and thousands of hectares are burnt through. The blaze expanded from 950 to 20,000 hectares around Lake Glenmaggie and Coongulla. On Victoria’s bushfire front Technorati Tags: Australia,heat wave,drought,global warming,climate change,wildfire,forest […]

U.S. mayors focus on ‘local warming’, urge Obama to act

By Valerie Volcovici and Patrick Rucker 18 January 2013 WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Reeling from an historic drought, the hottest year on record and more frequent wild weather, mayors from a number of U.S. cities urged the White House this week to take the lead on setting an agenda to address climate change. City leaders said […]

Preparing Richardson Bay for rising sea levels – ‘There are two reactions to dealing with sea level rise: there is fight and there is flight’

By James Temple19 January 2013 (San Francisco Chronicle) – On a sunny Friday afternoon last fall, a Grand Banks trawler idled at the mouth of Richardson Bay, giving those aboard a close look at a battleground in the fight against climate change. The lobster claw-shaped estuary defines and occasionally redefines the southeastern edge of Marin […]

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