Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

U.S. cities struggle with blighted bank-owned homes

By Tim Reid, Reuters8 June 2012 LOS ANGELES – The smell of rotting food and decay inside 10956 South Wilmington Avenue, Los Angeles, was overwhelming. A burst pipe in the kitchen ceiling leaked water onto a floor littered with half empty cans, razor blades, odd shoes, stained clothing and an upturned, mold-ridden sofa. Windows were […]

Western banks ‘reaping billions from Colombian cocaine trade’

Anti-Drugs Policies In Colombia: Successes, Failures And Wrong Turns, edited by Alejandro Gaviria and Daniel Mejía, Ediciones Uniandes, 2011 By Ed Vulliamy, www.guardian.co.uk 2 June 2012 The vast profits made from drug production and trafficking are overwhelmingly reaped in rich “consuming” countries – principally across Europe and in the US – rather than war-torn “producing” […]

Science out of context: BP’s demand for e-mail will erode the scientific deliberative process

By Christopher Reddy and Richard Camilli, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution3 June 2012 Late last week, we reluctantly handed over more than 3,000 confidential e-mails to BP, as part of a subpoena from the oil company demanding access to them because of the Deepwater Horizon disaster lawsuit brought by the US government. We are accused of […]

Graph of the Day: Asia Coal Imports, 1980-2009

Today, close to 99% of the coal mined in the Powder River Basin is consumed in domestic U.S. coal markets. However, a depressed domestic market and increased foreign demand, especially from the Pacific Rim, has piqued the interest of the largest U.S. coal producers in potential export markets. Chris Ruppel, an energy analyst at Execution, […]

Europe climate change to hit Scandinavia and south hardest

3 May 2012 (AFP) – Global warming in Europe this century will mostly affect Scandinavia and the Mediterranean basin, the European Environment Agency warned on Thursday. “The highest warming is projected over the eastern Scandinavia, and southern and south-eastern Europe,” experts at the agency said in comment accompanying a series of maps posted on the […]

Nuclear, coal power face climate change risk as cooling water becomes becomes scarce

By David Fogarty; Editing by Ed Davies3 June 2012 SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Warmer water and reduced river flows will cause more power disruptions for nuclear and coal-fired power plants in the United States and Europe in future, scientists say, and lead to a rethink on how best to cool power stations in a hotter world. […]

Peru needs glacier loss monitoring: UN warning

By Roberto Cortijo 4 June 2012 Peru needs a permanent monitoring system to gauge Andean mountain glacier shrinkage caused by global warming and its effect on people who depend on the ice for water, UN experts warned. “We have spoken with Peruvian government institutions, and there is no sufficient monitoring system to tell us the […]

Warming Arctic tundra producing pop-up forests – ‘Change is far greater than we expected’

By ANDREW C. REVKIN3 June 2012 Even as insect infestations and other factors accompanying warming have led to the “browning” of some stretches of boreal forest between temperate regions and the Arctic tundra, the tundra appears to be greening in a big way, various studies have shown. The newest such work, focused on scrubby windswept […]

Irish Sea level to rise 47cm by end of century

By Lorna Siggins, Marine Correspondent2 June 2012 THE IRISH Sea’s level will rise by almost half a metre by the end of the century, according to new research published by NUI Galway’s Ryan Institute. More extreme coastal flooding will occur in Dublin and other vulnerable urban areas in Ireland and Britain, and sea surface temperatures […]

Oklahoma not Texas, had hottest U.S. summer ever recorded in 2011 – ‘Warmer than all those summers that they experienced during the Dust Bowl’

1 June 2012, TULSA, Oklahoma (AP) – Oklahoma and Texas have argued for years about which has the best college football team, whose oil fields produce better crude, even where the state border should run. But in a hot, sticky dispute that no one wants to win, Oklahoma just reclaimed its crown. After recalculating data […]

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