Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Japan leaders fret over today’s nuclear shutdown – No nukes for first time in 42 years – Thousands march against nuclear power

By MARTIN FACKLER3 May 2012 OSAKA, Japan – Barring an unexpected turnaround, Japan on Saturday will become a nuclear-free nation for the first time in more than four decades, at least temporarily. Japan’s leaders have made increasingly desperate attempts in recent months to avoid just such a scenario, trying to restart plants shut for routine […]

Brazil sending more troops to guard Amazon borders

By SIMON ROMERO3 May 2012 RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil is deploying more than 8,500 troops to the far reaches of the Amazon rain forest this month in an operation aimed at cracking down on drug smuggling, gold mining and illegal deforestation, officials said. The troop mobilization sends a clear message ahead of the United […]

Graph of the Day: Observed and Experimental Sensitivity of Plants to Global Warming

This trend is seen in the observational studies (blue) but not in the experimental studies (red). The numbers correspond to those in Fig. 1 and to site information given in the Supplementary Information. ABSTRACT: Warming experiments are increasingly relied on to estimate plant responses to global climate change1, 2. For experiments to provide meaningful predictions […]

Heartland Institute billboards compare belief in global warming to mass murder

[Update: Heartland Institute President and CEO Joe Bast has issued the following statement: “We will stop running [the billboard] at 4:00 p.m. CST today. (It’s a digital billboard, so a simple phone call is all it takes.) “The Heartland Institute knew this was a risk when deciding to test it, but decided it was a necessary […]

Aspen chamber severs ties with U.S. Chamber of Commerce over climate change dispute

By Troy Hooper 27 April 2012 Aspen’s chamber of commerce isn’t the first to sever ties with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over political differences. The chamber in Homer, Alaska, made national headlines when it canceled its membership. But Auden Schendler, the Aspen Skiing Co.’s vice president of sustainability, believes the famous Rocky Mountain hamlet’s […]

Panetta: Environment and climate change emerge as national security concerns

By Nick Simeone, American Forces Press Service3 May 2012 WASHINGTON – Climate and environmental change are emerging as national security threats that weigh heavily in the Pentagon’s new strategy, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told an environmental group last night. “The area of climate change has a dramatic impact on national security,” Panetta said here […]

‘A staggering mess’ as tsunami debris hits Alaska coast early

By Michael van Baker 30 April 2012 Gulf of Alaska Keeper, a non-profit organization that estimates it has cleared nearly 1,000,000 pounds of plastic debris from Alaskan coasts over the past 10 years, is reporting “tons” of what it believes is likely tsunami debris washing up on the coasts of the Kayak and Montague islands. […]

Nuclear power is only solution to climate change, says Jeffrey Sachs

[Desdemona prefers this solution: Atmospheric Vortex Engine] By Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent, www.guardian.co.uk 3 May 2012 Combating climate change will require an expansion of nuclear power, respected economist Jeffrey Sachs said on Thursday, in remarks that are likely to dismay some sections of the environmental movement. Prof Sachs said atomic energy was needed because it […]

Shark Extinction: The Shocking Truth

4 April 2012 (Surfmeisters) – Ocean lovers everywhere, we are at crisis point. The top predator species in the food chain of our oceans is being hunted to extinction. Some shark specie populations are estimated to have declined by over 99% since the 1970′s! The repercussions for marine eco-systems are dramatic and have devastating consequences […]

Former BP engineer is indicted in Gulf oil spill case

By Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune2 May 2012 A week after he was arrested by the FBI, a federal grand jury on Wednesday indicted former BP engineer Kurt Mix on two counts of obstruction of justice in relation to the 2010 Gulf oil spill. Mix is accused of deleting hundreds of text messages from his iPhone […]

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