Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

World Bank says floods cost Thailand $45 billion – New rains flood the south

BANGKOK, November 26 (Xinhua) – According to the World Bank, the devastating floods have caused about $45 billion in estimated damage and are likely to slash Thailand’s economic growth to 2.4 percent this year, Bangkok Post reported on Saturday. The grim assessment was unveiled by the bank’s country director Annette Dixon after a meeting with […]

Video: State of the Oceans 2011

20 November 2011 (Desdemona Despair) – Here’s Desdemona giving a presentation on the accelerating destruction of the oceans by various human activities. It’s basically Graph of the Day with narration. Download the slide deck: http://www.leftopia.com/presentations/State_Of_The_Oceans_2011.pdf http://www.leftopia.com/presentations/State_Of_The_Oceans_2011.pptx State of the Oceans 2011 Technorati Tags: ocean acidification,global warming,climate change,phenology,overfishing,ocean overexploitation,fish decline,mass extinction,extinction,coral,habitat loss,ecosystem disruption,dead zone,ocean anoxia,phosphorus,nitrogen,carbon,carbon dioxide,overpopulation,doom

Caribbean fisheries highly vulnerable to climate change

November 23 (Science Daily) – An analysis in the SEI journal Climate and Development predicts severe negative impacts, including loss and alteration of habitats, smaller and less-diverse fish stocks, and coral bleaching, and urges prompt action to help the Caribbean fisheries prepare. The review, “The implications of global climate change for fisheries management in the […]

Thailand’s surreal industrial park: crocodiles but no chips

By Ploy Ten Kate, with additional reporting by Pisit Changplayngam, Jutarat Skulpichetrat in BANGKOK, and Iktae Park in SEOUL; Editing by Alan Raybould and Miyoung Kim AYUTTHAYA, Thailand, November 24 (Reuters) – Knee-deep in foul-smelling water, workers are piling office equipment, documents and food onto fibre boats that ferry them from one building on Hana […]

Erratic rains threaten southern Africa food output as climate changes – ‘The rain patterns are just mixed up’

By Olivia Kumwenda24 November 2011 JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Rainfall patterns in southern Africa are becoming erratic as climate change takes its toll, threatening long-term production of staple and cash crops in the region. Countries like South Africa, Zambia, and Malawi have enjoyed bumper harvests of their staple maize crop in recent years, ensuring food security […]

Bleak future for San Francisco Bay area tidal marshes

San Francisco, CA, November 24 (SPX) – A new study, led by PRBO Conservation Science (PRBO), projects a bleak future for San Francisco Bay’s tidal marshes under high-end sea-level rise scenarios that are increasingly likely. PRBO and colleagues found that in the worst case scenario 93% of San Francisco Bay’s tidal marsh could be lost […]

Bulgaria choking on hazardous air ‘due to the massive use of coal for heating’

Sofia, November 23 (AFP) – Air quality in Bulgaria has deteriorated sharply over the past week with dust pollution up to five times over the norm, posing a grave health risk, the environment ministry said Wednesday. “The norms for pollution with fine dust particles have been surpassed since November 15,” Valery Serafimov, an air pollution […]

Arctic sea ice melt ‘unprecedented’ in past 1,450 years

November 24 (mongabay.com) – Recent arctic sea ice loss is ‘unprecedented’ over the past 1,450 years, concludes a reconstruction of ice records published in the journal Nature. The study, which was led by Christophe Kinnard of Chile’s Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Zonas Aridas, used terrestrial proxies including ice cores, lake sediments, tree ring data, […]

New Zealand crews pump all oil from stranded ship – Clean-up to take months

WELLINGTON, New Zealand, November 13 (AP) – Salvage crews have successfully removed all the remaining oil from a cargo ship that ran aground on a New Zealand reef, avoiding a worse environmental disaster. The vessel Rena grounded on the Astrolabe reef near Tauranga on Oct. 5 and authorities feared the worst as about 385 tons […]

Winter brings more misery to millions of Pakistan flood victims

[It’s amazing that for all the bloviating on Pakistan during the parade of belligerent ignorance at this week’s Republican national security “debate”,  the catastrophic flooding of 2010 and 2011 wasn’t mentioned once.] ISLAMABAD – More than two months after the August floods hit the southern Pakistan, millions of affected people are still at great risk […]

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