Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Graph of the Day: Output Growth of Six Developed Nations, 2003-2011

After a rapid post-crisis recovery, the world economy is slowing down from around 4 per cent GDP growth in 2010 to about 3 per cent in 2011 (see table). Developing economies will continue to record higher growth, at above 6 per cent, compared with developed economies, which registered a mere 1.5 per cent to 2 […]

Editorial: Oil spill in the Gulf was slow-motion suicide in rush for more

By Bill Cato, Special to The Birmingham News 18 September 2011 […] We punched a hole in the Earth, and poison gushed from it. The fine folks at BP droned on about caps, junk shots and relief wells. They told us they were responsible and they would fix this problem. They bought full-page advertisements in […]

Reserve for endangered Tasmanian devil created on Australia mainland

September 21, 2011 (AAP) – A strip of dense bushland has been fenced off in a corner of NSW to create a safe haven for Tasmanian devils and rescue them from the brink of extinction. It’s not predators the devils need protecting from, but a contagious facial cancer that has wiped out between 60 and […]

Warming ocean drives cod from North Sea

By Lewis Smith20 September 2011 Changes in the water temperature have put an end to hopes that the North Sea cod population can return to the levels it enjoyed in the 1970s. Warmer conditions have altered the availability of prey species and driven the cold-loving cod northwards so even if the fishery is managed perfectly […]

Super weeds pose growing threat to U.S. crops

PAOLA, Kansas (Reuters) – Farmer Mark Nelson bends down and yanks a four-foot-tall weed from his northeast Kansas soybean field. The “waterhemp” towers above his beans, sucking up the soil moisture and nutrients his beans need to grow well and reducing the ultimate yield. As he crumples the flowering end of the weed in his […]

Biodiversity loss may be contributing to amphibian-killing fungal infection

ScienceDaily (Sep. 19, 2011) – Researchers at Oregon State University have shown for the first time that loss of biodiversity may be contributing to a fungal infection that is killing amphibians around the world, and provides more evidence for why biodiversity is important to many ecosystems. The findings, being published this week in Proceedings of […]

Graph of the Day: Arctic Sea Ice Extent, 1870-2008

By Tamino17 September 2011 […] One of the best long-term (on a century time scale) estimates of Arctic sea ice is the Walsh & Chapman data set (described in Walsh & Chapman 2001, Annals of Glaciology, 33, 444-448). It’s based on a vast array of available information, as described in Walsh & Chapman. […] It […]

Warming oceans cause largest movement of marine species in two million years

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent26 June 2011 Warming ocean waters are causing the largest movement of marine species seen on Earth in more than two million years, according to scientists. In the Arctic, melting sea ice during recent summers has allowed a passage to open up from the Pacific ocean into the North Atlantic, allowing […]

300 people killed, millions affected in Pakistan floods

Islamabad, Sept 18 (ANI) — Around 300 people have lost their lives and another six million affected by devastating rains and floods in Pakistan’s Sindh province, a new report has said. According to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), all 23 districts of Sindh have been affected by this year’s floods, the Dawn reports. The […]

‘Missing’ global heat may hide in deep oceans

By Deborah Zabarenko in Washington, editing by Chris Wilson18 September 2011 (Reuters) – The mystery of Earth’s missing heat may have been solved: it could lurk deep in oceans, temporarily masking the climate-warming effects of greenhouse gas emissions, researchers reported on Sunday. Climate scientists have long wondered where this so-called missing heat was going, especially […]

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