Desdemona Despair – Page 91 – Blogging the End of the World™

A wildfire rages beside the Kolyma highway, 30 June 2021. The highway is the major connection between the Republic of Sakha’s capital Yakutsk and the port town of Magadan, on the Sea of Okhotsk. The highway had to be shut because the fire got too close to the road and was much too fierce for safe driving. Photo: The Siberian Times

July 3, 2021

Siberia’s “Road of Bones” closed as early wildfires rage – “We can’t see the sun because of the smog, flakes of ash are raining from the sky. We are struggling to breathe, we really need help.”

By Svetlana Skarbo 30 June 2021 (The Siberian Times) – More than 2,000 people are deployed in extinguishing wildfires raging around Russia’s coldest inhabited territory, Yakutia, now in the third year of an extremely intense season of wildfires. The first of them ignited as early as the beginning of May right outside the world-famous Pole […]

In a grim commentary on climate change, in 2009, British artist Banksy creatively vandalized this 1890 painting by Hudson River School painter Albert Bierstadt. The artwork, now titled Subject to Availability, has a surprise for Northwest locals — Mount Rainier. It sold at auction Wednesday, 28 June 2021, for 4,582,500 pounds, or $6,342,180. Photo: Christie’s Images Limited 2021

July 3, 2021

Artist Banksy’s “hijacked” painting of Mount Rainier sells for more than $6 million as global warming roasts the Pacific Northwest

By Megan Burbank 30 June 2021 (The Seattle Times) – As the Puget Sound region coped this week with extreme heat caused by climate change, one of the art world’s most audacious commentaries on the issue reemerged across the Atlantic. A 2009 work of creative vandalism from British artist and agitator Banksy, Subject to Availability, was sold […]

Residents rest at a cooling center during a heat wave in Portland, Oregon on 28 June 2021. Photo: Maranie Staab / Bloomberg

July 3, 2021

Climate change in the U.S. has gotten deadly, and it will get worse – “The suffering here and now is because we have not heeded the warnings sufficiently”

By Sarah Kaplan 3 July 2021 PORTLAND, Oregon (The Washington Post) – The emergency department at Oregon Health Sciences University had rarely been this busy, even during the worst stages of the covid-19 pandemic. Physicians raced to provide fluids to patients who arrived breathless, dizzy, and drenched in sweat. Others were brought in on stretchers, […]

Senior ExxonMobil lobbyist on Capitol Hill Keith McCoy describes how ExxonMobil bribes U.S. Senators to kill climate policies in the U.S. During a secretly recorded interview 7 May 2021, McCoy names eleven U.S. senators who he says are “crucial” to ExxonMobil for sabotaging government action to save the planet: Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Senator Joe Manchin, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Senator Jon Tester, Senator Maggie Hassan, Senator John Barrasso, Senator John Cornyn, Senator Steve Daines, Senator Chris Coons, Senator Mark Kelly, and Senator Marco Rubio. Photo: Greenpeace / Channel 4 News

July 3, 2021

Revealed: ExxonMobil’s lobbying war on climate legislation – Senior lobbyist caught on camera, names 11 U.S. senators who are “crucial” to ExxonMobil attacks on climate policy

By Alex Thomson 30 June 2021 (Channel 4 News) – The explosive footage was obtained by Unearthed, Greenpeace UK’s investigative platform, who posed as head-hunters to obtain the information from one of ExxonMobil’s most senior Washington lobbyists. The recordings appear to reveal the secretive behind-the-scenes activities of a lobbyist for a company that claims in […]

A crane is used to remove sets of human remains, as search and rescue personnel work atop the rubble at the Champlain Towers South condo building, where scores of people remain missing more than a week after it partially collapsed, 2 July 2021, in Surfside, Florida. Rescue efforts resumed Thursday evening after being halted for most of the day over concerns about the stability of the remaining structure. Photo: Mark Humphrey / AP Photo

July 2, 2021

Miami’s climate dystopia gets real – South Florida real estate will get more deadly if we continue to ignore the warning signs of a doomed coastline

By Jeff Goodell 1 July 2021 (Rolling Stone) – Before it fell, Champlain Towers South, the 12-story Florida condo building that collapsed last week in the middle of the night, burying residents in a pile of concrete and chaos, was just another nondescript high-rise on the beach. It had been thrown up quickly during the […]

Wildfires consume the town of Lytton, British Columbia, on 30 June 2021. Photo: Jack Zimmerman / The Guardian

July 1, 2021

Wildfire forces evacuation for British Columbia town that hit a record 121 degrees – “The whole town is on fire”

LYTTON, British Columbia, 1 July 2021 (AP) – A wildfire amid a record heatwave in western Canada has forced authorities to order residents to evacuate a village in British Columbia that smashed the country’s record for hottest temperature three days in a row this week. Mayor Jan Polderman of Lytton issued the evacuation order Wednesday, […]

Surface temperature in the US Pacific Northwest and Canadian West, 29 June 2021. Graphic: Meteo365.com

June 29, 2021

More than 230 dead in British Columbia as heatwave shatters records – “Dubai would be cooler than what we’re seeing now”

By Sarah Moon, Jon Passantino, and Rebekah Riess 29 June 2021 (CNN) – “Since the onset of the heatwave late last week, the BC Coroners Service has experienced a significant increase in deaths reported where it is suspected that extreme heat has been contributory,” Chief Coroner Lisa Lapointe said in a statement. The coroner’s service […]

Heat dome strength of 4 sigma over the U.S. Pacific Northwest and Canadian West, 28 June 2021. The sigma is the standard deviation of a normal distribution of expected values. In this case the heat dome sigma max is 4.4, which mean that it's outside of 99.99 percent of expected values or a 1/10,000+ chance per year. Statistically speaking, there is a 1 in 10,000 chance of experiencing this value. So, if you could possibly live in that spot for 10,000 years, you'd likely only experience this kind of heat dome once, if ever. Graphic: By Jeff Berardelli / ECMWF

June 28, 2021

Pacific Northwest bakes under once-in-a-millennium heat dome – Heatwave has intensity never recorded by modern humans – “There is no analog in our past for what we are likely to see this week”

By Jeff Berardelli 28 June 2021 (CBS News) – The heatwave baking the U.S. Pacific Northwest and British Columbia, Canada, is of an intensity never recorded by modern humans. By one measure it is more rare than a once in a 1,000-year event — which means that if you could live in this particular spot […]

Global quantities of cocaine seized, by region, 1998–2019. Quantities of cocaine seized reached record levels in 2019. In 2019, the global quantity of cocaine seized increased by 9.6 percent compared with the preceding year to reach 1,436 tons (of varying purities), a record high. The 90 percent increase in the quantities of cocaine seized between 2009 and 2019 is likely a reflection of a combination of factors, including an increase in cocaine manufacture (50 per cent between 2009 and 2019) and a subsequent increase in cocaine trafficking, as well as an increase in the efficiency of law enforcement, which may have contributed to an increase in the overall interception rate. Graphic: UNODC

June 28, 2021

Illegal drug trade back to business as usual in 2020 and 2021 – Cocaine production hits record high – Number of people using illegal drugs increased by 22 percent in 2010-2019 decade

By Pia Lee-Brago 28 June 2021 (The Philippine Star) – Around 275 million people used illegal drugs worldwide in the last year of unprecedented upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, up by 22 percent from 2010, and it is “business as usual” again for drug traffickers, according to the latest annual world drug report by […]

Seasonal honey bee colony loss rates in the United States, 2008-2021. Annual loss estimates (from one 1 April to the next 1 April) combine winter (1 October – 1 April) and summer (1 April – 1 October) losses. The loss rate was calculated as the total number of colonies lost divided by the number of colonies “at risk” during the season. Colonies at risk were composed of viable colonies and new colonies made or acquired, while excluding colonies sold or parted with. Graphic: Bee Informed Partnership

June 25, 2021

U.S. honey bee colonies hit by second-highest annual loss on record in 2021

By Nathalie Steinhauer, Dan Aurell, Selina Bruckner, Mikayla Wilson, Karen Rennich, Dennis vanEngelsdorp, and Geoffrey Williams 23 June 2021 (Bee Informed Partnership) – The Bee Informed Partnership (http://beeinformed.org) is a non-profit organization that works alongside beekeepers to improve honey bee colony health and survivorship across the United States. One of the organization’s longest running programs, […]