Desdemona Despair – Page 96 – Blogging the End of the World™

African elephants, Loxodonta africana, during a thunderstorm. Photo: Ronan Donovan / National Geographic

March 27, 2021

Both African elephant species are now endangered, one critically – “At this point, there can be no doubt that poaching and habitat loss have devastated populations of elephants all across Africa”

By Rachel Nuwer 25 March 2021 (National Geographic) – Elephants have long been thought of as either African or Asian. But there are actually two species of African elephant: The savanna elephant is larger, has curving tusks, and roams the open plains of sub-Saharan Africa. The smaller, darker forest elephant, with straight tusks, lives in the […]

Monthly evolution of global CO2 emissions in 2020, relative to 2019. After hitting a low in April 2020, global emissions rebounded strongly and rose above 2019 levels in December. Global CO2 emissions were 2 percent, or 60 million tonnes, higher in December 2020 than they were in the same month a year earlier. Major economies led the resurgence as a pick-up in economic activity pushed energy demand higher and significant policies measures to boost clean energy were lacking. Many economies are now seeing emissions climbing above pre-crisis levels. Graphic: IEA

March 27, 2021

After steep drop in early 2020, global carbon dioxide emissions have rebounded strongly – “The rebound in global carbon emissions is a stark warning that not enough is being done to accelerate clean energy transitions worldwide”

2 March 2021 (IEA) – The Covid-19 crisis in 2020 triggered the largest annual drop in global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions since the Second World War, according to IEA data released today, but the overall decline of about 6% masks wide variations depending on the region and the time of year. After hitting a low in […]

Map of the U.S. showing incidents of hate, extremism, antisemitism, and terrorism in 2020. Graphic: ADL

March 22, 2021

White supremacist propaganda in U.S. hits all-time high in 2020 – “White supremacists appear to be more emboldened than ever”

New York, NY, 17 March 2021 (ADL) – White supremacist propaganda distribution surged across the United States in 2020, with a total 5,125 cases of racist, antisemitic, and other hateful messages reported by ADL (Anti-Defamation League). Last year marked the highest level of incidents reported since ADL began tracking such data – an average of […]

10,000 years of carbon dioxide. Due in large part to the burning of fossil fuels, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have now risen by about 50 percent% above the preindustrial level. At recent rates of growth, we would reach double the preindustrial by around the year 2075. Graphic: Dr. Robert Rohde

March 21, 2021

Graph of the Day: 10,000 years of carbon dioxide

Dr. Robert Rohde 17 March 2021 (Twitter) – Due in large part to the burning of fossil fuels, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have now risen about 50 percent above the preindustrial level. At recent rates of growth, we would reach double the preindustrial by around 2075. Dr. Robert Rohde on Twitter

Millennium-scale evolution of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), 400 - 2020. SST-based AMOC reconstructions (light and dark blue) compared to various proxy reconstructions, including land and sea surface temperature reconstructions, sortable silt data, δ18O in benthic foraminifera, δ15N of deep-sea gorgonian corals, and relative abundance of Turborotalita quinqueloba. Since at least 400 AD relatively stable, the AMOC began to decline during the 19th Century which is evident in all proxy records. Around 1950 a phase of particularly rapid decline started that is found in several, largely independent proxies. A short-lived recovery is evident in the 1990s before a return to decline from the mid-2000s. Together these data consistently show that the modern AMOC slowdown is unprecedented in over a thousand years. Graphic: Levke Caesar

March 21, 2021

Gulf Stream System at its weakest in more than a millennium – “This could bring us dangerously close to the tipping point at which the flow becomes unstable”

25 February 2021 (PIK) – Never before in over 1000 years the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), also known as Gulf Stream System, has been as weak as in the last decades. This is the result of a new study by scientists from Ireland, Britain, and Germany. The researchers compiled so-called proxy data – taken […]

Global map showing large-scale protests against COVID-19 control measures, defined as those that lead to arrests, in January 2021. Nations in green imposed large-scale lockdowns in 2021. Graphic: Al Jazeera / World Happiness Report

March 21, 2021

World Happiness Report 2021: Reasons for Asia-Pacific success in suppressing COVID-19 – Death rate in Asia-Pacific nations 42 times lower than North Atlantic nations

By Jeffrey D. Sachs 20 March 2021 (Sustainable Development Solutions Network) – […] Perhaps the most notable variation across world regions of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the far lower mortality rate (deaths per million) in the Asia-Pacific region (northeast Asia, southeast Asia, and Oceania) compared with the North Atlantic region (the US, Canada, the […]

A before-and-after satellite view of flooding at Port Macquarie, captured by radar data from the European Union Earth Observation Programme's Sentinel-1 satellite on 12 March 2021 19 March 2021. Photo: Copernicus European Earth Observation Programme

March 21, 2021

Heavy rains in Australia’s east bring worst floods in 50 years – “Yesterday, we were hoping it will only be a one-in-20-year event, now it looks like a one-in-50-year event”

By Angus Thompson, Rachel Clun, and Lucy Cormack 21 March 2021 (Sydney Morning Herald) – The collision of two powerful weather systems over the east coast of NSW on Monday night may see more evacuations as western Sydney residents were forced to flee to higher ground on Sunday when floodwaters inundated their neighbourhoods. The State […]

Screenshot of the EPA Climate Change website, which was relaunched on 17 March 2021 after President Biden reversed the antiscience policies of the Trump administration. Graphic: EPA

March 21, 2021

EPA brings climate science back to website after Trump purge – “Climate facts are back”

By Richard Luscombe 20 March 2021 (The Guardian) – Canceled four years ago by a president who considered global warming a hoax, climate crisis information has returned to the website of the US government’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as part of Joe Biden’s promise to “bring science back”. The revival of a page dedicated to the […]

An Asian-American man who did not want to be identified pauses at a makeshift memorial on 17 March 2021 in front of Gold Spa, one of three spas in Georgia where Robert Aaron Long is accused of opened fire, killing eight people. Six of the victims were Asian-American women. Photo: Chris Aluka Berry / The Washington Post

March 18, 2021

Asian Americans see shooting as a culmination of a year of racism – Anti-Asian attacks rise along with online vitriol – “I’ve never been this afraid to be Asian in America”

By Silvia Foster-Frau, Marian Liu, Hannah Knowles, and Meryl Kornfield 17 March 2021 (The Washington Post) – As Helen Kim Ho learned that a White man with a self-described sex addiction was charged with killing eight people — including six Asian women — at spas in the Atlanta area on Tuesday, she imagined the stereotypes of Asian […]

Anti‐Asian hate crime incidents reported to police in select U.S. cities, 2019‐2020. Graphic: CSUSB Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism

March 13, 2021

Anti-Asian hate crimes increased by nearly 150 percent in 2020, mostly in N.Y. and L.A. – “What Trump did is that he weaponized it”

By Kimmy Yam 9 March 2021 (NBC News) – An analysis of police department statistics has revealed that the United States experienced a significant hike in anti-Asian hate crimes last year across major cities. The analysis released by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, this month examined hate […]