Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Western Australia residents evacuated as flood threatens – ‘Way, way above anything that’s ever been seen here before’

13 March 2011 (ABC) — A remote Aboriginal community in Western Australia’s north is almost entirely under water. Police have evacuated parts of Fitzroy Crossing and Warmun in the Kimberley as floodwaters in the region rise. People in Wyndham, Kununurra and Halls Creek, including outlying communities in the Ord River Catchment, are also being told […]

Video: Rain to continue in North Queensland – 99 percent of state disaster-declared

VIDEO: Rain to continue in Nth Qld AAP, The Courier-MailMarch 11, 2011 ALMOST every inch of Queensland has been disaster-declared following the state’s devastating summer season. Premier Anna Bligh announced Richmond Shire Council and Kowanyama Aboriginal Shire Council were the latest local governments to qualify under joint state and federal government natural disaster relief and […]

Swiss NGO links Los Angeles killing to timber corruption in Malaysia

BASEL, Switzerland, March 9, 2011 (ENS) – Protests over timber corruption that has made a billionaire of the chief minister of the Malaysian state of Sarawak and enriched his family at the expense of the state’s indigenous and other citizens have spilled over to the streets of San Francisco, Seattle, Ottawa and London. A Swiss […]

Fellow travelers: World Catastrophe Map

[UPDATE 4 October 2011: Sadly, World Catastrophe Map has closed down for good.] Occasionally, Desdemona runs across a site or a blog that’s uncannily dialed into the Des vibe. All dedicated Doomers know the Apocadocs and Wit’s End, but the World Catastrophe Map is a new and delectable find for Des. “Let the End Times […]

Will freshwater pipeline save Cyprus from drought?

By Jennifer Hattam, Istanbul, Turkey 12 March 2011 Key reservoirs in Cyprus are drying up. In some parts of the Greek side of the divided island, 50 percent of the trees have died due to drought, damaging soil quality and agricultural productivity. Experts say the Mediterranean island could end up with as little water as […]

Ingestion of plastic found among small ocean fish – 35 percent of northern Pacific Ocean fish found with plastic in their stomachs

By Tony Barboza, Los Angeles TimesMarch 11, 2011| Southern California researchers have found evidence of ingestion of plastic among small fish in the northern Pacific Ocean in a study that they say shows the troubling effect floating litter is having on marine life in the far reaches of the world’s oceans. About 35% of the […]

Mixing nukes with earthquakes

By now, everybody has seen video of the blast that occurred at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, but this before/after comparison caught Desdemona’s eye: “The secondary containment building blew up; it’s totally gone (along with any relief valves that may have been installed).” – Ghung At 21:00 JST (12:00 GMT) TEPCO announced that they […]

Image of the Day: Retreat of Sea Ice in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, 2003-2011

Caption by Holli RiebeekMarch 10, 2011 Early in February 1902, Captain Robert Falcon Scott sailed into McMurdo Sound and docked his ship, the Discovery, in a small, sheltered bay at the tip of a rocky peninsula on Ross Island. Eager to begin a year exploring one of Earth’s last untouched places, Scott and his men […]

US farmers fear the return of the Dust Bowl

For years the Ogallala Aquifer, the world’s largest underground body of fresh water, has irrigated thousands of square miles of American farmland. Now it is running dry By Charles Laurence 07 Mar 2011 There is not much to be happy about these days in Happy, Texas. Main Street is shuttered but for the Happy National […]

Graph of the Day: Planetary Boundaries and Status of the Phosphorus Cycle, 2010

Planetary boundaries and current status of the phosphorus (P) cycle. (A) Planetary boundary and current status for P input to freshwaters from terrestrial ecosystems, Tg y–1. (B) Planetary boundary and current status for P input to terrestrial soils, Tg y–1. (C) Planetary boundary and current status for P mass in terrestrial soils, Tg. In each […]

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