Australia – Page 3 – Desdemona Despair

New Year’s Eve 2019: People seek shelter under heavy smoke at the Mallacoota Gymnasium relief centre during the Black Summer bushfires. Photo: Rachel Mounsey / The Sydney Morning Herald

January 2, 2023

Bushfires could kill almost 2500 Australians by 2030 – “This is not the first report saying this sort of thing, but each of the previous ones have to some extent been ignored by government”

By Lachlan Abbott 2 January 2023 (The Sydney Morning Herald) – Increasingly frequent and severe bushfires linked to climate change could kill nearly 2500 Australians and cost the economy billions of dollars by the end of the decade, according to new research. Modelling from Monash University’s Centre for Medicine Use and Safety has estimated 2418 […]

In less than three years, giant northern termites have destroyed the Galaxy Auditorium restaurant in Australia's Northern Territory. Photo: Frances Vinall / The Washington Post

January 2, 2023

Termites in Australia are hungry and marching as the climate heats up – “It’s a matter of when, not if. They’re going to get here, and when they get here, they’re going to cause a lot of problems.”

By Frances Vinall 1 January 2023 TENNANT CREEK, Australia (The Washington Post) – In a forgotten restaurant behind a gas station in this country’s red center, only metal and plastic parts remain unscathed. Chris Cook grabs at a timber door frame, which crumples like paper in his hand. “This has all just collapsed,” says Cook, […]

U.S. President Joe Biden departs after speaking at the COP27 U.N. Climate Summit, Friday, 11 November 2022, at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Photo: Alex Brandon / AP Photo

November 20, 2022

COP27 ends in tears and frustration – Reactions from participants – “The world will not thank us”

By Camilla Hodgson 20 November 2022 Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt (Financial Times) – Choking back his emotions, Tuvalu finance minister Seve Paeniu held up a photo of five youth delegates from his country and expressed his “deep regret and disappointment” that COP27 had been a “missed opportunity”. More than 80 countries had supported a proposal to […]

Global human population, 1700-2022. On 15 November 2022, the world’s population was estimated to reach 8 billion people, having grown by 1 billion since 2010. This is a remarkable milestone given that the human population numbered under 1 billion for millennia until around 1800, and that it took more than 100 years to grow from 1 to 2 billion. By comparison, the increase of the world’s population over the last century has been quite rapid. Despite a gradual slowing in the pace of growth, the global population is projected to surpass 9 billion around 2037 and 10 billion around 2058. Graphic: UN DESA

November 19, 2022

Global human population hits 8 billion – “We are already overstretching what we have: the housing, roads, the hospitals, schools. Everything is overstretched.”

By Dan Ikpoyi and Chinedu Asadu 15 November 2022 LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) – The world’s population will likely hit an estimated 8 billion people on Tuesday, according to a United Nations projection, with much of the growth coming from developing nations in Africa. Among them is Nigeria, where resources are already stretched to the limit. More than […]

Projections of GHG emissions under different scenarios to 2050 and indications of emissions gap and global warming implications over this century (medians only). Looking beyond 2030, this figure projects global GHG emissions out to 2050 under different scenarios and indicates the associated global warming implications over this century. The figure illustrates the substantial increase in the emissions gap for 2050 if climate efforts implied by current policies and NDC scenarios are continued without further strengthening. Implementation of net-zero targets by around mid-century would significantly reduce these gaps, but even then, gaps with the 1.5°C scenarios would remain. Graphic: UNEP

November 1, 2022

UN: Inadequate progress on climate action makes rapid transformation of societies only option – “It is a tall, and some would say impossible, order to reform the global economy and almost halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, but we must try”

NAIROBI, 27 October 2022 – As intensifying climate impacts across the globe hammer home the message that greenhouse gas emissions must fall rapidly, a new UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report finds that the international community is still falling far short of the Paris goals, with no credible pathway to 1.5°C in place. However, the Emissions Gap Report […]

A satellite image shows a flooded road in Brewarrina, Australia, 15 October 2022. Photo: Maxar Technologies / REUTERS

October 24, 2022

Australia flood crisis enters third week as heavy rains lash east – Sydney records wettest year since 1858 – “The damage is horrific and extensive”

By Lewis Jackson and Renju Jose; editing by Kenneth Maxwell 24 October 2022 SYDNEY (Reuters) – Already-flooded towns across Australia’s east were on high alert on Monday after a weekend of heavy rains, with authorities warning a wild weather system could persist until later this week and trigger renewed riverbank bursts. Thousands of homes and […]

The conservation status of the world’s 58,497 tree species in 2022. Graphic: BGCI

September 17, 2022

At least one-third of Earth’s trees face extinction – Scientists issue “warning to humanity” that tree species extinction could bring economic as well as ecosystem crisis

LONDON, 1 September 2022 (BGCI) – Today a new paper by leading scientists and the Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) reveals the severe impact that tree species extinction will have on other species, ecosystems and livelihoods. This comes exactly one year on from the landmark State of the World’s Trees report, which examined global tree species and found that a […]

Children use rafts to make their way along a waterlogged street in a residential area after a heavy monsoon rainfall in Hyderabad on 24 August 2022. Record monsoon rains were causing a “catastrophe of epic scale”, Pakistan's Climate Change Minister said August 24, announcing an international appeal for help in dealing with floods that have killed more than 800 people since June 2022. Photo: Akram SHAHID / AFP

September 5, 2022

Sleepwalking to destruction: World struck by relentless climate catastrophes – “We just would not get temperatures as high as we’ve seen without human-caused climate change”

By Nick O’Malley 3 September 2022 (The Sydney Morning Herald) – Authorities are having difficulties finding the words to properly capture the devastation caused by the floods that have swept across Pakistan in recent days, killing more than 1400 people and displacing up to 50 million as water inundates about a third of the country. […]

The Turner family children were rescued from the second story of their Shanes Park home in north-west Sydney on 5 July 2022, after the fourth flood in less than 18 months. Photo: Dean Sewell / The Sydney Morning Herald

July 8, 2022

How an atmospheric river hit Sydney – “We’re seeing these events which we call one-in-1000 year events or one-in-100 year events now becoming one-in-one year events”

By Ben Cubby, Laura Chung, and Nigel Gladstone 8 July 2022 (The Sydney Morning Herald) – Every disaster movie starts with a scientist being ignored, so the saying goes. In the Hollywood version, the lone researcher stares at a screen, eyes widening as the ominous data comes through, and leaps for a phone to try […]

Global distribution of estimated excess mortality rate due to the COVID-19 pandemic, for the cumulative period 2020–21. Although reported COVID-19 deaths between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2021 totaled 5.94 million worldwide, IHME estimates that 18.2 million (95 percent uncertainty interval 17.1–19.6) people died worldwide because of the COVID-19 pandemic over that period, as measured by excess mortality. Graphic: Wang, et al., 2022 / The Lancet

May 7, 2022

WHO estimates nearly 15 million deaths associated with COVID-19, more than double the official toll – “When you have a massive outbreak where people are dying in the streets because of a lack of oxygen, we end up never knowing just how many people died”

By Maria Cheng 5 May 2022 LONDON (AP) – The World Health Organization estimates that nearly 15 million people were killed either by coronavirus or by its impact on overwhelmed health systems during the first two years of the pandemic, more than double the current official death toll of over 6 million. Most of the […]