Global human population size and annual growth rate estimates, 1950-2022, and medium scenario with 95 per cent prediction intervals, 2022-2050. Over the one hundred years from 1950 to 2050, the world population was growing the fastest in the period 1962-1965, when it was increasing on average by 2.1 per cent per year. Since then, the pace of population growth has slowed by more than half owing to reduced levels of fertility. In 2020, and for the first time since 1950, the rate of population growth fell below 1 per cent per year and it is projected to continue to slow in the next few decades and through the end of this century. The global population could grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030, and add 1.18 billion in the following two decades, reaching 9.7 billion in 2050. Graphic: UN DESA

Doomiest Graphs of 2022

31 December 2022 (Desdemona Despair) – Like the year 2021, 2022 started with Desdemona obsessively tracking statistics on the Covid pandemic. The incredibly contagious Omicron variant was raging throughout the world, dwarfing the scale of the previous waves. Some of Desdemona’s friends fell ill with the disease. Fortunately, none of them died, because they were […]

Gail Zawacki at the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York City, 23 September 2011. She carries a sign that reads, “Industrial civilization is murdering our Earth”. Photo: Gail Zawacki

The Diva of Doom: Remembering the late, great Gail Zawacki – “In the end, what matters more than time?”

By James Galasyn 18 June 2022 (Desdemona Despair) – I was greatly saddened this week to read an email from climate activist Richard Pauli informing me that Gail Zawacki, the “Diva of Doom”, passed away on 9 June 2022. The community of environmental activists has lost one of its most eloquent and entertaining voices. She […]

Leonard Rieser, chairman of the board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, moves the hand of the Doomsday Clock back to 17 minutes before midnight at offices near the University of Chicago on 26 November 1991. Photo: Carl Wagner / Chicago Tribune

The story of how the Doomsday Clock began ticking 75 years ago, the brainchild of a Chicago artist

By Ron Grossman 13 January 2022 (Chicago Tribune) – Martyl Langsdorf designed just one magazine cover, but it has had considerable staying power. A prolific painter of abstract and figurative canvases, she was commissioned 75 years ago by the scientists who built the atomic bomb that ended World War II. By 1947 the Cold War […]

Promo still for the film “Don’t Look Up” showing Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio. Photo: Netflix

The most depressing thing about “Don’t Look Up” (isn’t what you think)

By Andrew P. Street 1 January 2022 (Independent Australia) – Don’t Look Up, Adam McKay’s star-studded Netflix satire about scientists desperately (and unsuccessfully) attempting to warn a jaded and deeply compromised world about the imminent arrival of an extinction-level comet, has already garnered a veritable encyclopedia of hot takes. But as best as I can see, […]

Trump insurrectionists attack police inside the Capitol Building, 6 January 2021. Video: Jon Farina / CNN

Doomiest Images of 2021

1 January 2022 (Desdemona Despair) – The year started with a fascist insurrection in the U.S. and ended with record COVID-19 case rates. In between, the forces of sedition and antiscience merged to form a monstrous alliance of violence, delusion, and ignorance amplified by social media and automation. The internet – once conceived as the […]

Global map showing COVID-19 vaccine doses administered per 100 people, 20 July 2021. The map shows the huge difference in vaccination rates between some wealthy nations and the rest of the world. Graphic: Max Roser / Our World In Data

Doomiest Graphs of 2021

31 December 2021 (Desdemona Despair) – For Des, 2021 was the second year of studying pandemic numbers daily and obsessively. In the U.S., the go-to site was Covid Act Now, which presents the latest data at the county level. Tracking the changing numbers every day was like watching the weather report, but with mass death […]

Protesters shout outside the Ohio Statehouse Atrium where reporters listen during state officials’ coronavirus update Monday, 13 April 2020. About 100 demonstrators assembled outside the building, upset that the state remains under a stay-at-home order and that non-essential businesses remain closed. Photo: Joshua A. Bickel / Dispatch

Doomiest images of 2020

31 December 2020 (Desdemona Despair) – In 2020, the long campaign by conservatives to squelch scientific decision-making in government reached its goal: the complete sidelining of evidence-based expertise in favor of arbitrary political whim. Last year’s Doomiest Graph presaged this development, but even Desdemona couldn’t have imagined the mass death that would result as government […]

Screenshot of the COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) on 30 December 2020. Graphic: JHU

Doomiest graphs of 2020

30 December 2020 (Desdemona Despair) – 2020 was the year that everybody got cozy with graphs showing exponential growth. A number of high-quality data sources showing the progression of the pandemic were published online, so anybody could rummage through the grim numbers and estimate their local risk. A few standout sites made it into Desdemona’s […]

Radar images from the Sentinel-1 satellite of the Milne Ice Shelf breakup at the end of July 2020. Photo: Dr. Adrienne White / Canadian Ice Service

Canada’s last fully intact Arctic ice shelf collapses – “This was the largest remaining intact ice shelf, and it’s disintegrated, basically”

By Moira Warburton 6 August 2020 (Reuters) – The last fully intact ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic has collapsed, losing more than 40% of its area in just two days at the end of July, researchers said on Thursday. The Milne Ice Shelf is at the fringe of Ellesmere Island, in the sparsely populated […]

The hands of the Doomsday Clock move to within 100 seconds of midnight, closer to midnight than at any point since its creation in 1947, 23 January 2020. Graphic: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Scientists move Doomsday Clock closer to midnight – “We are now expressing how close the world is to catastrophe in seconds”

By Gayle Spinazze 23 January 2020 WASHINGTON, D.C. (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) – The iconic Doomsday Clock symbolizing the gravest perils facing humankind is now closer to midnight than at any point since its creation in 1947. To underscore the need for action, the time on the Doomsday Clock is now being expressed in […]

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