DoomiestGraph – Page 27 – Desdemona Despair

Somalis who left rural areas due to drought receive nutritional assistance at a camp for the internally displaced on the outskirts of Baidoa, in the Southwest State of Somalia, Wednesday, 12 October 2022. Photo: Geneva Costopulos / WFP / AP

October 29, 2022

UN: Almost 1 million drought-hit Somalis in al-Shabab areas – Onset of the October-December deyr rains has either been late or performed poorly across most of Somalia

By Cara Anna 26 October 2022 NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – The United Nations says close to 1 million drought-affected people in Somalia are in areas under the control or influence of the al-Shabab extremist group, and it appealed to the fighters to allow humanitarian access as famine threatens the country. The U.N. secretary-general’s special representative in Somalia, […]

Projected changes in surface temperatures in the Alps, 2021-2050. The Alpine region experiences a higher temperature rise than peri-Alpine areas or at least that the temperature changes start earlier. Large parts of Bavaria, Lombardy and other regions depend on ecosystem services provided by the Alps. Decreasing quantities of water and a reduced reliability of supply will become major issues in the coming decades. This affects not only the drinking water supply but also agriculture, energy production, and industrial cooling demand. Graphic: FAU

October 29, 2022

Water woes loom in the Alps amid climate change – “Reduced quantities of water and limited reliability of water supply will be a major issue in the coming decades”

By Jamey Keaten 27 October 2022 BRIG, Switzerland (AP) – A battle is brewing around Europe’s rooftop over the planet’s most precious resource. The crystal-clear waters issuing from the Alps could become increasingly contested as the effects of climate change and glacier melt become more apparent. Italy wants them for crop irrigation in the spring […]

Quarterly profits of five major oil companies in the West, 2018-2022 in billions of U.S. dollars. Data for Shell, BP, Chevron, Exxon, and Total Energies are shown. In Q3 2022, global energy giants including Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) and Chevron Corp (CVX.N) posted another round of huge quarterly profits, benefiting from surging natural gas and fuel prices that have boosted inflation around the world and led to fresh calls to further tax the sector. Four of the five largest global oil companies have now reported results, combining for nearly $50 billion in net income, lifted by tight global markets and disruption following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Graphic: Reuters

October 29, 2022

Oil giants’ massive profits revive calls for windfall taxes – “The Russian war in Ukraine has changed the energy markets, reduced energy availability and increased prices”

By Sabrina Valle and Ron Bousso 28 October 2022 (Reuters) – Global energy giants including Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) and Chevron Corp (CVX.N) posted another round of huge quarterly profits, benefiting from surging natural gas and fuel prices that have boosted inflation around the world and led to fresh calls to further tax the sector. Four of the five […]

Number of fatal drug overdoses in the U.S. involving any opioid, synthetic opioids, heroin or prescription opioids, 1999-2020. Deaths in US involving fentanyl have continued to spike since 2013. Data: CDC WONDER. Graphic: Kavish Harjai / AP News

October 28, 2022

As Halloween approaches and fentanyl drives overdose deaths, mistaken beliefs persist – “No one is trying to addict little kids to fentanyl”

By Geoff Mulvihill 28 October 2022 (AP News) – Lillianna Alfaro was a recent high school graduate raising a toddler and considering joining the Army when she and a friend bought what they thought was the anti-anxiety drug Xanax in December 2020. The pills were fake and contained fentanyl, an opioid that can be 50 […]

Estimated percent difference in all-cause mortality rates when a U.S. State’s policy liberalism score is 1 versus 0, for various lag times between the policies and mortality. Blue dots mean a more liberal version of the policy is associated with lower mortality and red dots mean a more conservative version is associated with lower mortality. Dark blue and red dots indicate that the association is significant at α

October 28, 2022

More Americans die younger in states with conservative policies, study finds – “State policy matters. We always get the promise from conservative states that we’re going to cut your taxes and regulation and make the environment better for business, and it comes with a cost.”

By Adrianna Rodriguez 26 October 2022 (USA TODAY) – The United States has a working-age mortality problem: Americans die younger than people in most other high-income countries. While many blame drug overdoses, rising suicide rates, and bad health habits, a new study suggests policymakers may play a bigger role than previously thought. Researchers looked at policies relating […]

Map showing Biodiversity Intactness Index for the year 2020 at 0.25° resolution. The global average is 77 percent. Data: Natural History Museum, 2022. Graphic: WWF / ZSL

October 27, 2022

WWF’s Living Planet Report 2022 reveals devastating 69 percent average drop in wildlife populations since 1970 – “We have cut away the very foundation of life and the situation continues to worsen”

TORONTO, 12 October 2022 (WWF-Canada) – Monitored wildlife populations — mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish — have seen a devastating 69 per cent drop on average since 1970 according to WWF’s Living Planet Report (LPR) 2022. The report highlights the stark outlook of the state of nature and urgently warns governments, businesses and the public to take […]

A child in a refugee camp carries water in Somalia, 2022. Somalia faces widespread famine after four failed rainy seasons, with a fifth season underway that likely will fail too, along with the sixth early in 2023. Photo: Fazel / UNICEF

October 26, 2022

UNICEF: Heatwaves to impact almost every child on earth by 2050 – “The climate crisis is a child rights crisis, and it is already taking a devastating toll on children’s lives and futures”

25 October 2022 (UN News) – Heatwaves have become an unavoidable health hazard for many nations, but new data indicates that they are set to affect virtually every child on earth by 2050, the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, warned on Tuesday. Today, at least half a billion youngsters are already exposed to a high number of heatwaves, placing them on […]

Aerial view of people arriving at a displacement camp in southern Somalia in late September 2022. Photo: Jerome Delay / AP Photo

October 23, 2022

Prolonged drought brings famine, death, and fear to Somalia – “We’d grieve, stop for a while, pray. We’d bury them beside the road.”

By Cara Anna 5 October 2022 DOLLOW, Somalia (AP) – A man in a donkey cart comes wheeling through the dust, carrying two small, silent boys. The sky is overcast. It could rain. It won’t. It hasn’t for a very long time. Mohamed Ahmed Diriye is 60 years old, and he’s completing the grimmest journey […]

People walk on a street affected by the passing of Hurricane Fiona in Penuelas, Puerto Rico, 19 September 2022. Ricardo Arduengo / REUTERS

October 22, 2022

Five years after Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico’s power grid is still costly and unreliable – Puerto Rico struggles to recover after Hurricane Fiona razed crops

By Fred Imbert 22 October 2022 (CNBC) – When Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico in September, Felipe Pérez was ready. Pérez, the owner of local sandwich shop chain El Meson, equipped his stand-alone locations with power generators and water tanks in the event of a prolonged outage like the one after Hurricane Maria, the devastating […]

(a) Ocean thermal forcing (shaded areas) at the ocean bottom or 1000 m (whichever is shallower) and annual submarine melt rate (filled squares) at Greenland’s marine-terminating glaciers. The black dotted line shows the 1,000 m isobath and delineates the extent of the continental shelf. The black dashed regions on the ice sheet delineate the hydrological catchments for three large example glaciers: Jakobshavn Isbrae (JI), Helheim (HH) and Kangerdlugssuaq (KG). The five ice sheet regions considered throughout the paper—south (SO), central-west (CW), northwest (NW), northeast (NE) and north (NO)—are delineated by the black ticks. Other labels are the Irminger Sea (Irm), Davis Strait (Dav) and Denmark Strait (Den). Bathymetry is from ref. 42 and ref. 43. (b) Subglacial discharge (x axis, note logarithmic scale) and ocean thermal forcing (y axis) for each marine-terminating glacier. The background shading shows the resulting submarine melt rate. Glaciers are coloured by their regional grouping. The larger squares and error bars show the median and interquartile range for each region, respectively. (c) Submarine melt rate versus grounding line depth by region with fitted linear trends (all significant at the 5% level) as dashed lines. All the results shown in these plots are annually averaged over 1979–2018. Graphic: Slater and Straneo, 2022 / Nature Geoscience

October 21, 2022

Warmer air and warmer water are combining to melt Greenland ice sheet – “This unfortunately adds to the overwhelming body of evidence showing the sensitivity of the Greenland ice sheet to climate change”

By Rachel Koning Beals 17 October 2022 (MarketWatch) – The Greenland ice sheet — one of the two most important glaciers of its kind on Earth — may be even more sensitive to the warming climate than scientists previously thought. The findings, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, shed fresh light on the forces driving ice […]