doomiestImage – Page 35 – Desdemona Despair

Satellite view of container yards with strewn shipping containers in Durban, South Africa, after record flooding, 14 April 2022 Photo: Maxar Technologies

April 17, 2022

South Africa flood toll rises to 443 in deadliest flood and worst rains in 60 years – “This is a catastrophe of enormous proportions”

17 April 2022 (AFP) – The death toll from floods that have battered South Africa’s east coast has risen to 443, including a rescuer, a regional official said today, as dozens more are still missing. “The death toll now stands at 443,” Sihle Zikalala, the premier of the KwaZulu-Natal province told a media briefing, adding […]

Thousands of Sri Lankans demonstrate against President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on 9 April 2022. Protesters demanded Rajapaksa’s resignation, saying neither he nor members of his family could be trusted to steer the country out of its deepening economic crisis. At the Galle Face Green on Colombo’s waterfront on Saturday, students, teachers, lawyers, actors and architects – many of whom said they were protesting for the first time – chanted “madman Gota” and “Go home Gota”, in a reference to the president’s nickname, as they gathered under a blistering sun. Photo: Al Jazeera

April 13, 2022

Drugs running out, surgeries cancelled as Sri Lanka’s health system buckles – “This will result in a catastrophic number of deaths”

By Devjyot Ghoshal and Uditha Jayasinghe 12 April 2022 COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (Reuters) – Rosanne White was first diagnosed with cancer eight years ago and lost a kidney. After the cancer returned five years ago, an oncologist in Sri Lanka’s commercial capital Colombo started her on Bevacizumab last May, a treatment she was responding to. […]

Smoke billows from a fire at Ghazipur landfill, in New Delhi, India, late Saturday, 9 April 2022. Photo: Kamal Kishore / PTI

April 10, 2022

Fire at Delhi’s Ghazipur landfill site again, weeks after major blaze was doused — “Waste, plastic, cloth … once it catches fire, it keeps burning”

10 April 2022 (The Quint) – A fire broke out at the Ghazipur landfill in East Delhi on Saturday night, 9 April, officials stated, about two weeks after a major fire broke out at the same site that required almost 50 hours of firefighting operations to douse. This fire, however, was put out within three hours and there was no casualty, as per […]

A haze caused by dust covers the capital Nicosia, in the southeast Mediterranean island of Cyprus, on Monday, 4 April 2022. The World Health Organization (WHO), the U.N. health agency, says nearly everybody in the world breathes air that doesn't meet its standards for air quality. WHO is calling for more action reduce fossil-use use that generate pollutants that cause respiratory and blood-flow problems and lead to millions of preventable deaths each year. Photo: Petros Karadjias / AP Photo

April 10, 2022

Millions dying across the world due to poor-quality air that 99 percent of world’s population breathes – “After surviving a pandemic, it is unacceptable to still have 7 million preventable deaths and countless preventable lost years of good health due to air pollution”

By Jamey Keaten 4 April 2022 GENEVA (AP) – The U.N. health agency says nearly everybody in the world breathes air that doesn’t meet its standards for air quality, calling for more action to reduce fossil-fuel use, which generates pollutants that cause respiratory and blood-flow problems and lead to millions of preventable deaths each year. The […]

Anti-solar supporters pose for a portrait at the Johnson County BOCC public hearing on the solar amendments recommended by the Planning Commission in Olathe, Kansas, U.S., 4 April 2022. Photo: Arin Yoon / REUTERS

April 9, 2022

U.S. solar expansion stalled by rural land-use protests – “It’s pretty obvious that, if there’s a climate urgency, we’re not behaving that way”

By Nichola Groom 7 April 2022 (Reuters) – The Solar Star project in California is among the largest solar energy facilities in the world, boasting 1.7 million panels spread over 3,000 acres north of Los Angeles. Its gargantuan scale points to an uncomfortable fact for the industry: a natural gas power plant 100 miles south […]

A houseboat rests in a cove at Lake Powell near Page, Arizona on 30 July 2021. In the summer of 2021, the water levels hit a historic low amid a climate change-fueled megadrought engulfing the U.S. West. Severe drought across the West drained reservoirs in 2021, slashing hydropower production and further stressing the region’s power grids. And as extreme weather becomes more common with climate change, grid operators are adapting to swings in hydropower generation. Photo: Rick Bowmer / AP Photo

April 6, 2022

Lake Powell hits historic low, raising hydropower concerns – “We clearly weren’t sufficiently prepared for the need to move this quickly”

By Sam Metz and Felicia Fonseca 16 March 2022 SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – A massive reservoir known as a boating mecca dipped below a critical threshold on Tuesday raising new concerns about a source of power that millions of people in the U.S. West rely on for electricity. Lake Powell’s fall to below 3,525 […]

Lake Mead end of month elevations, projections from the February and March 2022 24-month study inflow scenarios. Water year 2022 got off to a promising start in the Colorado River Basin with a wetter-than-normal October, but it was followed by the second-driest November on record and resulted in a loss of 1.5 million acre-feet of inflow for Lake Powell compared to the previous month’s projections. December projections showed the reservoir dropping below the target elevation of 3,525 feet as early as February 2022. As defined in the Drought Response Operations Agreement, the target elevation provides a sufficient buffer to allow for response actions to prevent Lake Powell from dropping below the minimum power pool elevation of 3,490 feet, the lowest elevation that Glen Canyon Dam can generate hydropower. Graphic: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

April 4, 2022

Empty canals, dead cotton fields: Arizona farmers are getting slammed by 2022 water cuts in the U.S. West – “We’re not making one dime off this farm right now”

By Emma Newburger 3 April 2022 CASA GRANDE, Arizona (CNBC) – On the drought-stricken land where Pinal County farmers have irrigated crops for thousands of years, Nancy Caywood stopped her pickup truck along an empty canal and pointed to a field of dead alfalfa. “It’s heart wrenching,” said Caywood, a third-generation farmer who manages 247 […]

Afghan children play in the mud at an unofficial camp for internally displaced people in Herat, Afghanistan, May 2021. Photo: Charlie Faulkner

April 4, 2022

Devastated by worst drought in decades and economic turmoil, many in Afghanistan near starvation – “It is the speed, scale and source of the crisis that is so extreme”

By Holly Rosenkrantz 3 April 2022 (USA TODAY) – Afghanistan has faced grave hunger crises before. Two decades ago, people in the country were so hungry they resorted to eating wild grass. But the situation in the country now is unprecedented. Exacerbated by an unusually cold winter and the worst drought in decades, the economic […]

A woman uses a candle inside her house during a power cut in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on 30 March 2022. Many parts of the crisis-hit country faced up to 13 hours without electricity due to a shortage of foreign currency to import fuel. Photo: AFP

April 3, 2022

Power cuts in Sri Lanka could continue into May 2022 – Nation experiencing worst economic spiral since independence in 1948

COLOMBO, 31 March 2022 (The Straits Times) – Sri Lanka’s power minister said on Thursday (31 March 2022) that power cuts could continue into May, as many parts of the crisis-hit country currently face up to 13 hours without electricity due to a shortage of foreign currency to import fuel. Pavithra Wanniarachchi said that a […]

An octopus is pictured “stilt-walking” with a variety of collected trash. A new study crowdsourced hundreds of images, including this one, that observed octopuses using human garbage for a variety of tasks. Photo: Serge Abourjeily

April 3, 2022

Octopuses are using human garbage as shelter, camouflage and more, study finds – “It’s becoming so common that they’re using these items to protect themselves with instead of their natural shelters, such as seashells, which are becoming scarce in the ocean”

9 March 2022 (CBC Radio) – A new study suggests it’s becoming increasingly common for octopuses to use bottles, cans and other human trash to shelter themselves, camouflage their dens and even house their young. “We believe this is because of the high abundance of these artificial items — you know, the litter item — […]