50 doomiest images of 2012

[Barrett808]

In 2011, Desdemona experienced déjà vu while collecting doom-laden images, but not so this year. Doom has begun to have a certain characteristic look: the record flooding looks the same, whether it’s in the Philippines or Nigeria; spiderwebs coat the flooded landscape in Pakistan and Australia alike. Mega-fires in Siberia and the U.S. West produce the same rivers of smoke, so gigantic that they’re visible from space. The desolation of razed rainforest is familiar in the Amazon and in Madagascar. The decaying corpses of poached wildlife in Africa evoke the same despair as drying shark fins in Hong Kong.

So what’s new in 2012’s doom images? Here are a few highlights:

• Enterprising reporters took to the skies to photograph the wasteland of the Athabascan oil sands mines in more detail than we’ve seen before.
• A rare, powerful Arctic storm hovered over the pole and shredded what was left of the summer sea ice.
• Renegade geoengineer Russ George successfully created an artificial algae bloom off the coast of British Columbia.
• Some nominally Christian farmers in Kansas resorted to pagan appeals to bring rain. This effort had no effect on the devastating North America drought.
• Mutations appeared in wildlife near the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Most of all, Desdemona will remember 2012 for the ominous, orange summer sunlight in Seattle, as smoke from the Siberia mega-fires fell out over Washington state and British Columbia. ...

50 doomiest images of 2012

[stuntcat]

1. the 800-year old tree

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/05/17/thieves-take-800-year-old-red-cedar-tree-from-vancouver-island/

This is heartbreaking. Nothing but a shame on our whole species.