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[Plague/Virus]: from New Scientist, Thu May 17 2012:
Chikungunya virus loves warm New York winters
Warmer New York winters have a sting in the tail. The mosquito that carries chikungunya, a virus that causes joint pain, but isn't fatal, is flocking to the city in increasing numbers.
The virus, which originates in Africa, is carried by the Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) and could become endemic in New York within a few years. Until now the bitter winters have kept mosquito numbers down, says Laura Harrington at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
Harrington estimates there is one Asian tiger mosquito for every five New Yorkers. Once that ratio flips to five insects per person, her model suggests that someone arriving in New York carrying the virus would have a 38 per cent chance of passing it on to another person through mosquito bites. The disease could become entrenched in the city at that level of infection, Harrington told the Inside Cornell event in New York City last week.
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Chikungunya bites the Big Apple.
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[Read more stories about: anthropogenic change, health impacts]
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[Climate Chaos]: from Des Moines Register, Thu May 17 2012:
Report: Floods are growing trend
Heavy rainfall is falling more often in the Midwest and severe flooding has doubled in the last half-century, according to a report by two environmental groups.
The study was released Wednesday by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization. The research concludes storms that led to flooding that swamped Cedar Rapids in 2008 and that forced the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to blow up a Mississippi River levee to save Cairo, Ill., in 2011 are part of a growing climate trend.
Between 1961 and 2011, Iowa had a 32 percent increase in storms that brought 3 or more inches of rain in 24 hours, said the report, titled, "Doubled Trouble: More Midwestern Extreme Storms."
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Might we say there is a flood of floods?
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[Read more stories about: anthropogenic change, weather extremes]
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[Climate Chaos]: from Associated Press, Wed May 16 2012:
April 2012 heats up as 5th warmest month globally
Unseasonable weather pushed last month to the fifth warmest April on record worldwide, federal weather statistics show.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center calculated that April's average temperature of 57.9 degrees (14.4 degrees Celsius) was nearly 1.2 degrees (0.7 degrees Celsius) above the 20th Century normal. Two years ago was the hottest April since recordkeeping started in 1880.
Last month was the third hottest April in the United States and unusually warm in Russia, but cooler than normal in parts of western Europe. This is despite a now ended La Nina which generally lowers global temperatures.
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Records are made to be broken.
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[Read more stories about: global warming]
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[Climate Chaos]: from University of California - Riverside, Wed May 16 2012:
Humanmade Pollutants May Be Driving Earth's Tropical Belt Expansion: May Impact Large-Scale Atmospheric Circulation
Black carbon aerosols and tropospheric ozone, both humanmade pollutants emitted predominantly in the Northern Hemisphere's low- to mid-latitudes, are most likely pushing the boundary of the tropics further poleward in that hemisphere, new research by a team of scientists shows... the researchers are the first to report that black carbon and tropospheric ozone are the most likely primary drivers of the tropical expansion observed in the Northern Hemisphere... "The question to ask is how far must the tropics expand before we start to implement policies to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, tropospheric ozone and black carbon that are driving the tropical expansion?" said Allen, who joined UCR in 2011.
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Tropical belt growing bigger -- just like my own midsection.
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[Read more stories about: airborne pollutants, climate impacts, global warming]
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[Recovery]: from London Guardian, Tue May 15 2012:
Heartland Institute grows isolated as three more donors disassociate
Heartland Institute was cut off by three more corporate donors on Monday, further isolating the ultra-conservative thinktank from the mainstream business world.
The defections reinforce the sense of Heartland's isolation, ahead of its major climate contrarian conference in Chicago next week. A number of prominent speakers also pulled out of the conference after Heartland put up a billboard on a Chicago expressway suggesting believers in climate change were akin to serial killers.
In statements to advocacy groups, pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, BB&T bank and PepsiCo confirmed they would not fund Heartland in 2012 -- dealing a blow to the thinktank's plans of building long-term relationships with major corporations.
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Bye-bye brainless thinktank.
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[Read more stories about: deniers]
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[Resource Depletion]: from Climate Central, Tue May 15 2012:
A Tour of Drought as it Unfolds Across the U.S.
Last year at this time, all eyes were on Texas, where drought conditions were intensifying into what became that state's worst single year drought on record, causing nearly $8 billion in economic losses. Recently, though, Texas has gone from famine to feast in the precipitation department, and drought concerns for the upcoming summer are focused farther to the west, as drought tightens its grip across a broad swath of the interior West and Southwest
In addition to the West, drought conditions are also prevalent in the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, and parts of the Northeast as well, along with a small pocket in the Upper Midwest. In all, 56 percent of the Lower 48 states were experiencing drought conditions as of May 8, almost twice the area compared to last year at this time, according to data from the U.S. Drought Monitor.
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I'd cry but it would waste moisture.
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[Read more stories about: drought]
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[Climate Chaos]: from The Coloradoan, Tue May 15 2012:
CSU study: Trees don't clean as much as thought
A new Colorado State University study of when and how trees absorb carbon could have far-reaching effects on years of previous and current climate change research.
The culmination of seven years of research has revealed that trees trap in their leaves less carbon dioxide than once thought. This means that there is an estimated 2 billion more metric tons of the greenhouse gas in the air that scientists say has, with others, contributed to a rise in the Earth's temperature.
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Stupid slacker trees.
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[Read more stories about: anthropogenic change, carbon sinks, climate impacts]
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[Biology Breach]: from NPR, Tue May 15 2012:
Sick From Fracking? Doctors, Patients Seek Answers
...People living near gas well drilling around the country are reporting similar problems, plus headaches, rashes, wheezing, aches and pains and other symptoms... patients and doctors don't have a lot of options. In western Pennsylvania, a lot of them are referred to Charles Werntz at West Virginia University. Werntz, an occupational medicine specialist, is used to dealing with chemical exposures. Lately, he's seeing more people who live near the drilling.
But for now, he says he can't really do much more than offer basic advice: Drink bottled water, air out the house, leave your shoes outside. If it's still too bad, move -- if possible.
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These poor frolks are frucked.
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[Read more stories about: fracking, health impacts]
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[Plague/Virus]: from Chicago Tribune, Tue May 15 2012:
American livestock get extra dose of antibiotics from spent ethanol grain, report says
As the battle wages on over the safety of feeding antibiotics to livestock for growth promotion, a new report reveals yet another source of unregulated antibiotics in American animal feed--spent ethanol grain... When the Food and Drug Administration discovered the antibiotic residues in the grain in 2008, it started requiring ethanol/distiller grain producers to get approval for their presence as a food additive. But the IATP report claims that the antibiotic companies are skirting this rule by relying on their self affirmed GRAS status as approval enough. GRAS (generally recognized as safe) approval requires only that a company proves to itself that its product is safe. It can voluntarily report those findings to the FDA as well.
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Our ass is GRAS.
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[Read more stories about: antibiotic resistance, corporate farming, health impacts]
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[Biology Breach]: from PhysOrg, Tue May 15 2012:
Scientists sound acid alarm for plankton
The microscopic organisms on which almost all life in the oceans depends could be even more vulnerable to increasingly acidic waters than scientists realised, according to a new study.
Previous experiments have given an unduly optimistic view of the impact of acidifying oceans on plankton; it turns out that the methods used may have biased their results.
"Plankton often grow in clumps or aggregates," says Professor Kevin Flynn of Swansea University, lead author of the study. "But the way they are handled tends to break these clumps up. When a scientists starts working on a plankton sample in the lab, the first thing they do is give it a good shake."...
They found that if predictions of general ocean acidification come true, many kinds of plankton will face much more acidic conditions, and more widely varying conditions over each day, than previously realized - conditions far beyond anything seen in recent history. The results are likely to be stunted growth, or even death....
In another twist, as seawater gets more acidic, its capacity to protect against even more acidity diminishes, so general ocean acidification will increase the impact of the local acidification that plankton trigger.
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Whaddaya expect? Plankton're not cute.
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[Read more stories about: ocean acidification, carbon sequestration, unintended consequences, holyshit, ecosystem interrelationships, feedback loop]
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[Biology Breach]: from BBC, Wed May 2 2012:
Peru examines deaths of more than 500 pelicans
The government of Peru is investigating the deaths of more than 500 pelicans along a 70km (40-mile) stretch of the country's northern coast.
Officials say most appeared ...
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Random Sample PANIQuestion:
What do researchers say BPA does to roundworms?
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c) Makes 'em dead.
d) Makes 'em square.
e) Makes 'em sterile.
Answer: Makes 'em sterile.
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The ApocaDocs try to make fun of the horror of environmental collapse
by locating a handful of news items every day, and giving each a
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effects, and more); Resource Depletion (peak oil, peak
phosphorus, overfishing, topsoil loss, aquifer declines, and more);
Biology Breach (toxic runoff, radiation, GMOs, pharmwater,
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