ApocaDocuments (8) for the "Resource Depletion" scenario from this week
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Sun, Jan 11, 2009
from Contra Costa Times:
Food crisis due to warming world trumps all other worries, say scientists
Many of today's toddlers face the grim prospect of coping with chronic food shortages in their old age if agricultural science doesn't adapt to a warming world, concluded scientists in a study published Friday in the journal Science.
The stark report, from scientists at Stanford University and the University of Washington, makes melting polar ice caps and rising sea levels from global warming appear minor compared with the prospect of hundreds of millions of people, including those living in Europe and the United States, anxiously seeking stable food supplies. ... By the end of the century, the worst of the heat waves in recent times will become the normal average summertime temperatures, the researchers reported. They based their conclusions on 23 climate models in a 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as well as data from severe heat waves dating several decades. ...
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I can't believe we ate up the whoooooole thing.
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Sun, Jan 11, 2009
from Telegraph.co.uk:
Two Google searches 'produce same CO2 as boiling a kettle'
A typical search through the online giant's website is thought to generate about 7g of carbon dioxide. Boiling a kettle produces about 15g.
The emissions are caused both by the electricity required to power a user's computer and send their request to servers around the world.
The discovery comes amid increasing warnings about the little-known environmental impact of computer and internet use.
According to Gartner, an American research firm, IT now causes about two per cent of global CO2 emissions and its carbon footprint exceeded that of the world's aviation industry for the first time in 2007. ...
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Guess I'll have to slow down on the English Breakfast, wot?
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Fri, Jan 9, 2009
from Guardian (UK):
US recycling: 'I don't even think we have an industry'
"Across the street we would process 600 customers on a weekday, 1,000 at the weekend," he says. "The whole spectrum -- the homeowner who has stockpiled aluminium cans, the bar down the street that has a load of beer bottles, the liquor store with used cardboard. Now it's probably half that number."
Young is on the frontline of a crash in commodity prices that has seen the global market for recycled paper, cardboard, plastic, metals and glass all but disappear. In three weeks in October, the price of paper went from $200 to $20 a ton, corrugated cardboard dropped from $250 a ton in August to $100 in December. It is the worst he has seen since founding the company in 1963. ...
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Looks like littering is back in style again. Heck, Nature can just swallow it all, right?
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Fri, Jan 9, 2009
from Yahoo/AP:
Tangerine growers tell beekeepers to buzz off
Is it trespassing when bees do what bees do in California's tangerine groves?
That is the question being weighed by state agriculture officials caught between beekeepers who prize orange blossom honey and citrus growers who blame the bees for causing otherwise seedless mandarin oranges to develop pips.... Beekeepers say that, with development in the state's agricultural regions, there already are a limited number of places to take the bees for feeding.
"Our winter losses are increasing (because of colony collapse), and part of the problem is finding places to put bees where they have access to natural food, and citrus is part of that," said Gene Brandi, a Los Banos beekeeper and legislative liaison for the California State Beekeepers Association. [thanks, Janet!] ...
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This is somehow like that orange-burning scene in "The Pips of Wrath."
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Thu, Jan 8, 2009
from Reuters:
Monsanto seeks FDA approval for drought-tolerant corn
KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - Monsanto Co said Wednesday it filed for U.S. regulatory approval for what could be the world's first drought-tolerant corn, a product that agricultural companies around the globe are racing to roll out amid fears of global warming and the needs of a growing population.
Monsanto said it submitted its product to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for regulatory clearance. It is working with German-based BASF on the project.
The two companies are jointly contributing $1.5 billion to a venture aimed at developing higher-yielding crops and crops more tolerant to adverse environmental conditions, such as drought, which has eroded production in countries around the world in recent years.
"It's been everybody's dream to have a drought-tolerant crop," said Iowa State University agronomist Roger Elmore, though he pointed out advantages would vary widely depending on geography. ...
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I know that's been my dream all along...
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Thu, Jan 8, 2009
from Christian Science Monitor:
As beetle invasion rages, a debate over logs
Tromping through a snowy thicket of lodgepole pine, forester Tim Love identifies the telltale signs that the trees are, in his words, "dead already but don't know it."... These are the visible scars of massive beetle destruction that now stretches from Colorado to British Columbia. Soon, wind will likely finish off the pockmarked lodgepoles, sending them crashing to the forest floor, says Mr. Love, a district ranger in the Lolo National Forest in Montana. That's a fire hazard headache for the forest service -- and, some say, a missed opportunity.... An estimated 2.4 million acres across five northern US states show visible signs of trees killed by the beetles, according to data from Gregg DeNitto with the US Forest Service in Missoula. ...
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Monster fires are on the horizon...
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Thu, Jan 8, 2009
from Telegraph.co.uk:
Wind turbine destroyed after 'octopus UFO' seen in sky
Dozens of residents claimed to have seen bright flashing spheres is the skies near Louth, Lincolnshire, where a 290ft turbine was mangled in a mystery collision.
One woman said she saw the an object fly towards the wind farm, while others described the lights as being linked by "tentacles", leading locals to dub it the octopus UFO.... Later on Sunday night, one of a turbine's 65ft blades was ripped off and another severely damaged.
The Health and Safety Executive described the damage as a "unique incident", and the energy firm Ecotricity which owns the 20-turbine site say it has no explanation. ...
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Now even the flying spaghetti monster is against us?
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Thu, Jan 8, 2009
from Guardian (UK):
Daily Mail turns incandescent with lightbulb rage
As of just now the Daily Mail's hotline, giving away 5,000 sets of traditional incandescent no-nonsense lightbulbs is all out of its daily allocation of gas guzzling bulbs. The Mail is kindly dispensing them as a rebellion against the phasing out of 75w and 100w lightbulbs by 2012.... But deep down I know they've gone to people who take the right to install gas guzzling bulbs as the right to bear arms and whine on about how (traditional) incandescent lightbulbs heat the house with all that excess heat -- about efficient as using a hairdryer as your primary source of space heating... ...
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How cute. Next, they'll be providing Right Whale steaks, since there's fewer than 400 of them alive today.
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