ApocaDocuments (9) for the "Climate Chaos" scenario from this week
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Sun, Mar 8, 2009
from London Guardian:
Scientists to issue stark warning over dramatic new sea level figures
Scientists will warn this week that rising sea levels, triggered by global warming, pose a far greater danger to the planet than previously estimated. There is now a major risk that many coastal areas around the world will be inundated by the end of the century because Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting faster than previously estimated.
Low-lying areas including Bangladesh, Florida, the Maldives and the Netherlands face catastrophic flooding, while, in Britain, large areas of the Norfolk Broads and the Thames estuary are likely to disappear by 2100. In addition, cities including London, Hull and Portsmouth will need new flood defences. ...
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Our cup... runneth o'er.
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Sat, Mar 7, 2009
from Science News:
Chinese carbon dioxide emissions eclipse efficiency gains
The rapid growth of China's export-driven economy earlier this decade fueled a dramatic increase in carbon dioxide emissions that overwhelmed the country's substantial improvement in energy efficiency, a new analysis reveals.
China's recent economic growth has made the country the world's third-largest exporter and its fourth-largest economy. It has also made the Asian dynamo, in one sense, the world's largest polluter: In 2006, China passed the United States to become the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide, the most prevalent anthropogenic greenhouse gas.
Between 2002 and 2007, China's energy consumption nearly doubled, says Glen Peters, a climate scientist at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research--Oslo. Now Peters and his colleagues have conducted the first detailed analysis indicating which sectors of the Chinese economy most substantially contributed to the dramatic surge in CO2 emissions. The researchers focused on the period between 2002 and 2005, the most recent year for which detailed data are available. ...
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In the words of that esteemed philosopher, Scooby Doo: Wuh-oh!
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Fri, Mar 6, 2009
from London Independent:
Revenge of the rainforest
It covers an area 25 times bigger than Britain, is home to a bewildering concentration of flora and fauna and is often described as the "lungs of the world" for its ability to absorb vast amounts of carbon dioxide through its immense photosynthetic network of trees and leaves. The Amazon rainforest is one of the biggest and most important living stores of carbon on the planet through its ability to convert atmospheric carbon dioxide into solid carbon, kept locked in the trunks of rainforest trees for centuries.
But this massive natural "sink" for carbon cannot be relied on to continue absorbing carbon dioxide in perpetuity, a study shows. Researchers have found that, for a period in 2005, the Amazon rainforest actually slipped into reverse gear and started to emit more carbon than it absorbed.
Four years ago, a sudden and intense drought in the Amazonian dry season created the sort of conditions that give climate scientists nightmares. Instead of being a net absorber of about two billion tons of carbon dioxide, the forest became a net producer of the greenhouse gas, to the tune of about three billion tons.
The additional quantity of carbon dioxide left in the atmosphere after the drought - some five billion tons - exceeded the annual man-made emissions of Europe and Japan combined. What happened in the dry season of 2005 was a stark reminder of how quickly the factors affecting global warming can change. ...
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So the Rainforest... is a Drainforest!
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Thu, Mar 5, 2009
from Reuters:
Arctic summer ice could vanish by 2013: expert
The Arctic is warming up so quickly that the region's sea ice cover in summer could vanish as early as 2013, decades earlier than some had predicted, a leading polar expert said on Thursday.
Warwick Vincent, director of the Center for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec, said recent data on the ice cover "appear to be tracking the most pessimistic of the models", which call for an ice free summer in 2013.
The year "2013 is starting to look as though it is a lot more reasonable as a prediction. But each year we've been wrong -- each year we're finding that it's a little bit faster than expected," he told Reuters.
The Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world and the sea ice cover shrank to a record low in 2007 before growing slightly in 2008.
In 2004 a major international panel forecast the cover could vanish by 2100. Last December, some experts said the summer ice could go in the next 10 or 20 years. ...
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That's four years of bliss!
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Wed, Mar 4, 2009
from The Denver Post:
The cold truth about ozone
Ozone pollution -- considered a summer problem -- is being detected across the West this winter, raising questions about the program to monitor and cut the pollutant.
First detected in February 2005 near the oil and gas fields of Pinedale, Wyo., elevated winter ozone is now being found in New Mexico and Utah, according to state data, and could eventually be found in Colorado.
"Now that we know to look for it, I think we'll find high levels of winter ozone across the West and the world," said Russell Schnell, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist.
Schnell's Earth Systems Research Laboratory in Boulder is probing how ozone -- corrosive gas linked to respiratory problems -- is created in winter.
"It is a sign of the rapidly industrializing West," said Vickie Patton, air programs manager for the Environmental Defense Fund. "We are seeing a hallmark Western resource-- healthy, clean air -- vanish." ...
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Ozone is now the Mo'Zone.
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Wed, Mar 4, 2009
from New Energy Finance, via EurekAlert:
Clean energy investment not on track to avoid climate change
The world economic crisis has hit investment in clean energy and means its growth is no longer on track for the world to avert the worst impact of climate change, according to leading clean energy and carbon market analysts, New Energy Finance.... Investment in clean energy -- renewables, energy efficiency and carbon capture and storage -- increased from $34bn in 2004 to around $150bn in each of 2007 and 2008. New Energy Finance's latest Global Futures report demonstrates that investment needs to reach $500bn per annum by 2020 if CO2 emissions from the world's energy system are to peak before 2020. ...
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Hey man, my portfolio is down -- why should I invest in the future?
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Tue, Mar 3, 2009
from National Geographic News:
Glacier(less) National Park in 2020
It's an oft-repeated statistic that the glaciers at Montana's Glacier National Park will disappear by the year 2030.
But Daniel Fagre, a U.S. Geological Survey ecologist who works at Glacier, says the park's namesakes will be gone about ten years ahead of schedule, endangering the region's plants and animals.... The 2020 estimate is based on aerial surveys and photography Fagre and his team have been conducting at Glacier since the early 1980s. ...
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We can call it TPFKAGNP -- The Park Formerly Known As Glacier National Park.
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Tue, Mar 3, 2009
from BusinessGreen:
Research warns two degree rise will halve rainforest 'carbon sink'
The impact of global warming on tropical rainforests will be so severe that even increases in temperature that are widely regarded as "safe" could raise tree mortality rates to such a level that almost 50 billion tons of carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere.
That is the sobering warning contained in new research from a team of Australian scientists, which suggests that even a two degree increase in average global temperatures will see the "carbon sink" effect currently provided by the world's rainforests cut in half.... The researchers calculated that for each degree Celsius global temperatures rise, the rainforests will shrink at such a rate that 24.5 billion tons of carbon is released to the atmosphere. In comparison, man-made emissions of greenhouse gases in 2007 reached a peak of 10 billion tons CO2 equivalent. ...
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Oh good. Soon we'll have the rainforests to blame, instead of ourselves.
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Tue, Mar 3, 2009
from London Daily Star:
10,000 Could Die in Summer Heatwave
The Government is said to be "very concerned" that as many as 10,000 lives will be lost as temperatures soar to 40C across the country.
Sun stroke, dehydration, air pollution and wildfires all contribute to a rise in deaths during sizzling summers.
The highest temperature measured in the UK was 38.5C, recorded in Kent on August 10, 2003. And it could become a regular occurrence in the near future.
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The Brits just need to cool out.
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