ApocaDocuments (4) for the "Resource Depletion" scenario from this week
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Sun, Mar 8, 2009
from Telegraph.co.uk:
The toxic sea: the other CO2 problem
They are calling it "the other CO2 problem". Its victim is not the polar bear spectacularly marooned on a melting ice floe, or an eagle driven out of its range, nor even a French pensioner dying of heatstroke. What we have to mourn are tiny marine organisms dissolving in acidified water.
In fact we need to do rather more than just mourn them. We need to dive in and save them. Suffering plankton may not have quite the same cachet as a 700-kilo seal-eating mammal, but their message is no less apocalyptic. What they tell us is that the chemistry of the oceans is changing, and that, unless we act decisively, the limitless abundance of the sea within a very few decades will degrade into a useless tidal desert. ... On average, each person on Earth contributes a tonne of carbon to the oceans every year. The result is a rapid rise in acidity -- or a reduction in pH, as the scientists prefer to express it -- which, as it intensifies, will mean that marine animals will be unable to grow shells, and that many sea plants will not survive. With these crucial links removed, and the ecological balance fatally disrupted, death could flow all the way up the food chain, through tuna and cod to marine mammals and Homo sapiens. As more than half the world's population depends on food from the sea for its survival, this is no exaggeration. ...
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It's just a little evolutionary pressure. Come on, species, get with it!
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Fri, Mar 6, 2009
from Port Elizabeth Herald:
Starvation a likely outcome of climate change in Africa
The global community is failing to meet the threat of climate change, says the chairman of the international body researching and tracking the climate change phenomena, Dr Rajendra Pachauri.
Addressing the National Climate Change Summit here on a video clip, Pachauri, of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said things had gone backwards since the first global commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions was signed at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro 16 years ago.
"Despite that commitment, between 1970 and 2004 emissions rose 70 per cent, and carbon dioxide alone rose 80 percent." ... Focusing on Africa, Pachauri said the prediction for some countries was that, as early as 2020, agricultural yield would drop by up to 50 percent.
"In most cases, these are countries where people are already suffering from malnutrition, so this will exacerbate that suffering."
Also by 2020, largely as a result of climate change, it is expected that between 75 million and 250 million people across the continent will be suffering from "water stress" -- a shortage of drinkable water. ...
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Might be time to upgrade to a new continent.
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Mon, Mar 2, 2009
from Guardian (UK):
China plans 59 reservoirs to collect meltwater from its shrinking glaciers
China is planning to build 59 reservoirs to collect water from its shrinking glaciers as the cost of climate change hits home in the world's most populous country.
The far western province of Xinjiang, home to many of the planet's highest peaks and widest ice fields, will carry out the 10-year engineering project, which aims to catch and store glacier run-off that might otherwise trickle away into the desert.
Behind the measure is a concern that millions of people in the region will run out of water once the glaciers in the Tian, Kunlun and Altai mountains disappear.
Anxiety has risen along with temperatures that are rapidly diminishing the ice fields. The 3,800-metre Urumqi No1 glacier, the first to be measured in China, has lost more than 20 percent of its volume since 1962, according to the Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute (Careeri) in Lanzhou. ...
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Which of the seven previous generations do I blame?
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Mon, Mar 2, 2009
from The Canadian Press:
Large fish going hungry as supplies of smaller species dwindle: report
HALIFAX, N.S. -- Dolphins, sharks and other large marine species around the world are going hungry as they seek out dwindling supplies of the small, overlooked species they feed on, according to a new study that says overfishing is draining their food sources.
In a report released Monday, scientists with the international conservation group Oceana said they found several species were emaciated, reproducing slowly and declining in numbers in part because their food sources are being fished out.
"This is the first time that we're seeing a worldwide trend that more and more large animals are going hungry," Margot Stiles, a marine biologist at Oceana and the author of the report, said from Washington, D.C.
"It's definitely starting to be a pattern." ...
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And humans can be so good at reproducing patterns.
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