ApocaDocuments (15) for the "Climate Chaos" scenario from this week
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Sun, Apr 5, 2009
from London Daily Telegraph:
Trees are growing faster and could buy time to halt global warming
The phenomenon has been discovered in a variety of flora, ranging from tropical rainforests to British sugar beet crops.
It means they are soaking up at least some of the billions of tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere by humans that would otherwise be accelerating the rate of climate change.... they would be removing nearly 5 billion tons of CO2 a year from the atmosphere... Humans are believed to generate about 50 billion tons of the gas each year. ...
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Fantastic! Then let's pump out MORE carbons!
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Sun, Apr 5, 2009
from Reuters:
Ice bridge holding Antarctic ice shelf cracks up
An ice bridge which had apparently held a vast Antarctic ice shelf in place during recorded history shattered on Saturday and could herald a wider collapse linked to global warming, a leading scientist said.
"It's amazing how the ice has ruptured. Two days ago it was intact," David Vaughan, a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey, told Reuters of a satellite image of the Wilkins Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula.
The satellite picture, from the European Space Agency (ESA), showed that a 40 km (25 mile) long strip of ice believed to pin the Wilkins Ice Shelf in place had splintered at its narrowest point, about 500 meters wide. ...
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By "cracks up," I'm presuming they don't mean its funnybone was tickled.
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Sun, Apr 5, 2009
from Associated Press:
Climate change threatens Channel Islands artifacts
...Around the globe, climate change is erasing the archaeological record, already under assault from development, grave robbers and illegal trade. Most at risk are prehistoric burials entombed in ice and ancient settlements hugging ever-shrinking coastlines.
A warming planet is speeding the melting of polar ice, threatening to expose frozen remains like Scythian warrior mummies in Mongolia. Thawing permafrost is causing the ground to slump on Canada's Herschel Island, damaging caskets dating to the whaling heyday. Accelerated glacial melting may flood pre-Incan temples and tombs in the northern Andean highlands of Peru...."There are whole civilizations that we risk losing completely," said C. Brian Rose, president of the Archaeological Institute of America. "History is disintegrating before our very eyes." ...
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...there's a certain sad symmetry to erasing history as we're ruining the future...
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Sat, Apr 4, 2009
from Montreal Gazette:
Climate clock is ticking
We have already crossed some critical climate thresholds. The world not only has to drastically cut back its greenhouse gas emissions but also begin to take steps to deal with the inevitable changes that global warming will cause. The much-feared tipping points - which would cause massive icecap and ice shield melting, and plunge the world headlong into severe weather systems, causing broad devastation and rising seas - seem increasingly probable.
This is why, scientists say, the United Nations climate talks that began this week in Bonn, Germany, and will culminate in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December, are so important. They are a last chance for the world to come to its senses and negotiate an agreement to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions. ...
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It's time to stop tiptoeing around tipping points.
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Sat, Apr 4, 2009
from Reuters:
Wordie Ice Shelf has disappeared: scientists
One Antarctic ice shelf has quickly vanished, another is disappearing and glaciers are melting faster than anyone thought due to climate change, U.S. and British government researchers reported on Friday.
They said the Wordie Ice Shelf, which had been disintegrating since the 1960s, is gone and the northern part of the Larsen Ice Shelf no longer exists. More than 3,200 square miles (8,300 square km) have broken off from the Larsen shelf since 1986.
Climate change is to blame, according to the report from the U.S. Geological Survey and the British Antarctic Survey, available at pubs.usgs.gov/imap/2600/B.
"The rapid retreat of glaciers there demonstrates once again the profound effects our planet is already experiencing -- more rapidly than previously known -- as a consequence of climate change," U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement. ...
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Wordie up! Wordie... down...
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Fri, Apr 3, 2009
from Associated Press:
Arctic sea ice is melting faster than expected, study shows
Arctic sea ice is melting so fast that most of it could be gone in 30 years.
A new analysis of changing conditions in the region, using complex computer models of weather and climate, says conditions that had been forecast for the end of the century could occur much sooner.
A change in the amount of ice is important because the white surface reflects sunlight back into space. When ice is replaced by dark ocean water, the sunlight can be absorbed, warming the water and increasing the warming of the planet.
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Thirty years? That's all the time in the world.
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Thu, Apr 2, 2009
from New Scientist:
Rainforests may pump winds worldwide
THE acres upon acres of lush tropical forest in the Amazon and tropical Africa are often referred to as the planet's lungs. But what if they are also its heart? This is exactly what a couple of meteorologists claim in a controversial new theory that questions our fundamental understanding of what drives the weather. They believe vast forests generate winds that help pump water around the planet.
If correct, the theory would explain how the deep interiors of forested continents get as much rain as the coast, and how most of Australia turned from forest to desert. It suggests that much of North America could become desert - even without global warming. The idea makes it even more vital that we recognise the crucial role forests play in the well-being of the planet. ...
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Forests may also be the earth's brain.
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Thu, Apr 2, 2009
from Agence France-Presse:
Climate change to bring more whale beachings
Experts studying the mass beaching of whales along Australia's coast have warned that such tragedies could become more frequent as global warming brings the mammals' food stocks closer to shore.
Almost 90 long-finned pilot whales and bottlenose dolphins died after washing up last week at Hamelin Bay, on the country's west coast.
It was the second mass stranding in March, and took the total number of cetaceans to beach in southern Australia in the past four months beyond 500, including a single stranding of almost 200 on King Island.
Researchers tracking the beaching of whales in the region since 1920 said strandings tended to occur in 12-year cycles which coincided with cooler, nutrient-rich ocean currents moving from the south and swelling fish stocks. ...
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Aren't beached whales one of the Seven Signs of the Apocalypse?
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Thu, Apr 2, 2009
from New York Times:
China Vies to Be World's Leader in Electric Cars
Chinese leaders have adopted a plan aimed at turning the country into one of the leading producers of hybrid and all-electric vehicles within three years, and making it the world leader in electric cars and buses after that... To some extent, China is making a virtue of a liability. It is behind the United States, Japan and other countries when it comes to making gas-powered vehicles, but by skipping the current technology, China hopes to get a jump on the next... But electric vehicles may do little to clear the country's smog-darkened sky or curb its rapidly rising emissions of global warming gases. China gets three-fourths of its electricity from coal, which produces more soot and more greenhouse gases than other fuels. ...
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How about this, then? How about Flintstones-style vehicles?
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Thu, Apr 2, 2009
from Los Angeles Times:
Report outlines possible effects of warming on California
As California warms in coming decades, farmers will have less water, the state could lose more than a million acres of cropland and forest fire rates will soar, according to a broad-ranging state report released Wednesday.
The document, which officials called the "the ultimate picture to date" of global warming's likely effect on California, consists of 37 research papers that examine an array of issues including water supply, air pollution and property losses. Without actions to limit greenhouse gas emissions, "severe and costly climate impacts are possible and likely across California," warned state environmental protection secretary Linda Adams. The draft Climate Action Team Report, an update of a 2006 assessment, concludes that some climate change effects could be more serious than previously thought. ...
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This "more serious than previously thought" remark is getting a little too familiar.
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Wed, Apr 1, 2009
from BBC (UK):
Climate change fans Nepal's fires
The forest fires that flared unusually viciously in many of Nepal's national parks and conserved areas this dry season have left conservationists worrying if climate change played a role.
At least four protected areas were on fire for an unusually long time until just a few days ago.
Nasa's satellite imagery showed most of the big fires were in and around the national parks along the country's northern areas bordering Tibet.... For nearly six months, no precipitation has fallen across most of the country - the longest dry spell in recent history, according to meteorologists. ...
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Got marshmallows?
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Tue, Mar 31, 2009
from Washington Times:
Coal is winner even in 'green' Congress
After two years of campaign rhetoric and months of hearings, Congress is set this week to begin testing whether it can turn the push for renewable energy sought by President Obama into reality.
But the result is likely to fall short of Mr. Obama's goals and, ironically, preserve the primacy of the most abundant and dirtiest fossil fuel: coal.
Lawmakers this spring plan to keep their distance from the president's most ambitious and controversial proposals, including a mandate for utilities to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and the creation of a system to reduce such emissions called "cap and trade."
Yet they appear eager to appropriate billions of dollars for a little-tested technology that would prevent carbon dioxide from polluting the air by burying it underground, a process called "sequestration."
Coal - and the many parts of the country that rely on coal for power generation - would be the prime beneficiaries of such funding. ...
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Coal... it is still king.
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Tue, Mar 31, 2009
from The Washington Independent:
Tensions High as EPA Reasserts Mining Authority
For environmentalists in the Appalachians, it was a roller-coaster week.
Just one day after the Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to reassert its powers to protect mountain streams from the ravages of mountaintop coal mining, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved the broad expansion of such a project without EPA input... The recent saga began last Monday, when the EPA sent letters to the Army Corps of Engineers in Huntington, W.Va., recommending that the Corps either deny or alter proposed projects in West Virginia and Kentucky because agency studies show that the two mountaintop mines would have serious water-quality consequences. A day later, the EPA vowed to review hundreds more backlogged permit requests to assess their effect on streams... On Wednesday, however, the Corps’ Louisville district approved a 1.5-square-mile expansion of a mountaintop mine in Southeast Kentucky with no input from the EPA. ...
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In the battle betwixt the two my money's on the Army!
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Mon, Mar 30, 2009
from CBC News (Canada):
Global warming could melt winter sport industry: report
Global warming could cripple winter sports and winter tourism in Canada, according to a report published Monday by the David Suzuki Foundation.
"If heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions are not significantly cut, global warming stands to wipe out more than half of Canada's ski season later this century with few exceptions," said the study.
Entitled On Thin Ice, it was released Monday in Vancouver on the opening day of the 8th annual world conference on sport and the environment.
"By 2050, if we fail to take immediate action on climate change, a whole range of winter activities across Canada, from Olympic sports like skiing and snowboarding to iconic Canadian pastimes such as ice fishing and pond hockey, will be jeopardized," says report author and the foundation's climate-change specialist, Ian Bruce. ...
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OMG!!! You mean I have to take up skateboarding instead of snowboarding!?
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Mon, Mar 30, 2009
from Soil Science Society of America, via EurekAlert:
Nitrate fertilizer stimulates greenhouse gas production in small streams
Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas that has been accumulating in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. It is well known that fertilizer can stimulate nitrous oxide production in soils, but less is known about nitrous oxide production in small streams which drain agricultural landscapes. Much of the cropland in the agricultural Midwest is drained by an extensive subsurface drainage network which delivers soil-derived nitrate to small streams where it may be converted to nitrous oxide. Given the large quantities of nitrogen that leach from agricultural soils and the predominance of small streams in Midwestern agricultural landscapes, small streams may an important source of nitrous oxide.... The study revealed that nitrous oxide is frequently produced in the sediments of small streams and that production rates were best explained by stream water nitrate concentrations. The highest production rates were observed during the winter and spring of the second year of the study when snow melt and rain flushed nitrate into the streams resulting in elevated stream water nitrate concentrations. ...
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Fertilizing our way to climate warming? How efficient.
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