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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
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Species Collapse:(2)
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This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
climate impacts  ~ global warming  ~ contamination  ~ economic myopia  ~ airborne pollutants  ~ stupid humans  ~ toxic buildup  ~ smart policy  ~ efficiency increase  ~ water issues  ~ technical cleverness  



ApocaDocuments (12) matching "climate impacts" from this week
[see full week] ~ [see all stories tagged "climate impacts"]
Sun, Apr 12, 2009
from London Guardian:
Eco-warrior sets sail to save oceans from 'plastic death'
In a few weeks, the heir to one of the world's greatest fortunes, David de Rothschild, will set sail across the Pacific - in a boat, the Plastiki, made from plastic bottles and recycled waste. The aim of this extraordinary venture is simple: to focus attention on one of the world's strangest and most unpleasant environmental phenomena: the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a rubbish-covered region of ocean, several hundred miles in diameter.... The plastic - most of it swept from coastal cities in Asia and California - is trapped indefinitely in the region by the North Pacific Gyre, a vortex of currents that circulate clockwise around the ocean. Scientists estimate that there is six times more plastic than plankton by weight in the patch and that this is having disastrous ecological consequences. Fish and seabirds mistake plastic for food and choke to death. At the same time, plastics absorb pollutants including PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and pesticides, bringing poisons into the food chain. ...


David is going up against the Goliath of pollution.

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Sun, Apr 12, 2009
from National Geographic:
Changing rains
Warm air holds more water vapor -- itself a greenhouse gas -- so a hotter world is a world where the atmosphere contains more moisture. (For every degree Celsius that air temperatures increase, a given amount of air near the surface holds roughly 7 percent more water vapor.) This will not necessarily translate into more rain -- in fact, most scientists believe that total precipitation will increase only modestly -- but it is likely to translate into changes in where the rain falls. It will amplify the basic dynamics that govern rainfall: In certain parts of the world, moist air tends to rise, and in others, the moisture tends to drop out as rain and snow. ...


I bet it rains ... on our parade.

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Sun, Apr 12, 2009
from TIME Magazine:
Cows With Gas: India's Contribution to Global Warming
By burping, belching and excreting copious amounts of methane - a greenhouse gas that traps 20 times more heat than carbon dioxide - India's livestock of roughly 485 million (including sheep and goats) contribute more to global warming than the vehicles they obstruct. With new research suggesting that emission of methane by Indian livestock is higher than previously estimated, scientists are furiously working at designing diets to help bovines and other ruminants eat better, stay more energetic and secrete lesser amounts of the offensive gas. ...


Methane: the silent but deadly environmental killer...

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Sat, Apr 11, 2009
from Louisville Courier-Journal:
Ky., In. key contributors to 'dead zone'
Louisville and the state's Bluegrass region are among the likely sources of pollution runoff that have marked Kentucky as one of the top contributors to the Gulf of Mexico's oxygen-depleted "dead zone," according to a new federal study. Building on work released last year that placed Kentucky and Indiana among nine states contributing 75 percent of excess nutrients into the Gulf, a new report by the U.S. Geological Survey identifies watersheds that are most likely to blame.... In the Gulf, an overabundance of nutrients has led to an oxygen-depleted area that has grown to the size of New Jersey. Fish and other aquatic life suffocate if they can't reach better water, threatening the valuable Gulf fishery that supplies many restaurants and kitchens. ...


Try my new product: Aqualungs for aquatic life!

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Fri, Apr 10, 2009
from Science Daily:
Climate Change Leads To Major Decrease In Carbon Dioxide Storage
The North Atlantic Ocean is one of the Earth’s tools to offset natural carbon dioxide emissions. In fact, the ‘carbon sink’ in the North Atlantic is the primary gate for carbon dioxide (CO2) entering the global ocean and stores it for about 1500 years. The oceans have removed nearly 30 per cent of anthropogenic (man-made) emissions over the last 250 years. However, several recent studies show a dramatic decline in the North Atlantic Ocean's carbon sink....They believe the decrease is a natural phenomenon as a result of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which causes weather patterns to change. ...


Sounds like one of our major sinks... is sunk!

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Fri, Apr 10, 2009
from Yale Environment 360:
Retreat of Andean Glaciers Foretells Global Water Woes
Earlier this year, the World Bank released yet another in a seemingly endless stream of reports by global institutions and universities chronicling the melting of the world's cryosphere, or ice zone. This latest report concerned the glaciers in the Andes and revealed the following: Bolivia's famed Chacaltaya glacier has lost 80 percent of its surface area since 1982, and Peruvian glaciers have lost more than one-fifth of their mass in the past 35 years, reducing by 12 percent the water flow to the country's coastal region, home to 60 percent of Peru's population. And if warming trends continue, the study concluded, many of the Andes' tropical glaciers will disappear within 20 years, not only threatening the water supplies of 77 million people in the region, but also reducing hydropower production, which accounts for roughly half of the electricity generated in Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. ...


The melting of the cryosphere just makes me weep!

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Fri, Apr 10, 2009
from Toronto Globe and Mail:
Dow to sue over Quebec pesticide ban
Dow AgroSciences LLC has decided to sue the federal government over Quebec's ban on the residential use of pesticides. The U.S.-based company, maker of the herbicide 2,4-D, is claiming $2-million (U.S.) in damages, using controversial provisions in the North American Free Trade Agreement that allow businesses to sue governments over regulations that harm their interests.... The case has attracted wide interest because so-called cosmetic pesticide bans are becoming increasingly popular, with Ontario recently following Quebec's lead in introducing one and many retailers removing chemical bug and weed killers from their shelves. ...


Is there a pesticide for pests like Dow?

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Fri, Apr 10, 2009
from London Guardian:
Health risks of shipping pollution have been underestimated
Britain and other European governments have been accused of underestimating the health risks from shipping pollution following research which shows that one giant container ship can emit almost the same amount of cancer and asthma-causing chemicals as 50 million cars. Confidential data from maritime industry insiders based on engine size and the quality of fuel typically used by ships and cars shows that just 15 of the world's biggest ships may now emit as much pollution as all the world's 760 million cars. Low-grade ship bunker fuel (or fuel oil) has up to 2,000 times the sulphur content of diesel fuel used in US and European automobiles....pollution from the world's 90,000 cargo ships leads to 60,000 deaths a year in the US alone and costs up to $330 billion per year in health costs from lung and heart diseases. ...


Looks to me like it's time to give these cargo ships das boot!

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Thu, Apr 9, 2009
from BBC:
Americas on alert for sea level rise
Climate change experts in North and South America are increasingly worried by the potentially devastating implications of higher estimates for possible sea level rises. The Americas have until now been seen as less vulnerable than other parts of the world like low-lying Pacific islands, Vietnam or Bangladesh. But the increase in the ranges for anticipated sea level rises presented at a meeting of scientists in Copenhagen in March has alarmed observers in the region. Parts of the Caribbean, Mexico and Ecuador are seen as most at risk. New York City and southern parts of Florida are also thought to be particularly vulnerable. ...


Great news for the snorkeling business!

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Thu, Apr 9, 2009
from NASA, via EurekAlert:
Aerosols may drive a significant portion of arctic warming
Though greenhouse gases are invariably at the center of discussions about global climate change, new NASA research suggests that much of the atmospheric warming observed in the Arctic since 1976 may be due to changes in tiny airborne particles called aerosols.... Though there are several varieties of aerosols, previous research has shown that two types -- sulfates and black carbon -- play an especially critical role in regulating climate change. Both are products of human activity. Sulfates, which come primarily from the burning of coal and oil, scatter incoming solar radiation and have a net cooling effect on climate. Over the past three decades, the United States and European countries have passed a series of laws that have reduced sulfate emissions by 50 percent. While improving air quality and aiding public health, the result has been less atmospheric cooling from sulfates. At the same time, black carbon emissions have steadily risen, largely because of increasing emissions from Asia. Black carbon -- small, soot-like particles produced by industrial processes and the combustion of diesel and biofuels -- absorb incoming solar radiation and have a strong warming influence on the atmosphere. ...


We take with our black carbon hand, and give with our sulfate hand. Can't we just shake?

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Tue, Apr 7, 2009
from Minneapolis Star Tribune:
Climate change in Lake Superior ice
What started as a high school science fair project is the latest piece of evidence that global warming is affecting Lake Superior. Forrest Howk, now a freshman at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, studied 150 years of data in his hometown of Bayfield, Wis., and found that the harbor's frozen season has shrunk from about 120 days to 80 days. The findings, published in the latest issue of Journal of Great Lakes Research, are consistent with recent studies showing that maximum ice cover in the Great Lakes has decreased slowly but steadily over the years. ...


When it comes to ice, Lake Superior is more like Lake Mediocre.

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Mon, Apr 6, 2009
from Agence France-Presse:
Obama pledges US lead on climate change
PRAGUE (AFP) -- President Barack Obama said Sunday the United States was ready to take the lead in tackling climate change, as EU leaders pushed him to follow their ambitious targets to combat global warming. "To protect our planet, now is the time to change the way that we use energy," Obama told a crowd gathered at Prague Castle for his only public speech during his maiden tour of Europe. "Together we must confront climate change by ending the world's dependency on fossil fuels by tapping the power from the sources of energy like the wind and the sun and calling upon all nations to do their part. "And I pledge to you that in this global effort the US is now ready to lead." ...


Sometimes... you just gotta pinch yourself to make sure you're awake!

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