ApocaDocuments (14) matching "climate impacts" from this week
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Sun, Apr 19, 2009
from Nature:
Asian nations unite to fight dust storms
The dust-storm season in northeast Asia is expected to hit its peak next week, and this week three of the countries hardest hit met in Beijing to coordinate their response.
The storms coat cars, bury railways and facilities, and destroy crops, with the thick dust often bringing visibility down to the hundreds-of-metres range. Whipped up to heights of up to 8 kilometres, dust sometimes makes it as far as the United States.
The dust originates from the Takla Makan Desert, the Gobi Desert and other arid regions of northern China and Mongolia. It is a natural phenomenon, but accelerating desertification, caused by soil degradation and overgrazing, has made it worse. ...
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The grapes of global wrath.
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Sat, Apr 18, 2009
from Washington Post:
EPA Says Emissions Are Threat To Public
The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday officially adopted the position that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions pose a danger to the public's health and welfare, a move that could trigger a series of federal regulations affecting polluters from vehicles to coal-fired power plants. The EPA's action marks a major shift in the federal government's approach to global warming. The Bush administration opposed putting mandatory limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, on the grounds that they would hurt business, and the EPA had resisted identifying such emissions as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. ...
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Whoa! So the EPA decided to live on the same planet as the rest of us!
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Fri, Apr 17, 2009
from Associated Press:
As bears die, hunters and climate change blamed
Hunters are killing grizzly bears in record numbers around Yellowstone National Park, threatening to halt the species' decades-long recovery just two years after it was removed from the endangered species list.
Driving the bloodshed, researchers say, is the bear's continued expansion across the 15,000-square-mile Yellowstone region of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.
Bears are being seen - and killed - in places where they were absent for decades. And with climate change suspected in the devastation of one of the bear's food sources, there is worry the trend will continue as the animals roam farther afield in search of food. ...
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The bears are now far outnumbered by all us Goldilocks.
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Fri, Apr 17, 2009
from London Daily Guardian:
Australia's largest river close to running dry
Australia's biggest river is running so low that Adelaide, the country's fifth-largest city, could run out of water in the next two years.
The Murray river is part of a network of waterways that irrigates the south-eastern corner of Australia, but after six years of severe drought, the worst dry spell ever, its slow moving waters are now almost stagnant.
Water levels in the Murray in the first three months of this year were the lowest on record and the government agency that administers the river, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA), said the next three months could be just as grim.
With meteorologists predicting another year of below-average rainfall, the MDBA, is bracing for worse to come.
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Australia might just be world's first continent to go belly up.
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Thu, Apr 16, 2009
from Business Week:
China Faces a Water Crisis
After almost 30 years of double-digit economic growth and the migration of hundreds of millions of villagers to the cities, China has been barely able to meet the spike in demand for water. Its resources were scarce to begin with and pollution has made clean water even scarcer. Another unknown: the effect of climate change. "Based on our country's basic water situation, [we] must implement the strictest water resource management," said Vice-Premier Hui Liangyu at a national water conference in Beijing in January.
The scale of the challenge is enormous. Every year, on average 15.3 million hectares of farmland -- 13 percent of the total -- faces drought. Today some 300 million people living in rural areas, or nearly a quarter of China's population of 1.3 billion, don't have access to safe drinking water. And among more than 600 Chinese cities, 400 are facing water shortages, including 100 that may see serious shortages... ...
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I'd say China ... is fragile.
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Thu, Apr 16, 2009
from National Geographic News:
Rocket Launches Damage Ozone Layer, Study Says
Plumes from rocket launches could be the world's next worrisome emissions, according to a new study that says solid-fuel rockets damage the ozone layer, allowing more harmful solar rays to reach Earth.
Thanks to international laws, ozone-depleting chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and methyl bromide have been slowly fading from the atmosphere. But when solid-fuel rockets launch, they release chlorine gas directly into the stratosphere, where the chlorine reacts with oxygen to form ozone-destroying chlorine oxides.
Increased international space launches and the potential commercial space travel boom could mean that rockets will soon emerge as the worst offenders in terms of ozone depletion, according to the study, published in the March issue of the journal Astropolitics. ...
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It ain't rocket science to figure THIS out.
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Thu, Apr 16, 2009
from CSIRO Australia via ScienceDaily:
Climate Change May Wake Up 'Sleeper' Weeds
Weeds cost Australia more than A$4 billion a year either in control or lost production and cause serious damage to the environment. In an address given April 15 in Perth to the Greenhouse 09 conference on climate change, CSIRO researcher, Dr John Scott, said, however, that those cost estimates were only based on the damage caused by weeds known to be active in Australia. A recent CSIRO report for the Australian Government's Land and Water Australia looked at what effects climate changes anticipated for 2030 and 2070 might have on the distribution of 41 weeds that pose a threat to agriculture ("sleeper"¯ species) and the natural environment ("alert" species). ...
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Seems to me "sleeping" will be the only thing we'll want to do in the global warming future.
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Wed, Apr 15, 2009
from Reuters:
Asthma plus traffic equals poor lung function
The results of a new study appear to expand the link between traffic exposure and poor lung function among people with asthma.
In a study of 176 adults with asthma or rhinitis, Dr. John R. Balmes, of the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues found "the closer adults with asthma live to roadways with heavy traffic...the lower their lung function."
"Living close to any road was associated with lower lung function," Balmes told Reuters Health.
Other studies have shown lung health effects from major roadways, Balmes and colleagues note in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. "Ours is the first to show evidence that living near any road can do so," said Balmes. ...
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This study brought to you by the Duh Institute.
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Wed, Apr 15, 2009
from The Daily Climate:
Valley fever blowin' on a hotter wind
It's high noon, and the 112-degree summer heat -- up from a decade ago -- stalks Arizona's Sonoran Desert. By late afternoon, dark clouds threaten, and monsoon winds beat the earth into a mass of swirling sand. Thick walls of surface soil blind drivers on the Interstate.
Some health experts believe new weather conditions -- hotter temperatures and more intense dust storms fueled by global warming -- are creating a perfect storm for the transmission of coccidioidomycosis, also known as valley fever, a fungal disease endemic to the southwestern United States.
How do cocci spores infect the body? Propelled by winds, thousands of soil particles and cocci spherules are inhaled. People -- particularly those older or immune-compromised -- may experience flu-like symptoms that can turn into pneumonia. If the infection disseminates, the pathogens can target any organ -- mostly the nervous system, skin, bones and joints -- and become life threatening. ...
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This is sooooo, like, distressing!
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Tue, Apr 14, 2009
from TIME Magazine:
The Dire Fate of Forests in a Warmer World
In a new study published April 13 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), scientists at UA found that water-deprived pinon pines raised in temperatures about 7 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) above current averages died 28 percent faster than pines raised in today's climate. It's the first study to isolate the specific impact of temperature on tree mortality during drought -- and it indicates that in a warmer world trees are likely to be significantly more vulnerable to the threat of drought than they are today. ...
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We call it ... mortreelity.
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Tue, Apr 14, 2009
from The Daily Climate:
Steep emissions cuts take a chunk of warming with them -- study
BOULDER -- Drastic, economy-changing cuts to greenhouse gas emissions will spare the planet only half the trauma expected over the next century as the Earth warms.
And that's the good news.
Because a failure to significantly curb these planet-warming gases will truly transform our world in less than 100 years.
A new study to be published by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research finds that a 70 percent cut in emissions should stabilize temperatures at a mark not too much higher than today.
Such a cut, most experts agree, would require vast retooling of society's fossil-fuel-based economy and an unprecedented level of global cooperation. But even that major effort to slash emissions won't stop global warming, scientists warn. The question confronting politicians throughout the world, in other words, is not whether they want the planet to warm. It is to what degree. ...
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how 'bout an itty bitty degree?
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Mon, Apr 13, 2009
from Edinburgh Scotsman:
Website 'to end supermarket waste' by selling food destined for the bin
A SCOTTISH entrepreneur is hoping to cut down on the mountains of food waste that end up in landfill by launching a website that sells goods that are nearly out of date.
Ray Conn has set up an online market place where retailers can advertise products that are soon to go out of date.
The site, launched yesterday, sells products which would otherwise be thrown away at a discounted price...He said after talking to supermarket managers that he realised they were throwing away huge quantities of products that would soon go out of date. ...
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This will better than having to dumpster the food myself!
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Mon, Apr 13, 2009
from New Dehli Business Standard:
Add agriculture to climate talks, says global body
A global farm policy think tank has recommended that agriculture should form part of the international negotiations on climate change in the forthcoming apex conference of parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at Copenhagen in December 2009. A policy brief issued by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has pointed out that with suitable technology and management, agriculture, which now contributes about 15 per cent to green house gas (GHG) emissions, can actually become an important sink for emissions even from other sectors.
Besides, agriculture will be adversely affected by the climate change and millions of poor farmers will need help in adapting to the weather patterns. The mechanism for funding research on climate adaptation and mitigation by the agriculture sector needs to be discussed at the UNFCCC meet at Copenhagen.
Apart from agriculture’s direct contribution of 15 per cent to the GHG emissions, land-use related changes, including forest loss, account for additional 19 per cent to harmful emissions. ...
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How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm, after they've seen Copenhagen?
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Mon, Apr 13, 2009
from BBC:
City air pollution 'shortens life'
It has taken a quarter of a century, but US researchers say their work has finally enabled them to determine to what extent city air pollution impacts on average life expectancy.
The project tracked the change of air quality in 51 American cities since the 1980s.
During that time general life expectancy increased by more than two and half years, much due to improved lifestyles, diet and healthcare.
But the researchers calculated more than 15 percent of that extra time was due to cleaner air. ...
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Only the good die young.
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