ApocaDocuments (8) for the "Recovery" scenario from this week
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Sun, May 3, 2009
from Washington Post:
MD Men Who Overfished Rockfish Sentenced to Prison
Three fishermen accused of dramatically underreporting their rockfish harvests received prison terms last week, as federal prosecutors continued a crackdown on a black market fish trade involving more than a dozen people, including several in St. Mary's County, authorities said.... The three men sentenced last week overfished about $2.15 million worth of striped bass. Crowder was responsible for about $956,000; Dean, $100,000; and Quade, $151,000, prosecutors said.... Golden Eye Seafood, a Southern Maryland fish wholesaler and check-in station, and its owner, Robert Lumpkins, 55, of Piney Point, were also charged last month with violating federal fishing laws. ...
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Ahh, rockfish, we hardly knew ye.
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Sun, May 3, 2009
from Times Online (UK):
Mission to break up Pacific island of rubbish twice the size of Texas
A high-seas mission departs from San Francisco next month to map and explore a sinister and shifting 21st-century continent: one twice the size of Texas and created from six million tonnes of discarded plastic.
Scientists and conservationists on the expedition will begin attempts to retrieve and recycle a monument to throwaway living in the middle of the North Pacific....
Because of their tiny size and the scale of the problem, he believes that nothing can be solved at sea. "Trying to clean up the Pacific gyre would bankrupt any country and kill wildlife in the nets as it went."
In June the 151 ft brigantine Kaisei (Japanese for Planet Ocean) will unfurl its sails in San Francisco to try to prove Mr Moore wrong. Project Kaisei's flagship will be joined by a decommissioned fishing trawler armed with specialised nets.... The UN's environmental programme estimates that 18,000 pieces of plastic have ended up in every square kilometre of the sea, totalling more than 100 million tonnes. ...
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Perhaps we can just DNA-design a superbug that eats plastic. Surely that wouldn't have any unintended consequences.
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Sat, May 2, 2009
from Environmental Health News:
Big increase in ocean mercury found; study predicts more human threat from fish
Mercury levels in the Pacific Ocean will rise by 50 percent within the next few decades as emissions from coal-fired power plants and other sources increase, scientists reported Friday. The researchers, led by scientists from Harvard University and the U.S. Geological Survey, found that the ocean's mercury levels have already risen about 30 percent over the last 20 years. Combined, the findings mean the Pacific Ocean will be twice as contaminated with mercury in 2050 as it was in 1995 if the emission rates continue. As a result, people around the globe will be increasingly exposed to mercury from eating fish and other seafood. Methylmercury, a neurotoxin, can alter brain development of fetuses and has been linked with learning problems and reduced IQs in some children. ...
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The stupider these kids, the less chance they'll figure out we're to blame for ruining their earth.
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Fri, May 1, 2009
from Canadian Press:
Thou shall not ... kill the planet
The Christian Bible doesn't say anything about global warming, greenhouse gases or overpackaging. And when it mentions pollution by name, it tends to mean things like "blood pollutes the land," as discussed in Numbers.
So those looking for biblical references to back up their eco-friendly outlooks have had to look far deeper into their readings.
The newly published Green Bible, complete with essays and an index of environment-related references throughout the Old and New Testaments, can help.
"It's a wonderful tool," says Katharine Vansittart of the Greening Sacred Spaces program, which helps worship spaces get green retrofits. ...
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And the meek shall inherit what's left of the earth.
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Fri, May 1, 2009
from BusinessGreen:
Plastic bag charge hailed as a huge success
Since launching a 5p charge for food bags last May as part of its Plan A scheme to reduce waste, Marks & Spencers says the number of bags taken to cart posh ready meals home has fallen by 80 per cent, from 460m bags a year to 80m. The National Trust, which introduced a charge on 1 May last year in its shops and garden centres, has managed to slash plastic bag usage by 85 per cent, or one million bags a year. It said just five per cent of its customers were now taking the disposable option.... Tesco, which offers one Green point to its clubcard customers for every bag they reuse, says it has cut bag use by 50 per cent since it launched the scheme in August 2006, saving three billion bags in the process. In the past year alone, 1.8bn bags have been saved. ...
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One small step for each person; one small leap toward survival.
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Wed, Apr 29, 2009
from BusinessGreen:
Smarter grids could provide 700,000 UK job boost
The UK's Digital Road to Recovery report models the likely economic impact of an additional £15bn investment in broadband networks, smart grid technologies, and intelligent transport systems, such as congestion management infrastructure.
It concludes that the productivity boost digital networks can deliver for other businesses means that increased investment in ICT technology would prove more effective at creating jobs and boosting the economy than spending on physical infrastructure such as roads and bridges.
The report calculated that an additional £5bn in broadband investment would help to create or retain 280,000 jobs, while £5bn for smart grid systems would create or retain 235,000 jobs, and investing the same sum in intelligent transport systems would result in 188,000 jobs. ...
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Will that mean we'll start seeing groups of four geeks by the roadside, with three of them watching the fourth one work?
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Tue, Apr 28, 2009
from New Scientist:
How to turn greenhouse gas into a clean fuel
Converting a greenhouse gas into a clean-burning fuel offers two benefits for the price of one. That's the thinking behind a novel process for converting carbon dioxide into methanol at room temperature.... "Our catalyst isn't toxic, and the reaction happens rapidly at room temperature," says team leader Jackie Ying.
The catalyst used by Ying's team is a type of chemical called an N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC). The mechanism by which the NHC speeds up the conversion is uncertain, but it appears to change the shape of the CO2 molecule, "activating" it in a way that makes it easier for hydrogen to bond with its carbon atom, says team member Yugen Zhang. ...
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A converter in every home? That would suck... carbon dioxide.
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Tue, Apr 28, 2009
from Yale Environment 360:
A Potential Breakthrough In Harnessing the Sun's Energy
n the high desert of southern Spain, not far from Granada, the Mediterranean sun bounces off large arrays of precisely curved mirrors that cover an area as large as 70 soccer fields. These parabolic troughs follow the arc of the sun as it moves across the sky, concentrating the sun's rays onto pipes filled with a synthetic oil that can be heated to 750 degrees Fahrenheit. That super-heated oil is used to boil water to power steam turbines, or to pump excess heat into vats of salts, turning them a molten, lava-like consistency.
The salts are just fertilizers -- a mix of sodium and potassium nitrate -- but they represent a significant advance in the decades-old technology of solar thermal power production, which has traditionally used mirrors to heat water or oil to generate electricity-producing steam. Now, engineers can use the molten salts to store the heat from solar radiation many hours after the sun goes down and then release it at will to drive turbines. That means solar thermal power can be used to generate electricity nearly round-the-clock. ...
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Little darling... I say it's all right!
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