ApocaDocuments (12) for the "Climate Chaos" scenario from this week
[see full week] ~ [see full Climate Chaos scenario and stories]
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Sun, Jul 12, 2009
from London Independent:
The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'
An effort on the scale of the Apollo mission that sent men to the Moon is needed if humanity is to have a fighting chance of surviving the ravages of climate change. The stakes are high, as, without sustainable growth, "billions of people will be condemned to poverty and much of civilisation will collapse". This is the stark warning from the biggest single report to look at the future of the planet -- obtained by The Independent on Sunday ahead of its official publication next month. Backed by a diverse range of leading organisations such as Unesco, the World Bank, the US army and the Rockefeller Foundation, the 2009 State of the Future report runs to 6,700 pages and draws on contributions from 2,700 experts around the globe. Its findings are described by Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the UN, as providing "invaluable insights into the future for the United Nations, its member states, and civil society". ...
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Can I get the ApocaCliffsNotes version, please?
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Sat, Jul 11, 2009
from New York Times:
Survey Shows Gap Between Scientists and the Public
When it comes to climate change, the teaching of evolution and the state of the nation's research enterprise, there is a large gap between what scientists think and the views of ordinary Americans, a new survey has found... while almost all of the scientists surveyed accept that human beings evolved by natural processes and that human activity, chiefly the burning of fossil fuels, is causing global warming, general public is far less sure.
Almost a third of ordinary Americans say human beings have existed in their current form since the beginning of time, a view held by only 2 percent of the scientists. Only about half of the public agrees that people are behind climate change, and 11 percent does not believe there is any warming at all. ...
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This is evadense our public edjucation system are flawed.
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Sat, Jul 11, 2009
from CNN:
Greening the Internet: How much CO2 does this article produce?
Twenty milligrams; that's the average amount of carbon emissions generated from the time it took you to read the first two words of this article. Now, depending on how quickly you read, around 80, perhaps even 100 milligrams of C02 have been released. And in the several minutes it will take you to get to the end of this story, the number of milligrams of greenhouse gas emitted could be several thousand, if not more.... every second someone spends browsing a simple web site generates roughly 20 milligrams of C02. Whether downloading a song, sending an email or streaming a video, almost every single activity that takes place in the virtual environment has an impact on the real one.
As millions more go online each year some researchers say the need to create a green Internet ecosystem is not only imperative but also urgent. ...
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Turnabout's fair play!
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Fri, Jul 10, 2009
from Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres, via EurekAlert:
Between the devil and the deep blue sea
Many Megacities such as Tokyo (pop. 36.000.000), New York (22.000.000) and London (12.000.000) are found in the coastal zone. Coastal protection measures give a sense of false security and require increasingly expensive infrastructure.
The treatment and cure of these coastal syndromes includes renewable energy, recycled water and solid waste, sourcing locally grown foods and attention to social equity issues, especially in education and healthcare.... Up to now, governments at all scales, from local to international, have largely failed to seriously implement integrated management in coastal zones.... These are the conclusions of 40 international experts from wide ranging disciplines including economics, social sciences and natural sciences who met for an intensive, 5 day workshop near Oslo, Norway. ...
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Governments have failed to respond to long-term issues? When did this start?
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Fri, Jul 10, 2009
from Los Angeles Times:
Despite Obama's pledge, G-8 makes little headway on global warming
Reporting from Washington and L'Aquila, Italy -- Addressing leaders of the world's most important economies early Thursday, President Obama wasted no time in proclaiming a new day for U.S. policy on climate change.
"I know that in the past, the United States has sometimes fallen short of meeting our responsibilities," he said. "So let me be clear: Those days are over."
But by the end of the day, when the Group of 8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy, wrapped up its deliberations on climate, Obama found himself stymied by many of the same roadblocks that plagued previous efforts to tackle global warming.
Leaders of the most developed nations again declined to commit themselves to any specific actions now or in the immediate future to curb the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming -- actions that would require increasing energy prices, raising taxes or imposing other unpopular economic measures on their people.
Instead, they embraced the high-sounding goal of reducing their own emissions by 80 percent and worldwide emissions by 50 percent by 2050 -- without pledging to take any specific steps to get there. ...
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Our leaders need to get the lead out!
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Thu, Jul 9, 2009
from Bloomberg News:
Arctic Ocean's Ice Layer Thins 'Dramatically,' Study Concludes
The layer of ice over the Arctic Ocean has thinned "dramatically" this decade, with its thin seasonal blanket for the first time making up a bigger portion of the total ice than the thicker, older coat, a study said.
Scientists from NASA and the University of Washington in Seattle surveyed the ocean's ice sheet from 2003 through 2008 using observations from the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite, or ICESat, to make the first estimate of its thickness and volume.... The researchers found that the Arctic Ocean's ice layer thinned by about 2.2 feet over four winters, or about 7 inches a year, while the area covered by older, thicker ice shrank by about 42 percent, or 595,000 square miles -- almost the land area of Alaska.
In 2003, 62 percent of the ocean's ice cover was older, thicker ice, with 38 percent in seasonal layers, the researchers found. Five years later, 68 percent of the ice cap was made up of seasonal ice. ...
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Good thing that it's natural variation, and that we're not responsible. What a coincidence that unprecedented change is happening at this time in history!
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Thu, Jul 9, 2009
from Common Dreams:
Forget Shorter Showers: Why Personal Change Does Not Equal Political Change
Would any sane person think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday, or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons, or that dancing naked around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal "solutions"?
Part of the problem is that we've been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance. An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming. But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption -- changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much -- and had nothing to do with shifting power away from corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet? ...
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I don't want big corporations to get mad at me!
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Wed, Jul 8, 2009
from London Guardian:
Texas tycoon Pickens scraps $10bn windfarm plan
The billionaire energy tycoon T Boone Pickens has scrapped a $10bn plan to build the world's largest windfarm in the panhandle of Texas, dealing a setback to a broader effort to wean the US off its dependence on foreign oil.
Pickens blamed technical problems in transporting power between the proposed site of the system, which was to be in agricultural land hundreds of miles north-west of Dallas, and major population centres... Pickens, who built his fortune in the oil and gas industry, has spent the last year vigorously promoting a self-proclaimed "Pickens plan" which aims to make the US independent of foreign sources of oil by switching to domestic natural gas and wind generation. ...
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Call it the Slim Pickens Plan!
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Tue, Jul 7, 2009
from Belfast Telegraph:
Have U2 created a monster with massive carbon footprint of 360 tour?
U2 and Bono's long-held commitment to "save the planet" has come into question after it emerged they have a carbon footprint big enough to fly the band to Mars and back.... according to an environmentalists' website, the band's 100-date 18-month world tour will see the multi-millionaires clock up an incredible 70,000 air miles in their fuel-guzzling private jet... U2's CO2 emissions are the equivalent of the waste created by 6,500 average British or Irish people in an entire year, or equal to leaving a standard 100 watt lightbulb on for 159,000 years. ...
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Achtung, baby!
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Tue, Jul 7, 2009
from London Guardian:
Costa Rica is world's greenest, happiest country
Costa Rica is the greenest and happiest country in the world, according to a new list that ranks nations by combining measures of their ecological footprint with the happiness of their citizens.
Britain is only halfway up the Happy Planet Index (HPI), calculated by the New Economics Foundation (NEF), in 74th place of 143 nations surveyed. The United States features in the 114th slot in the table. The top 10 is dominated by countries from Latin America, while African countries bulk out the bottom of the table.
The HPI measures how much of the Earth's resources nations use and how long and happy a life their citizens enjoy as a result. ...
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Scoring high on this list is the quickest way to ruin a country.
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Mon, Jul 6, 2009
from Guardian (UK):
Just add lime (to the sea) -- the latest plan to cut CO2 emissions
Putting lime into the oceans could stop or even reverse the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere, according to proposals unveiled at a conference on climate change solutions in Manchester today.
According to its advocates, the same technique could help fix one of the most dangerous side effects of man-made CO2 emissions: rising ocean acidity.
The project, known as Cquestrate, is the brainchild of Tim Kruger, a former management consultant. "This is an idea that can not only stop the clock on carbon dioxide, it can turn it back," he said, although he conceded that tipping large quantities of lime into the sea would currently be illegal.... Kruger admits there are challenges to overcome: the world would need to mine and process about 10 cubic kilometres of limestone each year to soak up all the emissions the world produces, and the plan would only make sense if the CO2 resulting from lime production could be captured and buried at source. ...
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Management consultants make recommendations, and make up catchy branding. They rarely analyze unintended consequences.
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Mon, Jul 6, 2009
from 3news (New Zealand):
Antarctica melting faster than expected
Antarctica is melting faster than expected, a conference was told earlier this week.
Professor Peter Barrett of Victoria University's Antarctic Research Centre told the Annual Antarctic Conference in Auckland that the rate of ice loss was up 75 percent since 1996, and was increasing quickly.... Research centre director Professor Tim Naish, led a team of researchers who drilled deep into the Antarctic rock and discovered ancient records from the last time atmospheric CO2 reached the level it was now approaching.
They found that 3 million to 5 million years ago, seas were warm enough to melt a large chunk of Antarctica's ice when atmospheric CO2 was only slightly higher than today. ...
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Surely Antarctica would be the antithesis of what the Arctic is doing, right?
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