ApocaDocuments (11) for the "Climate Chaos" scenario from this week
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Sun, Jul 26, 2009
from London Observer:
Revealed: the secret evidence of global warming Bush tried to hide
Graphic images that reveal the devastating impact of global warming in the Arctic have been released by the US military. The photographs, taken by spy satellites over the past decade, confirm that in recent years vast areas in high latitudes have lost their ice cover in summer months.
The pictures, kept secret by Washington during the presidency of George W Bush, were declassified by the White House last week. President Barack Obama is currently trying to galvanise Congress and the American public to take action to halt catastrophic climate change caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere...
The photographs demonstrate starkly how global warming is changing the Arctic. More than a million square kilometres of sea ice - a record loss - were missing in the summer of 2007 compared with the previous year.
Nor has this loss shown any sign of recovery. Ice cover for 2008 was almost as bad as for 2007, and this year levels look equally sparse. ...
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While Bush fiddled, Rome melted.
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Sun, Jul 26, 2009
from Macedonian International News Agency:
India not buying Global Warming story
India rejected key scientific findings on global warming, while the European Union called for more action by developing states on greenhouse gas emissions.
Jairam Ramesh, the Indian environment minister, accused the developed world of needlessly raising alarm over melting Himalayan glaciers.
He dismissed scientists' predictions that Himalayan glaciers might disappear within 40 years as a result of global warming.
"We have to get out of the preconceived notion, which is based on western media, and invest our scientific research and other capacities to study Himalayan atmosphere," he said.
"Science has its limitation. You cannot substitute the knowledge that has been gained by the people living in cold deserts through everyday experience." ...
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When did Inhofe get over to India? And how did he get to be environmental minister?
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Sat, Jul 25, 2009
from New York Times:
An Amazon Culture Withers as Food Dries Up
Deforestation and, some scientists contend, global climate change are making the Amazon region drier and hotter, decimating fish stocks in this area and imperiling the Kamayura's very existence. Like other small indigenous cultures around the world with little money or capacity to move, they are struggling to adapt to the changes.... Chief Kotok, who like all of the Kamayura people goes by only one name, said that men can now fish all night without a bite in streams where fish used to be abundant; they safely swim in lakes previously teeming with piranhas.
Responsible for 3 wives, 24 children and hundreds of other tribe members, he said his once-idyllic existence had turned into a kind of bad dream.
"I'm stressed and anxious -- this has all changed so quickly, and life has become very hard," he said in Portuguese, speaking through an interpreter. "As a chief, I have to have vision and look down the road, but I don't know what will happen to my children and grandchildren." ...
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Hey, downturns happen. AMZN stock will rise -- just sell more books!
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Fri, Jul 24, 2009
from Newsweek:
Climate-Change Calculus: Why it's even worse than we feared.
Among the phrases you really, really do not want to hear from climate scientists are: "that really shocked us," "we had no idea how bad it was," and "reality is well ahead of the climate models." Yet in speaking to researchers who focus on the Arctic, you hear comments like these so regularly they begin to sound like the thumping refrain from Jaws: annoying harbingers of something that you really, really wish would go away.... The loss of Arctic sea ice "is well ahead of" what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecast, largely because emissions of carbon dioxide have topped what the panel—which foolishly expected nations to care enough about global warming to do something about it—projected. "The models just aren't keeping up" with the reality of CO2 emissions, says the IPY's David Carlson. Although policymakers hoped climate models would prove to be alarmist, the opposite is true, particularly in the Arctic.... But estimates of how much carbon is locked into Arctic permafrost were, it turns out, woefully off. "It's about three times as much as was thought, about 1.6 trillion metric tons, which has surprised a lot of people," says Edward Schuur of the University of Florida. ...
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Stop it! Hasn't Brangelina done something recently?
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Fri, Jul 24, 2009
from BBC:
Clouds in climate 'vicious cycle'
Clouds over the North-East Pacific dissipate as the ocean warms, according to a study in the journal Science.
Researchers have described this as a "vicious cycle" of warming, as reduced cloud cover allows more of the Sun's rays to heat the Earth.
They say warming could gradually reduce the low-level cloud cover that is thought to help cool the globe.
But the team stressed that it was not yet possible to quantify how much this might impact on global temperatures.
They said that accurate simulations of these cloud effects would improve the models scientists use to predict future climate change patterns.
The accuracy of these models has been hampered by the uncertain influence of clouds on the global climate system.
The low-level clouds studied here are of particular interest, as they have been shown to have a net cooling effect on the Earth, by reflecting the Sun's rays. ...
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Can't we just invent something to fix this?
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Thu, Jul 23, 2009
from Guardian (UK):
Meet Belchatow, Europe's biggest carbon polluter
The biggest single producer of carbon emissions in the European Union has been named -- and it is about to get even bigger. The appropriately titled Elektrownia Belchatow -- a massive coal-fired power station -- belched out 30,862,792 tonnes of CO2 last year and by 2010 the whole generating facility will have grown by 20 percent.... Elektrownia Belchatow is raising coal-fired capacity from 4,400 megawatts to 5,258 from next year. The facility, which burns the most polluting lignite "brown" coal from its own mine next door, is earmarked for a full carbon capture and storage prototype, but only by 2015 at the earliest.... New coal stations are being planned in big numbers in the US and China but the EU has been arguing that all countries should proceed only if they use CCS to turn them into "clean" coal projects. ...
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What's Polish for "you are building our future hell," I wonder?
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Wed, Jul 22, 2009
from West Virginia Gazette:
Carbon capture for coal costly, study finds
Harvard University researchers have issued a new report that confirms what many experts already feared: Stopping greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants is going to cost a lot of money.... Electricity costs could double at a first-generation plant that captures and stores carbon dioxide emissions, according to the report from energy researchers at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center.
Costs would drop as the technology matures, but could still amount to an increase of 22 to 55 percent, according to the report, "Realistic Costs of Carbon Capture," issued this week.... In the U.S., coal provides half of the nation's electricity. Many experts believe that, because of vast supplies, coal will continue to generate much of the nation's power for many years to come. ...
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OMG!! You mean we might have to almost pay the true cost of coal??
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Tue, Jul 21, 2009
from American Meteorological Society, via EurekAlert:
Geoengineering climate requires more research, cautious consideration and appropriate restrictions
Geoengineering -- deliberately manipulating physical, chemical, or biological aspects of the Earth system to confront climate change -- could contribute to a comprehensive risk management strategy to slow climate change but could also create considerable new risks, according to a policy statement released by the American Meteorological Society (AMS) today.
According to the Society, geoengineering will not substitute for either aggressive emissions reduction or efforts to adapt to climate change, but it could help lower greenhouse gas concentrations, provide options for reducing specific climate impacts, or offer strategies of last resort if abrupt, catastrophic, or otherwise unacceptable climate-change impacts become unavoidable by other means.
However, AMS scientists caution that research to date has not determined whether there are large-scale geoengineering approaches that would produce significant benefits, or whether those benefits would substantially outweigh the detriments. ...
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Why would meteorologists say this kind of thing? Don't they control the weather?
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Tue, Jul 21, 2009
from Mongabay:
Global ocean temperatures at warmest level since 1880
Global ocean temperatures rose to the warmest on record, according to data released last week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The combined average global land and ocean surface temperature for June was second-warmest since global recording-keeping began in 1880.... Worldwide sea surface temperatures were 62.56 F (16.99 C), or 1.06 degrees F (0.59 C) above the 20th century average of 61.5 F (16.4 C).... The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for June 2009 was the second warmest on record after 2005...
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Just mere coincidence that this is happening now. Move along. Nothing to see here.
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Tue, Jul 21, 2009
from Telegraph.co.uk, via DesdemonaDespair:
Giant jellyfish bloom hits Sea of Japan
"The arrival is inevitable," Professor Shinichi Ue, from Hiroshima University, told the Yomiuri newspaper. "A huge jellyfish typhoon will hit the country."
The vicious creatures, which would not be out of place in a sci-fi adventure, poison fish, sting humans and have even been known to disabling nuclear power stations by blocking the seawater pumps used to cool the reactors.
Nomura's jellyfish first arrived in Japanese waters in 2005 when fisherman out looking for anchovies, salmon and yellowtail began finding large numbers of the gelatinous creatures in their nets. The larger specimens would destroy the nets while the fish caught alongside them would be left slimy and inedible.... Scientists believe the influx could be caused by overfishing, pollution or rising ocean temperatures which have depleted the kinds of fish that normally prey on Nomura's jellyfish at the polyp stage, thereby keeping down numbers.
Another theory suggests that seas heated by global warming are better suited for breeding, multiplying the creature's numbers. ...
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What an ugly canary!
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Mon, Jul 20, 2009
from Washington Post:
Chemicals That Eased One Woe Worsen Another
This is not the funny kind of irony: Scientists say the chemicals that helped solve the last global environmental crisis -- the hole in the ozone layer -- are making the current one worse. The chemicals, called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), were introduced widely in the 1990s to replace ozone-depleting gases used in air conditioners, refrigerators and insulating foam.
They worked: The earth's protective shield seems to be recovering.
But researchers say what's good for ozone is bad for climate change. In the atmosphere, these replacement chemicals act like "super" greenhouse gases, with a heat-trapping power that can be 4,470 times that of carbon dioxide. ...
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Maybe we should just do nothing. Oh wait, we tried that.
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