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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(3)
Plague/Virus:(1)
Climate Chaos:(13)
Resource Depletion: (5)
Biology Breach:(7)
Recovery:(6)
This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
climate impacts  ~ global warming  ~ anthropogenic change  ~ weather extremes  ~ carbon emissions  ~ albedo effect  ~ ecosystem interrelationships  ~ technological innovation  ~ toxic buildup  ~ efficiency increase  ~ contamination  



ApocaDocuments (5) matching "anthropogenic change" from this week
[see full week] ~ [see all stories tagged "anthropogenic change"]
Thu, Aug 27, 2009
from New Scientist:
Laughing gas is biggest threat to ozone layer
Nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas, is now the dominant ozone-depleting substance emitted by humans -- and is likely to remain so throughout the century, a new study suggests. Researchers suggest use of the compound -- which is produced by the breakdown of nitrogen in fertilisers and sewage treatment plants -- should be reduced to avoid thinning the protective ozone layer that blankets the Earth.... Scientists say humans' role in producing the harmful gas has largely been overlooked. Thanks to fossil fuel combustion, which produces the gas, as well as nitrogen-based fertilisers, sewage treatment plants and other industrial processes that involve nitrogen, about one-third of the nitrous oxide emitted per year is anthropogenic. Although supersonic transport never got off the ground, current emissions are equivalent to flying 500 such planes a day. Emission levels have increased by 0.25 per cent a year since pre-industrial times. "Nitrous oxide is kind of the forgotten gas," says Don Wuebbles of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who invented the method of quantifying a chemical's ozone-depletion potential but was not involved in this work. "It was always thought of as a natural thing. People have forgotten that it's been increasing." ...


ha ha HA ha Ha ha.

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Thu, Aug 27, 2009
from Environmental Research Web:
Agricultural methods of early civilizations may have altered global climate, study suggests
Massive burning of forests for agriculture thousands of years ago may have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide enough to alter global climate and usher in a warming trend that continues today, according to a new study that appears online Aug. 17 in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.... "They used more land for farming because they had little incentive to maximize yield from less land, and because there was plenty of forest to burn," said William Ruddiman, the lead author and a professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia. "They may have inadvertently altered the climate." ...


Good thing we don't have plenty of anything to burn, and that CO2 is just a theory.

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Wed, Aug 26, 2009
from BBC (UK):
'Flying Fox,' world's largest fruit bat, soon hunted to extinction
Researchers say the large flying fox will be wiped out on the Malaysian peninsula if the current unsustainable level of hunting continues. Writing in the Journal of Applied Ecology they say around 22,000 of the animals are legally hunted each year and more killed illegally. They say the species could be extinct there by as early as 2015. Flying foxes can have a wingspan of up to 1.5m and are crucial for the rainforest ecosystems in this part of Asia. Lead author, Dr Jonathan Epstein of Wildlife Trust, told BBC News: "They eat fruit and nectar and in doing so they drop seeds around and pollinate trees. So they are critical to the propagation of rainforest plants." The most optimistic estimates put the population of flying foxes in peninsular Malaysia at 500,000. ...


It's so sad that they "taste like chicken."

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Tue, Aug 25, 2009
from University of Adelaide, via EurekAlert:
World's last great forest under threat: New study
The world's last remaining "pristine" forest -- the boreal forest across large stretches of Russia, Canada and other northern countries -- is under increasing threat, a team of international researchers has found.... The researchers... have called for the urgent preservation of existing boreal forests in order to secure biodiversity and prevent the loss of this major global carbon sink.... The boreal forest comprises about one-third of the world's forested area and one-third of the world's stored carbon, covering a large proportion of Russia, Canada, Alaska and Scandinavia.... "Much world attention has focused on the loss and degradation of tropical forests over the past three decades, but now the boreal forest is poised to become the next Amazon," says Associate Professor Bradshaw, from the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute. ...


I'm not liking that comparison at all.

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Tue, Aug 25, 2009
from COP15:
North-East Passage opens for commercial vessels
A German shipping company is the first non-Russian enterprise to send commercial vessels through the North-East Passage. Beluga Shipping GmbH just got its permit from Russian authorities to do the 4,000 nautical miles across Russia's northern shore without the help of icebreakers. On Friday, the "Beluga Fraternity" and "Beluga Foresight" left the Russian port of Vladivostok with cargo picked up in South Korea bound for Holland.... "Global warming is obviously a development with negative effects. However, the melting ice in the North-East Passage and the possibility to transit through it has positive effects, too...." ...


"Positive effects" like new shorelines, new warlords, no more third world obesity problems.... opportunity in threat's clothing!

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