ApocaDocuments (13) for the "Climate Chaos" scenario from this week
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Sun, Sep 27, 2009
from Science News:
Heavier Rainstorms Ahead Due To Global Climate Change, Study Predicts
Heavier rainstorms lie in our future. That's the clear conclusion of a new MIT and Caltech study on the impact that global climate change will have on precipitation patterns.... Overall, previous studies have shown that average annual precipitation will increase in both the deep tropics and in temperate zones, but will decrease in the subtropics. However, it's important to know how the frequency and magnitude of extreme precipitation events will be affected, as these heavy downpours can lead to increased flooding and soil erosion.... Model simulations used in the study suggest that precipitation in extreme events will go up by about 6 percent for every one degree Celsius increase in temperature. Separate projections published earlier this year by MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change indicate that without rapid and massive policy changes, there is a median probability of global surface warming of 5.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, with a 90 percent probability range of 3.5 to 7.4 degrees. ...
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Oh, the weather outside is frightnin'; with wind, and rain, and lightnin'; but we just don't want to know; let it blow let it blow let it blow.
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Sat, Sep 26, 2009
from AFP, via DesdemonaDespair:
India heading for worst drought since 1972
India's monsoon was about 20 percent below strength just over a week before the official end of the rainy reason, putting the country on course for its worst drought since 1972, weather data showed Wednesday.
"Until September 21, for the country as a whole, the rain deficiency was 22 percent," said B.K. Bandopadhyay, a spokesman for the weather office....
Low rainfall early in the monsoon period ravaged India's rice, cane sugar and groundnut crops, and has disrupted the flow of water into the main reservoirs that are vital for hydropower generation and winter irrigation.
The drought is expected to dampen India's economic growth this year and has sent food prices rocketing, leading to huge hardship for India's poor masses.... Rains in the northwest were 34 percent less than average, in central regions they were down by 19 percent, and the northeast had a 26-percent shortfall. ...
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Mother Nature has some explaining to do. Doesn't she owe us rain?
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Fri, Sep 25, 2009
from AP News:
Planned emission cuts still mean far hotter Earth
Earth's temperature is likely to jump nearly 6 degrees between now and the end of the century even if every country cuts greenhouse gas emissions as proposed, according to a United Nations update.
Scientists looked at emission plans from 192 nations and calculated what would happen to global warming. The projections take into account 80 percent pollution cuts from the U.S. and Europe by 2050, which are not sure things.... "We are headed toward very serious changes in our planet," said Achim Steiner, head of the U.N.'s environment program, which issued the update on Thursday.
Even if the developed world cuts its emissions by 80 percent and the developing world cuts theirs in half by 2050, as some experts propose, the world is still facing a 3-degree (1.7 degree Celsius) increase by the end of the century, said Robert Corell, a prominent U.S. climate scientist who helped oversee the update. ...
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And when next year's UNEP update comes in....?
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Thu, Sep 24, 2009
from London Independent:
Ancient glaciers are disappearing faster than ever
Melting ice is pouring off Greenland and Antarctica into the sea far faster than was previously realised because of global warming, new scientific research reveals today.
The accelerating loss from the world's two great land-based ice sheets means a rise in sea levels is likely to happen even more quickly than UN scientists suggested only two years ago, the findings by British scientists suggest.
Although floating ice, such as that in the Arctic Ocean, does not add to sea-level rise when it melts as it is already displacing its own mass in the water, melting ice from the land raises the global sea level directly. At present it is thought that land-based ice melt accounts for about 1.8mm of the current annual sea level rise of 3.2mm – the rest is coming from the fact that water expands in volume as it warms. But the new findings, published online today in the journal Nature, imply that this rate is likely to increase. ...
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Maybe it's melting faster 'cause we're watching it!
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Thu, Sep 24, 2009
from New Scientist:
Climate change may trigger earthquakes and volcanoes
FAR from being the benign figure of mythology, Mother Earth is short-tempered and volatile. So sensitive in fact, that even slight changes in weather and climate can rip the planet's crust apart, unleashing the furious might of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and landslides.
That's the conclusion of the researchers who got together last week in London at the conference on Climate Forcing of Geological and Geomorphological Hazards. It suggests climate change could tip the planet's delicate balance and unleash a host of geological disasters. What's more, even our attempts to stall global warming could trigger a catastrophic event... ...
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The Apocalypse... is gonna be like a themepark ride!
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Thu, Sep 24, 2009
from TIME Magazine:
How Much Human Activity Can Earth Handle?
...as human population has exploded over the past few thousand years, the delicate ecological balance that kept the Long Summer going has become threatened. The rise of industrialized agriculture has thrown off Earth's natural nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, leading to pollution on land and water, while our fossil-fuel addiction has moved billions of tons of carbon from the land into the atmosphere, heating the climate ever more. Now a new article in the Sept. 24 issue of Nature says the safe climatic limits in which humanity has blossomed are more vulnerable than ever and that unless we recognize our planetary boundaries and stay within them, we risk total catastrophe....Stay within the lines, and we might just be all right. ...
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Humans just aren't all that good at staying within the lines...
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Wed, Sep 23, 2009
from CBC News (Canada):
Polar ice sheets melting into sea: study
The massive ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica are thinning rapidly, say British researchers who have analyzed 50 million laser measurements from a NASA satellite.
Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey and the University of Bristol said the most dramatic loss of ice was the result of glaciers flowing into the sea at a faster rate.
"We think that warm ocean currents reaching the coast and melting the glacier front is the most likely cause of faster glacier flow," Hamish Pritchard of the British Antarctic Survey said in a statement.... "We were surprised to see such a strong pattern of thinning glaciers across such large areas of coastline," said Pritchard. "It's widespread and in some cases thinning extends hundreds of kilometres inland." ...
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Of course it's thinning: isn't that what saunas are supposed to do?
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Wed, Sep 23, 2009
from Greenwire:
Biodiversity a Bitter Pill in 'Tropical' Mediterranean Sea
Two weeks ago, a group of marine biologists from Israel's National Institute of Oceanography set sail from the country's central coast... They had a rich catch that night... pucker-faced dragonet fish, sprawling octopuses and brown crabs, snapping their claws. On the examination table, it seemed a display of the sea's bounty.
Unfortunately, it was another sea's bounty.
Almost all of the species Galil found that night were natives of the Indian or Pacific oceans. Lured by warming waters and a newly improved route through the Suez Canal, tropical marine species have enacted a slow march into the Mediterranean, displacing native species and disrupting ecosystems. ...
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It's so much more ominous when they march.
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Wed, Sep 23, 2009
from Guardian (UK):
Dust storms engulf Sydney, Australia
Winds sweep millions of tonnes of red dust from Australia's drought-ravaged interior and dump it on the coast. (Guardian photoessay) ...
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Is a dust bowl inverted, down under?
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Tue, Sep 22, 2009
from Journal of Consumer Research, via EurekAlert:
Hummer owners claim moral high ground to excuse overconsumption
"As we studied American Hummer owners and their ideological beliefs, we found that they consider Hummer driving a highly moral consumption choice," write the authors. "For Hummer owners it is possible to claim the moral high ground."
The authors explain that Hummer owners employ the ideology of American foundational myths, such as the "rugged individual," and the "boundless frontier" to construct themselves as moral protagonists. They often believe they represent a bastion again anti-American discourses evoked by their critics.
"Our analysis of the underlying American identity discourses revealed that being under siege by (moral) critics is an historically established feature of being an American," write the authors. "The moralistic critique of their consumption choices readily inspired Hummer owners to adopt the role of the moral protagonist who defends American national ideals." ...
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I assert my freedom every time I "jackrabbit start" my Hummer. And if you disagree with me, you're a terrorist.
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Mon, Sep 21, 2009
from Norfolk Eastern Daily Press:
Wave power setback as giant machine capsizes
A pioneering plan to create power from the waves suffered a major setback last night when the machine capsized off the north Suffolk coast.
The seabed off Southwold was being used to test a new way of harnessing power from the waves which could ultimately generate electricity on a large scale.
But as the experimental wave generator, weighing 80 tonnes, was being towed into position on a floating pontoon yesterday, the pontoon capsized. Local shipping had to be warned as the 18 metre (59ft) high generator was floating loose and drifting with the tide.
It was later connected to one of the tugs which had been towing the pontoon and towed to a safe location at Dunwich Bay, near the beach, where it was out of the way of shipping.
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They sure Suffolked this up!
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Mon, Sep 21, 2009
from Agence France-Presse:
That sinking feeling: world's deltas subsiding, says study
Two-thirds of the world's major deltas, home to nearly half a billion people, are caught in the scissors of sinking land and rising seas, according to a study published Sunday.
The new findings, based on satellite images, show that 85 percent of the 33 largest delta regions experienced severe flooding over the past decade, affecting 260,000 square kilometres (100,000 square miles).
Delta land vulnerable to serious flooding could expand by 50 percent this century if ocean levels increase as expected under moderate climate change scenarios, the study projects.
Worst hit will be Asia, but heavily populated and farmed deltas on every continent except Australia and Antarctica are in peril, it says.
On a five-tier scale, three of the eleven deltas in the highest-risk category are in China: the Yellow River delta in the north, the Yangtze River delta near Shanghai, and the Pearl River Delta next to Guangzhou. ...
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The delta, it melt-a away-a.
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Mon, Sep 21, 2009
from The (fake) New York Post:
We're Screwed
It�s official. It�s getting hot down here. And if we don�t stop burning oil and coal, the Big Apple will be cooked.
According to a high tech study commissioned by a concerned Mayor Bloomberg and generously funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, climate change caused by human-created greenhouse gases is threatening the health, livelihood and security of New Yorkers�especially those who take the subway to work. The New York City Panel on Climate Change, led by an elite team of NASA scientists and climate experts from Columbia, CUNY and Rutgers, has concluded that unless carbon emissions are drastically reduced all over the world, New York faces dangerous increases in temperature (up to 7.5 degrees), extreme weather (hurricanes and intense storms) and sea level rise (as much as 4.5 feet). ...
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A fake publication of the NYP, but all the facts are real. Go Yes Men!
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