ApocaDocuments (13) for the "Climate Chaos" scenario from this week
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Mon, Feb 1, 2010
from AP, via DesdemonaDespair:
Brown pelican migration disrupted, birds starving
Brown pelicans have steadily been expanding north. They typically migrated from Oregon and Washington in October or November, but they lingered until late December last winter. No one is certain why there are still here in late January, but theories range from the weather to an abundance of bait fish in early winter that enticed them to stay. Strong winds and severe storms have limited the pelicans' ability to hunt and dive for food that has since been pushed by currents to deeper waters, Grafe said.
"They don't have the energy," Grafe said. "They're so emaciated, so starving."
So the pelicans try to survive on bread crumbs or anything else they can get from humans. Typically unapproachable, the birds are surrounding visitors who come to see the breeding plumage -- a look not seen in summer months. ...
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Can't someone just buy 'em tickets to LA?
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Sun, Jan 31, 2010
from Rolling Stone:
As the World Burns
How Big Oil and Big Coal mounted one of the most aggressive lobbying campaigns in history to block progress on global warming... This was supposed to be the transformative moment on global warming, the tipping point when America proved to the world that capitalism has a conscience, that we take the fate of the planet seriously.... Over the past year, the corporations and special interests most responsible for climate change waged an all-out war to prevent Congress from cracking down on carbon pollution in time for Copenhagen...."In the long term, the fossil-fuel industry is going to lose this war," says Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "But in the short term, they are doing everything they can to delay the revolution. For them, what this fight is really about is buying precious time to maximize profits from carbon sources. It's really no more complicated than that." ...
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Our guiding light should be all our children but sadly ... these are the last days of our lives.
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Sun, Jan 31, 2010
from Fort Myers News-Press:
Much of Collier, Lee counties put at risk by rising sea
For the first time, three big government agencies in South Florida are issuing a red alert on global warming.
They all acknowledge that global warming is happening and may be accelerating, that the climate is changing and the sea is rising because of it.
Now they want to do something about it, with each issuing new climate change directives in the last six months.... This means that any remaining debate, complacency or indecision government agencies once had about the threat of global warming has given way to urgency. ...
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Now I think I prefer blissful ignorance.
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Sat, Jan 30, 2010
from IRIN:
PAKISTAN: Drought fears for wheat farmers
Drought-like conditions across Pakistan in December and January are worrying wheat farmers who fear large-scale crop failure.
"Things are looking dismal right now. The wheat crop, sown late last year, needs to be watered. It is our main crop of the year. The lack of rain is a disaster for those of us who depend on wheat," Muhammad Fiaz, a farmer from the Vehari area of Punjab Province told IRIN.... "The lack of rain means the water table is falling and it is hard even to grow vegetables for use in our house. Things are really looking very bleak, and there is still no sign of rain," said Fiaz.
The water volume in rivers has fallen by 21 percent due to the lack of rain, while reservoir levels have dropped by around 34 percent since September, when the monsoon ended, according to media reports. ...
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I like to think of the reservoirs as being two thirds full.
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Fri, Jan 29, 2010
from Louisville Courier-Journal:
Kentucky greenhouse-emission growth is worst in nation, panel told
Kentucky's greenhouse gas emissions are increasing at twice the rate of the rest of the nation, according to a draft inventory prepared for state environment officials. The Center for Climate Strategies found greenhouse gases -- mainly carbon dioxide -- rose 33 percent from 1990 to 2005, compared to 16 percent for the nation. Left unchecked, emissions are projected to increase to 62 percent above 1990 levels by 2030... "it's an important issue, said Len Peters, secretary of the state's Energy and Environment Cabinet, because many thousands of jobs are at stake in the state's coal, automotive, aluminum and steel industries if electricity rates go too high.
"As we go forward, we have to link energy, the economy and the environment together," he said. ...
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Good luck with that.
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Thu, Jan 28, 2010
from China Daily:
China sea levels reach record high
The sea level in China late last year hit a record high for the past three decades, threatening the safety of thousands of people in the coastal areas, the national ocean agency said yesterday.
The average rise in sea level for the past three decades occurred at a rate of 2.6 mm a year, much higher than the average rate of 1.7 mm annually across the world, a report on the sea-level rise in China for 2009 released by the State Oceanic Administration (SOA) showed.
"Last year, the sea level was 8 mm higher than 2008 with the rise in sea level in Hainan Province reaching 113 mm, the highest across the country," Lin Shanqing, director of forecast and disaster relief department of the SOA, said yesterday. ...
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We call this a tsea-nami.
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Wed, Jan 27, 2010
from Johann Hari, in Slate:
NASA's Prophet Will Give You Nightmares
Ice sheets can go fast, and when they do, sea levels rise remorselessly and do not settle for centuries. He reasons: "If ice sheets begin to disintegrate, there will not be a new stable sea level on any foreseeable time scale. We will have created a situation with continual change, with intermittent calamities at thousands of cities around the world. It will continue for as many generations as we care to think about.... Global chaos will be difficult to avoid."
So it is sobering to hear Hansen say -- based on large numbers of scientific studies -- that "a disintegration of the ice sheets has begun." Now we need to concentrate on forestalling a tipping point at which they would begin to internally collapse. Once that has happened, we will be powerless to stop a disaster. It will be too late to cut our emissions: They would still fall. ...
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Evidence? I don't see evidence.
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Wed, Jan 27, 2010
from New York Times:
Iceland Leads Environmental Index as U.S. Falls
A new ranking of the world's nations by environmental performance puts some of the globe's largest economies far down the list, with the United States sinking to 61st and China to 121st.
In the previous version of the Environmental Performance Index, compiled every two years by Yale and Columbia University researchers, the United States ranked 39th, and China 105th.
The top performer this year is Iceland, which gets virtually all of its power from renewable sources -- hydropower and geothermal energy. It was joined in the top tier by a cluster of European countries known for their green efforts, including Switzerland, Sweden, Norway and Finland. ...
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We are so good at getting worse and worse!
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Wed, Jan 27, 2010
from Environmental Defense Action Fund:
Today: National Climate Action Day
Tonight, President Obama will announce his legislative priorities for 2010 in his State of the Union speech.
We need your help to make sure fighting global warming is at the top of the agenda.
That's why we've declared today National Climate Action Day in support of a strong climate and energy bill in the Senate.
Here are 5 things you can do today to help make our National Climate Action Day a big success:
1) Write Letters: Watch the State of the Union speech tonight with your family and use the opportunity to write letters to your Senators. Our goal is to collect 100,000 letters from around the country.
We've already received about 55,000 and we will start delivering them to Senate offices tomorrow, so please get your letters in now.
Go to our 100,000 Letters for Climate Action page for instructions. 2) Call Your Senators... ...
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Here in America we have to REMIND people global warming matters.
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Tue, Jan 26, 2010
from BBC:
Using religious language to fight global warming
If the case for tackling climate change is backed by science, why do so many green campaigners rely on the language of religion?
I am looking at a clock that is counting down the months, days, hours and minutes until planet Earth reaches "the point of no return".
As I type, we have 83 months to go. The end of the world, if not exactly nigh, certainly seems to be on its way.
But this doomsday countdown has not been devised by a religious cult or millenarian seer. It is on the website of the New Economics Foundation (Nef), designed to raise awareness about climate change. ...
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How would we know, we're just the ApocaDocs!
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Tue, Jan 26, 2010
from NPR:
Methane Causes Vicious Cycle In Global Warming
Carbon dioxide is the gas we most associate with global warming, but methane gas also plays an important role. For reasons that are not well understood, methane gas stopped increasing in the atmosphere in the 1990s. But now it appears to be once again on the rise. Scientists are trying to understand why — and what to do about it.
Methane gas comes from all sorts of sources including wetlands, rice paddies, cow tummies, coal mines, garbage dumps and even termites. Drew Shindell, at NASA's Goddard Institute in New York, says, "It's gone up by 150 percent since the pre-industrial period. So that's an enormous increase. CO2, by contrast, has gone up by something like 30 percent." ...
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I think I hear the Mars-bound space shuttles warming up their engines...
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Mon, Jan 25, 2010
from London Independent:
Campaign to save tropical forests failed by food giants
Western food manufacturers are buying so little sustainable palm oil that the system set up to limit damage to tropical forests caused by the world's cheapest vegetable oil is in danger of collapse. Palm-oil producers say the industry may quit the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) because so few firms are financially backing the scheme.
Houshold products giant Unilever and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) founded the RSPO seven years ago, to encourage producers of the oil, used in products such as biscuits and margarine, to minimise forest destruction, greenhouse gas emissions and loss of endangered wildlife, such as tigers and orangutans. Palm oil is in hundreds of branded foods such as Kit Kat and Hovis and household products such as Dove soap and Persil washing powder.
The first certified RSPO supplies arrived in Europe in November 2008, yet only 27 per cent of present supply has so been sold, leading to claims of hypocrisy among Western buyers. ...
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That roundtable is starting to look pretty square.
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Mon, Jan 25, 2010
from NPR:
New Anti-Smog Restrictions Could Warm Planet
The Environmental Protection Agency's proposal to tighten the ozone standard for smog will have an unfortunate side effect: Because of a quirk of atmospheric chemistry, those measures will hasten global warming.
There's no question that smog is a hazard that deserves attention. Lydia Wegman of the EPA says the new ozone limits would have significant health benefits.
Less smog means fewer asthma attacks, fewer kids in the hospital, fewer days of lost school, "and we also believe that we can reduce the risk of early death in people with heart and lung disease," she says.
Here's the tough part: The way many states and localities will reduce smog is by cracking down on the chemicals that produce ozone. And those include nitrogen oxides, or NOx. ...
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Stories like this are the very definition of being between a rock and a hard place.
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