ApocaDocuments (14) for the "Climate Chaos" scenario from this week
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Sun, Mar 7, 2010
from PhysOrg.com:
Melbourne cyclone, hailstones 'size of tennis balls', record floods
"(It was) tennis ball size roughly," he said. "As far as we can tell, that's close to the biggest hail we've seen in Melbourne." As the city readied for further violent storms Sunday, once-in-a-century floods were peaking in the state of Queensland in the country's northeast, parts of which have been in drought for almost a decade.... Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said the cost of the flooding would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, as there had been major damage to highways and rail lines had been washed away.
"This is a massive water event which has smashed all the records known here in the southwest," she told reporters Sunday as she toured St George. ...
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I'll be convinced something is wrong only when hailstones are the size of pumpkins.
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Sun, Mar 7, 2010
from Bard College, via Reuters and DesdemonaDespair:
Arctic melt to cost up to $24 trillion by 2050: report
Arctic ice melting could cost global agriculture, real estate and insurance anywhere from $2.4 trillion to $24 trillion by 2050 in damage from rising sea levels, floods and heat waves, according to a report released on Friday.... "The Arctic is the planet's air conditioner and it's starting to break down," he said.
The loss of Arctic Sea ice and snow cover is already costing the world about $61 billion to $371 billion annually from costs associated with heat waves, flooding and other factors, the report said.
The losses could grow as a warmer Arctic unlocks vast stores of methane in the permafrost. The gas has about 21 times the global warming impact of carbon dioxide.
Melting of Arctic sea ice is already triggering a feedback of more warming as dark water revealed by the receding ice absorbs more of the sun's energy, he said. That could lead to more melting of glaciers on land and raise global sea levels. ...
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Sorry, can't repair it -- I can't find anyone who carries the parts!
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Sat, Mar 6, 2010
from Living on Earth:
Climate Confusion
For climate scientists, now is the winter of their discontent. Their major work, the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, which won the Nobel Peace Prize, is now under attack. A sloppy paragraph wrongly projected how soon Himalayan glaciers might melt. Another section overestimated flood-prone areas in the Netherlands. Scientists say the mistakes are minor. But the errors came to light just as the heat was building around another matter: embarrassing revelations in thousands of emails by climate scientists that were hacked...[Penn State Professor Richard Alley]: ...what's come out doesn't shake the fundamentals of the science as we know it. One of the key things about science about the IPCC and all of us in general -- a big result which is put forward to the public can never be broken by one mistake, and so my suspicion is that we just have not done enough of a job of communicating this. ...
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Scientists: get your geek on!
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Fri, Mar 5, 2010
from NUVO Newsweekly:
Atmospheric scientist speaks at Butler
On Thursday night, March 4, atmospheric scientist Katharine Heyhoe spoke to more than a hundred students, faculty and community members on the campus of Butler University... After her excellent presentation, the first question asked from the audience was about climategate. Heyhoe handled the questioner deftly, referring him to investigating the hacked emails himself, along with looking at the actual science of global warming, yet the man nattered on, until, having stolen too much speakspace, was asked to stop.
He quickly left the room.
Unfortunately, so did a number of students...a survey by the Yale Project on Climate Change and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change concluded that younger people, 18-34, are relatively "apathetic about the threat" of climate change. In fact, the survey found, nearly two thirds of younger Americans are "unsure whether global warming is real." ...
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Maybe the young people, like, mean it's soooooooo UNreal it doesn't seem real.
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Fri, Mar 5, 2010
from London Financial Times:
Review says global warming is man-made
The case for man-made global warming is even stronger than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change maintained in its official assessments, according to the first scientific review published since December's Copenhagen conference and subsequent attacks on the IPCC's credibility.
An international research team led by the UK Met Office spent the past year analysing more than 100 recent scientific papers to update the last IPCC assessment, released in 2007. Although the review itself preceded the sceptics' assault on climate science over the past three months, its launch in London on Thursday marks a resumption of the campaign by mainstream scientists to show that man-made releases of greenhouse gases are causing potentially dangerous global warming. ...
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More carbons burned to prove the obvious!
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Thu, Mar 4, 2010
from National Geographic:
Arctic Sea Belching Tons of Methane
Arctic seabeds are belching massive quantities of methane, according to a new study that says ocean permafrost is a huge and largely overlooked source of the powerful greenhouse gas, which has been linked to global warming.
Previous research had found methane bubbling out of melting permafrost -- frozen soil -- in Arctic wetlands and lakes.
But the permafrost lining the deep, cold seas was thought to be staying frozen solid, holding in untold amounts of trapped methane.
"It's not the case anymore," said study leader Natalia Shakhova, a biogeochemist at the University of Fairbanks, Alaska. "The permafrost is actually failing in its ability to preserve this leakage."... The scientists found that much of the seawater above the shelf is laden with methane, which in turn is being released into the atmosphere.
What's more, the team found that current atmospheric methane levels in the Arctic are three times higher than those recorded across previous climate cycles going back 400,000 years. This phenomenon most likely isn't limited to the East Siberian Sea, the researchers note. If permafrost is melting in this part of the Arctic, all shallow areas along the Arctic shelf should be similarly affected. ...
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Methane: the organic alternative to CO2!
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Thu, Mar 4, 2010
from Yale 360:
Younger Americans Disengaged On Global Warming, Survey Finds
Although they have grown up during an era when global warming has emerged as a major issue, Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 are relatively apathetic about the threat, according to a new survey. And even when they do think about it, young Americans are just as divided as older Americans about whether global warming is real, according to results of the survey conducted by the Yale Project on Climate Change and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. Adults under 35 are significantly less likely than older Americans to say they have thought about global warming, with 22 percent saying they have never thought about the issue. Only 38 percent of younger Americans say they had previously thought about global warming either "a lot" or "some," compared to 51 percent of those aged 35 to 59. And 54 percent of Americans aged 18 to 34 said they were not at all worried or not very worried about global warming. Sixty-one percent of younger Americans said that most of their friends were generally not taking actions to reduce global warming. And nearly two-thirds of younger Americans are unsure whether global warming is real, with 20 percent saying they didn't know enough to make a judgment and 40 percent saying that there is a lot of disagreement among scientists on the issue.
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Ah youth. Wasted on the stupid.
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Thu, Mar 4, 2010
from New York Times:
Darwin Foes Add Warming to Targets
Critics of the teaching of evolution in the nation's classrooms are gaining ground in some states by linking the issue to global warming, arguing that dissenting views on both scientific subjects should be taught in public schools.... In Kentucky, a bill recently introduced in the Legislature would encourage teachers to discuss "the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories," including "evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning."... The linkage of evolution and global warming is partly a legal strategy: courts have found that singling out evolution for criticism in public schools is a violation of the separation of church and state. By insisting that global warming also be debated, deniers of evolution can argue that they are simply championing academic freedom in general. ...
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Their evolving legal strategy is generating a lot of hot air.
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Thu, Mar 4, 2010
from New York Times:
Fuel Taxes Must Rise, Harvard Researchers Say
To meet the Obama administration's targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, some researchers say, Americans may have to experience a sobering reality: gas at $7 a gallon.
To reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the transportation sector 14 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, the cost of driving must simply increase, according to a forthcoming report by researchers at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
The 14 percent target was set in the Environmental Protection Agency's budget for fiscal 2010. ...
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Ivy League gassholes.
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Thu, Mar 4, 2010
from Mother Jones:
The Chamber of Commerce vs. Climate Science
William Kovacs, the US Chamber of Commerce's vice president of environment, technology and regulatory affairs, last year famously called for a "Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" on climate change. Kovacs was referencing the lightning-rod 1925 court case that made it illegal to teach anything other than divine creation in Tennessee public schools -- and he wanted a similar public hearing in which climate science would be put on the stand. The remark drew plenty of bad press, and Kovacs soon recanted his "inappropriate" analogy. But it looks like the chamber is angling for that monkey trial after all, by way of a lawsuit it's filed against the Environmental Protection Agency that could be the first wave of a big-business assault on greenhouse gas regulations. ...
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We need a US Chamber of Climate.
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Wed, Mar 3, 2010
from ACS, via EurekAlert:
CFC replacements may cause warming and acid rain
Chemicals that helped solve a global environmental crisis in the 1990s -- the hole in Earth's protective ozone layer -- may be making another problem -- acid rain -- worse, scientists are reporting.... [S]tudies later suggested the need for a replacement for the replacements, showing that HCFCs act like super greenhouse gases, 4,500 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The new study adds to those concerns, raising the possibility that HCFCs may break down in the atmosphere to form oxalic acid, one of the culprits in acid rain.
They used a computer model to show how HCFCs could form oxalic acid via a series of chemical reactions high in the atmosphere. The model, they suggest, could have broader uses in helping to determine whether replacements for the replacements are as eco-friendly as they appear before manufacturers spend billions of dollars in marketing them. ...
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Replacing the replacement... aren't we getting a little meta here?
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Wed, Mar 3, 2010
from LA Times:
Woolly mammoths resurfacing in Siberia
The beasts had long lain extinct and forgotten, embedded deep in the frozen turf, bodies swaddled in Earth's layers for thousands of years before Christ.
Now, the Russian permafrost is offering up the bones and tusks of the woolly mammoths that once lumbered over the tundra. They are shaped into picture frames, chess sets, pendants. They are gathered and piled, carved and whittled, bought and sold on the Internet.... The mammoth finds have been growing steadily over the last three decades as Russia's vast sea of permafrost slowly thaws.
Russian scientists disagree over whether global warming is responsible. Some say yes, others are skeptical. But nobody argues that the permafrost is dwindling -- and they're glad to have the bones and tusks, especially when the increased yields coincide with bans on elephant ivory. ...
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Every methane cloud holds an ivory lining.
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Tue, Mar 2, 2010
from Environmental Research Web:
Media play hockey with climate change
Climate scientists around the world have been struggling to understand the public backlash against anthropogenic global warming over the last 12 months or so. In several panels at the recent American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting, leading scientists struggled with how best to respond to a rising tide of climate-change scepticism.
"There is a good deal of difference between scepticism derived from evidence, which many of us are familiar with, and scepticism derived from ideology," said Boykoff.
"It raises questions about who has authority. Who has expertise? Who has the authority to speak for the climate?" ...
Freudenburg also said that there is strong pressure to publish results that surprise readers, both in the academic literature and the popular press. This inevitably leads to papers that lean towards hyperbole and ultimately cause laypeople to doubt the entire field, rather than individual papers. ...
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Is there much evidence of hyperbole?
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Want more context?
Try reading our book FREE online:
Humoring the Horror of the Converging Emergencies!
More fun than a barrel of jellyfish!
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Mon, Mar 1, 2010
from PhysOrg.com:
Australian residents urged to flee 18-metre flames
Some 166 firemen using dozens of fire engines and aircraft were battling the flames, which have already consumed 22,000 hectares (54,000 acres) of land.
FESA could not say how many homes were at risk in the sparsely populated area but said it was mainly farmland.
Western Australia, a giant state four times the size of Texas, has just sweltered through its hottest southern hemisphere summer with temperatures averaging nearly 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit).
News of the blaze follows an announcement that Western Australia has sweated through its hottest ever summer, recording average temperatures just shy of 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit), officials have said. ...
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Go East, young man -- and hurry!
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