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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(9)
Plague/Virus:(1)
Climate Chaos:(10)
Resource Depletion: (4)
Biology Breach:(4)
Recovery:(5)
This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
ecosystem interrelationships  ~ climate impacts  ~ anthropogenic change  ~ global warming  ~ water issues  ~ predator depletion  ~ stupid humans  ~ hunting to extinction  ~ deniers  ~ unintended consequences  ~ overfishing  



ApocaDocuments (3) matching "unintended consequences" from this week
[see full week] ~ [see all stories tagged "unintended consequences"]
Sat, Mar 20, 2010
from New York Times:
Consumers Buy More Efficient Refrigerators, but Keep the Old Ones Humming
Each year millions of Americans with old, inefficient refrigerators in their kitchens buy new, energy saving ones. That may sound like an efficiency boon, but what's vexing efficiency advocates is that an increasing number of consumers don't actually get rid of the old fridge. Instead, they move it to another area of the house and keep using it -- increasing their energy usage over all.... Further, every year about 10 percent of households that purchase new refrigerators keep their old units, a practice that is adding as many as one million secondary units to homes annually.... Individual owners could save from $420 to $750 in energy costs over the lifetime of an older, secondary unit by retiring it, depending on the age of the unit, the agency found. ...


I love having that second fridge cold -- "just in case"!

ApocaDoc
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Fri, Mar 19, 2010
from Duke, via PhysOrg.com:
High Fructose Corn Syrup Linked to Liver Scarring
"We found that increased consumption of high fructose corn syrup was associated with scarring in the liver, or fibrosis, among patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)," said Manal Abdelmalek, MD, MPH, associate professor of medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology/Hepatology at Duke University Medical Center.... The researchers found only 19 percent of adults with NAFLD reported no intake of fructose-containing beverages, while 52 percent consumed between one and six servings a week and 29 percent consumed fructose-containing beverages on a daily basis.... "Our findings suggest that we may need to go back to healthier diets that are more holistic," Abdelmalek said. "High fructose corn syrup, which is predominately in soft-drinks and processed foods, may not be as benign as we previously thought." ...


You'll pry my Coca-Cola from my cold, dead hands!

ApocaDoc
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Tue, Mar 16, 2010
from New York Times:
A Risk of Poisoning the Deepest Wells
Fertilizing the oceans with iron has been proposed as a way of fighting climate change. The idea is that iron will promote blooms of phytoplankton that will remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. When the phytoplankton dies and sinks, the carbon will effectively be sequestered in the deep ocean. Enthusiasm for the idea has waned, in part because of concerns about large-scale manipulation of ocean ecosystems. Now, a study in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences points out a specific risk: by promoting the growth of certain organisms, iron enrichment may result in the harmful production of a neurotoxin[, domoic acid].... The researchers found evidence that increased domoic acid production enabled Pseudonitzschia to outcompete other phytoplankton. "So it's more toxic than it was before," Dr. Trick said, "and there's more of it." ...


Good thing we have other consequence-free geoengineering options to turn to!

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