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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(2)
Plague/Virus:(1)
Climate Chaos:(8)
Resource Depletion: (1)
Biology Breach:(11)
Recovery:(7)
This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
oil issues  ~ climate impacts  ~ smart policy  ~ contamination  ~ global warming  ~ corporate malfeasance  ~ anthropogenic change  ~ koyaanisqatsi  ~ rising sea level  ~ wetlands  ~ coral bleaching  



ApocaDocuments (7) for the "Recovery" scenario from this week
[see full week] ~ [see full Recovery scenario and stories]
Sat, May 22, 2010
from Eurepean Science Foundation, via Reuters:
'Double trouble' in acidic, warming oceans - study
Acidification of the oceans means "double trouble" for marine life from corals to shellfish since it is adding to stresses caused by global warming, a study showed on Wednesday. "The oceans are more acidic than they have ever been for at least 20 million years," according to the report by the European Science Foundation. On current trends, seas could be 150 percent more acidic by 2100 than they were in pre-industrial times. Sea water is acidifying because carbon dioxide, released to the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, is slightly corrosive in water. That makes it harder for creatures such as corals, lobsters, crabs or oysters to build their protective shells.... Among worrying precedents were fossil records of a leap in ocean acidity 55 million years ago that caused a spasm of extinctions of creatures living on the ocean floor, he said. That pulse may have been caused by natural releases of methane. ...


Yes, but it may be doubly invisible.

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Sat, May 22, 2010
from SciDev.net:
Fishing restrictions bring better catches, says study
Closing fishing areas and regulating the use of fishing gear can result in more profitable catches that boost fishermen's incomes, according to a study. The conclusion has emerged from a long-term investigation in Kenya on the effects of fishery closures on fishermen's profits. The study, published today in Conservation Biology, used data on 27,000 fish caught in three locations off the Kenyan coast over a period of 12 years. One location was next to a closed fishing area, one far from the closed area but with restrictions on vertically hanging fishing nets (seine nets), and one far from any fishing restrictions. Fishing close to an area with fishery closures led to larger catches of fish with a higher market value. And the ban on seine nets also increased fishermen's income, the study found. ...


You want me to listen to science? It's obvious that restrictions are bad.

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Fri, May 21, 2010
from Rep. Ed Markey, bless him.:
Live Video Feed of Gulf Gusher
Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), Chair of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, has been a vocal advocate of transparency, and vocal critic of the BP and governmental response to the Gulf Gusher. May 19 he insisted on video; on May 20 it was purportedly available, and by May 21 was handling the staggering Web traffic to the house.gov "spillcam" (note: use MS Internet Explorer). Thank goodness we have politicians who use their positions for the public good, rather than to attain and retain power. Now, we can watch the source of multi-level biosphere death gushing from a mile beneath sea level. Now there can be at least a few better independent estimates (though high-res video is required for accurate assessment) of the outflow (kinda handy when you're doing, y'know, engineering and problem-solving). And because of this, BP had no choice but to admit that the always-know-to-be-bogus 5,000 barrel-a-day number was a dramatic underestimate. What you see gushing *already* has 5,000 barrels a day being extracted up to the surface, from BP's one small pipe, inserted a few days ago. Marvelous video of Markey and Waxman also worth watching. ...


That spillcam video looks 'Doctored to me!

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Thu, May 20, 2010
from CNN:
Giant solar-powered yacht to circle globe
Intensive trials are under way as the world's largest solar-powered yacht prepares to circumnavigate the globe. As heavy as a whale and 30 meters long, the vessel is adorned with 536 square-meters of photovoltaic panels -- enough to cover over two tennis courts -- which its crew hope will enable it to complete the 50,000 kilometre journey fueled by nothing but energy from the sun. "This is not just an adventure story," skipper Raphael Domjan told CNN. "We want to show the world that we have the technology right now to change how we do things." Energy captured from the sun and stored in the world's largest lithium ion battery will power a noise-free, pollution-free electric motor during an estimated 160 day voyage. The boat, christened "Turanor" after a word meaning "power of the sun" in JRR Tolkein's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, is Domjan's brainchild. ...


And hey, on a cloudy day, if this yacht is anywhere near the Gulf it can just scoop up some stray oil.

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Thu, May 20, 2010
from IU News Room:
IU physicists, in DZero Collaboration, announce evidence of matter-antimatter imbalance
Physicists at Indiana University are joining fellow DZero Collaboration researchers from around the world in announcing evidence of a 1 percent deviation between the amounts of elementary matter and antimatter particles being produced from high-energy collisions at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. IU Department of Physics chair and DZero collaborator Rick Van Kooten, one of four professors and research scientists from IU Bloomington working on the experiment, called new evidence of a deviation of the Standard Model of particle physics "unexpected" and "a surprise." He described the 1 percent deviation as "huge, and definitely not seen in general particle collisions." "We are very excited about this discovery as it is truly unexpected," he said. "This observation that particles can not only quantum mechanically change into their own anti-particles and vice versa, but also that the two processes are not equally likely at this level, is a surprise." ...


Can we marshall this quantum-change force to turn ourselves into a bizarro-world of environmental health, fairness, and freedom?

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Wed, May 19, 2010
from Toronto Globe and Mail:
With newly protected boreal forest, the caribou are smiling
Two old foes in Canada have made peace to conserve some of the world's most precious natural resources. The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, signed by most of the Canadian forestry industry and environmental activists, is nothing less than historic. It will result in a real and internationally significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and it serves as a model of non-governmental co-operation. The agreement commits all participating companies (which cover some 70 per cent of Canada's boreal forest) to the most advanced sustainability practices in forestry: practices that "start with the science" and make the protection of species-at-risk paramount. Canada's woodland caribou, and other less photogenic species that traverse the boreal forest, are among the greatest beneficiaries. ...


Caribou are smiling... and by extension we presume the clams are happy!

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Tue, May 18, 2010
from UN, via AFP/Yahoo:
Ocean fish could disappear in 40 years: UN
The world faces the nightmare possibility of fishless oceans by 2050 unless fishing fleets are slashed and stocks allowed to recover, UN experts warned. "If the various estimates we have received... come true, then we are in the situation where 40 years down the line we, effectively, are out of fish," Pavan Sukhdev, head of the UN Environment Program's green economy initiative, told journalists in New York. A Green Economy report due later this year by UNEP and outside experts argues this disaster can be avoided if subsidies to fishing fleets are slashed and fish are given protected zones -- ultimately resulting in a thriving industry.... Environmental experts are mindful of the failure this March to push through a worldwide ban on trade in bluefin tuna, one of the many species said to be headed for extinction. Powerful lobbying from Japan and other tuna-consuming countries defeated the proposal at the CITES conference on endangered species in Doha. But UNEP's warning Monday was that tuna only symbolizes a much vaster catastrophe, threatening economic, as well as environmental upheaval.... According to the UN, 30 percent of fish stocks have already collapsed, meaning they yield less than 10 percent of their former potential, while virtually all fisheries risk running out of commercially viable catches by 2050. ...


But wasn't I taught "there's always another fish in the sea"?

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