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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(14)
Plague/Virus:()
Climate Chaos:(6)
Resource Depletion: (8)
Biology Breach:(8)
Recovery:(6)
This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
marine mammals  ~ ecosystem interrelationships  ~ toxic buildup  ~ oil issues  ~ massive die-off  ~ unintended consequences  ~ toxic water  ~ hunting to extinction  ~ short-term thinking  ~ death spiral  ~ lived experience  



ApocaDocuments (6) for the "Climate Chaos" scenario from this week
[see full week] ~ [see full Climate Chaos scenario and stories]
Sat, Jun 26, 2010
from Vietnamnet:
Scorching heat, pollution kills fish, vegetables in central Vietnam
Hundreds of fish breeders along the edges of Tam Giang Lagoon have been watching their fish die off en masse due to heat and pollution in the central province of Thua Thien-Hue over the last few weeks.... The hot and muggy weather has also coupled with diseases to kill a slew of shrimp bred in the province. As of now, shrimps bred on nearly 2,000 hectares of farms have died to ineffectual breeding methods. In addition, several vegetable crop fields have yellowed and withered in the heat, putting over 1,200 Quang Dien District households in financial straits. The district provides the market an average of 2,000 tons of fresh vegetables annually. ...


Gooood endless noon, Vietnam!

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Fri, Jun 25, 2010
from NASA:
Global Temperature Anomalies for May 2010 released
In May 2010, temperature records assembled by the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) showed wide expanses of slightly above- and slightly below-normal temperatures over most of the globe, but also dramatic warmth near the North Pole.... Especially warm temperatures--close to five degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above average--occur over most of the Arctic, including the northernmost reaches of North America, northwestern Greenland, and most of the northern coast of Eurasia. Unusually warm conditions also extend southward into Eastern Europe and Siberia.... "Ongoing temperature anomalies like these are strong evidence of the Arctic amplification of global climate change," says Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The Arctic environment is very vulnerable to warming because of feedbacks that amplify the initial change. Sea ice retreat and snow melt reduce Earth's albedo, which can lead to increased warmth and further melting. Scambos explains that, although the Northern Hemisphere experienced significant snowfall in early 2010, spring melt was rapid, exposing land surfaces to sunlight sooner than usual. ...


"De Nial" is a river in the Arctic.

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Fri, Jun 25, 2010
from PNAS, via EurekAlert:
Aggressive action to reduce soot emissions needed to meet climate change goals
Without aggressive action to reduce soot emissions, the time table for carbon dioxide emission reductions may need to be significantly accelerated in order to achieve international climate policy goals such as those set forth in last December's Copenhagen Accord... The Princeton University researchers assessed the climatic contribution of "carbonaceous aerosols," fine particulates emitted into the atmosphere and commonly known as soot. Soot is produced by the incomplete combustion of organic matter and comes from a variety of sources, ranging from diesel engines and coal combustion to biomass cook stoves, crop burning and wildfires. Soot has complex effects on the global climate when airborne or deposited on snow. It has two main components: black carbon and organic carbon. Black carbon is dark and absorbs radiation, thus warming the atmosphere; organic carbon is light colored and reflective, so tends to have a cooling effect.... Their best estimate indicates that eliminating soot pollution from "contained combustion" sources such as diesel engines and poorly-controlled coal sources would provide the world with an additional eight years (with an uncertainty range of about one to 15 years) to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Conversely, if these sources of carbonaceous aerosols continued at levels seen in the 1990s, more aggressive reductions in carbon dioxide emissions than previously recognized would need to occur for the world to meet the goal of avoiding "dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system". ...


Santa Claus demands it!

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Fri, Jun 25, 2010
from Science:
Hydrogen Isotopes Preclude Marine Hydrate CH4 Emissions at the Onset of Dansgaard-Oeschger Events
The causes of past changes in the global methane cycle and especially the role of marine methane hydrate (clathrate) destabilization events are a matter of debate. Here we present evidence from the North Greenland Ice Core Project ice core based on the hydrogen isotopic composition of methane [{delta}D(CH4)] that clathrates did not cause atmospheric methane concentration to rise at the onset of Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) events 7 and 8. Box modeling supports boreal wetland emissions as the most likely explanation for the interstadial increase. Moreover, our data show that {delta}D(CH4) dropped 500 years before the onset of DO 8, with CH4 concentration rising only slightly. This can be explained by an early climate response of boreal wetlands, which carry the strongly depleted isotopic signature of high-latitude precipitation at that time. [Translation provided in Science's TOC: "Catastrophic destabilization of marine methane clathrates did not trigger rapid warming episodes 39,000 and 35,000 years ago."] ...


If these guys are so smart, why can't they write?

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Thu, Jun 24, 2010
from Telegraph.co.uk:
Iron to be dumped at sea to reduce global warming
Thousands of tonnes of iron will be dumped at sea in an attempt to cut global warming by sucking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, it has been reported. The iron will lay vast amounts of phytoplankton, which absorbs CO2 as the grow, The Times reported. When the phytoplankton die it sinks to the bottom of the ocean, storing away the carbon for more than 50 years, the paper added.... Aircraft would spray iron sulphate liquid over almost 4,000 miles of the Southern Ocean, The Times claimed. It is thought that if successful the project could remove almost a billion tonnes of carbon a year from the atmosphere - 12 per cent of total CO2 emissions produced by humans.... Scientists, however, have admitted that fertilising the ocean with hundreds of tonnes of iron could have a negative impact on marine life because the dying phytoplankton would cause a reduction in oxygen. ...


Pffft. That's only a little of the ocean suffocating.

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Tue, Jun 22, 2010
from CBC:
Scientist apologizes to oilsands researchers
A scientist who works for the Alberta government has apologized to two scientists for calling their research "a lie." Dr. Preston McEachern, an environmental effects biologist who works for the government of Alberta, issued a letter of apology and retraction to Kevin Timoney, a researcher with Treeline Ecological Research, and Peter Lee, executive director with Global Forest Watch Canada. Timoney's and Lee's lawyer had contacted him after he said in a presentation at the University of Alberta in March that the two "chose to remove data" from a study about the environmental impact of the oilsands, and called their findings a "lie." "You did not lie," McEachern wrote. "You did not choose to remove data from your study. You did not actually remove data from 1985, 2003 and 2004. The statements in my presentation that you did these things were false and I regret very much that I made these statements. I unequivocally retract them."... Timoney and Lee published the study "Does the Alberta Tar Sands Industry Pollute? The Scientific Evidence," which suggested the physical and ecological changes that result from oilsands industrial activities are detectable. One of the conclusions in the study is that the ecological and health effects of these activities deserve immediate and systematic study.... "The government of Alberta seems more concerned about the reputation of the tarsands industry than it is about learning about the destructive and dangerous impacts this industry has." ...


With such a controversial conclusion -- "more study is needed" -- it's no surprise that the tar sands industry freaked.

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