ApocaDocuments (10) for the "Climate Chaos" scenario from this week
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Sun, Aug 1, 2010
from London Guardian:
Insects could be the key to meeting food needs of growing global population
Saving the planet one plateful at a time does not mean cutting back on meat, according to new research: the trick may be to switch our diet to insects and other creepy-crawlies.
The raising of livestock such as cows, pigs and sheep occupies two-thirds of the world's farmland and generates 20 percent of all the greenhouse gases driving global warming. As a result, the United Nations and senior figures want to reduce the amount of meat we eat and the search is on for alternatives. ...
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Now where is my bbq dipping sauce?
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Sat, Jul 31, 2010
from USA Today:
July could be hottest month on record
Relentlessly scorching temperatures have July flirting with the record books to become the hottest month since weather data were first collected more than a century ago.
Cities such as New York, Washington and Las Vegas are on track to set record average temperatures for any month. Philadelphia, Phoenix and Raleigh, N.C., are on pace for their second-warmest month, the National Weather Service says.... Cool weather in the Northwest may keep July from setting a national heat record, says Deke Arndt of the climatic data center. Much of the Midwest and Deep South have been significantly warmer than average in July, but no records should be set in those areas. ...
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I'm just relieved that it's weather, and not climate. Whew!
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Sat, Jul 31, 2010
from IEEE Spectrum:
Technically Speaking: Hacking the Planet
My goal here, as usual, is to focus on the new language being generated by geoengineers and others in this burgeoning field, and there's plenty of it.
The overall goal of solar radiation management (or SRM)--the various schemes to reflect sunlight back into space and thus reduce global warming--is global dimming, which is the gradual reduction in the amount of sunlight reaching Earth's surface. One way to do this is to increase Earth's overall reflectivity, which is also called its albedo, so this form of planet hacking is known as albedo engineering. Examples of proposed projects include cloud brightening, increasing the reflectivity of marine clouds (also called cloud whitening); creating a stratoshield through stratosphere doping.... These two procedures are linked as carbon capture and storage, or CCS. Strategies include adding nutrients to the ocean to increase the number of organisms that can capture carbon, known as ocean nourishment (when the nutrient is iron, this technique is also called iron fertilization); making artificial trees with plastic "leaves" that capture carbon; creating carbon sinks, reservoirs that store carbon; injecting carbon into underground geological structures (geosequestration) or into biological entities (biosequestration), particularly a form of charcoal called biochar; and pumping carbon into the deep ocean, where it dissolves (ocean dissolution). ...
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Now that we have a special language for geoengineering, we're ready for groupthink!
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Sat, Jul 31, 2010
from Wisconsin State Journal:
Glacier Park's future uncertain
The gorgeous million-acre park in northwestern Montana celebrates its 100th birthday this year. But many of its glaciers have melted, and scientists predict the rest may not last even another decade.
The forests are drier and disease-ridden, leading to bigger wildfires. Climate change is forcing animals that feed off plants to adapt.... The change is visible to the naked eye, with vast moraines left behind as the giant glaciers melt away. Climate change is blamed for the increasing size and frequency of wildfires and for lower stream flows as summer progresses.
What this all means for the bears, wolves and other big predators in the park is unclear, Fagre said.... Fagre said that based on geologic evidence, the park had about 150 glaciers in 1850, the end of the so-called Little Ice Age. Most would have still been around when the park was established in 1910.
Only about 25 named glaciers are left, and they could be gone by 2020, Fagre said.
Many experts consider Glacier Park a harbinger of Earth's future, a laboratory where changes in the environment will likely show up first.... ...
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What a naming opportunity! Oilco National Park? Coalco Energy Park?
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Sat, Jul 31, 2010
from Charleston Post and Courier:
Jellyfish invasion
Hundreds of stings from these translucent blobs have been reported along the Charleston County coastline since last weekend. Some suspect a swarm of jellies rode in with strong onshore winds and roiling surf. Others wonder if a shift in the Gulf Stream or this week's blast of thunderstorms are to blame. Whatever the reason, they are here -- in force.... The beach parks normally see just a couple of reported stings a month, if any at all. Isle of Palms, however, had 162 reported stings last Sunday and an additional 186 jellyfish run-ins on Tuesday. The number of reported stings on Folly Beach jumped from 15 on Wednesday to 150 the following day, Bowie said. Several stings also were reported at Beachwalker Park on Kiawah Island, she said.
Among the reports is at least one unconfirmed run-in with a dreaded Portuguese man-of-war, the unofficial king of sting. ...
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Hey, Charleston's where the sun and fun is -- wouldn't you be there if you were a jellyfish?
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Fri, Jul 30, 2010
from BusinessGreen:
Keep the coal fires burning a bit longer, says energy analyst
Britain should renegotiate its commitment to close old coal- and oil-fired power stations by 2015, so it can decarbonise generating capacity without racking up high costs for business and consumers, claims a report from energy analysts to be published next week.... The report, Realigning UK Energy Policy, states: "The recession and global energy prices have conspired to ensure that these plants are unlikely to reach their 20,000 hours running time limit by 2015, when they must close, according to current commitments.
"At a time when this type of plant will be needed the most, it makes sense from both security of supply and cost perspectives to allow this flexible capacity to remain on the system, while still limiting their operations to 20,000 hours, providing some much-needed breathing space within the energy infrastructure supply chain." ...
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Heck yeah! We have plenty of time!
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Thu, Jul 29, 2010
from Christopher Booker, in the Telegraph:
Desperate days for the warmists
Ever more risibly desperate become the efforts of the believers in global warming to hold the line for their religion, after the battering it was given last winter by all those scandals surrounding the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
One familiar technique they use is to attribute to global warming almost any unusual weather event anywhere in the world. Last week, for instance, it was reported that Russia has recently been experiencing its hottest temperatures and longest drought for 130 years. The head of the Russian branch of WWF, the environmental pressure group, was inevitably quick to cite this as evidence of climate change, claiming that in future "such climate abnormalities will only become more frequent". He didn't explain what might have caused the similar hot weather 130 years ago. Meanwhile, notably little attention has been paid to the disastrous chill which has been sweeping South America thanks to an inrush of air from the Antarctic, killing hundreds in the continent's coldest winter for years. ...
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Warmist? I'm a Chaosist!
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Wed, Jul 28, 2010
from Dalhousie University via ScienceDaily:
Marine Phytoplankton Declining: Striking Global Changes at the Base of the Marine Food Web Linked to Rising Ocean Temperatures
A new article published in the 29 July issue of the journal Nature reveals for the first time that microscopic marine algae known as "phytoplankton" have been declining globally over the 20th century. Phytoplankton forms the basis of the marine food chain and sustains diverse assemblages of species ranging from tiny zooplankton to large marine mammals, seabirds, and fish. Says lead author Daniel Boyce, "Phytoplankton is the fuel on which marine ecosystems run. A decline of phytoplankton affects everything up the food chain, including humans."... documented phytoplankton declines of about 1 percent of the global average per year. This trend is particularly well documented in the Northern Hemisphere and after 1950, and would translate into a decline of approximately 40 percent since 1950. The scientists found that long-term phytoplankton declines were negatively correlated with rising sea surface temperatures and changing oceanographic conditions. ...
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Does this mean I won't be able to get my Phytoplankton Krispies?
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Mon, Jul 26, 2010
from Christian Science Monitor:
Activists frustrated at Obama's environmental record
...recently, Obama and his administration have been taking flak from the left on the environment.
This past week, the Center for Biological Diversity sued the US Forest Service for failing to monitor and protect endangered species and habitat in Arizona and New Mexico national forests....But it is the inability to get comprehensive energy and climate legislation that environmental advocates see as Obama's biggest failure.
"Obama is the first president in history to articulate in stark terms both the why and how of the sustainable clean energy vision," writes physicist and author Joseph Romm. "But the question now is whether he really believed what he said." ...
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Give it a rest, activists. With all your complaining... you'd think the world was at stake!
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Mon, Jul 26, 2010
from Discover Magazine:
The Best Flavor of Geoengineering Stills Leaves a Bad Taste
In theory, geoengineering seems like the ideal remedy for our climate ills. Some white reflective roofs here, a little ocean fertilization there, a few simulated volcanic eruptions, and voila! you have a potential fix for one of the world's most intractable problems.
But there's good reason to believe that many of these proposed schemes would prove much costlier to the planet over both the short- and long-term than more mainstream approaches to addressing climate change--and leave a number of critical problems, like ocean acidification, in the lurch.... The rapidly changing nature of climate models, from which most of these findings are drawn, also makes it inherently difficult to predict with any uncertainty what this scheme's exact outcome will be. What is certain, however, is that it would have a fair number of unintended consequences--almost all of which would be bad.
According to a new paper in Nature Geoscience, stratospheric geoengineering, or "solar-radiation management," as the authors refer to it, would affect different parts of the world differentially (go figure), helping to cool down some countries while cooking others. ...
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It doesn't just taste bad.
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