ApocaDocuments (10) for the "Climate Chaos" scenario from this week
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Sat, Aug 7, 2010
from Associated Press:
Climate talks appear to slip backward
Global climate talks appeared to have slipped backward after five days of negotiations in Bonn, with rich and poor countries exchanging charges of reneging on agreements they made last year to contain greenhouse gases.
Delegates complained that reversals in the talks put negotiations back by a year, even before minimal gains were scored at the Copenhagen summit last December.
"It's a little bit like a broken record," said European Union negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger. "It's like a flashback," agreed Raman Mehta, of the Action Aid environment group. "The discourse is the same level" as before Copenhagen. ...
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We're a planet full of slackers.
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Sat, Aug 7, 2010
from AolNews:
Giant Ice Island Breaks Off From Greenland
A giant chunk of ice four times the size of Manhattan has broken off from one of Greenland's two biggest glaciers, creating the largest Arctic iceberg since 1962.
The new ice island has a surface area of about 100 square miles and a thickness of about half the height of the Empire State Building. It broke off from the Petermann Glacier on Thursday, and was spotted by a NASA satellite sensor... Icebergs often break off from glaciers in summer, when the ice begins to melt and gets thinner in some areas, triggering cracks. The process has been exacerbated by global warming, and the melting of arctic glaciers could lead to a rise in global sea levels. ...
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It better be a nice iceberg.
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Fri, Aug 6, 2010
from Biogeosciences:
Ocean acidification shows no effect on Baltic Cod sperm
Ocean acidification, as a consequence of increasing marine pCO2, may have severe effects on the physiology of marine organisms. However, experimental studies remain scarce, in particular concerning fish. While adults will most likely remain relatively unaffected by changes in seawater pH, early life-history stages are potentially more sensitive - particularly the critical stage of fertilization, in which sperm motility plays a central role. In this study, the effects of ocean acidification (decrease of pH to 7.55) on sperm motility of Baltic cod, Gadus morhua, were assessed. We found no significant effect of decreased pH on sperm speed, rate of change of direction or percent motility for the population of cod analyzed. We predict that future ocean acidification will probably not pose a problem for sperm behavior, and hence fertilization success, of Baltic cod.
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We've got endocrine disruptors for that!
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Fri, Aug 6, 2010
from Fast Company:
Desertification of Nebraska Not Enough to Convince Climate Change Deniers, Says Poll
The tipping point that turns skeptics into believers seems nearly impossible to reach when it comes to climate change. That isn't changing anytime soon, according to the Shelton Group's new Green Living Pulse study. The poll surveyed 1,098 consumers who buy green products on occasion, and asked climate change skeptics what it would take for them to believe that climate change is real and caused by humans. Answer: even an ice-free North Pole or a dustbowl on the Great Plains barely move the needle.
The study says that 15 percent of skeptical respondents would be convinced by a melted polar ice cap, 15 percent would respond if kids should no longer go outside to play in the summer because of dangerous pollution levels, 3 percent would be swayed if changing weather patterns turned Nebraska into a desert, 2 percent would warm to the idea if there were only 20 polar bears left in the wild, and just 0.6 percent would be convinced if residents of America Samoa had to relocate because of rising tides. ...
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This ship is unsinkable!
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Fri, Aug 6, 2010
from BBC:
Pakistan floods 'hit 12m people'
The worst floods in Pakistan's history have now affected 12 million people, says the government relief agency.
General Nadeem Ahmed, of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), said that figure only covered Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab provinces.
Figures for Sindh province were not yet available, he added.... As well the estimate of 12 million people affected, Gen Ahmed said that 650,000 houses had been destroyed.
"In my opinion, when assessments are complete, this will be the biggest disaster in the history of Pakistan," he told a news conference in Islamabad on Friday.... And the region is only midway through monsoon season, with more rain forecast. ...
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I hate it when "Singin' in the Rain" gets to that primal-scream part.
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Thu, Aug 5, 2010
from BusinessGreen:
UK Government: Too many firms ignoring climate risks
Environment secretary Caroline Spelman last night called on UK firms to urgently improve their resilience to climate change, warning that too many companies were not prepared for the changes to weather patterns that climate change will inevitably bring.
Speaking at an event at the Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter, Spelman said that businesses needed to prepare for the opportunities and challenges that will arise from a warmer climate.
"We know that some level of change is now unavoidable and it is the responsibility of us all to think about what a changing climate will mean for our health, our businesses and our way of life," she said. "I want to ensure that UK businesses are well placed to take advantage of the new opportunities that arise as well as ensuring they are ready for the difficulties that higher temperatures and more adverse weather could mean for their staff and working practices." ...
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"Inevitable"? So the government is siding with the warmists? The conspirators are everywhere.
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Wed, Aug 4, 2010
from Environmental Science & Technology:
Specific Climate Impact of Passenger and Freight Transport
An unambiguous ranking can be established for the freight transportation of the year 2000: The specific climate impact of air transport is 3 to 42 times higher, for a light truck it is 2 to 8 times higher than average truck transport. Rail transport of heavy goods has a 4 to 10 times lower specific climate impact than trucking, while it varies from negligible to half to a similar impact for volume products. Ship transport has by far the lowest climate impact: It exerts 5 to 10 to 30 times less warming per transport work than trucking and is even cooling on shorter time scales. This ranking holds for both climate metrics and both measures for transport work; most importantly it is robust for the time horizons considered.
For the passenger travel of the year 2000 the modes with clearly lower specific climate impact than car travel can be readily identified: Rail travel has at least a factor 4 lower specific impact and is cooling on shorter times, bus and coach travel has 2 to 5 times lower specific impact, while travel with two- or three-wheelers has up to a factor 2 lower specific climate impact than car travel. Air travel results in a lower temperature change per passenger-kilometer than car travel on the long run; the integrated radiative forcing of air travel is on short- to medium time horizons much higher than for car travel. Per passenger-hour traveled however, aviations climate impact is a factor 6 to 47 higher than the impact from car travel. ...
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So the rule of thumb is: If driving takes 6 times longer than the air travel time, then I'm still damaging the climate more than I should.
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Wed, Aug 4, 2010
from New York Times:
Pessimism Clouds Climate Meeting
This week in Bonn, negotiators are meeting to prepare for this year's annual climate meeting, COP-16 (the 16th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), which opens in late November in Cancun, Mexico. There is little optimism this time around. Even the few areas of agreement that were hailed as great accomplishments in the Copenhagen Accord seem to be back on the negotiating table.
The negotiating document for the Bonn session, which ends on Friday, leaves open - once again -- whether the goal of a new treaty should be to limit the temperature rise to 1 degree, 1.5 degrees or 2 degrees Celsius.
Delegates will have to decide anew whether developed countries should "commit to a goal of mobilizing" $100 billion to support poorer nations or should be "assessed contributions of 1.5 percent of the G.D.P."
Likewise, the negotiating document suggests that delegates will be revisiting emissions reductions goals for richer nations: Should developed countries, as a group, be required to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by "75 to 85 percent," or "at least 80 to 95 percent," or "more than 95 percent" from 1990 levels by 2050? ...
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And once more, we'll revisit the question "is humankind fatal to humans?"
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Tue, Aug 3, 2010
from University of Alaska, via EurekAlert:
Study finds widespread permafrost warming
Permafrost warming continues throughout a wide swath of the Northern Hemisphere, according to a team of scientists assembled during the recent International Polar Year.... The article notes that permafrost temperatures have warmed as much as two degrees Celsius from 20 to 30 years ago. They also found that permafrost near zero degrees Celsius warmed more slowly than colder permafrost.... ...
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I wonder when we'll put the "im" in "impermafrost"?
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Mon, Aug 2, 2010
from University of Georgia, via EurekAlert:
Ice-free ocean may not absorb CO2
Scientists have been looking at ways the Earth might benefit from natural processes to balance the rising heat, and one process had intrigued them, a premise that melting ice at the poles might allow more open water that could absorb carbon dioxide, one of the major compounds implicating in warming.
Now, though, in research just published in the journal Science and led by a University of Georgia biogeochemist, that idea may be one more dead end. In fact, a survey of waters in the Canada Basin, which extends north of Alaska to the North Pole, shows that its value as a potential carbon dioxide "sink" may be short-lived at best and minor in terms of what the planet will need to avoid future problems.... "But our research shows that as the ice melts, the carbon dioxide in the water very quickly reaches equilibrium with the atmosphere, so its use as a place to store CO2 declines dramatically and quickly. We never really understood how limited these waters would be in terms of their usefulness in soaking up carbon dioxide."... And because of this carbon dioxide uptake, the waters become quite acidic and "a poor environment for calcium-carbonate shell-bearing marine organisms," Cai said. ...
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I'm not sure how a cul-de-sac can be composed of so many dead ends.
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