ApocaDocuments (11) for the "Climate Chaos" scenario from this week
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Sun, Aug 29, 2010
from Reuters, via Scientific American:
Pakistanis too broken to rebuild in flood crisis
He has been walking for two days with a 20-kg (44 lb) sack of wheat on his back. Food shortages caused by the disaster have sent prices soaring and the only market he can afford is many kilometers away.
"How can I think about rebuilding? I have no way of making money and I am just too tired," said the 50-year-old farmer.
Madyan, in the northwest Swat valley, looks more like an earthquake zone than a flood-stricken area.
Four-storey hotels that fueled the local economy vanished. Buildings have been flattened, with cars sandwiched between slabs of concrete. Roads were dragged down and all that's left behind are 30-meter (100-foot) dirt cliffs crumbling into a river.
Pakistan's government was heavily criticized after its sluggish response to the floods, which hit about one-third of the country, made more than 6 million homeless, and threaten to the bring the economy to its knees without outside intervention....
"The government is robbing everything from us," he said. "If this continues there will be lots of angry young men here. They could join the Taliban. They have nothing else to do." ...
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Act of God, or act of Man, betrayal has consequences.
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Sun, Aug 29, 2010
from SolveClimate:
Chinese Climate Negotiator Provides Candid Take on What Happened in Copenhagen
First, by announcing programs and targets for the coming decade prior to the talks, the government continued to show the world that China is a responsible nation. Those plans were unconditional, as we do not believe that the future of mankind should be used as a bargaining chip - a position that contrasts sharply with the stance of developed nations.... They did not consider that their proposed 30 percent cuts have a long list of conditions attached, yet when we aim to cut carbon-intensity by 40 percent they say we are doing nothing.... The talks focused on two issues. One was long term goals. As disagreement over atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentrations and 2050 emissions targets was too great, these were not covered in the agreement, which specified only a goal of limiting any temperature increase to two degrees Celsius [above pre-industrial levels].... China is bound to be dependent on coal for energy - we cannot afford oil as an alternative when it costs more than US$100 dollars (680 yuan) a barrel.... Many problems can only be solved through development.
We cannot blindly accept that protecting the climate is humanity's common interest - national interests should come first.... The individual can save power, but there are 600 million people in India without electricity - the country has to develop and meet that need. And if that increases emissions, I say, "So what?" The people have a right to a better life.... Some EU nations have done well on emissions reductions, but the United States, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Spain and Italy have not just failed to make cuts – they have significantly increased their emissions. And they do not seem to feel they have done anything wrong. ...
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This is the way the world ends / not with a bang, but an economic justification.
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Sun, Aug 29, 2010
from Telegraph.co.uk:
UN climate change panel to be warned over reports
Conducted by a committee of representatives from the world's leading scientific bodies, the analysis is expected to recommend a number of changes to the way the IPCC compiles and checks its extensive 1,000 page reports.
The committee, which is made up of scientific organisations that form the InterAcademy Council, is also expected to recommend changes to help the IPCC keep its reports, which take around six years to complete, more up to date with current science.... The IPCC has been under scrutiny after it admitted making an error in its 2007 report, that stated Himalayan glaciers could melt to a fifth of current levels by 2035 - a statement that was wrong by over 300 years.... Speaking ahead of his lecture, he said: "The IPCC has not sufficiently adapted to the changing science and politics of climate change, nor to the changing expected and demanded role of science and expertise in society.
"The IPCC's approach of seeking consensus obscures and constricts both scientific and wider social debates about both knowledge-driven and value-driven uncertainties that surround climate change politics." ...
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Glad someone has a time machine.
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Fri, Aug 27, 2010
from Guardian:
Pakistan flood victims flee Thatta after another levee is breached
Hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis have fled the historic southern city of Thatta in Sindh province after the swollen Indus river broke a levee and flooded new areas.
Around 175,000 people, about 70 percent of the city's population, were believed to have fled their homes overnight, said Manzoor Sheikh, a senior government official. Authorities were trying to repair the broken levee 78 miles south-east of the major port city of Karachi and arranging transport for people trying to leave.
"The situation is getting worse," said local disaster official Hadi Baksh Kalhoro. "The water is flowing into a nearby canal endangering Thatta city."... Many historic tombs, graves and other sites linked to the Mughal empire that once ruled the subcontinent are at risk in Sindh. Some people have refused to leave the danger zone while others have taken shelter in an ancient graveyard for Muslim saints.... The floods began with the onset of the monsoon and have ravaged large parts of Pakistan, from the mountainous northwest to the agricultural heartlands. More than 1,500 people have died, almost 17.2 million people have been significantly affected, and about 1.2m homes have been destroyed or badly damaged, according to the UN. ...
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That "Pakistan Flood" story is still around? It's been weeks!
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Thu, Aug 26, 2010
from CBC:
Huge ice chunk breaks off Ellesmere Island
A large parcel of ice has fractured from a massive ice shelf on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, marking the third known case of Arctic ice loss this summer alone.
The chunk of ice, which scientists estimate is roughly the size of Bermuda, broke away from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf on the island's northern coast around Aug. 18, according to NASA satellite imagery.
At 40 metres thick, the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf is estimated to be 3,000 to 5,000 years old, jutting off the island like an extension of the land.
"The cracks are going right to the mainland, basically, right to Ellesmere Island," John England, a professor of earth and atmospheric sciences with the University of Alberta, told CBC News on Tuesday. "So, in the core of the ice shelf itself, the fracturing is occurring.
"I think that's really quite significant, that it's like the most resistant and most tenacious part of the ice shelf is now being dismantled."...
England said there is still a month to go in the summer ice loss season in the Arctic Ocean, raising the possibility that other parts of the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf -- particularly on the eastern side -- could easily break off.
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It's those eco-nazi terrorists, blowing ice up to convince us that the greenhouse thing is real.
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Thu, Aug 26, 2010
from Yahoo News:
Behold the awesome power of the fire tornado
It turns out that "firestorm" isn't just a figure of speech.
In a scene that looks like something straight out of the Book of Revelation, brushfires in Brazil combined with strong wind gusts to spark a tornado of fire. The bizarre weather event trailed flames in its wake as it touched down in the town of Aracatuba and around its surrounding countryside. Aracatuba hasn't seen any rain in three months.
The flames brought traffic to a halt on a nearby road then disappeared. One local citizen caught the fearsome spectacle on camera. You can watch the raw footage... ...
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The Apocalypse is going to be way cool!
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Thu, Aug 26, 2010
from Sydney Morning Herald:
Declining trees spell gloom for planet
LESS rainfall and rising global temperatures are damaging one of the world's best guardians against climate change: trees.
A global study, published in the journal Science, shows that the amount of carbon dioxide being soaked up by the world's forests in the past decade has declined, reversing a 20-year trend.
It diminishes hopes that global warming can be seriously slowed down by the mass planting of trees in carbon sinks. Although plants generally grow bigger as a result of absorbing carbon-enriched air, they need more water and nutrients to do so, and they have been getting less. ...
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There's always kudzu.
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Thu, Aug 26, 2010
from Inter Press Service:
Climate Change Policy Ignores Women Farmers
...Research has shown that women are more likely to feel the effects of climate change because they have less access to resources. Changing weather patterns increase poor women's work burden on gathering water and firewood. Girls may be forced to forgo school in order to contribute to the increased household work.
Where traditional land tenure is practiced, women may lose land normally reserved for growing crops for household consumption to give way for commercial crops.
The South African government, through its Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA), is in the process of developing a national climate change policy. Consultations with a few environmental experts and civil society organisations took place in May.... ...
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Does this mean my foot rub is going to be delayed again?
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Wed, Aug 25, 2010
from Climatewire:
If a Country Sinks Beneath the Sea, Is It Still a Country?
Rising ocean levels brought about by climate change have created a flood of unprecedented legal questions for small island nations and their neighbors. Among them: If a country disappears, is it still a country? Does it keep its seat at the United Nations? Who controls its offshore mineral rights? Its shipping lanes? Its fish?
And if entire populations are forced to relocate -- as could be the case with citizens of the Maldives, Tuvalu, Kiribati and other small island states facing extinction -- what citizenship, if any, can those displaced people claim? ...
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If a tree on a submerged island falls and there's no one there to hear it, will it drown?
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Tue, Aug 24, 2010
from PNAS, via Scientific American:
All-out geoengineering still would not stop sea level rise
Mimicking volcanoes by throwing particles high into the sky. Maintaining a floating armada of mirrors in space. Burning plant and other organic waste to make charcoal and burying it--or burning it as fuel and burying the CO2 emissions. Even replanting trees. All have been mooted as potential methods of "geoengineering"--"deliberate large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment," as the U.K.'s Royal Society puts it.... Arguably a more devastating consequence would be the rise of the seas as warmer waters expand and melting icecaps fill ocean basins higher, potentially swamping nations and the estimated 150 million people living within one meter of high tide. Can geoengineering hold back that tide?
That's what scientists attempted to assess with computer models in a paper published online August 23 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In their words, "sea level rise by 2100 will likely be 30 centimeters higher than 2000 levels despite all but the most aggressive geoengineeering." In large part, that's because the ocean has a lot of thermal inertia: it only slowly warms as a result of increasing greenhouse gas levels--and it will only slowly cool down again.... Perhaps the only way to reduce warming enough to minimize the rise of the oceans is an all-out effort that also includes burning biomass as fuel (either to replace coal or gasoline or both) and pairing it with CO2 capture and storage. Together, they could suck down greenhouse gas levels by 180 ppm--more than enough to bring us below pre-industrial levels. As a result, sea level rise is held to just 10 centimers by 2100, according to the author's modeling.
Such extensive geoengineering seems impractical given its economic (and environmental) cost. ...
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We can't just build an armada of floating refrigerators?
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Tue, Aug 24, 2010
from Jakarta Globe, via DesdemonaDespair:
Indonesia reaches 'super-extreme level of weather'
Indonesia has been experiencing its most extreme weather conditions in recorded history, meteorologists warned on Wednesday as torrential rains continued to pound the capital.
All regions across the archipelago have been experiencing abnormal and often catastrophic weather, an official from the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) said.
"We have reached a super-extreme level of weather this year, the first time in our history, and this is much worse than what we experienced back in 1998, when the La Nina caused extreme weather in the country," Edvin Aldrian warned. ...
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Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout till you have drenched our... wait, no, don't do that!
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