ApocaDocuments (5) for the "Resource Depletion" scenario from this week
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Fri, Aug 27, 2010
from Guardian:
Coffee threatened by beetles in a warming world
A tiny insect that thrives in warmer temperatures -- the coffee berry borer -- has been spreading steadily, devastating coffee plants in Africa, Latin America, and around the world.... The beetle is a relatively recent problem in Ethiopia and Latin America, where most Arabica coffee is grown. A field survey of Ethiopia's coffee-growing regions conducted in the late 1960s found no trace of the beetle, but in 2003 researchers reported that the pest was widespread.... Until recently, the coffee berry borer was confined to just a few regions in Central Africa. But since the 1980s, the beetle has gradually spread to every coffee-growing region except Hawaii, Nepal, and Papua New Guinea. Juliana Jaramillo, a biologist at Kenya's International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology, suspects temperature increases are to blame. ...
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A collapsing environment and no coffee?
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Fri, Aug 27, 2010
from CBC:
Pursuing the mystery herring loss near Nova Scotia
Scientists from the Bedford Institute of Oceanography are on a mission to find out why herring fishermen in Nova Scotia are reporting fewer and smaller fish this season.
The researchers are using sounders and sonars to count the number of herring in an area known as the German Bank, off the southwestern coast of Nova Scotia.
The count may help explain why the catches have been coming up smaller this year.
"When the fishermen don't land fish, people think that there may not be fish," said Gary Melvin, a research scientist. "There can actually be fish. But we want to be sure, one way or the other."
Some fishermen said they believe the catches are smaller because the fish are avoiding warmer water temperatures near the surface and diving deeper, thereby eluding the large nets used to catch them.
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Avoiding warmer temperatures would be a smart survival strategy.
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Thu, Aug 26, 2010
from IRIN:
Record low water levels threaten millions in Cambodia
Late rains and record low water levels in Cambodia's two main fresh water systems will affect food security and the livelihoods of millions, government officials and NGOs warn.
"We expect the impact to be very strong," said Nao Thuok, director of the Fisheries Administration, adding that low water levels along the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers were already limiting fish production and migration.
Crucial spawning grounds in floodplains along the rivers remained dry. "The places where the fish usually lay their eggs do not have much water so the fish population will decrease a lot," he warned.
Approximately six million Cambodians or 45 percent of the population depend on fishing in the Mekong and Tonle Sap basins, the government's Inland Fisheries Research and Development Institute, reports.
The annual "flood" season of daily rain usually starts in July but began a month late, local agricultural surveyors say.... Not only the fisheries sector is suffering, however.
Rice farmer Meas Chan Thorn in western Pursat Province was only able to plant last week, a month behind schedule, because of the late rains, and predicted yields would be halved. ...
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I'm sure this is just a "localized weather phenomenon."
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Tue, Aug 24, 2010
from PhysOrg:
The world is running out of helium: Nobel prize winner
A renowned expert on helium says we are wasting our supplies of the inert gas helium and will run out within 25 to 30 years, which will have disastrous consequences for hospitals and industry. Liquid helium is vital for its use in cooling the superconducting magnets in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners. There is no substitute because no other substance has a lower boiling point. Helium is also vital in the manufacture of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and fiber optics.... Professor Richardson warned the gas is not cheap because the supply is inexhaustible, but because of the Helium Privatisation Act passed in 1996 by the US Congress. The Act required the helium stores held underground near Amarillo in Texas to be sold off at a fixed rate by 2015 regardless of the market value, to pay off the original cost of the reserve. The Amarillo storage facility holds around half the Earth's stocks of helium: around a billion cubic meters of the gas. The US currently supplies around 80 percent of the world's helium supplies.... the reserve is a collection of disused underground mines, pipes and vats extending over 300 km from north of Amarillo into Kansas. He warned that when helium is released to the atmosphere, in helium balloons for example, it is lost forever.
There is no chemical way of manufacturing helium, and the supplies we have originated in the very slow radioactive alpha decay that occurs in rocks. It costs around 10,000 times more to extract helium from air than it does from rocks and natural gas reserves. ...
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That "Contract with America" really paid off.
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Mon, Aug 23, 2010
from Guardian:
Coral doctor sounds the alarm about more acidic seas
The changes he sees in ocean chemistry spell trouble for the coral that he studies closely. If the acidification process continues on its current trajectory, it poses a dire threat to the whole marine ecosystem.
"What I'm really concerned about with ocean acidification is that we are facing the prospect of a crash in marine food webs." says Guinotte. "There is no question that many of my colleagues in marine science are scared about what is happening. We know we need a more precise understanding of the changes and biological responses now under way -- and we need it as quickly as possible, before it is too late to turn things around."... As carbon dioxide is absorbed by seawater, hydrogen ions are released. This lower the pH, making the water more acidic. Measurements indicate that Earth's oceans are already about 30 percent more acidic than they were before the industrial revolution. As the number of hydrogen ions has risen, the number of carbonate ions available in seawater has gone down. This carbonate deficit makes life more difficult for the "marine calcifiers," species such as coral and shellfish that use carbonate to build their skeletons and protective shells.... "From the standpoint of the oceans," Guinotte says, "there is no escaping the fact that we are going to need major reductions in our CO2 emissions -- something like 80 to 90 percent. When we see governments arguing about reductions of 10 to 15 percent, I think all of us in the marine science community need to say that CO2 reductions of this scale are simply not going to be sufficient. We have to get off fossil fuels." ...
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CO2 reductions of 85-90 percent? Are you tripping?
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