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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(5)
Plague/Virus:(2)
Climate Chaos:(10)
Resource Depletion: (6)
Biology Breach:(10)
Recovery:(9)
This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
stupid humans  ~ global warming  ~ anthropogenic change  ~ short-term thinking  ~ deniers  ~ contamination  ~ ecosystem interrelationships  ~ climate impacts  ~ oil issues  ~ economic myopia  ~ carbon emissions  



ApocaDocuments (9) for the "Recovery" scenario from this week
[see full week] ~ [see full Recovery scenario and stories]
Sun, Sep 5, 2010
from Glasgow Herald:
War on the car
Stricter and lower speed limits, higher parking charges and a five pence per kilometre road-pricing scheme are being proposed by the Scottish Government as part of a major new offensive to cut the pollution that is disrupting the climate. The suggestions, contained in a key policy report leaked to the Sunday Herald, are part of radical plans being drawn up to meet the ambitious target of a 42 percent cut in carbon emissions by 2020. The government's new package of 30 "proposals and policies" to combat climate change has been welcomed by environmentalists. But some of the measures have already provoked the ire of the car lobby and businesses. The Association of British Drivers dismissed the curbs on cars as "lunatic". They would spark widespread anger, claimed Peter Spinney, the association's co-ordinator in Scotland. ...


Way to cut carbons!

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Fri, Sep 3, 2010
from PhysOrg:
Cheaper, better solar cell is full of holes
A new low-cost etching technique developed at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory can put a trillion holes in a silicon wafer the size of a compact disc. As the tiny holes deepen, they make the silvery-gray silicon appear darker and darker until it becomes almost pure black and able to absorb nearly all colors of light the sun throws at it. At room temperature, the black silicon wafer can be made in about three minutes. At 100 degrees F, it can be made in less than a minute. The breakthrough by NREL scientists likely will lead to lower-cost solar cells that are nonetheless more efficient than the ones used on rooftops and in solar arrays today.... Could the same black-silicon etching result be achieved by substituting the inexpensive chloroauric acid for costly colloidal gold, and then mixing it as before with hydrogen peroxide and hydrofluoric acid? Yost and Branz wondered. Yes, it worked. "Chloroauric acid is much cheaper than colloidal gold," Branz said. "In essence, by skipping a few steps, they were able to make gold nanoparticles from the chloroauric acid at the same time as they were etching holes into the silicon with the gold they had made."... NREL estimates that the black silicon can reduce cell conversion costs by 4 to 8 percent, while using widely available industrial materials and equipment. "That's big," Goodrich added. "The people who are interested in this technology recognize that that difference is valuable real estate." ...


That's an Au-ful big step!

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Thu, Sep 2, 2010
from Scientific American:
Eternal Fascinations with the End: Why We're Suckers for Apocalyptic Endings
You might think that the enterprise of science, with its method and its facts, would inoculate us against the most extravagant doomsday obsessions. But it doesn't. If anything, it just gives us more to worry about. Some of the most fervent and convincing doomsayers, after all, are scientists. Bill Joy, co-founder and former chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, has warned that of out-of-control nanobots could consume everything on earth. Astronomer Royal Martin Rees has publicly offered a bet that a biological catastrophe--accidental or intentional--will kill at least one million people by 2020 (so far, no takers). Numerous climatologists sound the alarm about the possibility of runaway global warming. They all stand on the shoulders of giants: British economist Thomas Malthus predicted in the 19th century that the rise in population would lead to widespread famine and catastrophe. It never happened, but that didn't stop Stanford biologist Paul R. Ehrlich from renewing the warning in his 1968 book The Population Bomb when he predicted that global famine was less than two decades away. Catastrophe didn't arrive then, either, but does that mean it never will? Not necessarily. Still, people often worry disproportionately about disasters that are unlikely to occur.... Some researchers think that apocalyptic dread feeds off our collective anxiety about events that lie outside our individual control.... The desire to treat terrible events as the harbinger of the end of civilization itself also has roots in another human trait: vanity.... Our fears of the apocalypse may in the end mirror the most fundamental fear of all: fear of our own mortality. ...


Does it matter if we hope we're wrong?

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Thu, Sep 2, 2010
from Jeffrey Sachs, in Scientific American:
The Deepening Crisis: When Will We Face the Planet's Environmental Problems?
During the four years of this column, the world's inability to face up to the reality of the growing environmental crisis has become even more palpable. Every major goal that international bodies have established for global environmental policy as of 2010 has been postponed, ignored or defeated. Sadly, this year will quite possibly become the warmest on record, yet another testimony to human-induced environmental catastrophes running out of control. This was to be the year of biodiversity. In 2002 nations pledged, under the auspices of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, to slow significantly the planetary loss of biodiversity by 2010. This goal was not even remotely achieved. Indeed, it was barely even noticed by Americans: the U.S. signed the convention in 1992 but never ratified it. Ratifi­cation fell victim to the uniquely American delusion that virtually all of nature should be subdivided into parcels of private property, within which owners should have their way.... The Senate, true to form, sustained its 18th year of inaction on global warming since ratifying the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992.... Fifth, vested corporate interests have mastered the dark arts of propaganda, and they can use their deep pockets to purchase a sea of deliberate misinformation to deceive the public. ...


The free market of corporate politics is my friend! They told me so!

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Thu, Sep 2, 2010
from New Scientist:
For self-healing concrete, just add bacteria and food
Like living bone, concrete could soon be healing its own hairline fractures - with bacteria in the role of osteoblast cells. Worked into the concrete from the beginning, these water-activated bacteria would munch food provided in the mix to patch up cracks and small holes. Concrete reinforced with steel forms the skeleton of many buildings and bridges. But any cracks in its gritty exterior make it vulnerable: "Water is the culprit for concrete because it enters the cracks and it brings aggressive chemicals with it," says Henk Jonkers of Delft University of Technology in Delft, the Netherlands. These chemicals degrade both concrete and steel.... To find bacteria that are happy in such an alkaline environment, Jonkers and his colleagues looked to soda lakes in Russia and Egypt where the pH of the water is naturally high - and found that some strains of Bacillus thrived there. Moreover, the bacteria can take on a dormant spore state for long periods - up to 50 years, according to Jonkers - without food or water. He compares them to seeds waiting for water to germinate. To keep the spores from activating in the wet concrete mix, and to keep them and their calcium lactate food from affecting the quality of the concrete, Jonkers and his colleagues first set both into ceramic pellets 2 to 4 millimetres wide and then added them to the concrete. ...


Can we get some bacteria to make concrete? Now there's some GMO I could get behind.

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Wed, Sep 1, 2010
from Upshot:
Noted anti-global-warming scientist reverses course
With scientific data piling up showing that the world has reached its hottest-ever point in recorded history, global-warming skeptics are facing a high-profile defection from their ranks. Bjorn Lomborg, author of the influential tract "The Skeptical Environmentalist," has reversed course on the urgency of global warming, and is now calling for action on "a challenge humanity must confront." Lomborg, a Danish academic, had previously downplayed the risk of acute climate change. A former member of Greenpeace, he was a vocal critic of the Kyoto Protocol -- a global U.N. treaty to cut carbon emissions that the United States refused to ratify -- as well as numerous other environmental causes. ...


He's a bjorn-again believer!

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Tue, Aug 31, 2010
from Washington Post:
Judge rejects Ken Cuccinelli's probe of U-Va. global warming records
A Virginia judge on Monday dismissed a civil subpoena issued by Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II to the University of Virginia that had sought documents related to the work of a global warming scientist and former university professor.... Cuccinelli, a vocal global warming skeptic who has contended that climate scientists have colluded to skew data, said he thinks that the documents are key to deciding whether to launch a fraud investigation into Mann's work. He said he plans to reissue the demand, crafting it with the judge's ruling in mind. He indicated that he might appeal portions of the ruling. ...


I don't think global warming skeptics should be in positions of decision-making power.

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Tue, Aug 31, 2010
from New York Times:
Banks Grow Wary of Environmental Risks
Blasting off mountaintops to reach coal in Appalachia or churning out millions of tons of carbon dioxide to extract oil from sand in Alberta are among environmentalists' biggest industrial irritants. But they are also legal and lucrative. For a growing number of banks, however, that does not seem to matter. After years of legal entanglements arising from environmental messes and increased scrutiny of banks that finance the dirtiest industries, several large commercial lenders are taking a stand on industry practices that they regard as risky to their reputations and bottom lines. ...


Ya think insurance companies might catch on?

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Mon, Aug 30, 2010
from Discovery:
9 Essential Clothing Repair Skills - Make Your Clothes Last Longer!
One of the best ways to buy less stuff is to buy fewer, but higher quality items, and to keep them in good repair. This is very true for clothing, and by learning a few simple skills, you can keep your clothes looking and fitting great, longer. These skills are also important to learn if you have kids -- the things they manage to do to clothes are just amazing sometimes. Save money, save your clothes -- here are nine simple skills to learn. ...


I thought clothes had no user-serviceable parts!

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