ApocaDocuments (8) for the "Climate Chaos" scenario from this week
[see full week] ~ [see full Climate Chaos scenario and stories]
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Sun, Sep 19, 2010
from LA Times:
Obama administration leaves climate change to Congress, not the courts
Environmentalists say they are surprised and disappointed that the Obama administration is urging the Supreme Court to kill a major global warming lawsuit that seeks new limits on carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants.... Though the administration seeks new limits on carbon pollution from Congress or through the Environmental Protection Agency, it says courts should step aside. But some environmentalists call this one-track approach shortsighted and a mistake.... Environmentalists last year won a major victory in the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York in a global warming suit brought on behalf of eight states, including Connecticut and California. It sought new limits on greenhouse gases from power plants throughout the Midwest and South.
But late last month, the Obama administration joined the case on the side of the utilities and said the suit should be dismissed. The brief by Acting U.S. Solicitor Gen. Neal Katyal argued that the plaintiffs, including the states, do not have standing to sue and that global warming is suited to "political or regulatory -- not judicial -- resolution."
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I think I'll try to repair this engine with only a screwdriver in someone else's hands.
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Fri, Sep 17, 2010
from IRIN:
Nepal: Global warming swells glacial lakes, endangering thousands
As global warming shrinks glaciers along the world's highest peaks, glacial lakes in Nepal are increasingly at risk of bursting the natural dams containing them - endangering the lives of tens of thousands in communities below, experts say. Nepalese authorities have identified about 20 "priority" lakes at risk of leading to glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs), and are using various methods to reduce the volume of water in some of them.... "GLOFs come very fast, carry great big boulders; they can push down rock walls and destroy river banks. The destructive impact is very, very high," Mool told IRIN by phone from Kathmandu.
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Didn't the Himalayan glaciers get the message about the IPCC being wrong about them?
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Wed, Sep 15, 2010
from ClimateProgress:
Serreze: Arctic is "continuing down in a death spiral."
National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) director Mark Serreze slammed the anti-science disinformers yesterday:
"There are claims coming from some communities that the Arctic sea ice is recovering, is getting thicker again. That's simply not the case. It's continuing down in a death spiral.
Every bit of evidence we have says the ice is thinning. That means there's less energy needed to melt it out than there used to be."... Arctic sea ice volume, extent, and area continue to shrink apace as we approach the dramatic end to this year's melt season. The NSIDC tells me extent dropped to 4.76 million square kilometers today -- which is below the majority of even the most recent expert predictions logged with the Study of Environmental Arctic Change... ...
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Pretty soon there'll be nothing to get in the way of oil exploration!
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Wed, Sep 15, 2010
from San Francisco Chronicle:
Did BP write your child's textbook?
A new environmental curriculum, written over the course of seven years, is about to be launched in California. Guess who helped write it? BP.
That's right, the company earned a place on the working group that developed the [optional] program's guiding principles despite a checkered safety record even before this summer's catastrophic spill. BP was the only oil company to participate in writing the curriculum, which will be taught to 6 million K-12 students across several subjects. But other corporate giants, including PG&E, Sempra Energy and the American Plastics Council were also considered "stakeholders."
Corporations in the most environmentally destructive industries are considered stakeholders in what our students learn about the environment.
Although the California EPA -- which oversaw the state environmental curriculum development -- insists BP played a minor role, the high school materials praise BP for its donation to energy research at the University of California.
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"A" is for Appalling.
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Tue, Sep 14, 2010
from PR Watch:
Lauria Quit Cigarettes, But Now He's on the Bottle
...Bottled water means big money for beverage manufacturers, but people are starting to realize that it's also big drain on their wallets and the environment. Bottled water costs a whopping 2,000 times more than tap water, and about 40 percent of mass-produced bottled water brands come from the same sources as tap water. Tap water is also subjected to more regulations than bottled water. Moreover, bottled water also siphons money from taxpayers' pockets. Last March, Corporate Accountability International surveyed the budgets of five states and found that taxpayers in those states were shelling out between $78,000 and $450,000 for bottled water, a resource that essentially flows free from public taps. People are discovering this information to the detriment of the bottled water companies, which made $11 billion on the product in 2008.... When he worked for the tobacco industry, Tom Lauria used to deny smoking was addictive. He denied the connection between secondhand smoke and respiratory disease. He also denied the health affects of parental smoking on children, opposed restrictions on cigarette vending machines and told us that efforts to end smoking in public places would lead to Prohibition. Now Lauria works for the International Bottled Water Association, which occupies the same address as the American Beverage Association, the soft drink companies' lobbying group. Lauria is running a campaign to try to convince people that bottled water is indisposable. ...
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When Lauria's free, I'd like to hire him to convince people that the planet is not warming!
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Tue, Sep 14, 2010
from Washington Post:
Miniature nuclear reactors might be a safe, efficient source of power
Take a mental stroll through the streets of Anytown, U.S.A. City hall is on your left, the movie theater on your right. Smell the delights from the bakery. And in the distance, there's the gentle steam plume billowing from the cooling tower of the miniature nuclear reactor that powers the quaint little burg. Not your idea of Americana? Wait a decade or two. The government and its private partners are developing reactors that one day might power your home town.
Not long ago, siting a nuclear reactor anywhere near a population center would have been unthinkable. While the 1979 Three Mile Island reactor meltdown didn't cause any deaths or injuries, it soured Americans on nuclear energy. Construction of new reactors came to an abrupt halt. The dramatic Chernobyl meltdown in 1986, meanwhile, created widespread fear that another accident could be even more disastrous. ...
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Is that nuclear reactor in your pocket ... or are you happy to see me!
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Tue, Sep 14, 2010
from Alaska Dispatch, via DesdemonaDespair:
Tens of thousands of walrus on land haulout near Point Lay, Alaska
A few miles down the coastline, tens of thousands of walruses are jammed together in a tight beach-bound pod to catch a little R&R from their daily routine.
This is not a small group -- we're talking in the neighborhood of 40 million collective pounds of massive marine mammal.... But government scientists suspect it has more to do with an increasing lack of sea ice. Walruses have been known to haul out onto land in large numbers in Russia, but never on the Alaska side of their migratory corridor in the tens of thousands, as is being witnessed this year. ...
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"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes, and ships, and sealing-wax,
Of cabbages, and kings,
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
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Mon, Sep 13, 2010
from The Vancouver Sun:
Ottawa's media rules muzzling federal scientists, say observers
The Harper government has tightened the muzzle on federal scientists, going so far as to control when and what they can say about floods at the end of the last ice age.
Natural Resources Canada scientists were told this spring they need "pre-approval" from Minister Christian Paradis' office to speak with national and international journalists. Their "media lines" also need ministerial approval, say documents obtained by Postmedia News through access-to-information legislation.
The documents say the "new" rules went into force in March and reveal how they apply to not only to contentious issues including the oilsands, but benign subjects such as floods that occurred 13,000 years ago.
They also give a glimpse of how Canadians are being cut off from scientists whose work is financed by taxpayers, critics say, and is often of significant public interest -- be it about fish stocks, genetically modified crops or mercury pollution in the Athabasca River.
"It's Orwellian," says Andrew Weaver, a climatologist at University of Victoria. The public, he says, has a right to know what federal scientists are discovering and learning. ...
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We wouldn't want to unnecessarily alarm the public about the pre-Apocalypse, would we?
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