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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(4)
Plague/Virus:(2)
Climate Chaos:(7)
Resource Depletion: (4)
Biology Breach:(7)
Recovery:(5)
This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
ecosystem interrelationships  ~ oil issues  ~ water issues  ~ anthropogenic change  ~ health impacts  ~ toxic buildup  ~ ocean warming  ~ climate impacts  ~ tipping point  ~ deniers  ~ drought  



ApocaDocuments (7) for the "Climate Chaos" scenario from this week
[see full week] ~ [see full Climate Chaos scenario and stories]
Sun, Oct 24, 2010
from NUVO Newsweekly:
A ringside seat at the end of the world: Republicans are smarter than scientists!
As we approach the mid-term election, we are learning that, by and large, Republicans running for office this year are highly intelligent people. They are so intelligent they are even smarter than scientists! That's right. Despite scientific proof that carbon emissions cause higher temperatures and that human beings are creating that very rise in carbon emissions, Republicans instead believe that our rocketing global temperatures are the result of natural geologic cycles or liberal propaganda. ...


Let's form a third party called the Dumbocrats!

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Sun, Oct 24, 2010
from NPR:
GOP Victory May Be Defeat For Climate Change Policy
The more carbon that gets released into the atmosphere, the higher the average temperature rises. That's a scientific fact. Human activities, such as driving, flying, building and even turning on the lights, are the biggest contributor to the release of carbon. That too, is a fact. And yet the majority of Republicans running for House and Senate seats this year disagree. Ken Buck, the GOP senate candidate in Colorado admits he's a climate change denier. Ron Johnson, who leads in the polls of Wisconsin's senatorial race, has said that "it is far more likely that [climate change] is just sunspot activity or something just in the geologic eons of time where we have changes in the climate." And when Christine O'Donnell, the Republican candidate for Senate in Delaware, was asked whether human activity contributes to global warming, she said, "I don't have an opinion on that." Conservatives in Congress are turning against the science behind climate change. That means if Republicans take control this November, there's little hope for climate change policy. ...


I have an opinion, Ms. O'Donnell, that you and your GOP cohorts are not fit for duty.

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Fri, Oct 22, 2010
from BBC:
Warming destabilises freshwater aquatic ecosystems
Future warming could have "profound implications" for the stability of freshwater ecosystems, a study warns. Researchers said warmer water affected the distribution and size of plankton - tiny organisms that form the basis of food chains in aquatic systems. The team warmed plankton-containing vessels by 4C (7F) - the temperature by which some of the world's rivers and lakes could warm over the next century.... "Essentially, what we observed within the phytoplankton (microscopic plants) community was that it switched from a system that was dominated by larger autotrophs (plants that photosynthesise) to a system that was dominated by smaller autotrophs with a lower standing biomass." Dr Yvon-Durocher added that a greater abundance, but lower overall biomass, of smaller phytoplankton had "very important implications for the stability of plankton food webs".... "This meant that the distribution of biomass between plants and animals changed from a... situation where you had a large amount of plants and a smaller amount of animal consumers to an 'inverted pyramid' where you have a smaller quantity of plant biomass and a larger amount of animal biomass," he told BBC News. ...


I eat the food pyramid upside down. Why not the rivers?

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Fri, Oct 22, 2010
from The Washington Post:
Sea ice melting as Arctic temperature rises
The temperature is rising again in the Arctic, with the sea ice extent dropping to one of the lowest levels on record, climate scientists reported Thursday.... Atmospheric scientists concerned about global warming focus on the Arctic because that is a region where the effects are expected to be felt first, and that has been the case in recent years. There was a slowdown in Arctic warming in 2009, but in the first half of 2010 warming has been near a record pace, with monthly readings over 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 Fahrenheit) above normal in northern Canada, according to the report card released Thursday. ...


Earth's canary -- the Arctic -- is flying on a wing and a prayer.

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Wed, Oct 20, 2010
from Live Science:
End of the Earth Postponed
It's a good news/bad news situation for believers in the 2012 Mayan apocalypse. The good news is that the Mayan "Long Count" calendar may not end on Dec. 21, 2012 (and, by extension, the world may not end along with it). The bad news for prophecy believers? If the calendar doesn't end in December 2012, no one knows when it actually will - or if it has already. A new critique, published as a chapter in the new textbook "Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World" (Oxbow Books, 2010), argues that the accepted conversions of dates from Mayan to the modern calendar may be off by as much as 50 or 100 years. ...


Something else to worry about: We don't know which day is doomsday!

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Tue, Oct 19, 2010
from National Geographic:
Winds Slowing Around the World, Study Suggests
Around the world, surface winds are slowing down, a new study says. Strangely enough, the alleged culprits aren't new buildings but new trees. The easing breezes--if also detected higher up--could affect movements of air pollution but may not necessarily give the wind power industry a case of the doldrums, experts say. For the new study, published Sunday by the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists analyzed nearly 30 years' worth of wind speed data collected from more than 800 land-based weather stations, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, where long-term wind-data collection has been most reliable. The average annual surface wind speed in countries in mid-northern latitudes--including the United States, China, and Russia--had dropped by as much as 15 percent, from about 10.3 miles (17 kilometers) an hour to about 9 miles (14 kilometers) an hour, the study found.... But reforestation can explain only about 60 percent of the wind speed reductions, the study says. Changes in air circulation due to global warming may be responsible for the rest, but more studies are needed to be sure, according to Vautard. ...


That's not what the hurricanes are sayin'.

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Mon, Oct 18, 2010
from Scientific American:
Melting Ice Turns 10,000 Walruses into Landlubbers
The lumbering marine mammals normally spend their summers resting on the ice as it floats north, making periodic dives to the ocean floor to forage for food. But this year, as in 2007 and 2009, a lack of ice in the eastern Chukchi Sea has driven thousands of walruses to congregate on land instead.... "This is the third time in the last four years that this has happened, and we're still learning and looking for patterns," Jay said. "Anything could have happened. In 2008, there was enough ice that stayed over the [continental] shelf that they never did come ashore, but we were kind of betting the odds they would come to shore again this year."... One of their initial studies, published last week, found "a clear trend of worsening conditions" for the animals through the end of this century. "Our biggest concern right now is stampeding," said Bruce Woods, a spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife Service's Alaska regional office. "That's the big risk posed to these animals." That's because the intensely social -- but easily spooked -- animals have congregated in numbers that dwarf their normal groupings of up to 500 animals. ...


There's a worsening trend of evidence supporting "a clear trend of worsening conditions."

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