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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(4)
Plague/Virus:(2)
Climate Chaos:(10)
Resource Depletion: (4)
Biology Breach:(7)
Recovery:(3)
This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
anthropogenic change  ~ deniers  ~ koyaanisqatsi  ~ efficiency increase  ~ oil issues  ~ ecosystem interrelationships  ~ economic myopia  ~ carbon emissions  ~ food crisis  ~ stupid humans  ~ short-term thinking  



ApocaDocuments (10) for the "Climate Chaos" scenario from this week
[see full week] ~ [see full Climate Chaos scenario and stories]
Fri, Nov 5, 2010
from Nature.com:
Ocean pH dropping faster than expected
Thanks to rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, some Arctic waters are already experiencing pH dips that could be harmful to sea life. What's more, this acidification seems to be happening more rapidly than models have predicted.... "Models are probably underestimating at least by a few years the impact of ocean acidification in the Arctic," says Jeremy Mathis, a chemical oceanographer at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. "We don't know what the organisms' responses are yet, but the conditions are already there to potentially be disruptive to the ecosystems."... One important source of carbonate ions is aragonite, a particularly soluble form of calcium carbonate. Seawater is usually saturated with aragonite. However a recent study in Biogeosciences estimated that by 2016, according to the IPCC's mid-range emissions projections, aragonite will fall below this level in some Arctic waters for at least one month a year. By the end of the century, it predicts that the entire Arctic Ocean could be under-saturated with respect to aragonite. "But we don't have to wait until 2016," says Mathis. "We're already seeing places in the Arctic where these under-saturations are happening now." High latitude waters in the Arctic and Antarctic are particularly sensitive to pH changes, as cold waters absorb more gas than warm waters.... The news gets worse. Several speakers on the panel, including Richard Feely, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who has been leading large-scale ocean surveys of acidification, warned that the acidity of seawater could double by the end of the century. ...


Whoops! My bad! Erroneous moi! Ich bin ausgeguilty! Can we move on now?

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Thu, Nov 4, 2010
from NUVO Newsweekly:
A ringside seat at the end of the world: The Titanic deck chairs are burning
Let's mix up some metaphors to try and fathom what happened during the elections. At the very moment that we should be peeling back the onion of denial on climate change, and moving WITHOUT PAUSE to an energy efficient economy -- and human behavioral change toward conservation -- we just fell further down the rabbit hole. Republicans, by and large a motley group of climate change deniers, have now taken over the House of Representatives. The Democrats still have a majority in the Senate, but they are by and large a motley group of climate change cowards, as many of them must bend over for coal and oil industry interests.... And so with this election we are fiddling around with the chairs on the Titanic as Rome is burning. ...


Not to mention being up a creek, paddlessly!

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Thu, Nov 4, 2010
from Telegraph.co.uk, from DesdemonaDespair:
Earth would take 100,000 years to recover from global warming say geologists
Professor Jim Zachos, of the University of California, said that 55 million years ago volcanic activity caused around 4,500 gigatons of greenhouse gases to be released into the atmosphere over thousands of years. This caused the planet to warm by 6C (10.8F), forcing whole ecosystems, including early mammals, to adapt, migrate or die out in certain areas. Prof Zachos said that if the world continues to pump out greenhouse gases at the current rate, around 5,000 gigatons of greenhouse gases will be released into the atmosphere over a few hundred years. He said this will cause a more rapid temperature rise that at any other time in history and could cause "mass extinction of species". "The impacts will be pretty severe compared to 55 million years ago in terms of evolution of this planet," he said. The Geological Society warned that it could take the Earth 100,000 years to recover.... "The geological evidence from the 55 million year event and from earlier warming episodes suggests that such an addition [a massive increase in greenhouse gases caused by the activities of mankind] is likely to raise average global temperatures by at least 5 to 6C, and possibly more, and that recovery of the Earth's climate in the absence of mitigation measures could take 100,000 years or more. Numerical models of the climate system support such an interpretation. In the light of the evidence presented here it is reasonable to conclude that emitting further large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over time is likely to be unwise, uncomfortable though that fact may be." ...


Pfft. Geologists. What do they know?

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Wed, Nov 3, 2010
from New York Times:
Rising Seas and the Groundwater Equation
Worldwide overpumping of groundwater, particularly in northern India, Iran, Mexico, northeastern China and the American West, more than doubled from 1960 to 2000 and is responsible for about 25 percent of the rise in sea level, according to estimates in a new study by a team of Dutch researchers published in Geophysical Review Letters. The general idea that groundwater used for irrigation is running off into ocean-bound rivers or evaporating into the clouds, only to end up raining into the ocean, has been around for two decades or so; it was a focus of a 2005 paper in The Journal of Hydrogeology. But Peter H. Gleick, a leading expert on water issues, said the new paper offers a fresh way of quantifying the phenomenon. Mr. Gleick, president of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute, said that experts on groundwater issues "have known for a long time that that water ultimately ends up in the oceans and contributes to sea level rise. What we haven't known is the magnitude and severity of the problem." ...


The sky IS falling!

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Wed, Nov 3, 2010
from USA Today:
Global warming may bring giant, voracious crabs to Antarctica
Changing ocean temperatures may allow giant, voracious, predatory crabs to enter the unique continental-shelf ecosystems of Antarctica. Research by scientists at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton in the United Kingdom found that even small increases in water temperature due to global warming could bring king crabs into new areas. King crabs are a popular food source. But historically they haven't been able to live in the high-Antarctic continental shelves, so the species that currently live there have not evolved to cope with them. ...


I suppose we had this coming.

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Wed, Nov 3, 2010
from Scientific American:
Geoengineering faces ban
A last-ditch remedy for an ailing planet, or a reckless scheme that could be a greater threat to life on Earth than the problem it aims to solve? Opinions are sharply divided on geoengineering--potential massive interventions in the global climate system, intended to forestall the worst effects of climate change. Last week, participants in the international Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) made their views clear at a meeting in Nagoya, Japan. They included in their agreement to protect biodiversity a moratorium on geo-engineering "until there is an adequate scientific basis on which to justify such activities and appropriate consideration of the associated risks." The moratorium, expected to be in force by 2012, isn't legally binding, and given the preliminary nature of studies in the area it is unlikely to affect researchers in the near future. But some scientists fear that the CBD's stance will sow confusion and delay at a time when governments and research groups are exploring how geo-engineering might feasibly be undertaken if global warming accelerates disastrously. ...


Why would geoengineering concern biodiversity scientists? Complex living ecosystem interrelationships have nothing to do with corporate-military politics.

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Tue, Nov 2, 2010
from Reuters:
U.S. wind power posts slowest quarter since 2007
The U.S. wind power industry had its slowest quarter since 2007 in the just-ended third quarter, as investors turned away from the sector after Congress did not pass a renewable power mandate, an industry group said. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) said U.S. developers added 395 megawatts of electricity capacity at wind farms in the third quarter -- the slowest quarter since 2007. Year-to-date installations of 1,634 MW, were down 72 percent versus the same period last year. The U.S. Senate has not passed a national renewable energy mandate that would have required power utilities to generate minimum amounts of power from sources like wind and solar power. ...


At this point, 'bout all we have is breeze power.

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Tue, Nov 2, 2010
from Guardian:
Is climate science disinformation a crime against humanity?
Although there is an important role for scepticism in science, for almost 30 years some corporations have supported a disinformation campaign about climate change science. While it may be reasonable to be somewhat sceptical about climate change models, these untruths are not based upon reasonable scepticism but outright falsification and distortions of climate change science.... According the New York Times article, the fossil fuel industry has "created and lavishly financed institutes to produce anti-global warming studies, paid for rallies and websites to question the science, and generated scores of economic analyses that purport to show that policies to reduce emissions of climate-altering gases will have a devastating effect on jobs and the overall economy." Disinformation about the state of climate change science is extraordinarily - if not criminally - irresponsible, because the consensus scientific view is based upon strong evidence that climate change: * Is already being experienced by tens of thousands in the world; * Will be experienced in the future by millions of people from greenhouse gas emissions that have already been emitted but not yet felt due to lags in the climate system; and, * Will increase dramatically in the future unless greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically reduced from existing global emissions levels.... We may not have a word for this type of crime yet, but the international community should find a way of classifying extraordinarily irresponsible scientific claims that could lead to mass suffering as some type of crime against humanity. ...


The tobacco executives all retired rich.

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Mon, Nov 1, 2010
from The Vancouver Tyee:
US Tea Party's Deep Ties to Oil Sands Giant
The Tea Party movement, poised to help shift the U.S. legislature to the right and stymie President Obama's green agenda, has financial and organizational ties to Koch Industries, one of America's biggest processors of Alberta oil sands crude. Congressional midterm elections on Tuesday could create a U.S. government less amenable to climate change action, partly a result of Tea Party influence. That would likely bode well for Alberta's carbon-intensive oil sands industry, which has long worried that national greenhouse gas standards south of the border will reduce profits and restrict future growth.... Koch Industries provides critical support for the Tea Party movement through Americans for Prosperity (AFP), an advocacy group it established in 2003 and now helps fund. AFP sponsored and helped organize nearly 1,000 Tea Party rallies in April. ...


Sounds like a bunch of dicks to me.

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Mon, Nov 1, 2010
from London Guardian:
Obama environment agenda under threat from incoming Republicans
Republican leaders have begun gathering evidence for sweeping investigations of Barack Obama's environmental agenda, from climate science to the BP oil spill, if as expected, they take control of the House of Representatives in the 2 November mid-term elections, the Guardian has learned. The new Congress will not be installed until next January, but Democrats and environmental organisations say they are braced for multiple, aggressive investigations from the incoming Republican majority. Republican leaders have also raised the possibility of disbanding the global warming committee in Congress, established by the Democratic speaker, Nancy Pelosi. ...


It would be soooo cool if, upon investigation, it turned out global warming isn't real.

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