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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(3)
Plague/Virus:(2)
Climate Chaos:(14)
Resource Depletion: (3)
Biology Breach:(4)
Recovery:(5)
This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
anthropogenic change  ~ contamination  ~ carbon emissions  ~ climate impacts  ~ global warming  ~ ecosystem interrelationships  ~ deniers  ~ efficiency increase  ~ hunting to extinction  ~ algal bloom  ~ falling fertility  



ApocaDocuments (5) for the "Recovery" scenario from this week
[see full week] ~ [see full Recovery scenario and stories]
Sat, Nov 20, 2010
from USA Today:
Kimberly-Clark rolls out tube-free Scott toilet paper
On Monday, Kimberly-Clark, one of the world's biggest makers of household paper products, will begin testing Scott Naturals Tube-Free toilet paper at Walmart and Sam's Club stores throughout the Northeast. If sales take off, it may introduce the line nationally and globally -- and even consider adapting the technology into its paper towel brands. No, the holes in the rolls aren't perfectly round. But they do fit over TP spindles and come with this promise: Even the last piece of toilet paper will be usable -- without glue stuck on it.... The 17 billion toilet paper tubes produced annually in the USA account for 160 million pounds of trash, according to Kimberly-Clark estimates, and could stretch more than a million miles placed end-to-end. That's from here to the moon and back -- twice. Most consumers toss, rather than recycle, used tubes, says Doug Daniels, brand manager at Kimberly-Clark. "We found a way to bring innovation to a category as mature as bath tissue," he says. ...


And if sales don't take off, maybe you can just do the right thing anyway?

ApocaDoc
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Fri, Nov 19, 2010
from Earth Institute:
'Small is Also Beautiful' - Appropriate Technology Cuts Rice Famers' Water Use by 30 Percent in Punjab, India
But the Green Revolution in Punjab came with a heavy price. Even as yields per acre shot up year after year, heavy use of pesticides, synthetic fertilizer and tube-irrigation soared as well, contributing to cancer, degrading the natural capital of the soil and-perhaps most importantly-depleting non-renewable underground aquifers at staggering speed. Now, even as agricultural productivity has plateaued, a dropping water table now puts the food security of the entire country at risk.... The team then installed the tensiometers in rice fields. In order to get accurate results, farmers were instructed to irrigate only one acre of their fields based on the tensiometer readings, and to use the other fields as control plots. Initial results were remarkable. On average, farmers irrigated the tensiometer fields 30 to 35 percent less than on control plots--with no adverse impact on yield. In fact, anecdotal reports suggested that in some cases yield actually improved, as farmers were able to minimize some pest diseases associated with excessive standing water. ...


"Appropriate technology" seems so appropriate!

ApocaDoc
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Thu, Nov 18, 2010
from CNN:
Climate project calls for citizen scientists
An international team of climate scientists is calling on the public to help with a new initiative aimed at predicting how the climate will change during the 21st century. Using the collective power of ordinary home computers, scientists from the United Kingdom, United States and South Africa will run thousands of regional climate modeling tests which would otherwise take much longer to complete, even on the most up-to-date supercomputers... With the help of the public's PCs scientists will now start running regional climate models for the western United States, Europe and southern Africa. People interested in signing up to the project can visit http://climateprediction.net/weatherathome/ where they can download all the necessary tools to start running regional climate models from their own computers. ...


C'mon kids let's put on a show!

ApocaDoc
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Wed, Nov 17, 2010
from Climatewire:
The 'Fate of the World' Will Soon Be in Your Hands (Virtually Speaking)
...A British game designer is launching "Fate of the World," a climate change video game giving the gamer total control of the world's energy economy -- and a bird's-eye view of what happens if he or she flips the wrong switches. In a way, a computer game is the perfect medium for the topic. Part of the reason U.S. action is so lukewarm, environmentalists have complained, is that climate's too big to grasp. Carbon dioxide is invisible, and its consequences are too far away. The likely consequences -- future floods, drought, famine -- lack a personal touch. ...


Only problem is with most video games, it's most fun when you destroy things.

ApocaDoc
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Tue, Nov 16, 2010
from Associated Press:
EPA announces Fla. water pollution rules
The federal Environmental Protection Agency for the first time Monday in Florida set numeric water pollution standards for a state although 13 others already have adopted such rules on their own. The federal standards are required by the settlement of a lawsuit last year. They replace Florida's vague descriptive regulations for determining when rivers, lakes and other inland waters are polluted with such contaminants as fertilizer and animal and human waste. Those pollutants are blamed for toxic algae blooms that have clogged Florida's waterways. "The EPA has stepped in to rescue Florida from a powerful gang of polluters who for decades have used campaign contributions and intimidation to stop state government in Tallahassee from taking this action," said Frank Jackalone, Florida staff director for the Sierra Club. His is one of five environmental groups that sued EPA for failing to enforce the Clean Water Act of 1972, charging Florida was allowed to get away without adopting numeric standards. ...


This is especially important in a state that will have so much more water once sea levels rise.

ApocaDoc
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