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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(3)
Plague/Virus:(1)
Climate Chaos:(10)
Resource Depletion: (3)
Biology Breach:(7)
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This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
health impacts  ~ contamination  ~ economic myopia  ~ global warming  ~ ecosystem interrelationships  ~ carbon emissions  ~ unintended consequences  ~ oil issues  ~ airborne pollutants  ~ climate impacts  ~ deniers  



ApocaDocuments (10) for the "Climate Chaos" scenario from this week
[see full week] ~ [see full Climate Chaos scenario and stories]
Sun, Dec 19, 2010
from Toronto Globe and Mail:
On the move in a warming world: The rise of climate refugees
... Across the Sahel, a band of semi-arid land south of the Sahara stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, an estimated 10 million people suffered food shortages this year, including 850,000 children who are acutely malnourished and could die without urgent care. In the Sahel region of Chad, more than 20 per cent of children are acutely malnourished, on top of a chronic malnutrition rate of about 50 per cent. In some regions, mothers are desperately digging into anthills in search of tiny grains and seeds for their children. And this is just one of many places around the world where the changing climate has left the people dependent on foreign aid. When the 190-nation climate conference in Cancun, Mexico, staggered to an end last weekend, there was no binding agreement on curbing carbon emissions and no sign of a treaty to replace the soon-expiring Kyoto Protocol. The negotiators will try again next December. But regardless of those negotiations, the facts on the ground will not change: The climate is growing more precarious, and millions of people are on the move. The question now is whether to encourage them to migrate - or to salvage their ravaged land with long-term investment, instead of simply handing out emergency aid. ...


Is there no other option, such as colonizing Mars? C'mon, people, where's the can-do vision?

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Fri, Dec 17, 2010
from NPR:
Long Wait May Be Over For Science Guidelines
Long-awaited guidelines ordered by President Obama last year to prevent government research from being altered or suppressed for political purposes so the integrity of government scientists can be protected could be released as early as Friday. The guidelines are nearly 11/2 years overdue. During that time, the administration has drawn criticism for its own scientific missteps. ...


Let's hope the guidelines emerge without revision!

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Thu, Dec 16, 2010
from New Scientist:
Carbon trading tempts firms to make greenhouse gas
A handful of Chinese and Indian chemicals companies seemingly have the world over a barrel - or rather a large number of barrels of a super-greenhouse gas called HFC-23, which is 14,800 times more potent than carbon dioxide. This week, apparently following Chinese threats to vent stockpiles of HFC-23 into the atmosphere, a UN panel issued two million valuable carbon credits to a company called Juhua. It has a factory in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, where the gas can be destroyed. Nobody needs HFC-23. It is a waste by-product of the manufacture of a refrigerant called HCFC-22, used mostly in developing nations.... The offer only applies to HCFC-22 plants that were built before 2000. Even so it has proved highly lucrative. By some estimates, the value of the carbon credits is up to 100 times the cost of incinerating HFC-23. The resulting income of Chinese companies alone is estimated to reach $1.6 billion by 2012.... As a result, the "waste gas" HFC-23 has become much more profitable to refrigerant factories than HCFC-22 itself. ...


Blackmail once again leads to murder.

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Wed, Dec 15, 2010
from MediaMatters:
FOX boss ordered staff to cast doubt on climate science
In the midst of global climate change talks last December, a top Fox News official sent an email questioning the "veracity of climate change data" and ordering the network's journalists to "refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question." The directive, sent by Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon, was issued less than 15 minutes after Fox correspondent Wendell Goler accurately reported on-air that the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization announced that 2000-2009 was "on track to be the warmest [decade] on record."... A month after Sammon sent his memo, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies released data confirming that 2009 was the second warmest year on record and marked the end of the warmest decade on record. ...


FOX just wants us all to be happy. As patriotic Americans, we deserve it!

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Wed, Dec 15, 2010
from PhysOrg:
Ancient forest emerges mummified from the Arctic
The northernmost mummified forest ever found in Canada is revealing how plants struggled to endure a long-ago global cooling. Researchers believe the trees -- buried by a landslide and exquisitely preserved 2 to 8 million years ago -- will help them predict how today's Arctic will respond to global warming. They also suspect that many more mummified forests could emerge across North America as Arctic ice continues to melt. As the wood is exposed and begins to rot, it could release significant amounts of methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- and actually boost global warming.... "Mummified forests aren't so uncommon, but what makes this one unique is that it's so far north. When the climate began to cool 11 million years ago, these plants would have been the first to feel the effects," Barker said. ...


Mummified forests releasing gases that then reveal more mummified forests -- are we sure this isn't another zombie-movie promo?

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Wed, Dec 15, 2010
from Associated Press:
Environmentalists sue ExxonMobil over air laws
The largest oil refinery in the United States released more than 8 million pounds of illegal pollution in the past five years, violating the federal Clean Air Act thousands of times, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by environmental groups in Texas. The lawsuit against ExxonMobil is the latest by Sierra Club and Environment Texas as part of their campaign to rein in what they call "illegal emissions" by dozens of refineries and chemical plants that operate in the Texas Gulf Coast. In recent months, the groups have reached multimillion-dollar, out-of-court settlements with Shell and Chevron Phillips after filing similar suits. ExxonMobil denied the allegations and said it would fight the lawsuit... Texas has more oil refineries, chemical plants and coal-fired power plants that any other state and is the nation's leader in greenhouse gases. The state produces more than 20 percent of the nation's oil and one-third of the country's gas is refined along the Texas Gulf Coast. ...


Oil is the lifeblood of Uhmerica and it's the heart of Texas that pumps it.

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Tue, Dec 14, 2010
from Associated Press:
Concerns Over Eagle Safety Stall Wind Projects
Fears that whirling wind turbines could slaughter protected golden eagles have halted progress on a key piece of the federal government's push to increase renewable energy on public lands, stalling plans for billions of dollars in wind farm developments. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management suspended issuing wind permits on public land indefinitely this summer after wildlife officials invoked a decades-old law for protecting eagles, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Associated Press. The restriction has stymied efforts to "fast-track" approvals for four of the seven most promising wind energy proposals in the nation, including all three in California. Now, these and other projects appear unlikely to make the year-end deadline to potentially qualify for hundreds of millions of dollars in stimulus funds. If extensions aren't granted in the lame duck session of Congress, the future of many of these plans could be in doubt. ...


Eagles, hoping to avoid being referred to as "lame eagles," are encouraging the reissue of these wind permits.

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Tue, Dec 14, 2010
from Plataforma SINC via ScienceDaily:
Blooming Jellyfish in Northeast Atlantic and Mediterranean: Over-Fishing, Warming Waters to Blame
A study examining over 50 years of jellyfish data by an international team, with the participation of the Balearic Oceanography Centre of the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO) has confirmed an increase in the size and intensity of proliferations of the jellyfish Pelagia noctiluca. There are several complex reasons for this -- over-fishing and the current increase in sea water temperatures...The increase in jellyfish over the course of the year "directly" affects fisheries, fish farming and tourism "because of the jellyfishes' toxic effects and the poison in their tentacles, and because they appear particularly in the summer, having a significant socioeconomic impact," says Fernandez de Puelles. ...


Let's sic these beasts on climate skeptics!

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Mon, Dec 13, 2010
from Reuters:
Analysis: Next climate test: how to adapt
...Because nations are unlikely to make deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to prevent climate change, world leaders must work out how developing nations will adapt to more severe weather predicted in coming years that will hit food and water supplies...Until now, most efforts have been on curbing greenhouse gases from factories, power plants and vehicles -- not on adapting to a changing climate of droughts, floods and a creeping rise in sea levels. The Cancun deal asks countries to submit ideas by February 21 about steps to set up an "Adaptation Committee." ...


I can get used to anything but committees.

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Mon, Dec 13, 2010
from Stanford University, via PhysOrg:
Earthshaking possibilities may limit underground storage of carbon dioxide
Storing massive amounts of carbon dioxide underground in an effort to combat global warming may not be easy to do because of the potential for triggering small- to moderate-sized earthquakes, according to Stanford geophysicist Mark Zoback. While those earthquakes are unlikely to be big enough to hurt people or property, they could still cause serious problems for the reservoirs containing the gas. "It is not the shaking an earthquake causes at the surface that creates the hazard in this instance, it is what it does at depth," Zoback said. "It may not take a very big earthquake to damage the seal of an underground reservoir that has been pumped full of carbon dioxide."... The other complication, Zoback said, is that for sequestration to make a significant contribution to reducing carbon dioxide emissions, the volume of gas injected into reservoirs annually would have to be almost the same as the amount of fluid now being produced by the oil and gas industry each year. This would likely require thousands of injection sites around the world. "Think about how many wells and pipelines and how much infrastructure has been developed to exploit oil and gas resources over the last hundred years," he said. "You need something of comparable scale and volume for carbon dioxide sequestration." ...


Well then, I'm sure glad we have clean coal technology that's just around the corner.

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