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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(2)
Plague/Virus:()
Climate Chaos:(9)
Resource Depletion: (2)
Biology Breach:(8)
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This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
contamination  ~ ecosystem interrelationships  ~ global warming  ~ climate impacts  ~ anthropogenic change  ~ health impacts  ~ massive die-off  ~ airborne pollutants  ~ habitat loss  ~ ocean warming  ~ carbon emissions  



ApocaDocuments (9) for the "Climate Chaos" scenario from this week
[see full week] ~ [see full Climate Chaos scenario and stories]
Sun, Dec 26, 2010
from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration via ScienceDaily:
Growing Hypoxic Zones Reduce Habitat for Billfish and Tuna
Billfish and tuna, important commercial and recreational fish species, may be more vulnerable to fishing pressure because of shrinking habitat, according to a new study published by scientists from NOAA, The Billfish Foundation, and University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. An expanding zone of low oxygen, known as a hypoxic zone, in the Atlantic Ocean is encroaching upon these species' preferred oxygen-abundant habitat, forcing them into shallower waters where they are more likely to be caught. ...


...as if we'd planned it all along.

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Fri, Dec 24, 2010
from New York Times:
Climate Change and 'Balanced' Coverage
In an article this week on the relentless rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, I outlined one of the canonical projections of climate science: if the amount of carbon dioxide doubles, the average surface temperature of the earth is likely to increase by 5 or 6 degrees Fahrenheit, a whopping change. I contrasted that with a prediction from skeptics of climate change who contend that the increase is likely to be less than 2 degrees. One major voice on climate science, Richard B. Alley of the Pennsylvania State University, told me he gets annoyed by the way this contrast is often presented in news accounts. The higher estimate is often put forward as a worst case, he pointed out, while the skeptic number is presented as the best case... The true worst case from doubled carbon dioxide is closer to 18 or 20 degrees of warming, Dr. Alley said -- an addition of heat so radical that it would render the planet unrecognizable to its present-day inhabitants. ...


Just when you thought it was safe to slip back into denial.

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Fri, Dec 24, 2010
from BBC:
New cars in Beijing cut by two-thirds to battle traffic
New rules have taken effect in China that restrict car purchases in an effort to combat serious traffic problems in the capital, Beijing. City authorities will allow only 240,000 vehicles to be registered for 2011 - one-third of this year's total. Car buyers have been swamping dealers in anticipation of the new rules, which will still leave about five million cars on the road in the capital. Traffic and air pollution in Beijing is among the worst in the world.... Yang Ailun of Greenpeace China told the BBC that the restrictions had come far too late... "Everything in China now happens so quickly, and the government always fails to anticipate what's coming, and as a result normally policies are only introduced when things are already out of control." ...


Thank goodness 'Mericans are free to ruin the planet without interference.

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Wed, Dec 22, 2010
from Reuters:
Invasive species lie in wait, strike after decades
Species that are moved away from their natural predators back home can displace native species in their new habitats, and scientists say the problem already costs Europe 12 billion euros ($16 billion) a year. The study, which is likely to hold true for other continents too, means that the seeds of future, perhaps bigger, problems have literally already been sown. The study compared the effects of "alien species" such as American ragweed, Canada geese or Japanese deer in 28 European countries. The study's findings indicated that it can take decades to figure out which alien species will be disruptive, and looking at those that arrived in 1900 was a better indicator of current problems than looking at those from 2000. ...


They're invasive... their alien ... and they're sneaky, too!

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Wed, Dec 22, 2010
from University of Bristol, via EurekAlert:
New fossil site in China shows long recovery of life from the largest extinction in Earth's history
Some 250 million years ago, at the end of the time known as the Permian, life was all but wiped out during a sustained period of massive volcanic eruption and devastating global warming. Only one in ten species survived, and these formed the basis for the recovery of life in the subsequent time period, called the Triassic. The new fossil site - at Luoping in Yunnan Province - provides a new window on that recovery, and indicates that it took about 10 million years for a fully-functioning ecosystem to develop.... 'The fossils at Luoping have told us a lot about the recovery and development of marine ecosystems after the end-Permian mass extinction,' said Professor Benton. 'There's still more to be discovered there, and we hope to get an even better picture of how life reasserted itself after the most catastrophic global event in the history of our planet.' ...


I think the word "heretofore" may be missing from that description.

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Tue, Dec 21, 2010
from London Guardian:
That snow outside is what global warming looks like
... There is now strong evidence to suggest that the unusually cold winters of the last two years in the UK are the result of heating elsewhere.... Here's what seems to be happening. The global temperature maps published by Nasa present a striking picture. Last month's shows a deep blue splodge over Iceland, Spitsbergen, Scandanavia and the UK, and another over the western US and eastern Pacific. Temperatures in these regions were between 0.5C and 4C colder than the November average from 1951 and 1980. But on either side of these cool blue pools are raging fires of orange, red and maroon: the temperatures in western Greenland, northern Canada and Siberia were between 2C and 10C higher than usual. Nasa's Arctic oscillations map for 3-10 December shows that parts of Baffin Island and central Greenland were 15C warmer than the average for 2002-9. There was a similar pattern last winter. These anomalies appear to be connected. ...


In the future all our anomalies will be connected.

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Mon, Dec 20, 2010
from Nature:
Newsmaker of the year: In the eye of the storm
She set out to revolutionize US ocean management -- but first she faced the oil spill. Jane Lubchenco is Nature's Newsmaker of the Year. ...


We await our turn.

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Mon, Dec 20, 2010
from CNN:
Going green to save the white of the Alps
In the Alps, the term "going green" is not necessarily a good thing. While efforts to be more environmentally friendly are welcome, the region is under threat from climate change that could mean in the future the snowy, white slopes in the winter are more a grassy, green color... According to figures from an OECD report from 2007, a two degree Celsius rise in temperature would reduce the number of skiable areas in the Alps from nearly 700 to around 400. Those lying below 1,500 meters are most vulnerable.... ...


On the flip side, with sea level rise, we'll have more water skiing!

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Mon, Dec 20, 2010
from Associated Press:
2010's world gone wild: Quakes, floods, blizzards
This was the year the Earth struck back. Earthquakes, heat waves, floods, volcanoes, super typhoons, blizzards, landslides and droughts killed at least a quarter million people in 2010 -- the deadliest year in more than a generation. More people were killed worldwide by natural disasters this year than have been killed in terrorism attacks in the past 40 years combined. "It just seemed like it was back-to-back and it came in waves," said Craig Fugate, who heads the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. It handled a record number of disasters in 2010. "The term `100-year event' really lost its meaning this year." And we have ourselves to blame most of the time, scientists and disaster experts say. Even though many catastrophes have the ring of random chance, the hand of man made this a particularly deadly, costly, extreme and weird year for everything from wild weather to earthquakes. ...


The hand of man is a mighty instrument of ineptitude.

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