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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(6)
Plague/Virus:(1)
Climate Chaos:(9)
Resource Depletion: (4)
Biology Breach:(5)
Recovery:(6)
This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
climate impacts  ~ global warming  ~ anthropogenic change  ~ carbon emissions  ~ weather extremes  ~ smart policy  ~ toxic water  ~ food crisis  ~ arctic meltdown  ~ corporate malfeasance  ~ predator depletion  



ApocaDocuments (6) for the "Recovery" scenario from this week
[see full week] ~ [see full Recovery scenario and stories]
Sun, Feb 6, 2011
from Huffington Post:
The Jobs Project: Unemployed Coal Miners Install Solar Panels In West Virginia
A group devoted to creating alternative energy jobs in Central Appalachia is building a first for West Virginia's southern coalfields region this week - a set of rooftop solar panels, assembled by unemployed and underemployed coal miners and contractors. The 40- by 15-foot solar array going up on a doctor's office in Williamson is significant not for its size but for its location: It signals to an area long reliant on mining that there can be life beyond coal.... The Jobs Project teamed up about a year ago with a solar energy company from the Eastern Panhandle, Mountain View Solar & Wind of Berkeley Springs, to develop a privately funded job-training program. The 12 trainees are earning $45 an hour for three days of work, while some local laborers are earning $10 an hour helping out. Mountain View owner Mike McKechnie is also buying all his electrical supplies from a local business. "We are not funded by any state organization. We're doing this as a business because we want to grow the solar infrastructure and industry," McKechnie says. "We're West Virginians, and we think it's important. There's a need here that's not being met." ...


"there can be life beyond coal" has a bell-like tone, doesn't it?

ApocaDoc
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Fri, Feb 4, 2011
from ScienceDaily:
Still Hope for Arctic Sea Ice
The substantial decline of Arctic sea ice in recent years has triggered some fears that the ice cover might be approaching a "tipping point" beyond which the loss of the remaining sea ice would become unstoppable. However, new research carried out at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg/Germany now indicates that such tipping point is unlikely to exist for the loss of Arctic summer sea ice. The sea-ice cover reacts instead relatively directly to the climatic conditions at any given time. Hence, the ongoing loss of Arctic sea ice could be slowed down and eventually stopped if global warming were to be slowed down and eventually stopped.... The researchers underline that their results do not question the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice or its relation to anthropogenic climate change. "If we don't slow down global warming extensively, we will lose the summer sea-ice cover in the Arctic within a few decades," says Tietsche. "Our research shows that the speed of sea-ice loss is closely coupled to the speed of global warming. We think that it's important to know that we can still do something about slowing down or possibly even stopping the loss of the sea-ice cover." ...


I'm delighted there are no other tipping points involved.

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Fri, Feb 4, 2011
from Bloomberg:
EPA Sets First Standard for Perchlorate in Water, Reversing Bush Decision
The Obama administration will set the first U.S. standard for perchlorate in drinking water, reversing a Bush-era decision against regulating the chemical that may impair the human thyroid. The Environmental Protection Agency will propose a rule for perchlorate, a toxic rocket-fuel ingredient used to make fireworks and explosive devices, the EPA said today in an e- mailed statement. The EPA also said it will craft a rule to protect people from as many as 16 chemicals found in drinking water that may cause cancer. The agency under President Barack Obama set aside about one-third, or $3.3 billion, of its proposed fiscal 2011 budget for drinking and wastewater projects, almost double the total approved in the final year of the Bush administration. Bush's EPA declined to establish rules for perchlorate.... More than 4 percent of public U.S. water systems have detected perchlorate and 5 million to 17 million people may drink water containing the chemical, according to the EPA, citing monitoring data. The agency said its has received almost 39,000 comments about regulating perchlorate. ...


They monitor chemicals they don't even regulate? That's gotta change.

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Thu, Feb 3, 2011
from Yale360:
Intel the Biggest Buyer Of Green Energy in the U.S., Report Says
Intel Corporation remains the top purchaser of renewable energy in the U.S., nearly doubling the amount of green energy credits it will buy in 2011 to more than 2.5 billion kilowatt-hours -- the equivalent of powering 218,000 American homes -- according to a new ranking by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). With that increase, the California-based chipmaker -- which has also built nine solar plants at its facilities in the U.S. and Israel -- now gets about 88 percent of its electricity from renewable sources. The retail chain, Kohl's, which ranked second on the EPA's list of the top 50 green energy buyers, now gets 100 pecent of its electricity from green sources, purchasing more than 1.4 million kilowatt-hours annually. ...


That computes.

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Wed, Feb 2, 2011
from Mark Bittman, New York Times:
A Food Manifesto for the Future
And we've come to recognize that our diet is unhealthful and unsafe. Many food production workers labor in difficult, even deplorable, conditions, and animals are produced as if they were widgets. It would be hard to devise a more wasteful, damaging, unsustainable system. Here are some ideas -- frequently discussed, but sadly not yet implemented -- that would make the growing, preparation and consumption of food healthier, saner, more productive, less damaging and more enduring.... Total agricultural subsidies in 2009 were around $16 billion, which would pay for a great many of the ideas that follow. Begin subsidies to those who produce and sell actual food for direct consumption.... Outlaw concentrated animal feeding operations and encourage the development of sustainable animal husbandry. The concentrated system degrades the environment, directly and indirectly, while torturing animals and producing tainted meat, poultry, eggs, and, more recently, fish. Sustainable methods of producing meat for consumption exist. At the same time, we must educate and encourage Americans to eat differently. ...


This from the guy whose food column in the NYT was called the Minimalist?!

ApocaDoc
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Tue, Feb 1, 2011
from PhysOrg:
Surprising approach could help rescue fragile ecosystems and halt cascades of extinctions
Feral pigs introduced to the Galapagos Archipelago shortly after Charles Darwin's historical visit have damaged the ecosystem of Santiago Island, causing, it is believed, the extinction or imperilment of a number of species. The complete removal of the pigs 11 years ago is beginning to restore balance to the island. Two Northwestern University scientists have developed a mathematical model that supports the management choices in perturbed ecosystems, such as the Galápagos, and illustrates how human intervention may effectively aid species conservation efforts. The selective suppression or removal of one or more species in a troubled ecosystem can save many more species.... Motter explained further, "We find that extinction cascades can often be mitigated by suppressing -- rather than enhancing -- the populations of specific species. In numerous cases, it is predicted that even the proactive removal of a species that would otherwise be extinct by a cascade can prevent the extinction of other species." ...


If you think about this a minute, it has disturbing implications for invasive humans.

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