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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(3)
Plague/Virus:(1)
Climate Chaos:(8)
Resource Depletion: (4)
Biology Breach:(6)
Recovery:(1)
This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
health impacts  ~ climate impacts  ~ capitalist greed  ~ airborne pollutants  ~ anthropogenic change  ~ unintended consequences  ~ economic myopia  ~ global warming  ~ toxic water  ~ food crisis  ~ corporate malfeasance  



ApocaDocuments (3) for the "Species Collapse" scenario from this week
[see full week] ~ [see full Species Collapse scenario and stories]
Fri, Apr 8, 2011
from Reuters:
Biodiversity vital to streams as extinctions rise
As Earth enters a period of mass extinction, a study released on Wednesday offers a new reason to preserve biodiversity: it's an effective, natural pollution scrubber in streams. Environmental activists have long warned that waning biodiversity means the loss of such ecological services as stream-cleaning, control of pests and diseases and increased productivity in fisheries. The latest study, published in the journal Nature, shows how this works, demonstrating that streams that contain more species have better water quality than streams that have fewer. The species being discussed are microorganisms such as algae that incorporate elements of pollution into their bodies. The more types of algae there are in a stream, each with a minutely different habitat, the better they are collectively at filtering pollution out of the water. ...


Can't we just bioengineer a quicker picker-upper?

ApocaDoc
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Tue, Apr 5, 2011
from Independent:
Study reveals how bees reject 'toxic' pesticides
Bees can detect pesticide residues in the pollen they bring back to the hive and try to isolate it from the rest of the colony, the American government's leading bee scientist revealed in London yesterday. They "entomb" the contaminated pollen in cells which are sealed over, so they cannot be used for food, said Dr Jeffrey Pettis, head of the Bee Research Laboratory of the US Department of Agriculture.... Great interest has been shown in Dr Pettis's work on how a new generation of pesticides, the neonicotinoids, which are increasingly used over enormous acreages of crops in Britain and the US, and may be contributing to the worldwide decline in honey bees by making them more susceptible to disease. Dr Pettis has discovered that bees infected with microscopic doses of imidacloprid, the best-selling neonicotinoid made by the German agribusiness giant Bayer, are far more susceptible to infection by the harmful nosema parasite. Yet his study, which featured on the front page of The Independent two months ago, remains unpublished two years after it was completed.... He said his study was going through the process of peer-review with a scientific journal, and he hoped it would be published shortly, perhaps in less than a month. "In fact, the US Department of Agriculture has given me freedom to talk about it," he said. ...


If you had to ask for permission, that's probably not freedom.

ApocaDoc
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Mon, Apr 4, 2011
from PhysOrg:
Declining mangroves shield against global warming
Mangroves, which have declined by up to half over the last 50 years, are an important bulkhead against climate change, a study released on Sunday has shown for the first time.... Destruction of these tropical coastal woodlands accounts for about 10 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from deforestation, the second largest source of CO2 after fossil fuel combustion, the study found. Fewer trees not only mean less CO2 absorbed from the air, but also the release of carbon stocks that have been accumulating in shallow-water sediment over millennia. Mangroves -- whose twisted, exposed roots grace coastlines in more than 100 countries -- confer many benefits on humans living in their midst. The brackish tidal waters in which the trees thrive are a natural nursery for dozens of species of fish and shrimp essential to commercial fisheries around the world. Another major "ecosystem service," in the jargon of environmental science, is protection from hurricanes and storm surges. ...


I bet that passive-voice "decline" has an active causal agent behind it.

ApocaDoc
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