ApocaDocuments (7) for the "Climate Chaos" scenario from this week
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Fri, May 13, 2011
from BBC:
Wikileaks cables show race to carve up Arctic
The opportunity to exploit resources has come because of a dramatic fall in the amount of ice in the Arctic.
The US Geological Survey estimates oil reserves off Greenland are as big as those in the North Sea....
Tom Burke, who advises mining company Rio Tinto and the UK Foreign Office on climate change and business, told Newsnight that political tensions were rising because "the ice is declining much faster" than expected, so "everybody who thinks they've got a chance to get at those resources wants to get in there and stake their claim".
Since the 1970s, Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University has made repeated trips under the North Pole in Royal Navy nuclear submarines to measure the thickness of the ice.
He told Newsnight the graph "has gone off a cliff" because the ice sheet has thinned as well as shrunk.
The Pan-Arctic Ice-Ocean Modelling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) which measures ice volume shows that last September there was only a quarter of the ice in the Arctic that there had been in 1979.
Prof Wadhams says in summer "it could easily happen that we'll have an ice-free North Pole within a year or two". ...
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Sometimes it's the offhand comments that hit the hardest.
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Fri, May 13, 2011
from National Research Council, via New York Times:
Scientists' Report Stresses Urgency of Limiting Greenhouse Gas Emissions
The nation's scientific establishment issued a stark warning to the American public on Thursday: Not only is global warming real, but the effects are already becoming serious and the need has become "pressing" for a strong national policy to limit emissions of heat-trapping gases....
"The risks associated with doing business as usual are a much greater concern than the risks associated with engaging in ambitious but measured response efforts," the report concludes. "This is because many aspects of an 'overly ambitious' policy response could be reversed or otherwise addressed, if needed, through subsequent policy change, whereas adverse changes in the climate system are much more difficult (indeed, on the time scale of our lifetimes, may be impossible) to 'undo.'"...
The report's authors -- an unusual combination of climate scientists, businessmen and politicians -- said they were very aware that the political mood on climate change had changed significantly from when the committee was formed in 2009....
But Representative Joe L. Barton, Republican of Texas, who has been leading the charge against further regulating carbon emissions, swiftly dismissed the council's findings in an interview Thursday. "I see nothing substantive in this report that adds to the knowledge base necessary to make an informed decision about what steps -- if any -- should be taken to address climate change," Mr. Barton said. ...
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Silly scientists. All we need to do is Cntrl-Alt-Delete and restart the ecosystem.
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Wed, May 11, 2011
from Southwest Farm Press, via DesdemonaDespair:
Texas/Southwest gripped in drought; crops 'pretty much shut down'
Crop and forage production has "pretty much shut down" due to severe to exceptional drought conditions, said a Texas AgriLife Extension Service statewide crop expert.
"If you look at the U.S. drought monitor, about 26 percent of the state of Texas is an exceptional drought," said Dr. Travis Miller, AgriLife Extension program leader and associate department head of the soil and crop sciences department, College Station.
"Exceptional," means it is a one-in-50-year occurrence, Miller explained.
Much of the rest of the state was in what's classified as moderate, severe, or extreme drought. The distinctions are being based largely on how much damage and losses are expected to crops, forage production, livestock and water sources, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor classification scheme....
"But statewide, it's a pretty grim picture," he said. "And it's not just Texas; it's New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and parts of Arkansas. It's an exceptional drought across a big area."
Corn along the Gulf Coast is stunted and tasselling early, Miller said. "It's in a lot trouble." ...
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I'm just glad we can't blame it on climate change!
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Tue, May 10, 2011
from Cardiff Western Mail:
Hi-tech teen lifestyle fuels climate change
TODAY'S teenagers are consuming more energy than any previous generation - despite receiving unprecedented education on climate change and other green issues, an academic has warned.
Mobile phones, gaming devices, televisions, computers and hair straighteners are just some of the gadgets commonly found in the bedrooms of modern teenagers.
Professor Ian Williams, who has studied the Facebook generation's lifestyles and environmentalism, says a typical teenager may have amassed more electrical items than an entire household would have owned a generation earlier.
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They were so, like, primitive back then.
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Tue, May 10, 2011
from Reno Gazette-Journal:
Fact checker: Don't see consensus on global warming? Look past Fox News
The claim: There is no scientific consensus that global temperatures are rising and humans are significantly to blame.
The background: This week's claim started because of a study done by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes. The study's aim was to determine whether the Citizens United case before the Supreme Court, which allowed unlimited campaign contributions from corporations and unions, affected people's perception of the truthfulness of the information being fed in the midterm elections.
The study wasn't intended to be concerned with where people got their information, just how accurate it seemed. But the researchers noticed a peculiar thing: Although some Americans were misinformed, they generally became more informed if they consumed more news -- with one major exception.
The study found that the more people watched Fox News, the less informed they became. ...
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Unfair and unbalanced.
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Mon, May 9, 2011
from The Walrus:
Climate Controlled
He's been training his mental telescope on the year 2031, and the nagging question of whether our world will be consumed by a new, climate-related geopolitics....
China and the Pacific Rim nations, meanwhile, are enduring ever-worsening repercussions of climate change: volatile storms, food riots, and rising sea levels that displace millions of people. "Suddenly," he says, drawing out the tale like the pitch for a thriller, "some countries say, 'Screw it. We have to cool this down.'"
How? A bloc of Asian nations underwrites an aggressive geoengineering effort that uses specially designed aircraft to disperse thousands of tonnes of sulfate aerosols into the upper atmosphere. The goal: to reduce global temperatures and calm regional weather patterns. Relative to the costs of environmental mayhem, this high-leverage project is alluringly affordable and promises quick results. Indeed, the halo of high-altitude particles succeeds in reflecting enough sunlight into space that ocean temperatures begin to drop -- so much so that the summer sea ice in the Arctic refreezes.
Blackstock continues the plot line: Arctic oil and gas exploration halts, triggering a recession as investors anticipate rising energy prices. Resource-rich northern nations, which have reaped a climate change dividend in the Arctic, now find their commercial interests directly threatened by the geoengineering efforts of southern countries hit by global warming symptoms. ...
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Surely nobody would change the climate in a way that would harm others, would they?
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Mon, May 9, 2011
from Scientific American blogs:
Temperature Tantrum: James Hansen Speaks Out, Gets Busted, and Now Sues to Stop Global Warming
In the 1980s, however, he became so worried about global warming that he started speaking out. At a 1988 Senate hearing on climate change, he made headlines when he asserted with 99 percent certainty that greenhouse gases from human activities were causing global warming. Since then the correlated surge in atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperatures has borne out his assertion....
Hansen advocates civil disobedience to block fossil-fuel operations; in 2009 he was arrested along with other protestors allegedly obstructing traffic into a coal-mining operation in West Virginia. Now he is trying another tactic: suing the government. Hansen serves as a scientific advisor for Our Children's Trust, an Oregon-based nonprofit formed "to protect Earth's natural systems for current and future generations." The group has organized a lawsuit that a coalition of environmental groups filed last week against the U.S. and other nations in attempt to force them to take measures to cut fossil-fuel emissions. ...
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When science fails, and foresight fails, and prudence fails, and even reason fails to convince, all that's left is the legal system.
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