http://www.apocadocs.com Humoring the Horror Regarding Climate Chaos, Resource Depletion, Plague/Virus, Species Collapse, Biology Breach, Recovery, and more. en-us http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/humans-driving-extinction-faster-than-species-can-evolve-say-experts.html Conservation experts have already signalled that the world is in the grip of the "sixth great extinction" of species, driven by the destruction of natural habitats, hunting, the spread of alien predators and disease, and climate change. However until recently it has been hoped that the rate at which new species were evolving could keep pace with the loss of diversity of life.... "Measuring the rate at which new species evolve is difficult, but there's no question that the current extinction rates are faster than that; I think it's inevitable," said Stuart.... Stuart said it was possible that the dramatic predictions of experts like the renowned Harvard biologist E O Wilson, that the rate of loss could reach 10,000 times the background rate in two decades, could be correct. "All the evidence is he's right," said Stuart. "Some people claim it already is that ... things can only have deteriorated because of the drivers of the losses, such as habitat loss and climate change, all getting worse. But we haven't measured extinction rates again since 2004 and because our current estimates contain a tenfold range there has to be a very big deterioration or improvement to pick up a change." (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/global-warming-doubts-could-hamper-climate-legislation.html A recent poll suggests that high-profile controversies regarding climate science are weakening public confidence in the validity of global warming, And that could endanger congressional efforts to pass climate legislation. In 2008, 71 percent of respondents said they thought global warming was happening, while 10 percent thought it wasn't. This year, only 57 percent thought global warming was a reality, and the number of doubters increased to 20 percent, according to a poll conducted by the Yale Project on Climate Change and the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. "We've seen some pretty significant changes over the past year," says Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change. "We found a very significant drop in the percentage of Americans who think global warming is happening, and a significant drop in those who think humans are responsible. Generally speaking, we've seen a drop in public concern about the issue." (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/world-s-pall-of-black-carbon-can-be-eased-with-new-stoves.html With a single, concerted initiative, says Lakshman Guruswami, the world could save millions of people in poor nations from respiratory ailments and early death, while dealing a big blow to global warming -- and all at a surprisingly small cost. "If we could supply cheap, clean-burning cook stoves to the large portion of the world that burns biomass," says Guruswami, a Sri Lankan-born professor of international law at the University of Colorado, "we could address a significant international public health problem, and at the same stroke cut a major source of warming."...Some scientists now estimate that small, solid particles of black carbon are responsible for about one-fifth of warming globally and, as such, are the second-largest contributor to climate change, after carbon dioxide gas. (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/pack-ice-scarce-off-eastern-canada.html A Canadian Coast Guard official said Monday that many parts of the ocean near Newfoundland and Labrador are devoid of pack ice -- a condition that hasn't been seen in at least 40 years. "It's been an unusual year this year, to the point that there is no ice. There have been high temperatures, high winds, and as a result we have very little ice," said Dan Frampton, the Coast Guard's supervisor of ice operations. "By this time of year, pack ice is usually down to the St. John's area." Frampton said icebreakers have been idle because there's no pack ice in the Strait of Belle Isle between Newfoundland's Northern Peninsula and southern Labrador, as well as in the Gulf of St. Lawrence or further north off central Labrador. It could be a problem for harp seals that give birth to pups on the ice. In the Gulf of St. Lawrence their population can swell to a million but with next to no ice this year only 500 seals have been counted so far. "Yes, there's only water around the island. There's no ice at all around the island. There's no ice at all," said veteran mariner Jean-Claude Lapierre. "I'm 69 years old and I never saw that before. I talked to the older people and it's the first time they saw that." (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/growing-low-oxygen-zones-in-oceans-worry-scientists.html In some spots off Washington state and Oregon, the almost complete absence of oxygen has left piles of Dungeness crab carcasses littering the ocean floor, killed off 25-year-old sea stars, crippled colonies of sea anemones and produced mats of potentially noxious bacteria that thrive in such conditions.... "The depletion of oxygen levels in all three oceans is striking," said Gregory Johnson, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle. In some spots, such as off the Southern California coast, oxygen levels have dropped roughly 20 percent over the past 25 years. Elsewhere, scientists say, oxygen levels might have declined by one-third over 50 years. "The real surprise is how this has become the new norm," said Jack Barth, an oceanography professor at Oregon State University. "We are seeing it year after year." (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/ge-limit-pcb-contamination-during-hudson-dredging.html General Electric Co. on Monday proposed a halting further dredging of the Hudson River if PCBs churned up by the work spread too much pollution downriver during the second phase of an ongoing cleanup. GE made the proposal as the company and the federal Environmental Protection Agency were set to release separate reports assessing the dredging in 2009 of PCB "hot spots" north of Albany. The EPA had yet to release its report Monday afternoon, but the agency has been much more upbeat in its assessments of the dredging than GE, which is paying for the cleanup.... Crews working the river last summer found contamination of the river bed was deeper than expected and the work took longer. GE said PCBs kicked up into the water during dredging presented a serious problem. So the company proposed setting a "hard cap" on the amount of PCBs that would be allowed to flow downstream during Phase 2. Crews would start by targeting the contaminated areas that otherwise would be most likely to pollute fish downriver. "(T)o send more PCBs downriver than would happen without dredging eliminates the benefits of the remedy identified by EPA," the GE report said.... PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, are considered probable carcinogens. GE plants in Fort Edward and neighboring Hudson Falls discharged wastewater containing PCBs for decades before the lubricant and coolant was banned in 1977. (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/orcas-have-nd-biggest-brains-of-all-marine-mammals.html Neuroscientist Lori Marino and a team of researchers explored the brain of a dead killer whale with an MRI and found an astounding potential for intelligence.... It's not clear whether they are as well-endowed with memory cells as humans, but scientists have found they are amazingly well-wired for sensing and analyzing their watery, three-dimensional environment. Scientists are trying to better understand how killer whales are able to learn local dialects, teach one another specialized methods of hunting and pass on behaviors that can persist for generations -- longer possibly than seen with any other species except humans.... These researchers have yet to find evidence that an orca in the wild has ever killed a person.... They swim the world's oceans -- they are more widely distributed than any whale, dolphin or porpoise -- in at least three distinct populations. There are fish-eating orcas that stay in one area, flesh-eaters that wander more widely along coasts, and a third group that roams the deep-blue waters. The three groups have starkly different diets, languages, hunting techniques and manners of behaving around other marine life, and they don't seem to interact much with one another.... Hal Whitehead, a biology professor at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, awakened the world of cetacean research in 2001 when he co-authored a controversial paper that suggested no species other than humans are as "cultural" as orcas. "Culture is about learning from others," Whitehead said. "A cultural species starts behaving differently than a species where everything is determined genetically." (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/ibm-stanford-cite-advance-in-plastic-recycling.html When you recycle a plastic bottle, it doesn't necessarily become another plastic bottle. Because of limitations in recycling technology, a common type of plastic used in water bottles and food containers weakens so much when it's recycled that it can't be used again for the same purpose. Some small amount of the plastic might make it into another bottle, but more often than not, it instead becomes synthetic carpet or clothing and can't easily be recycled a second time. So when those products are used up, they end up in landfills. Researchers from IBM Corp. and Stanford University believe they have developed a way to significantly improve the quality of recycled plastic and strip away those limitations.... The innovation is a new family of catalysts that can reduce polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic to its basic building blocks, while retaining its original properties and making it "ridiculously economical" to build it back up again, said Bob Allen, senior manager of chemistry and functional materials for IBM's Almaden research center in Silicon Valley. (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/edinburgh-is-first-uk-city-to-launch-bt-carbon-club-initiative-to-tackle-climate-change.html A network of carbon clubs could be launched across Edinburgh to enlist citizens in the battle to save energy and tackle climate change. The City of Edinburgh Council is the first local authority in the UK to adopt an innovative carbon club scheme pioneered by BT.... BT has created a web site where council employees can form their own clubs and will manage the site during the pilot. Club members can access a library of information and energy savings tips, build their own micro-sites and pledge to undertake actions that will reduce their impact on the environment.... BT's carbon club initiative was launched in June 2007 as a way to bring people together to work on carbon reduction initiatives. The company now has more than 130 clubs in operation and more than 14,000 pledges have been made. The clubs are involved in an array of initiatives, from recycling and saving money through greener living to running a light bulb library and smart meter lending service, working with wildlife and community groups and providing electric scooters for use at one of its larger sites. (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/the-apocadocs-seek-new-title-for-their-book.html In response to a number of complaints, the ApocaDocs may be forced to retitle their short free book Converging Emergencies: 2010-2020. "I was planning for it to be a big downer, but then I found jokes mixed in with the facts," grumped one respondent. Snarled another: "Why didn't you warn me? I spat coffee all over my laptop!" Consequently, 'Docs Jim and Michael are seeking suggestions for "funnifying the title," as a means of warning, by the title alone, that humor lurks within the book. Requirements are a) 'Converging' and/or 'Emergencies' be in the subtitle at least; b) it must be in good taste; c) it must be funny. Please use the "quip-o-matic" device below to make suggestions! (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/pakistan-wheat-rust-threat-rising.html Experts say it is only a matter of time before wind carries a deadly wheat stem pathogen into Pakistan, the ninth largest wheat producing nation in the world. Known as Ug99, the disease could potentially decimate the country's highly vulnerable wheat crop and cause a huge food security problem. "There is a real possibility that winds could move the pathogen directly into southern Pakistan from Yemen or even the Horn of Africa. Realistically, I believe it is only a matter of time before Ug99 or variants appear in Pakistan," said David Hodson of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) Wheat Rust Disease Global Programme. (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/tide-of-acid-ocean-fear-rolls-over-oyster-industry.html The collapse began rather unspectacularly. In 2005, when most of the millions of Pacific oysters in this tree-lined estuary failed to reproduce, the shellfish growers of Willapa Bay, Washington state largely shrugged it off. In a region that provides one-sixth of the nation's oysters -- the epicentre of the West Coast's $US111 million ... oyster industry -- everyone knows nature can be fickle. But then the failure was repeated in 2006, 2007 and 2008. It spread to an Oregon hatchery that supplies baby oysters to shellfish nurseries from Puget Sound to Los Angeles. Eighty percent of that hatchery's oyster larvae died, too. Now, as the US oyster industry heads into the fifth summer of its most unnerving crisis in decades, scientists are pondering a disturbing theory. They suspect water that rises from deep in the Pacific Ocean -- icy seawater that surges into Willapa Bay and is pumped into seaside hatcheries -- may be corrosive enough to kill baby oysters. If true, that could mean shifts in ocean chemistry associated with carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil fuels may be impairing sea life faster and more dramatically than expected. (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/mit-researchers-discover-new-way-of-producing-electricity.html A team of scientists at MIT have discovered a previously unknown phenomenon that can cause powerful waves of energy to shoot through minuscule wires known as carbon nanotubes. The discovery could lead to a new way of producing electricity, the researchers say.... Like a collection of flotsam propelled along the surface by waves traveling across the ocean, it turns out that a thermal wave --... (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/high-carbon-ice-age-mystery-solved.html How come a big ice age happened when carbon dioxide levels were high? It's a question climate sceptics often ask. But sometimes the right answer is the simplest: it turns out CO2 levels were not that high after all. The Ordovician ice age happened 444 million years ago, and records have suggested that CO2 levels were relatively high then. But when Seth Young of Indiana University in Bloomington did a detailed analysis of carbon-13 levels in rocks formed at the time, the picture that emerged was very different. Young found CO2 concentrations were in fact relatively low when the ice age began. Lee Kump of Pennsylvania State University in University Park says earlier studies missed the dip because they calculated levels at 10-million-year intervals and the ice age lasted only half a million years. (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/epa-delays-action-on-mountaintop-removal-plan.html The Obama administration has delayed action on a set of broad-ranging and specific measures to reduce the environmental impacts of mountaintop removal, after details of the plan were leaked to coal-state mining regulators...Agency officials are pushing for more stringent water pollution standards, tougher permit requirements and more extensive monitoring downstream from mining operations. Among the initiatives are initial steps toward tighter mining discharge limits on the toxic pollutant selenium and on electrical conductivity, which serves as a measure of harmful salts and metals and has been identified by scientists as an indicator of coal-mining water damage. An announcement had been planned for Wednesday, but has been delayed for at least several weeks. (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/can-bats-be-saved.html The bats appear to die of starvation during hibernation, but scientists still cannot confirm that the fungus is the primary cause of death. What they know: White-nose Syndrome is spreading fast, but not uniformly. It leapfrogs from affected areas to popular recreational caving sites, leading researchers to suspect that microscopic fungal spores get onto clothing worn by cavers, who unintentionally carry it to new sites. Some researchers speculate that European cavers may have innocently brought the spores to America, where native bats have no natural resistance. Others suspect spread of the fungus is more likely a naturally occurring anomaly. In three years since the onset of the outbreak, more than a million bats have died in the Northeast. They would have eaten 694 tons of insects, and scientists are worried about the impact of the sudden break in the food chain. "Our work here may save them farther west, but we are not going to be able to save the bats in Pennsylvania. What that means to us we don't know, but it can't be good." "You try not to over-interpret, but at the same time I won't sugarcoat it," Dr. Reeder said. "We're seeing 80, 90, 95 percent mortality in some of these caves. We come back the next year -- another 90 percent mortality. I mean, how long can that go on?" (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/melbourne-cyclone-hailstones-size-of-tennis-balls-record-floods.html "(It was) tennis ball size roughly," he said. "As far as we can tell, that's close to the biggest hail we've seen in Melbourne." As the city readied for further violent storms Sunday, once-in-a-century floods were peaking in the state of Queensland in the country's northeast, parts of which have been in drought for almost a decade.... Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said the cost of the flooding would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, as there had been major damage to highways and rail lines had been washed away. "This is a massive water event which has smashed all the records known here in the southwest," she told reporters Sunday as she toured St George. (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/arctic-melt-to-cost-up-to-trillion-by-report.html Arctic ice melting could cost global agriculture, real estate and insurance anywhere from $2.4 trillion to $24 trillion by 2050 in damage from rising sea levels, floods and heat waves, according to a report released on Friday.... "The Arctic is the planet's air conditioner and it's starting to break down," he said. The loss of Arctic Sea ice and snow cover is already costing the world about $61 billion to $371 billion annually from costs associated with heat waves, flooding and other factors, the report said. The losses could grow as a warmer Arctic unlocks vast stores of methane in the permafrost. The gas has about 21 times the global warming impact of carbon dioxide. Melting of Arctic sea ice is already triggering a feedback of more warming as dark water revealed by the receding ice absorbs more of the sun's energy, he said. That could lead to more melting of glaciers on land and raise global sea levels. (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/climate-confusion.html For climate scientists, now is the winter of their discontent. Their major work, the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, which won the Nobel Peace Prize, is now under attack. A sloppy paragraph wrongly projected how soon Himalayan glaciers might melt. Another section overestimated flood-prone areas in the Netherlands. Scientists say the mistakes are minor. But ... (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/climate-change-shareholder-actions-hit-record-high.html The number of climate change-related shareholder actions has soared 40 per cent during the 2010 proxy season to a record 95 resolutions, according to new figures from sustainable investment lobby group Ceres. The flurry of shareholder resolutions, many of which call on companies to provide more detailed information on the risks they face as a result of climate change and imminent carbon regulations, are expected to increase further after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently released new guidance detailing how climate change can represent a material risk to a firm's operations that should be disclosed to investors. "We want our companies to closely look at the impact climate change legislation and regulation have on them, to realistically assess those risks, and to consider the indirect consequences of climate change-driven regulation and business trends on their activities," said Jack Ehnes, chief executive of CalSTRS, a pension fund which manages $131bn dollars in assets. "The SEC's interpretive guidance outlines exactly the kind of action we have been asking our portfolio companies to take with regards to the issues raised by climate change." (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/disposal-of-spilled-coal-ash-a-long-winding-trip.html More than a year after a Tennessee coal ash spill created one of the worst environmental disasters of its kind in U.S. history, the problem is seeping into several other states...After the spill, the TVA started sending as many as 17,000 rail carloads of ash almost 350 miles south to the landfill in Uniontown, Ala. At least 160 rail shipments have gone out from the cleanup site... The landfill operators first sent it to wastewater treatment plants -- a common way that landfills deal with excess liquid -- in two nearby Alabama cities, Marion and Demopolis. After what the EPA calls unrelated problems with ammonia in Marion, the landfill in January started using a commercial wastewater treatment plant in Mobile, Ala., 500 miles from the original spill. (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/groundwater-depleting-at-alarming-rate-report.html If current trends of acute groundwater use continue, 60 percent of all aquifers in India could run dry in 20 years or will be in a critical condition, a World Bank report launched on Friday said. It has urged priority action through higher investment in management of groundwater resources to reduce over exploitation, especially in view of the fact that there is major dependence by several sectors on the resources countrywide. Groundwater resources are being depleted at an alarming rate. Today, 29 percent of groundwater blocks are semi-critical, critical, or overexploited, and the situation is deteriorating rapidly. (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/behavioral-economics-and-the-energy-behavior.html The argument Sendhil and I make is that we have to compare across all of these classes and say, "What's cost-effective in terms of achieving our goals?" We use the results from recent large-scale energy conservation programs that were motivated by behavioral science to show that behavioral science R and D is an underexplored and potentially cost-effective approach.... There was an academic s... (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/atmospheric-scientist-speaks-at-butler.html On Thursday night, March 4, atmospheric scientist Katharine Heyhoe spoke to more than a hundred students, faculty and community members on the campus of Butler University... After her excellent presentation, the first question asked from the audience was about climategate. Heyhoe handled the questioner deftly, referring him to investigating the hacked emails himself, along with looking at the actual science of global warming, yet the man nattered on, until, having stolen too much speakspace, was asked to stop. He quickly left the room. Unfortunately, so did a number of students...a survey by the Yale Project on Climate Change and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change concluded that younger people, 18-34, are relatively "apathetic about the threat" of climate change. In fact, the survey found, nearly two thirds of younger Americans are "unsure whether global warming is real." (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/review-says-global-warming-is-man-made.html The case for man-made global warming is even stronger than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change maintained in its official assessments, according to the first scientific review published since December's Copenhagen conference and subsequent attacks on the IPCC's credibility. An international research team led by the UK Met Office spent the past year analysing more than 100 recent scientific papers to update the last IPCC assessment, released in 2007. Although the review itself preceded the sceptics' assault on climate science over the past three months, its launch in London on Thursday marks a resumption of the campaign by mainstream scientists to show that man-made releases of greenhouse gases are causing potentially dangerous global warming. (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/too-great-a-risk-for-the-bahamas.html The commercial fishing of Yellow-fin Tuna using purse seine nets in Bahamian waters poses too great a risk for the Bahamas, fisheries conservationist Dr David Philip warned. He is urging the government not to permit the use of this technique - in which, he says, large game fish, dolphins, sea turtles, and other species are likely to be caught and killed along with the tuna in the large nets. "This is a huge issue and the Bahamas should take leadership and stand to be leaders in this manner and say no to this kind of fishing," said Dr Philips, a representative of the Fisheries Conservation Foundation.... Craig Riker, president of the Grand Bahama Dive Association, says no one wins with purse seine fishing. "If you take the big fish out of the ocean, what fills its place is jellyfish. Jellyfish eat baby fish and fish eggs, and even if you leave some fish to breed they can't because the jellyfish get them. "Once that happens there is very little chance of getting fish back. It is a very dangerous slope to jump off," he said. (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/scientist-there-s-still-time-to-save-the-oceans.html "There's a great opportunity to take action to save what we can while we still can, but we first have to understand what is going on," Earle said in the Montana State University Friends of Stegner Lecture at the Ellen Theatre on Thursday evening. "What is going on," according to Earle, includes the deterioration of the world's coral reefs, the overfishing and poaching of important ocean carnivores like the blue fin tuna and increased pollution of the sea, largely a result of Western abundance and overindulgence. Due to industrialized nations' insatiable appetite for tuna, a 200-kilogram tuna can be sold for $100,000, Earle said, making it one of the most overfished species in the world.... "We take 100 million tons of wildlife out of the sea every year," she said, "and most of it is just bycatch," caught unintentionally by fishermen after the big-ticket fish.... "This is a moment in time, maybe a decade, when there's still a chance," she said. (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/arctic-sea-belching-tons-of-methane.html Arctic seabeds are belching massive quantities of methane, according to a new study that says ocean permafrost is a huge and largely overlooked source of the powerful greenhouse gas, which has been linked to global warming. Previous research had found methane bubbling out of melting permafrost -- frozen soil -- in Arctic wetlands and lakes. But the permafrost lining the deep, cold seas was thought to be staying frozen solid, holding in untold amounts of trapped methane. "It's not the case anymore," said study leader Natalia Shakhova, a biogeochemist at the University of Fairbanks, Alaska. "The permafrost is actually failing in its ability to preserve this leakage."... The scientists found that much of the seawater above the shelf is laden with methane, which in turn is being released into the atmosphere. What's more, the team found that current atmospheric methane levels in the Arctic are three times higher than those recorded across previous climate cycles going back 400,000 years. This phenomenon most likely isn't limited to the East Siberian Sea, the researchers note. If permafrost is melting in this part of the Arctic, all shallow areas along the Arctic shelf should be similarly affected. (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/environmental-collapse-s-funnier-side.html This small book [Converging Emergencies 2010-2020] is intended to be a fast, funny and frightening read, about things that matter. Sometimes we'll get a little, well, science-y. Sometimes we'll get a little silly, a little pedantic, a little too passionate, or too poetic.... But we guarantee that if you read it, you'll think about our world differently -- and laugh about it! (Punchline and user comments available on site) http://www.apocadocs.com/docs/2010/mar/us-backs-ban-on-bluefin-tuna-trade.html The US government announced yesterday that it supports prohibiting international trade of Atlantic bluefin tuna, a move that could lead to the most sweeping trade restrictions ever imposed on the highly prized fish. Sushi aficionados in Japan and elsewhere have consumed bluefin for decades, causing the fish's population to plummet. In less than two weeks, representatives from 175 countries ... (Punchline and user comments available on site)