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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(5)
Plague/Virus:(2)
Climate Chaos:(8)
Resource Depletion: (9)
Biology Breach:(10)
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This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
anthropogenic change  ~ stupid humans  ~ bad policy  ~ faster than expected  ~ ecosystem interrelationships  ~ overfishing  ~ airborne pollutants  ~ governmental idiocy  ~ climate impacts  ~ smart policy  ~ global warming  



ApocaDocuments (11) matching "anthropogenic change" from this week
[see full week] ~ [see all stories tagged "anthropogenic change"]
Sun, Dec 14, 2008
from Indo-Asian News Service:
Get ready for worse climate change impacts: expert
Poznan (Poland), Dec 14 (IANS) An extra billion people will face water shortage, cereal production in developing countries will drop and coastal regions will face more damage from floods and storms because of delay in combating climate change, says a leading expert. The world should be prepared to face far worse effects of global warming than it is facing now, Martin Parry, a professor at the Imperial College in London, said in the backdrop of little substantial progress at the Dec 1-12 climate summit here. ...


Parry, from what I hear, teaches in the Duh!-partment of the Obvious.

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Fri, Dec 12, 2008
from Toronto Globe and Mail:
Scientists predict seasonal ice-free Arctic by 2015
QUEBEC -- Ice in the Canadian Arctic is melting at such an alarming pace due to climate change that the North will be seasonally ice free in six years, according to a study released yesterday from a groundbreaking scientific expedition. The dawning of a seasonal ice-free Canadian Arctic is upon us, said David Barber, one of the leading scientists on the 15-month expedition, adding the consequences for Inuit communities, the wildlife and the entire northern ecosystem are unpredictable. And it is happening much faster than anyone anticipated, he said, noting that only two years ago a seasonal ice-free Arctic was predicted by 2030. "I now believe that the Arctic will be out of multiyear ice in the summertime as early as 2015; it is coming very quickly," Dr. Barber said. "The whole system is in a very rapid rate of change. ... The Arctic is telling us that climate change is coming quicker and stronger." ...


Quick! Someone distract me with a story about Amy Winehouse or Britney Spears.

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Fri, Dec 12, 2008
from CNN:
Drought parches much of the U.S., may get worse
...At least 36 states expect to face water shortages within the next five years, according to a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. According to the National Drought Mitigation Center, several regions in particular have been hit hard: the Southeast, Southwest and the West. Texas, Georgia and South Carolina have suffered the worst droughts this year, the agency said. Yet most people don't need a federal agency to tell them there's a water shortage. Plenty of cities have implemented water bans while state squabbles over water usage are common in some regions. What may surprise people, though, are the causes for the recent drought. It's not global warming, some climatologists say. The droughts are caused by rapid population growth and unwise agricultural choices. John R. Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, says the last three years have been drier than usual in many parts of the United States, but overall there's been no shortage of rainfall. He says the U.S. mainland experienced worse droughts in the 12th and 16th centuries. ...


It doesn't just make me thirsty -- it's everything around me!

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Fri, Dec 12, 2008
from New York Times:
Interior Department Rule Eases a Mandate Under a Law on Wildlife
The Interior Department on Thursday announced a rule that has largely freed federal agencies from their obligation to consult independent wildlife biologists before they build dams or highways or permit construction of transmission towers, housing developments or other projects that might harm federally protected wildlife.... In announcing the rule, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said his main intention was to ensure that the 1972 law was not used as a "back door" means of regulating the emission of the gases that accelerate climate change.... Pat Parenteau, a professor at the Vermont Law School, disagreed, saying, "For all federal agencies, if this isn't a carte blanche, it's certainly a broad license to decide for yourself that you don't need to consult." ...


If only these guys could be haunted forever by the ghosts of all they have destroyed.

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Thu, Dec 11, 2008
from Mongabay:
Climate change will transform the chemical makeup of the ocean
"The ocean's calcium cycle is closely linked to atmospheric carbon dioxide and the processes that control seawater's acidity," co-author of the paper, Ken Caldeira, adds. Already, increasing acidification of the ocean is decimating certain populations of coral. In past research Caldeira has pointed out that an increasingly acidic ocean will doom the world's fishing industry and degrade 98 percent of the world's coral reefs in less than fifty years.... "as CO2 increases and weather patterns shift, the chemical composition of our rivers will change, and this will affect the oceans. This will change the amount of calcium and other elements in ocean salts." "What we learned from this work is that the ocean system is much more sensitive to climate change than we have previously appreciated," Griffith adds. ...


At least nothing in the ocean depends on calcium! Whew!

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Wed, Dec 10, 2008
from London Independent:
Climate change: A battle for the planet
Summing up what many scientists, environmentalists and politicians now think about the threat of climate change is simple: the world is drinking in the last chance saloon. Time is still available to tackle the warming of the atmosphere, which every government (including that of George Bush) today accepts is real, and being caused by human actions. But the window of opportunity is rapidly closing, and the last chance for the world to act in concert to bring the process under control is clearly visible: it is the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen scheduled for December 2009. ...


Whew! We have one more year to enjoy denial!

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Wed, Dec 10, 2008
from Guardian (UK):
Europe pledges strict emissions cut to tempt China and India into climate deal
European officials have offered to make the continent virtually zero-carbon in an attempt to lure China and other developing countries into a new global climate deal to replace the Kyoto protocol. Stavros Dimas, European commissioner for the environment, told the Guardian that the EU could aim for a 80-95 percent reduction in greenhouse gas pollution by 2050 in exchange for greater efforts by developing nations to limit their emissions. Dimas said the pledge has "already been put on the table" and that he was awaiting responses. In return, Europe would ask developing countries to reduce their forecasted carbon pollution growth by 15-30 percent over the next decade. "We haven't got any reaction, so they're floating somewhere," he said. ...


Apart from how disconnected that is from our real needs (2050? Try 2015...), this is good news!

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Wed, Dec 10, 2008
from AFP:
Fifth of world's corals already dead, say experts
Almost a fifth of the planet's coral reefs have died and carbon emissions are largely to blame, according to an NGO study released Wednesday. The report, released by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, warned that on current trends, growing levels of greenhouse gases will destroy many of the remaining reefs over the next 20 to 40 years. "If nothing is done to substantially cut emissions, we could effectively lose coral reefs as we know them, with major coral extinctions," said Clive Wilkinson, the organisation's coordinator. ...


Any way to turn back time, so we might learn from our mistakes?

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Wed, Dec 10, 2008
from Straight.com:
Gwynne Dyer: Four harsh truths about climate change
About 70 interviews, a dozen countries, and 18 months later, I have reached four conclusions that I didn’t even suspect when I began the process. The first is simply this: the scientists are really scared. Their observations over the past two or three years suggest that everything is happening a lot faster than climate models predicted. This creates a dilemma, because for the past decade they have been struggling against a well-funded campaign that cast doubt on climate change. Now, finally, people and even governments are listening. Even in the United States, the world headquarters of climate-change denial, 85 percent of the population now sees climate change as a major issue, and both major presidential candidates promised 80-percent cuts in American emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. The scientists are understandably reluctant at this point to announce publicly that their predictions were wrong, that it's really much worse, and that the targets will have to be revised. Most of them are waiting for overwhelming proof that climate change really is moving faster, even though they are already privately convinced that it is. ...


When the scientists are afraid to admit they were underestimating -- well, it means they've been well-trained by the last eight years of ignorant "leadership."

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Tue, Dec 9, 2008
from London Guardian:
Too late? Why scientists say we should expect the worst
... The cream of the UK climate science community sat in stunned silence as [climate scientist Kevin] Anderson pointed out that carbon emissions since 2000 have risen much faster than anyone thought possible, driven mainly by the coal-fuelled economic boom in the developing world. So much extra pollution is being pumped out, he said, that most of the climate targets debated by politicians and campaigners are fanciful at best, and "dangerously misguided" at worst. In the jargon used to count the steady accumulation of carbon dioxide in the Earth's thin layer of atmosphere, he said it was "improbable" that levels could now be restricted to 650 parts per million (ppm)....At 650ppm, the same fuzzy science says the world would face a catastrophic 4C average rise. ...




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Mon, Dec 8, 2008
from AP News:
Native Hunters -- Climate is thinning caribou herds
Chief Bill Erasmus of the Dene nation in northern Canada brought a stark warning about the climate crisis: The once abundant herds of caribou are dwindling, rivers are running lower and the ice is too thin to hunt on. Erasmus raised his concerns in recent days on the sidelines of a U.N. climate conference, seeking to ensure that North America's indigenous peoples are not left out in the cold when it comes to any global warming negotiations. Erasmus, the 54-year-old elected leader of 30,000 native Americans in Canada, and representatives of other indigenous peoples met with the U.N.'s top climate official, Yvo de Boer, and have lobbied national delegations to recognize them as an "expert group" that can participate in the talks like other nongovernment organizations. "We bring our traditional knowledge to the table that other people don't have," he said. ...


What, listen to those who have experience and ground-level knowledge? What planet is he from?

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