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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(4)
Plague/Virus:(1)
Climate Chaos:(12)
Resource Depletion: (1)
Biology Breach:(12)
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This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
ecosystem interrelationships  ~ anthropogenic change  ~ climate impacts  ~ contamination  ~ economic myopia  ~ faster than expected  ~ toxic water  ~ deniers  ~ massive die-off  ~ carbon emissions  ~ corporate farming  



ApocaDocuments (4) matching "faster than expected" from this week
[see full week] ~ [see all stories tagged "faster than expected"]
Fri, Apr 23, 2010
from McClatchy Newspapers:
Report: Ocean acidification rising at unprecedented rate
With the oceans absorbing more than 1 million tons of carbon dioxide an hour, a National Research Council study released Thursday found that the level of acid in the oceans is increasing at an unprecedented rate and threatening to change marine ecosystems. The council said the oceans were 30 percent more acidic than they were before the Industrial Revolution started roughly 200 years ago, and the oceans absorb one-third of today's carbon dioxide emissions. Unless emissions are reined in, ocean acidity could increase by 200 percent by the end of the century and even more in the next century, said James Barry, a senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California and one of the study's authors... Also testifying was actress Sigourney Weaver, who made passing references to her roles in "Alien" and "Avatar" while urging Congress to pass global climate change legislation. ...


She did not, however, make any reference to her role in Tadpole.

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Wed, Apr 21, 2010
from Scientific American (per DesdemonaDespair):
Antarctica ice sheets: 'Our models may be dramatically underestimating' danger
Withered by summer heat, Arctic sea ice has shrunk to record low coverage several times since 2005, only to rebound to within 95 percent of its long-term average extent this winter. By comparison, Antarctica, with some 90 percent of the world's glacial reserves, has generally shed ice in more stately fashion. However, emerging evidence from an Antarctic geological research drilling program known as ANDRILL suggests that the southernmost continent has had a much more dynamic history than previously suspected--one that could signal an abrupt shrinkage of its ice sheets at some unknown greenhouse gas threshold, possibly starting in this century. Especially troubling, scientists see evidence in the geological data that could mean the vast East Antarctic Ice Sheet, which holds at least four-fifths of the continent's ice, is less resistant to melting than previously thought.... According to the simulation, the East ice sheet melts only when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are at least eight times higher than preindustrial levels. The ice sheet's so-called hysteresis, or resistance to change, is now in doubt. Modeler and geologist Robert DeConto of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, says the policy implications are grim. "Our models may be dramatically underestimating how much worse it's going to get," he says, noting that many population centers worldwide are within a few meters of sea level. Looking at signs of meltwater in the early Miocene, DeConto says, "we're seeing ice retreat faster and more dramatically than any model predicts." ...


Hysteresical.

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Tue, Apr 20, 2010
from KTVU:
Climate Damage Confirmed To Be Serious, Extensive
Internationally respected Mbari ocean chemist Peter Brewer says 85 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from automobiles and fossil fuel power plants, their output equaling a million tons of carbon dioxide every hour dissolving into the ocean. "In the long term future, where there'll be a huge swath of ocean, that will be inhospitable to marine life," said Brewer. Research published Friday suggested that deep oceans are hiding heat that will likely accelerate global warming, spawn repeated El Nino's and quicken ocean catastrophes.... The net effect experts say, is greenhouse gas levels are greater now and rising faster than at any time humans have been on earth "We're putting so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that the biosphere just can't catch up," said Baldocchi.... But scientists like Brewer and Baldocchi are pessimistic, saying climate change is happening too fast. "I think we're going to have these changes, I wish we didn't, we better work hard to try and undo them, but right now there's not a good path for doing that," said Brewer. "Sure we'll live, we'll survive, it just might not be a very nice world.," said Baldocchi. ...


I ain't fallin' for it. I demand a 145,322nd opinion.

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Mon, Apr 19, 2010
from NUVO Newsweekly:
Bill McKibben's must-read "Eaarth"
Bill McKibben, the writer who first brought the reality of global warming to the mainstream reader 20 years ago with The End of Nature, is understandably feeling a little dark. Well, not a little dark, a lot dark. And who can blame him. The past twenty years have created more carbons, more methane, and more pain. Progress is hard to find; hope even harder. And so he intentionally misspells our planet's name to make a point: that we no longer live on the same planet. McKibben describes this old planet in this way. "For the ten thousand years that constitute human civilization, we've existed in the sweetest of sweet spots." This "sweet spot" has turned sour, and the first half of Eaarth is a relentless, panoramic accounting of just how bad it's gotten, worldwide, from artic melt to extreme weather to the growth of dengue fever. This litany of global woe, he says, "Should come as body blows, as mortar barrages, as sickening thuds... Name a major feature of the earth's surface and you'll find massive change." ...


Me? I'm building a rocketship to Maars.

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