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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(4)
Plague/Virus:()
Climate Chaos:(9)
Resource Depletion: (6)
Biology Breach:(10)
Recovery:(8)
This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
alternative energy  ~ weather extremes  ~ faster than expected  ~ ecosystem interrelationships  ~ stupid humans  ~ climate impacts  ~ anthropogenic change  ~ short-term thinking  ~ unintended consequences  ~ oil issues  ~ ocean warming  



ApocaDocuments (3) matching "short-term thinking" from this week
[see full week] ~ [see all stories tagged "short-term thinking"]
Sun, Aug 22, 2010
from Guardian:
We've gone into the ecological red
At the weekend, Saturday 21 August to be precise, the world as a whole went into "ecological debt". That means in effect that from now until the end of the year, humanity will be consuming more natural resources and producing more waste than the forests, fields and fisheries of the world can replace and absorb. By doing so, the life-support systems that we all depend on are worn ever thinner. Farms become less productive, fish populations crash and climate regulating forests decline. All become less resilient in the face of extreme weather events. The date is arrived at by comparing our annual environmental resource budget with our ecological footprint - the rate at which we spend it. The more we overshoot the available budget, the earlier in the year we start to go into the ecological red. Collectively we started to live beyond our means in the 1980s. Since then the date has crept earlier and earlier in the year. Improved measurement and data bring the latest date forward by a whole month in comparison with last year's date. It now takes about 18 months for the planet to generate what we consume in just 12. ...


I'm not worried -- I invested in ecology default swaps.

ApocaDoc
permalink

Fri, Aug 20, 2010
from The Independent:
Now Atlantic is found to have huge 'garbage patch'
A huge expanse of floating plastic debris has been documented for the first time in the North Atlantic Ocean. The size of the affected area rivals the "great Pacific garbage patch" in the world's other great ocean basin, which generated an outcry over the effects of plastic waste on marine wildlife. The new plastic waste, which was discovered in an area of the Atlantic to the east of Bermuda, consists mostly of fragments no bigger than a few millimetres wide. But their concentrations and the area of the sea that is covered have caused consternation among marine biologists studying the phenomenon.... Kara Lavender Law from the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, said the size of the Atlantic "garbage patch" was roughly equal to the one in the Pacific, where circulating currents of the North Pacific Gyre have trapped it over a wide area to the north of the equator. "The Pacific has received more attention in terms of plastic accumulation but we know less about the Pacific so it's very difficult to compare the Atlantic patch in terms of size. We had a cruise this summer to try to find the eastern extent and in fact we failed to find it," Dr Lavender Law said.... Small fragments of plastic could pose an even greater menace to marine life than the larger fragments that become entangled with animals such as albatrosses and turtles, she said. "We know that smaller pieces of plastic are eaten and it's unclear what happens to that plastic then. But clearly biological organisms were not designed to eat plastic," she said. ...


Perhaps there simply isn't an eastern limit.

ApocaDoc
permalink

Thu, Aug 19, 2010
from AolNews:
EPA May Give 1st Approval of Nanosilver for Fabrics
A Swiss chemical producer may soon be the first company to receive approval by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to use nanosilver to make clothing smell better, stay cleaner and destroy germs. However, health scientists say the nanoparticles will wash out with the rinse water and could cause unknown environmental and health problems downstream. The EPA said that it may issue "conditional approval" to HeiQ Materials AG, a producer of nanosized additives, for the use of a nanosilver pesticide as a new active ingredient in fabrics. ...


Me, I like to look good while I'm dying from environmental contamination.

ApocaDoc
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