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[Recovery]: from Reuters, Thu Apr 17 2014:
In green car race, Toyota adds muscle with fuel-cell launch
...Toyota Motor Corp will next year launch a hydrogen-powered car in the United States, Japan and Europe. For now, people at Toyota are calling it the 2015 FC car, for fuel-cell.
Fuel-cell cars use a "stack" of cells that electro-chemically combine hydrogen with oxygen to generate electricity that helps propel the car. Their only emission, bar heat, is water vapor, they can run five times longer than battery electric cars, and it takes just minutes to fill the tank with hydrogen - far quicker than even the most rapid charger can recharge a battery electric car... Safety is also a concern. Hydrogen is a highly flammable element when not handled properly.
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Note to car-makers: Don't name it the Toyota Hindenburg.
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[Read more stories about: climate impacts, technological innovation]
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[Climate Chaos]: from Bloomberg News, Thu Apr 17 2014:
Koch Brothers Net Worth Tops $100 Billion as TV Warfare Escalates
Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who run Wichita, Kansas-based Koch Industries Inc., added $1.3 billion to their collective fortune yesterday on reports that U.S. industrial production gained more than forecast. The surge elevated their net worth to more than $100 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The Koch's ascent comes as Freedom Partners, one of their fundraising networks, last week aired its first batch of television ads targeted at this year's U.S. Senate races...
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Some rich folks use their money to help people; others use it to destroy the planet.
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[Read more stories about: corporate malfeasance]
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[Biology Breach]: from Huffington Post, Thu Apr 17 2014:
One Year After Texas Disaster, Report Looks At Schools Located Near Chemical Facilities
A new study released Wednesday finds there are almost 10,000 schools across the country located within a mile of a chemical facility.
The research was released ahead of the April 17 anniversary of an explosion at a West, Texas, fertilizer plant, which killed 15 people and injured hundreds of others. The explosion left many people wondering why schools and homes were located so close to the plant.
The report finds that 4.6 million children attend a school located within a mile of a facility that stores potentially risky chemicals.
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An opportunity for hands-on learning!
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[Read more stories about: contamination, health impacts]
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[Recovery]: from NPR, Thu Apr 17 2014:
Plant Breeders Release First 'Open Source Seeds'
A group of scientists and food activists is launching a Thursday to change the rules that govern seeds. They're releasing 29 new varieties of crops under a new "open source pledge" that's intended to safeguard the ability of farmers, gardeners and plant breeders to share those seeds freely.
It's inspired by the example of open source software, which is freely available for anyone to use but cannot legally be converted into anyone's proprietary product...
, director of intellectual property for the seed company HM Clause and the incoming president of the American Seed Trade Association, says his company may avoid using open source seed to breed new commercial varieties "because then we'd ... have limited potential to recoup the investment." That's because the offspring of open source seeds would have to be shared as well, and any other seed company could immediately sell the same variety.
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This will make Big Ag gag!
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[Read more stories about: food crisis, people rise up]
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[Biology Breach]: from Midwest Energy News, Thu Apr 17 2014:
Southeast Chicago residents take petcoke fight to the streets
Feeling that elected officials have betrayed them in the battle over piles of petroleum coke on the Southeast Side of Chicago, residents have vowed to take the fight to the streets and into their own hands... residents are furious that at the April 1 City Council meeting where the zoning committee was to vote on the ordinance, a substitute ordinance was introduced that allows continued increased petcoke storage provided the material is burned on-site... "I assure you over the next few months we'll get a lot more people involved," Esquivel said. "A lot of people still don't really know or care. But we've been educating ourselves, and hopefully we will be able to open their eyes and get them mad. We have to keep getting louder and louder and stronger and stronger. Because this is not a dumping ground, this is our home."
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These folks are mad and they're not going to take it anymore!
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[Read more stories about: toxic buildup, people rise up]
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[Climate Chaos]: from Climate Central, Tue Apr 15 2014:
March Was 4th Warmest on Record Globally
March 2014 was the fourth-warmest March on record globally, according to recently released NASA data, making it the 349th month -- more than 29 years -- in which global temperatures were above the historic average. The planet's average March temperature was 57.9°F -- 0.7°C (or 1.2°F) above the average temperature from 1951-1980 -- behind only the March of 2002, 2010 and 1990, in that order... The warm winter period may surprise those in the U.S. who suffered through the effects of a wobbling polar vortex, but the months of December through February were 1.57°F above the 20th century average...
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You mean the rest of the planet has temperatures too?
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[Read more stories about: global warming]
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[Climate Chaos]: from McClatchy, Tue Apr 15 2014:
EPA drastically underestimates methane released at drilling sites
Drilling at several natural gas wells in southwestern Pennsylvania released methane into the atmosphere at rates that were 100 to 1,000 times higher than federal regulators had estimated, new research shows.
Using a plane equipped to measure greenhouse gas emissions in the air, scientists found that drilling activities at seven well pads in the Marcellus shale formation emitted 34 grams of methane per second, on average. The Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that such drilling releases between 0.04 grams and 0.30 grams of methane per second.
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Decimal points have always been my downfall.
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[Read more stories about: climate impacts, methane release]
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[Recovery]: from Des Moines Register, Mon Apr 14 2014:
Rare partnership in Fairfield delivers veggies to kids
...there, tucked behind a nondescript factory, is a new greenhouse, sprouting spinach, radishes, pea shoots, greens and lettuce on a cold April day, thanks to its industrial partner next door.
In a unique experiment, Swinton is growing veggies by tapping unused heat from her neighbor, Schaus-Vorhies Kleaning, a company that uses heat up to 1,600 degrees to clean and sometimes strengthen metals. Swinton said the greenhouse is the first of its kind in Iowa, possibly the nation, and could become a demonstration project for others wanting to bring more locally grown fruits and vegetables to U.S. schoolchildren, especially in cold-weather locations like Iowa.
"It's pioneering. The concept of taking unused industrial heat for greenhouse production has been talked about, but few have developed it," said Matt Russell, a state food policy project coordinator at Drake University's Agricultural Law Center.
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That house is green in more ways than one.
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[Read more stories about: food crisis, technical cleverness, sustainability, wisdom]
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[Climate Chaos]: from New York Times, Mon Apr 14 2014:
Climate Efforts Falling Short, U.N. Panel Says
Delivering the latest stark news about climate change on Sunday, a United Nations panel warned that governments are not doing enough to avert profound risks in coming decades. But the experts found a silver lining: Not only is there still time to head off the worst, but the political will to do so seems to be rising around the world.
In a report unveiled here, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that decades of foot-dragging by political leaders had propelled humanity into a critical situation, with greenhouse emissions rising faster than ever. Though it remains technically possible to keep planetary warming to a tolerable level, only an intensive push over the next 15 years to bring those emissions under control can achieve the goal, the committee found.
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Today is the first day of the next 15 years to save the planet.
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[Read more stories about: holyshit]
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[Recovery]: from Chicago Tribune, Fri Apr 11 2014:
Ikea investing in Illinois wind farm
Home goods giant Ikea is building a wind farm in downstate Illinois large enough to ensure that its stores will never have to buy a single kilowatt of power again....
With ...
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[Climate Chaos]: from Newsweek, Thu Apr 10 2014:
Death on the Farm
...the suicide rate for male farmers has remained high: just under two times that of the general population. And this isn't just a problem in the U.S.; it's an international ...
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[Climate Chaos]: from The Daily Beast, Tue Apr 8 2014:
Can Generation Hot Avoid Its Fate?
...As a journalist who has reported on climate change from dozens of countries since then, I can't say I was surprised by the IPCC's report. Most of its findings were familiar ...
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Don't miss:
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According to the world's largest investment consultant, how big a shift in institutional asset allocation does climate change require today?
a) Depends on whether you believe in reality or magic.
b) Twenty-five percent.
c) None of it you durn tree-hugger.
d) Forty percent.
e) All of it you durn capitalist.
Answer: Forty percent.
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The ApocaDocs try to make fun of the horror of environmental collapse
by locating a handful of news items every day, and giving each a
punchline. The stories are categorized into five main topics: Species Collapse (ecosystem
interrelationships, invasive species, the sixth extinction, pesticide
effects, and more); Resource Depletion (peak oil, peak
phosphorus, overfishing, topsoil loss, aquifer declines, and more);
Biology Breach (toxic runoff, radiation, GMOs, pharmwater,
contamination, and idle destruction); Climate Chaos (global warming,
weather extremes, ocean warming, and more); and Infectious Disease
(pandemics, viruses, antibiotic resistance). To avoid deep depression,
we also include stories of Recovery
(alternative energy, innovations, species restoration, better policies, social
change, and the like).
For more information, see About The ApocaDocs.
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