ApocaDocuments (23) gathered this week:
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Sun, Apr 13, 2008
from Contra Costa Times:
Bill to keep mussels out of lakes
"California, where water and recreation often mix, is struggling to devise a plan to defend its lakes and rivers from invasions by tiny quagga and zebra mussels, which threaten to wreak havoc on the environment and water delivery systems.
An East Bay lawmaker has introduced a bill that would require lake and reservoir operators to develop plans to prevent boaters from inadvertently infecting new water bodies in California with nonnative mussels. The invasive mollusks can stow away in boats hauled from one reservoir to another. In a little more than a year, the mussels have infested the Colorado River and 17 reservoirs and aqueducts, mostly in Southern California but one in San Benito County." ...
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We suggest instituting a photo ID requirement for these mussels.
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Sun, Apr 13, 2008
from Chicago Tribune:
Winds of change are blowing in the suburbs
"Joel Lee doesn't consider himself an environmental maverick. He doesn't collect rainwater for bathing or drive a car powered by cooking grease. He's just an ordinary guy who has grown tired of the amount of money he forks over to heat his showers, light his bedroom and cool his home. So for the last year, Lee has been pressing officials in Will County to let him erect a 70-foot-tall wind turbine on the 10 acres that surround his ranch home near Peotone." ...
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Now, if we can figure out a way to keep these wind turbines from being a buzz saw for birds, we'll really be getting somewhere.
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Sun, Apr 13, 2008
from London Independent:
Russian town is so toxic even the mayor wants it closed down
"Harsh winters, polluted air, crumbling apartment blocks..." the residents of many Russian towns might feel that they have cause for complaint. But in Chapayevsk, a town of about 70,000 inhabitants in European Russia, the mayor himself has suggested a novel way of solving the town's problems ... abandon it. You can hardly blame him ... 96 per cent of all children there are deemed unhealthy." ...
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Britney Spears is naked and drunk and has a car accident in this story! Sorry...we just really want you to read this article and will try anything.
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Sat, Apr 12, 2008
from London Daily Telegraph:
Pollution is making flowers smell less
"Air pollution from power plants and cars is destroying the fragrance and thereby inhibiting the ability of pollinating insects to follow scent trails to their source, a new University of Virginia study indicates. This could partially explain why wild populations of some pollinators, particularly bees - which need nectar for food - are declining in areas around the world, from California to the Netherlands.... The result, potentially, is a vicious cycle where pollinators struggle to find enough food to sustain their populations, and populations of flowering plants, in turn, do not get pollinated sufficiently to proliferate and diversify."
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Maybe the flowers need little gas masks.
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Sat, Apr 12, 2008
from The Canadian Press:
New cracks suggest largest remaining Arctic ice shelf destined to disappear
"WARD HUNT ISLAND, Nunavut -- New cracks in the largest remaining Arctic ice shelf suggest another polar landmark seems destined to break up and disappear. Scientists discovered the extensive new cracks in the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf earlier this year and a patrol of Canadian Rangers got an up-close look at them last week."
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All these cracks leave me joke-less.
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Sat, Apr 12, 2008
from Toronto Star:
The coming hunger
"...This week, food riots paralyzed Haiti, with angry marchers outside the president's palace shouting "We are hungry!" Five people were killed in the chaos...Rice is the staple food of 4 billion people. But the prices for it, along with corn, wheat and other basics, has surged by 40 per cent to 80 per cent in the last three years and caused panicked uprisings in some of the poorest countries on Earth, from Cameroon to Bolivia. The situation has deteriorated so swiftly that some experts predict the effects of a global food crisis are going to bite more quickly than climate change. ...
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Then let them eat biofuel cake.
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Sat, Apr 12, 2008
from Associated Press:
EPA advisors slam new smog rule
"An advisory panel of scientists told the Environmental Protection Agency that its new air quality standard for smog fails to protect public health as required by law and should be strengthened. In a stern letter to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, the advisors expressed frustration that their unanimous recommendation for a more stringent standard was ignored when Johnson set the new smog requirements last month."
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Way to go, advisers! Send a "stern letter" to EPA's chief. Now that's pushing the envelope!
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Sat, Apr 12, 2008
from Science, via Science Daily (US):
Massive Study Of Madagascar Wildlife Leads To New Conservation Roadmap
An international team of researchers has developed a remarkable new roadmap for finding and protecting the best remaining holdouts for thousands of rare species that live only in Madagascar, considered one of the most significant biodiversity hot spots in the world. Altogether, more than 2,300 species found only in the vast area of Madagascar - a 226,642-square-mile (587,000-square-kilometer) island nation in the Indian Ocean - were included in the analysis. ...
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Madagascar? Don't the animals sing Disney tunes down there? Now that's biodiversity!
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Sat, Apr 12, 2008
from Jamai Cascio (Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies):
The Big Picture: Resource Collapse
We (the human we) have pushed the limits of many of the resources our civilization has come to depend upon. Oil is the most talked-about example, but from topsoil to fisheries, water to wheat, many of the resources underpinning life and society as we know it face significant threat. In many cases, this threat comes from simple over-consumption; in others, it comes from ecosystem damage (often, but not always, made worse by over-consumption). ...
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What a challenge, "ethics" and "emerging technologies" -- since most any technologies that makes money get promoted.
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Thu, Apr 10, 2008
from News-Enterprise (KY):
Report: A dozen Hardin County water sources polluted
A dozen Hardin County streams and the headwaters of one popular lake are considered unhealthy for aquatic life, fish consumption or both, according to a draft report released this week by Kentucky’s Division of Water.... Thirty-four streams in surrounding counties also are considered too polluted to fully sustain aquatic life or fully provide healthy recreational opportunities, according to the draft report. ...
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The solution to pollution is not dilution.
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Thu, Apr 10, 2008
from Newsline365 (India):
Bird Flu virus entrenched in India: United Nations
In a grave and serious warning to India since the first outbreak of birdflu in Maharashtra in 2006, the United Nations today said that the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza virus might have got entrenched in the Indo-Gangetic plains of India and Bangladesh. This is almost confirmed by the massive spread of the disease across the states in India. After West Bengal, now it is the turn of Tripura. Bird flu has attacked this northeastern state, the fifth state of India that has become the prey of H5N1 avian influenza virus within a short span of three years. ...
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First, endemic. Next, pandemic. Finally, panicdemic.
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Thu, Apr 10, 2008
from Telluride DailyPlanet:
Fish kill possible on Fall Creek
Pink-bellied and dappled with black-pepper speckles, the Colorado River cutthroat trout once swam through 21,000 miles of rivers and streams across the West. But the fish are dwindling, threatened by invasive species, polluted streams and years of mining, and they now occupy only 3 to 15 percent of their old habitats.
Efforts to replenish cutthroat stocks to Colorado rivers have a spotty record. But now, the U.S. Forest Service and Colorado Department of Wildlife are proposing a fish-kill in Fall Creek and Woods Lake to wipe out non-native fish and bring back the endemic trout. ...
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We burned the river to save it.
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Thu, Apr 10, 2008
from Greenpeace:
Logging in Canada
... it finds that logging is destabilizing the Boreal Forest in ways that may exacerbate both global warming and its impacts. The forest products industry and government regulators adamantly deny that logging in Canada's Boreal affects the climate. But research shows that when the forest is degraded through logging and industrial development, massive amounts of greenhouse gasses are released into the atmosphere, and the forest becomes more vulnerable to global warming impacts like fires and insect outbreaks. In many cases, these impacts cause even more greenhouse gasses to be released, driving a vicious circle in which global warming degrades the Boreal Forest, and Boreal Forest degradation advances global warming. If left unchecked, this could culminate in a catastrophic release of greenhouse gasses known as "the carbon bomb". ...
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That bomb may leave a huuuge smoking crater.
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Want more context?
Try reading our book FREE online:
Humoring the Horror of the Converging Emergencies!
More fun than a barrel of jellyfish!
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Wed, Apr 9, 2008
from Reuters:
Warming trends rise in large ocean areas: study
"Warming trends in a third of the world's large ocean regions are two to four times greater than previously reported averages, increasing the risk to marine life and fisheries, a U.N.-backed environmental study said.
Overfishing, coastal pollution and degradation of water quality were common in all 64 large marine ecosystems studied by scientists who contributed to the U.N. Environmental Program report presented at an international conference on oceans, coasts and islands in Vietnam this week." ...
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That fish are gonna be so hot you won't even need to cook 'em before you eat 'em!
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Wed, Apr 9, 2008
from Purdue University:
Interactive Map of Greenhouse Gases and Emissions
"A new, high-resolution, interactive map of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels has found that the emissions aren't all where we thought. "For example, we've been attributing too many emissions to the northeastern United States, and it's looking like the southeastern U.S. is a much larger source than we had estimated previously," says Kevin Gurney, an assistant professor of earth and atmospheric science at Purdue University and leader of the project...."Ten years ago there might have been resistance to the notion of examining who is responsible for the CO2 emissions in such a visually detailed way," Gurney says. "However, what Vulcan makes utterly clear is that CO2 emissions cannot be exclusively affixed to SUV drivers, manufacturers or large power producers; everybody is responsible...." ...
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You mean... I can't just blame everybody else?
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Wed, Apr 9, 2008
from National Science Foundation:
Breakthrough In Biofuel Production Process
"Researchers have made a breakthrough in the development of "green gasoline," a liquid identical to standard gasoline yet created from sustainable biomass sources like switchgrass and poplar trees...While it may be five to 10 years before green gasoline arrives at the pump or finds its way into a fighter jet, these breakthroughs have bypassed significant hurdles to bringing green gasoline biofuels to market." ...
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Thank goodness corn can go back to its main job of making my soda pop taste sugary.
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Tue, Apr 8, 2008
from London Times:
Food prices rise beyond means of poorest in Africa
"It has been called a "perfect storm" -- a combination of apparently unrelated events that have come together to trigger soaring food prices. Millions of people, particularly in developing countries, are affected by rises that have caused riots and many deaths.
Increased energy prices, competition between biofuels and food, rising demand from economic growth in emerging countries and the effects of sudden climatic shocks, such as drought and floods, have combined to cause skyrocketing prices in some of the world's poorest countries, such as Ethiopia and Burkina Faso.
Peter Smerdon, Africa spokesman for the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), told The Times: "The people hit hardest by this combination of factors are those living on the razor's edge of poverty. There is not one single country in Africa not negatively affected. Indeed, most countries in the world are affected." ...
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Surely one of the most effective ways of controlling overpopulation is starvation. And not all countries are affected. Here in the US we waste about 25 percent of our food -- around 100 billion tons of food per year.
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Tue, Apr 8, 2008
from Time Magazine:
Can Climate Change Make Us Sicker?
"What do we talk about when we talk about global warming? It'll get hotter, that's a safe bet; polar ice caps will be melting, and wildlife that can't adapt to warmer temperatures could be on the way out. But what does it really mean for the health of us, the human race? It's a question that remains surprisingly difficult to answer — research into climate change's impacts on human health have lagged behind other areas of climate science. But what we do know has scientists and doctors increasingly worried — a rising risk of death from heat waves, the spread of tropical diseases like malaria into previously untouched areas, worsened water-borne diseases." ...
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Thank you, Time, for a good article. Now, how about a publication called Time Running Out?
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Tue, Apr 8, 2008
from New York Times:
Hermaphrodite Frogs Found in Suburban Ponds
"Just as frogs' mating season arrives, a study by a Yale professor raises a troubling issue. How many frogs will be clear on their role in the annual springtime ritual? Common frogs that make their homes in suburban areas are more likely than their rural counterparts to develop the reproductive abnormalities previously found in fish in the Potomac and Mississippi Rivers, according to the study by David Skelly, a professor of ecology at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
Dr. Skelly's research found that 21 percent of male green frogs, Rana clamitans, taken from suburban Connecticut ponds are hermaphrodites, with immature eggs growing in their testes.
The study is the latest in a decade's worth of research that has found intersex characteristics in water-dwelling species like sharp-tooth catfish in South Africa, small-mouth bass on the Potomac and shovelnose sturgeon in the Mississippi. ...
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Maybe these frogs are not so much intersexual as they are metrosexual.
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Mon, Apr 7, 2008
from Reuters:
Hard Times on the Way for Koalas
"Australia's unique tree-dwelling koalas may become a victim of climate change, new research reported on Saturday shows. Australian scientists say that eucalyptus leaves, the staple diet of koalas and other animals, could become inedible because of climate change." ...
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Maybe if something as cute as a koala is being threatened by global warming, it will wake everyone up.
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Mon, Apr 7, 2008
from Vancouver Tyee:
Big Worries About Micro Particles
"The next "it" product is here. Some of you sleep on it. Some of you slap it on cuts. Some of you clean with it. Some babies suck on it. A few people study it, wondering if "it" will be an environmental and health disaster. Silver nanoparticles lace the insides of mattresses, bandages, washing machines, baby soothers, teddy bears and socks. Long known for its antimicrobial properties, silver is more effective at the nano-scale, particles a billionth of a metre in diameter. It's effective enough that the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States will consider it a pesticide under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act. Over 500 consumer products in North America hype their nano-sized composition, with silver the nano-star of the moment....The question of toxicity and human-engineered nanomaterials is one scientists and regulators struggle to understand. And one that consumers barely know about." ...
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By all means let's mass produce this crap, THEN worry about the consequences.
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Mon, Apr 7, 2008
from New York Times:
Duck and Cover: It's the new survivalism
"...Survivalism, it seems, is not just for survivalists anymore. Faced with a confluence of diverse threats — a tanking economy, a housing crisis, looming environmental disasters, and a sharp spike in oil prices — people who do not consider themselves extremists are starting to discuss doomsday measures once associated with the social fringes.
They stockpile or grow food in case of a supply breakdown, or buy precious metals in case of economic collapse. Some try to take their houses off the electricity grid, or plan safe houses far away. The point is not to drop out of society, but to be prepared in case the future turns out like something out of “An Inconvenient Truth,” if not “Mad Max.” ...
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Good for our site, but kinda tragic otherwise...
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Mon, Apr 7, 2008
from San Francisco Chronicle:
Health problems reported after aerial spraying
"On a clear night in September, the Wilcox family got ready for the airplane that would soon fly overhead and spray a pesticide to fight an invasive moth discovered on the Monterey Peninsula. They shut the windows and stayed indoors. "I didn't think much of it. We thought it wouldn't be harmful," said Air Force Maj. Timothy Wilcox, who's enrolled in the U.S. Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey. The very next day, the Wilcoxes' 11-month-old son, Jack, started wheezing. It got so bad, his eyes rolled back in his head, the boy's father said. The baby spent his first birthday in the hospital on oxygen and medication." ...
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Makes you wonder if inhaling the invasive moth would be any worse than this.
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Weeks' Archived
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