Apocadocuments, for the week of

[About the Project]
[About the ApocaDocs]
[About Equal Share]
[TwitterFollow: apocadocs]

Explore:

Play:

It's weekly, funny, and free!

Play:

Click for paper-free fun!

	Ads for potentially microfunding this site:

What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from

View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:	(3)
Plague/Virus:	()
Climate Chaos:	(11)
Resource Depletion:	(6)
Biology Breach:	(9)
Recovery:	(5)

This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
anthropogenic change ~ global warming ~ ocean acidification ~ water issues ~ technological innovation ~ faster than expected ~ contamination ~ toxic sludge ~ marine mammals ~ capitalist greed ~ climate impacts

ApocaDocuments (34) gathered this week:
Sun, Jan 4, 2009 from Science Daily (US): Amazon Deforestation Trend On The Increase Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon forests has flipped from a decreasing to an increasing trend, according to new annual figures recently released by the country's space agency INPE. Commenting on the figures, Brazilian environment minister Carlos Minc confirmed that the government will on Monday announce forest related carbon emission reduction targets, which will link halting deforestation to the national climate change campaign. From August 2007 to July 2008, Brazil deforested 11,968 square kilometers of forests in the area designated as the Legal Amazon, a 3.8 per cent increase over the previous year and an unwelcome surprise following declines of 18 per cent over the previous period. ...	Maybe this is a version of "set the price 18 percent higher and offer a 14 percent discount" marketing. ApocaDoc permalink
Sun, Jan 4, 2009 from Associated Press: Lead for car batteries poisons an African town THIAROYE SUR MER, Senegal -- First, it took the animals. Goats fell silent and refused to stand up. Chickens died in handfuls, then en masse. Street dogs disappeared. Then it took the children. Toddlers stopped talking and their legs gave out. Women birthed stillborns. Infants withered and died. Some said the houses were cursed. Others said the families were cursed. The mysterious illness killed 18 children in this town on the fringes of Dakar, Senegal's capital, before anyone in the outside world noticed. When they did - when the TV news aired parents' angry pleas for an investigation, when the doctors ordered more tests, when the West sent health experts - they did not find malaria, or polio or AIDS, or any of the diseases that kill the poor of Africa. They found lead. The dirt here is laced with lead left over from years of extracting it from old car batteries. So when the price of lead quadrupled over five years, residents started digging up the earth to get at it. ...	Another heart-breaking symptom of our global illness of over-consumption. ApocaDoc permalink
Sun, Jan 4, 2009 from Huffington Post: Tennessee's Toxic Nightmare: Arsenic Levels 35 to 300 Times EPA Standard for Drinking Water Just-released independent water sampling data from the Tennessee coal ash disaster has shown alarmingly high levels of arsenic and seven other heavy metals, including cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury and thallium. "I've never seen levels this high," said Dr. Shea Tuberty, Assistant Professor of Biology at the Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Lab at Appalachian State University. "These levels would knock out fish reproduction ... the ecosystems around Kingston and Harriman are going to be in trouble ... maybe for generations." ...	This is the Exxon Valdez of 2008. But who's the drunken sailor? ApocaDoc permalink
Sun, Jan 4, 2009 from Joplin Independent: Tyson Foods is undisputed winner of OCWF award The Golden Litter Award for 2008 goes to Tyson Foods, Inc. in recognition of attempts to cloud a U.S. Federal District Court lawsuit accusing Tyson and other poultry companies of water pollution. The award is presented by the Oklahoma Clean Water Forum (OCWF), a blog about water quality, the Illinois River and Tenkiller Lake. In addition to the Golden Litter Award, Silver Squat Awards will go to Oklahoma television stations for non-coverage of Oklahoma's poultry lawsuit and poultry waste pollution of the Illinois River watershed. A newspaper and a public utility also are receiving Silver Squat Awards. "With only a few exceptions, TV stations did dismal "diddly squat: in coverage of Oklahoma’s clean water lawsuit and poultry waste pollution of the Illinois River and Tenkiller Lake," said OCWF editors. "Because they did squat while raking in millions of poultry industry advertising dollars, they deserve squat." ...	Ignorance is advertising bliss -- how about a "Blind Acquiescence" award for media? ApocaDoc permalink
Sat, Jan 3, 2009 from Goldsboro News-Argus: Cape Fear all-release fishing tourney raises striper issues Already, biologists have curtailing stocking white bass-striped bass hybrids into Jordan Lake. Fish from the upstream lake were passing into the lower Cape Fear River, diluting striped bass spawning effort. In 2008, NCWRC and NCDMF implemented a moratorium to shore up the spawning population. Based on a tournament held in Dec. 6, 2008 the moratorium is already working. "This is one of the best days I've ever see," said Capt. Jeremiah Hieronymus. "Seven boats caught 77 striped bass and tagged 44 of them." ... "Stripers, sturgeon, shad and herring are like canaries in a coal mine," said Owens. "These anadromous suffer from the dams, which block their access to historic spawning waters. If we can get everyone together to allow those fish to get above the dams to spawn, we could have fishing on the Cape Fear that rivals the fishing on the Roanoke River." ...	An all-release tourney that tag the fish -- what a great idea! Can the Japanese do that with their "scientific whaling" instead of committing mammal murder? ApocaDoc permalink
Sat, Jan 3, 2009 from Science Daily (US): Hot Southern Summer Threatens Coral With Massive Bleaching Event A widespread and severe coral bleaching episode is predicted to cause immense damage to some of the world's most important marine environments over the next few months. A report from the US Government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts severe bleaching for parts of the Coral Sea, which lies adjacent to Australia's Great Barrier Reef, and the Coral Triangle, a 5.4 million square kilometre expanse of ocean in the Indo-Pacific which is considered the centre of the world's marine life. "This forecast bleaching episode will be caused by increased water temperatures and is the kind of event we can expect on a regular basis if average global temperatures rise above 2 degrees," said Richard Leck, Climate Change Strategy Leader for WWF's Coral Triangle Program.... The bleaching, predicted to occur between now and February, could have a devastating impact on coral reef ecosystems, killing coral and destroying food chains. There would be severe impacts for communities in Australia and the region, who depend on the oceans for their livelihoods. ...	That is one massive canary. ApocaDoc permalink
Sat, Jan 3, 2009 from Guardian (UK): Paradise lost on Maldives' rubbish island It may be known as a tropical paradise, an archipelago of 1,200 coral islands in the Indian Ocean. But the traditional image of the Maldives hides a dirty secret: the world's biggest rubbish island. A few miles and a short boat ride from the Maldivian capital, Malé, Thilafushi began life as a reclamation project in 1992. The artificial island was built to solve Malé's refuse problem. But today, with more than 10,000 tourists a week in the Maldives adding their waste, the rubbish island now covers 50 hectares (124 acres).... Environmentalists say that more than 330 tonnes of rubbish is brought to Thilafushi a day. Most of it comes from Malé, which is one of the world's most densely populated towns: 100,000 people cram into 2 square kilometres. Brought on ships, the rubbish is taken onshore and sifted by hand. Some of the waste is incinerated but most is buried in landfill sites. There is, say environmental campaigners, also an alarming rise in batteries and electronic waste being dumped in Thilafushi's lagoon. "We are seeing used batteries, asbestos, lead and other potentially hazardous waste mixed with the municipal solid wastes being put into the water...." ...	Actually, the continent of plastic in the Pacific likely holds that dubious prize. ApocaDoc permalink
Fri, Jan 2, 2009 from London Independent: Climate scientists: it's time for 'Plan B' An emergency "Plan B" using the latest technology is needed to save the world from dangerous climate change, according to a poll of leading scientists carried out by The Independent. The collective international failure to curb the growing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has meant that an alternative to merely curbing emissions may become necessary. The plan would involve highly controversial proposals to lower global temperatures artificially through daringly ambitious schemes that either reduce sunlight levels by man-made means or take CO2 out of the air. This "geoengineering" approach – including schemes such as fertilising the oceans with iron to stimulate algal blooms – would have been dismissed as a distraction a few years ago but is now being seen by the majority of scientists we surveyed as a viable emergency backup plan that could save the planet from the worst effects of climate change, at least until deep cuts are made in CO2 emissions. What has worried many of the experts, who include recognised authorities from the world's leading universities and research institutes, as well as a Nobel Laureate, is the failure to curb global greenhouse gas emissions through international agreements, namely the Kyoto Treaty, and recent studies indicating that the Earth's natural carbon "sinks" are becoming less efficient at absorbing man-made CO2 from the atmosphere. ...	What the hell. Let's skip B and go right to Plan C! ApocaDoc permalink
Fri, Jan 2, 2009 from New York Times: Signs of Another California Drought Year SAN FRANCISCO-- California, just finished with its second consecutive year of drought, might well be facing a third. If so, state authorities may be forced to impose water rationing on farmers, homes and businesses. With the rainy season well under way, early partial measurements indicate that the amount of water stored in the Sierra snowpack, the state's natural reservoir, is higher than the amount at this time last year but well below average, said the state's meteorologist, Elissa Lynn. The deficit can be made up if January, February and March are full of big Pacific storms. But this week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that the weather phenomenon known as La Nina, which is characterized by cooler waters in the western Pacific Ocean and drier conditions, had returned for the second consecutive year. ...	That durn La Nina .... she just won't go away! ApocaDoc permalink
Fri, Jan 2, 2009 from Chicago Tribune: Canada's forests, once huge help on greenhouse gases, now contribute to climate change As relentlessly bad as the news about global warming seems to be, with ice at the poles melting faster than scientists had predicted and world temperatures rising higher than expected, there was at least a reservoir of hope stored here in Canada's vast forests. The country's 1.2 million square miles of trees have been dubbed the "lungs of the planet" by ecologists because they account for more than 7 percent of Earth's total forest lands. They could always be depended upon to suck in vast quantities of carbon dioxide, naturally cleansing the world of much of the harmful heat-trapping gas. But not anymore. In an alarming yet little-noticed series of recent studies, scientists have concluded that Canada's precious forests, stressed from damage caused by global warming, insect infestations and persistent fires, have crossed an ominous line and are now pumping out more climate-changing carbon dioxide than they are sequestering. Worse yet, the experts predict that Canada's forests will remain net carbon sources, as opposed to carbon storage "sinks," until at least 2022, and possibly much longer. ...	So... Ronald Reagan WAS right. Trees do cause pollution! ApocaDoc permalink
Fri, Jan 2, 2009 from The Economist: Troubled waters -- the ocean collapse The evidence abounds. The fish that once seemed an inexhaustible source of food are now almost everywhere in decline: 90 percent of large predatory fish (the big ones such as tuna, swordfish and sharks) have gone, according to some scientists. In estuaries and coastal waters, 85 percent of the large whales have disappeared, and nearly 60 percent of the small ones. Many of the smaller fish are also in decline. Indeed, most familiar sea creatures, from albatrosses to walruses, from seals to oysters, have suffered huge losses. All this has happened fairly recently. Cod have been caught off Nova Scotia for centuries, but their systematic slaughter began only after 1852; in terms of their biomass (the aggregate mass of the species), they are now 96 percent depleted. The killing of turtles in the Caribbean (99 percent down) started in the 1700s. The hunting of sharks in the Gulf of Mexico (45-99 percent, depending on the variety) got going only in the 1950s. ...	You mean the ocean is a finite resource? Why didn't anyone tell me? ApocaDoc permalink
Thu, Jan 1, 2009 from Guardian (UK): Slowdown of coral growth extremely worrying, say scientists Coral growth across the Great Barrier Reef has suffered a "severe and sudden" slowdown since 1990 that is unprecedented in the last four centuries, according to scientists. The researchers analysed the growth rates of 328 coral colonies on 69 individual reefs that make up the 1,250 mile-long Great Barrier Reef, off north-east Australia. They found that the rate at which the corals were laying down calcium in their skeletons dropped by 14.2 percent between 1990 and 2005.... the most probable explanation for the drop in the growth rate of the corals' calcium carbonate skeletons is acidification of the water due to rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. More acid water makes it more difficult for the coral polyps to grab the minerals they need to build their skeletons from the sea water. ...	Please don't tell me "more study is needed..."! ApocaDoc permalink
Thu, Jan 1, 2009 from Guardian (UK): 95 months and counting From today, based on the best estimates available, we have eight years to head-off potentially uncontrollable climatic upheaval. What can happen in eight years? Quite a lot, actually. A world war can begin, and end. Two, in fact.... [H]istory tells us great things are possible. We are still in control. We just need to build, rapidly, new energy and transport systems and change our behaviour. Only, we seem to have forgotten what we are capable of. Victorian engineers would have been aghast at our timidity. Within our 8 year time frame, for example, between 1845 and 1852 there were 4,400 miles of railway track laid in Britain. ...	Bad enough if the last two generations are labelled "world killers" -- but "timid losers"? That would be too much. ApocaDoc permalink
Want more context? Try reading our book FREE online: Humoring the Horror of the Converging Emergencies! More fun than a barrel of jellyfish!
Thu, Jan 1, 2009 from New Scientist: More polar bears going hungry The number of undernourished bears has tripled in a 20-year period.... In 1985 and 1986 the proportion of bears fasting was 9.6 and 10.5 per cent respectively. By 2005 and 2006 this had risen to 21.4 and 29.3 per cent... "If the ice continues to contract, which seems inevitable, polar bears will become even more nutritionally disadvantaged. The study proves polar bears are in serious trouble," says Rick Steiner, a marine conservationist at the University of Alaska in Anchorage. ...	"Nutritionally disadvantaged"? Should we be considering the polar bear just "collateral damage"? ApocaDoc permalink
Thu, Jan 1, 2009 from Science Daily (US): Killer Mice Bring Albatross Population Closer To Extinction The critically endangered Tristan albatross (Diomedea dabbenena) has suffered its worst breeding season ever, according to research by the RSPB (BirdLife in the UK). The number of chicks making it through to fledging has decreased rapidly, and it is now five times lower than it should be because introduced predatory mice are eating the chicks alive on Gough island -- the bird's only home and a South Atlantic territory of the United Kingdom.... "Unsustainable numbers are being killed on land and at sea. Without major conservation efforts, the Tristan Albatross will become extinct". ...	'Why look'st thou so ?' -- With my [mouse]-bow I [killed] the ALBATROSS. ApocaDoc permalink
Wed, Dec 31, 2008 from SciDev.net: Climate change linked to decline in Asian monsoon Evidence that human-induced climate change may be affecting the Asian monsoon cycle has been published by a Chinese-US team.... Records show that, before 1960, warmer years were associated with stronger monsoons, and the temperature decreased when the monsoon weakened. But the study found a reversed association after this date. "The rising temperature now leads to less precipitation, which is not a natural pattern," said Larry Edwards, geologist at the University of Minnesota and co-author of the paper, which was published in Science (November). ...	How's that for good luck! Now Asia will need fewer unsustainable umbrellas and raincoats! ApocaDoc permalink
Wed, Dec 31, 2008 from Guardian (UK): Rainforest's chewing gum tappers go organic to get out of a sticky situation The location is remote, the practice old, the tools rudimentary, and the chances to chat with spider monkeys high. But this is no world apart. Men like Banos were at the root of one of the great consumer phenomena of our time: chewing gum. Produced only in the jungle that straddles the southern part of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, northern Guatemala and Belize, chicle was the basis of chewing gum, from the little balls first sold in New York 140 years ago to the sticks included in GI rations during the second world war. Then in the 1950s came synthetic substitutes that shrank the industry to a shadow of its former self.... Mexico's chicleros may be on the threshold of a comeback: they are about to launch their own brand of certified organic chewing gum, which is expected to go on sale shortly in Waitrose. ...	Chewing gum that biodegrades under the desk? My heart swells! ApocaDoc permalink
Wed, Dec 31, 2008 from Reuters: Researchers say 2009 to be one of warmest years on record LONDON (Reuters) - Next year is set to be one of the top-five warmest on record, climate scientists said on Tuesday. The average global temperature for 2009 is expected to be more than 0.4 degrees celsius above the long-term average, despite the continued cooling of huge areas of the Pacific Ocean, a phenomenon known as La Nina. That would make it the warmest year since 2005, according to researchers at the Met Office, who say there is also a growing probability of record temperatures after next year. Currently the warmest year on record is 1998, which saw average temperatures of 14.52 degrees celsius - well above the 1961-1990 long-term average of 14 degrees celsius. Warm weather that year was strongly influenced by El Nino, an abnormal warming of surface ocean waters in the eastern tropical Pacific. ...	You say El Nino, I say La Nina ... let's call the whole thing off! ApocaDoc permalink
Wed, Dec 31, 2008 from The Arizona Republic: Asthma's links to air pollution stir worry The bits of dust and dirt so common in Phoenix's air may be causing more problems for asthmatic children than experts previously believed. A new study released Tuesday found that asthma attacks and symptoms in children ages 5 through 18 increased by 14 percent on the days Valley skies were plagued by high levels of particulate pollution. The study, conducted by researchers at Arizona State University, is thought to be the first in the state to quantify a tie between poor air quality and children's health. It also reveals that children are affected by coarse pollutants at levels below the federal government's health standard. ...	Ah, yes. Our children. The ultimate canary in a coal mine. ApocaDoc permalink
Wed, Dec 31, 2008 from Forbes: Idaho miners won't have to restore groundwater Monsanto Co., Agrium Inc., and J.R. Simplot Co. will be able to mine phosphate without being forced to restore groundwater beneath their operations to its natural condition, according to a new rule awaiting approval by the 2009 Legislature.... "We have never asked for the right to mess up someone else's beneficial use of the groundwater," [lobbyist for Idaho Mining Association] Lyman told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "The department came up with a rule they think is workable, without putting our industry into a difficult situation where we'd be unable to comply." The rule is backed by industry but opposed by environmentalists including the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and Idaho Conservation League, who say it gives mining companies near the Idaho-Wyoming border license to pollute forever. ...	"Unable to comply" with a livable future, that is. ApocaDoc permalink
Wed, Dec 31, 2008 from The Economist: A sea of troubles -- an ocean wrapup The worries begin at the surface, where an atmosphere newly laden with man-made carbon dioxide interacts with the briny. The sea has thus become more acidic, making life difficult, if not impossible, for marine organisms with calcium-carbonate shells or skeletons. These are not all as familiar as shrimps and lobsters, yet species like krill, tiny shrimp-like creatures, play a crucial part in the food chain: kill them off, and you may kill off their predators, whose predators may be the ones you enjoy served fried, grilled or with sauce tartare. Worse, you may destabilise an entire ecosystem.... And then there are the red tides of algal blooms, the plagues of jellyfish and the dead zones where only simple organisms thrive. All of these are increasing in intensity, frequency and extent. All of these, too, seem to be associated with various stresses man inflicts on marine ecosystems: overfishing, global warming, fertilisers running from land into rivers and estuaries, often the whole lot in concatenation. ...	Concatenation, concentration, feedback loops, the underwater stripmining of biomass.... Lucky we can't see it, or we'd be adding our tears to the salt in the sea! ApocaDoc permalink
Wed, Dec 31, 2008 from Politiken.dk: Danish Arctic research dates Ice Age: "so sudden that it is as if a button was pressed" The extensive scientific study shows that it was precisely 11,711 years ago -- and not the indeterminate figure of 'some' 11,000 years ago -- that the ice withdrew, allowing humans and animals free reign. ... "Our new, extremely detailed data from the examination of the ice cores shows that in the transition from the ice age to our current warm, interglacial period the climate shift is so sudden that it is as if a button was pressed", explains ice core researcher Jorgen Peder Steffensen, Centre for Ice and Climate at NBI at the University of Copenhagen. ...	Is that button labelled "reset"? ApocaDoc permalink
Tue, Dec 30, 2008 from Discovery News: Sprayed Aerosols Could Ease Climate Woes It won't solve global warming, but a group of scientists are calling for a focused research program to investigate ways to seed the atmosphere with chemicals that would let the heat out -- literally... David Keith, with the University of Calgary's Energy and Environmental Systems Group ... and colleagues want to investigate putting aerosols, such as sulfur, into the atmosphere to chemically unlock the greenhouse effect and allow more of the sun's reflected heat to radiate back into space. "This brings up the question of who would make that decision," said Alan Robock of Rutgers University. And what temperature the world should be. "A ski slope operator and someone running a shipping company in the Arctic might have different opinions about what's the ideal temperature for the planet," NASA's administrator Michael Griffin told Discovery News in an interview last year. ...	Where's the anti-christ when you need him -- or her. ApocaDoc permalink
Tue, Dec 30, 2008 from Popular Science: This Machine Might* Save the World * that's a big, fat "might" ... The source of endless energy for all humankind resides just off Government Street in Burnaby, British Columbia, up the little spit of blacktop on Bonneville Place and across the parking lot from Shade-O-Matic blind manufacturers and wholesalers. The future is there, in that mostly empty office with the vomit-green walls -- and inside the brain of Michel Laberge, 47, bearded and French-Canadian... What Laberge has set out to build in this office park, using $2 million in private funding and a skeletal workforce, is a nuclear-fusion power plant... If (and this is a truly serious if) Laberge and his team succeed, the rewards could be astounding: nearly limitless, inexpensive energy, with no chemical combustion by-products, a minimal amount of extremely short-lived radioactive waste, and no risk of a catastrophic, Chernobyl-level meltdown. ...	Sounds like this is the guy to put the "nu" and "fu" back into nuclear fusion! ApocaDoc permalink
Tue, Dec 30, 2008 from via ScienceDaily: Climate Change Effects On Imperiled Sierra Frog Examined Climate change can have significant impacts on high-elevation lakes and imperiled Sierra Nevada Yellow-legged frogs that depend upon them, according to U.S. Forest Service and University of California, Berkeley, scientists. Their findings show how a combination of the shallow lakes drying up in summer and predation by introduced trout in larger lakes severely limits the amphibian's breeding habitat, and can cause its extinction... Sierra Nevada Yellow-legged frogs need two to four years of permanent water to complete their development so repeated tadpole mortality from lakes drying up in summer leads to population decline. The scientists found the effect to be a distinct mortality mechanism that could become more important in a warmer, drier climate. ...	RIPbit ApocaDoc permalink
Tue, Dec 30, 2008 from Indo-Asian News Service: Jan 31 deadline to remove Bhopal gas waste unlikely to be met Bhopal, Dec 30 (IANS) It has been 24 years since over 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate (MIC) spewed out of the now defunct Union Carbide's pesticide plant here, killing thousands of people instantly and maiming many for life. But the state government is still grappling with ways to dispose of the toxic waste left behind that poses grave health hazards to people living nearby. The world's worst man-made disaster - the Bhopal gas tragedy - occurred on the night of Dec 2-3, 1984, and the Madhya Pradesh High Court had set a Jan 31, 2009, deadline to remove the poisonous waste from the plant site, but this seems to be a tough task....According to medical experts, the site is a virtual storehouse of deadly chemicals including lead, mercury and chlorinated naphthalene that can cause cancer, affect the growth of children and lead to other health disorders. But more than 25,000 people living in 14 colonies around the factory have no option but to continue drinking the contaminated water. ...	When it comes to methyl isocyanate spills this is the Mother of All Craps. ApocaDoc permalink
You're still reading! Good for you! You really should read our short, funny, frightening book FREE online (or buy a print copy): Humoring the Horror of the Converging Emergencies! We've been quipping this stuff for more than 30 months! Every day! Which might explain why we don't get invited to parties anymore.
Tue, Dec 30, 2008 from Bloomberg News: Texaco Toxic Past Haunts Chevron as $27 Billion Judgment Looms Bolivar Cevallos walks around the farm where his family once lived amid the oil fields of Ecuador's Amazon rain forest. His boots sink ankle deep in tar. Everywhere he steps, oily muck seeps from the ground. A gasolinelike smell hangs in the sweltering jungle air. The mess is a remnant of oil drilling in a 120-mile-long swath of the tropical jungle in northeastern Ecuador where Texaco Inc. and Ecuador's state-run oil company, PetroEcuador, have pumped billions of barrels of crude from the ground during the past 40 years. The ruined land around Cevallos's home is part of one of the worst environmental and human health disasters in the Amazon basin, which stretches across nine countries and, at 1.9 billion acres (800 million hectares), is about the size of Australia. And depending on how an Ecuadorean judge rules in a lawsuit over the pollution, it may become the costliest corporate ecological catastrophe in world history. If the judge follows the recommendation of a court-appointed panel of experts, he could order Chevron Corp., which now owns Texaco, to pay as much as $27 billion in damages. ...	When it comes to oil, this is the Mother of All Craps. ApocaDoc permalink
Tue, Dec 30, 2008 from New York Times: At Plant in Coal Ash Spill, Toxic Deposits by the Ton In a single year, a coal-fired electric plant deposited more than 2.2 million pounds of toxic materials in a holding pond that failed last week, flooding 300 acres in East Tennessee, according to a 2007 inventory filed with the Environmental Protection Agency. The inventory, disclosed by the Tennessee Valley Authority on Monday at the request of The New York Times, showed that in just one year, the plant's byproducts included 45,000 pounds of arsenic, 49,000 pounds of lead, 1.4 million pounds of barium, 91,000 pounds of chromium and 140,000 pounds of manganese. Those metals can cause cancer, liver damage and neurological complications, among other health problems. And the holding pond, at the Kingston Fossil Plant, a T.V.A. plant 40 miles west of Knoxville, contained many decades' worth of these deposits. ...	If this is "clean coal" I'd sure hate to know what's in dirty coal! ApocaDoc permalink
Mon, Dec 29, 2008 from Agence France-Presse: Natural disasters killed over 220,000 BERLIN -- Natural disasters killed over 220,000 people in 2008, making it one of the most devastating years on record and underlining the need for a global climate deal, the world's number two reinsurer said Monday. Although the number of natural disasters was lower than in 2007, the catastrophes that occurred proved to be more destructive in terms of the number of victims and the financial cost of the damage caused, Germany-based Munich Re said in its annual assessment. "This continues the long-term trend we have been observing. Climate change has already started and is very probably contributing to increasingly frequent weather extremes and ensuing natural catastrophes," Munich Re board member Torsten Jeworrek said. ...	We might have to stop calling them natural disasters. ApocaDoc permalink
Mon, Dec 29, 2008 from Toronto Globe and Mail: What if you can't see the forest for the wind farm? The only certain thing about the battle shaping up on the edge of Algonquin Park is that the green side will win. The question, however, is which green side will be the victor? In a conflict suited to the times, the Ontario government is running into resistance from self-professed environmentalists over its plan to expand the use of wind turbines, which are the darling of other self-professed environmentalists. The government, which wants to shut down all the province's polluting coal plants by 2014, seems determined to ignore the cries that plunking up to 60 giant wind turbines in the middle of nearly pristine forest is not the highest evolution of green philosophy. ...	I have a solution: Disguise the wind turbines AS trees! ApocaDoc permalink
Mon, Dec 29, 2008 from via ScienceDaily: Climate Change Could Dramatically Affect Water Supplies It's no simple matter to figure out how regional changes in precipitation, expected to result from global climate change, may affect water supplies. Now, a new analysis led by MIT researchers has found that the changes in groundwater may actually be much greater than the precipitation changes themselves. For example, in places where annual rainfall may increase by 20 percent as a result of climate change, the groundwater might increase as much as 40 percent. Conversely, the analysis showed in some cases just a 20 percent decrease in rainfall could lead to a 70 percent decrease in the recharging of local aquifers — a potentially devastating blow in semi-arid and arid regions. ...	You mean.... there's water under the ground? ApocaDoc permalink
Mon, Dec 29, 2008 from NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory via ScienceDaily: NASA Study Links Severe Storm Increases, Global Warming The frequency of extremely high clouds in Earth's tropics -- the type associated with severe storms and rainfall -- is increasing as a result of global warming, according to a study by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. [The] team found a strong correlation between the frequency of these clouds and seasonal variations in the average sea surface temperature of the tropical oceans. For every degree Centigrade (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) increase in average ocean surface temperature, the team observed a 45-percent increase in the frequency of the very high clouds. At the present rate of global warming of 0.13 degrees Celsius (0.23 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade, the team inferred the frequency of these storms can be expected to increase by six percent per decade. ...	I'll just get a six-percent bigger umbrella every decade! ApocaDoc permalink
Mon, Dec 29, 2008 from Washington Post: Inventors Find Inspiration in Natural Phenomena For some, whale watching is a tourist activity. For Gunter Pauli, it is a source of technological inspiration. "I see a whale, I see a six-to-12-volt electric generator that is able to pump 1,000 liters per pulse through more than 108 miles of veins and arteries," he said. The intricate wiring of the whale's heart is being studied as a model for a device called a nanoscale atrioventricular bridge, which will undergo animal testing next year and could replace pacemakers for the millions of people whose diseased hearts need help to beat steadily. Pauli -- who directs the Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives (ZERI) Foundation in Geneva -- is an unabashed promoter of biomimicry, the science of making technological and commercial advances by copying natural processes. At a time when many are looking for a way to protect Earth's biodiversity and reduce the ecological impact of industrial products and processes, a growing number of business leaders and environmental activists alike are looking to biomimicry as a way to achieve both ends. ...	And biota won't sue you for intellectual property theft! ApocaDoc permalink
Mon, Dec 29, 2008 from San Francisco Chronicle: Drillers eye oil reserves off California coast The federal government is taking steps that may open California's fabled coast to oil drilling in as few as three years, an action that could place dozens of platforms off the Sonoma, Mendocino and Humboldt coasts, and raises the specter of spills, air pollution and increased ship traffic into San Francisco Bay. Millions of acres of oil deposits, mapped in the 1980s when then-Interior Secretary James Watt and Energy Secretary Donald Hodel pushed for California exploration, lie a few miles from the forested North Coast and near the mouth of the Russian River, as well as off Malibu, Santa Monica and La Jolla in Southern California. "These are the targets," said Richard Charter, a lobbyist for the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund who worked for three decades to win congressional bans on offshore drilling. "You couldn't design a better formula to create adverse impacts on California's coastal-dependent economy." ...	I'm sure Bush will come up with something! ApocaDoc permalink