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:	(5)
Plague/Virus:	(2)
Climate Chaos:	(15)
Resource Depletion:	(3)
Biology Breach:	(8)
Recovery:	(2)

This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
anthropogenic change ~ global warming ~ stupid humans ~ climate impacts ~ contamination ~ governmental idiocy ~ holyshit ~ ecosystem interrelationships ~ economic myopia ~ carbon emissions ~ airborne pollutants

ApocaDocuments (35) gathered this week:
Sun, Nov 29, 2009 from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Carp battle not over yet Biologist Duane Chapman knows as much about Asian carp as anyone in the United States, and he says that even though some of the giant fish apparently have breached an electric barrier protecting the Great Lakes, all is not lost... Chapman said the leaping, plankton-hogging fish that can grow to the size of an Olympic gymnast do indeed pose a dire threat to fishing and recreational boating on the world's largest freshwater system. But he said that at this point it is all a question about numbers. Will enough fish get into Lake Michigan to establish a breeding population? First, he said, the fish have to find each other. Then they have to find a place to spawn. ...	Maybe we'll luck out and they won't be attracted to each other. ApocaDoc permalink
Sun, Nov 29, 2009 from London Observer: Climate change denier Nick Griffin to represent EU at Copenhagen Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National party, is to represent the European parliament at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, which opens next week. Last night politicians and scientists reacted furiously to news that the far-right politician and climate change denier should be attending the summit on behalf of the EU....n a speech in the parliament last week, Griffin denounced those who warn of the consequences of climate change as "cranks". He said they had reached "an Orwellian consensus" that was "based not on scientific agreement, but on bullying, censorship and fraudulent statistics". "The anti-western intellectual cranks of the left suffered a collective breakdown when communism collapsed. Climate change is their new theology�" ...	And you, Nick Griffin, in that new theology, are the devil. ApocaDoc permalink
Sun, Nov 29, 2009 from BBC: Australian aims to breed 'green' sheep that burp less The scientists have been trying to identify a genetic link that causes some sheep to belch less than others. Burping is a far greater cause of emissions in sheep than flatulence, they say. About 16 percent of Australia's greenhouse emissions come from agriculture, says the department of climate change. Australia's Sheep Cooperative Research Council says 66 percent of agricultural emissions are released as methane from the gut of livestock....The scientists' goal in the long term is to breed sheep that produce less methane, which produces many times more global warming than carbon dioxide. ...	While we're at it, can we teach them to bleat "pardon me"? ApocaDoc permalink
Sun, Nov 29, 2009 from Sports Illustrated: Ski resorts fight global warming; Utah gov unsure ...Warmer temperatures at night are making it more difficult to make snow and the snow that falls naturally is melting earlier in the spring. In few places is this a bigger concern than the American West, where skiing is one of the most lucrative segments of the tourism industry and often the only reason many people visit cash-strapped states like Utah during winter. But even as world leaders descend on Copenhagen next month to figure out a way to reduce carbon emissions blamed in global warming, the industry is still grappling with leaders in some of their own ski-crazy states who refuse to concede that humans have any impact on climate change. Chief among them is Republican Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, who says he will host what he calls the first "legitimate debate" about man's role in climate change in the spring... it openly infuriates industry officials elsewhere who liken it to having a debate about whether the world is flat. "That's just kind of raging ignorance," said Auden Schendler, executive director of sustainability for Aspen (Colo.) Skiing Co. "We're not environmentalists, we're business people. We have studied the hell out of the climate science. To have a neighboring governor not believe it ... It's absurd." ...	Bring it on, little man. ApocaDoc permalink
Sun, Nov 29, 2009 from London Independent: Bhopal: The victims are still being born Bhopal is a calamity without end. On 3 December 1984, clouds of poison leaking from a Union Carbide pesticides plant brought death to thousands in this central Indian city. Today, fully a quarter of a century later, victims of this, the world's worst industrial disaster, are still being born. Here, in neighbourhoods where people depend on water contaminated by chemicals leaking from the abandoned factory and to mothers exposed to the toxic gas as children, brain damaged and malformed babies are 10 times more common than the national average. Doctors at Bhopal's Sambhavna Clinic say that as many as one in 25 babies are still born with defects and developmental problems such as a smaller head, webbed feet and low birth weight. ...	Presumably, the perpetrators continue to be born as well. ApocaDoc permalink
Sun, Nov 29, 2009 from Environmental Research Web: Arctic Ocean undersaturated for calcium carbonate Shelled organisms in the Canada Basin region of the Arctic Ocean could be about to experience a double whammy. Not only did increased ice melt lead to the area's surface waters becoming undersaturated in 2008 for aragonite, a form of calcium carbonate vital for shell-building, but the retreat of sea ice away from the coast means that undersaturated waters from the depths can now upwell and affect organisms living on the sea floor of the Arctic continental shelf.... "This is the first evidence of omega aragonite undersaturation in deep basin surface waters," Fiona McLaughlin of the Institute of Ocean Sciences, Canada, told environmentalresearchweb. "In a 2009 publication models predicted that the surface waters might be undersaturated in the Arctic within a decade. We're making those observations now, because the ice has melted so fast. Essentially the papers are almost being written at the same time."... Because the Arctic food web is quite simple and short, it could be extremely vulnerable to such changes. But McLaughlin says that it takes time to see how populations are decreasing. "I think this has identified that we need to go out and make counts and do a time series so that we can see whether there are effects and what these organisms' tolerance is," she explained. ...	Aragonite is aragoing, aragoing.... Aragoodnight. ApocaDoc permalink
Sun, Nov 29, 2009 from Globe and Mail (Canada): 'Permanent' Arctic sea ice has nearly vanished, expert fears One of Canada's top northern researchers says the permanent Arctic sea ice that is home to the world's polar bears and usually survives the summer has all but disappeared. Experts around the world believed the ice was recovering because satellite images showed it expanding.... "It caught us all by surprise because we were expecting there to be multiyear sea ice -- the whole world thought it was multiyear sea ice," said Dr. Barber, who just returned from an expedition to the Beaufort Sea. "Unfortunately what we found was that the multiyear [ice] has all but disappeared. What's left is this remnant, rotten ice." ...	So seeing is believing -- but can be wrong. ApocaDoc permalink
Sat, Nov 28, 2009 from Agence France-Presse: Top French chefs take bluefin tuna off the menu Top French chefs this week pledged to keep bluefin tuna and other threatened fish species off the menu, whatever the cost. With half of the fish eaten in Europe dished up in restaurants, it was high time for the food-loving nation's leading chefs to take a stand, said one of the country's greatest chefs, Olivier Roellinger. Roellinger, celebrated for his fish and seaweed fare in western Brittany, took bluefin tuna -- aka red tuna -- off the menu five years ago. "We have a responsibility towards all those who are in charge of feeding others, cooks but also mothers and even fathers, and must show them the way," he told AFP. ...	We could order off menu! ApocaDoc permalink
Sat, Nov 28, 2009 from Toronto Globe and Mail: As toll mounts, researchers peer into the H1N1 death spiral The lungs were heavy, difficult to deflate, and beefy looking. To the pathologist who held them, they belied their own anatomy, resembling a liver. They belonged to an Ontarian who, until contracting H1N1, had been healthy and in early middle age. Within days, the person was dead, being dissected at Toronto's University Health Network. Pathologists concurred on the likely mechanism of death -- an immune system reaction, most common among the young and people in their prime, called a cytokine storm. "Once the inflammatory cascade gets established, it's like a runaway freight train -- it's just going to keep going," said pathologist David Hwang, who consulted on the samples. "In some of these patients, even if you clear the virus, the cytokine storm has already taken hold and it takes on a life of its own." It's a fatal irony: A robust immune system can be hazardous to your health. In some cases, it's the reaction to the flu -- more so than the virus itself -- that sets off the death spiral. So far, 309 people have died across Canada since the pandemic began in the spring, and roughly one-third had no underlying health conditions. ...	Sounds more like a PERFECT cytokine storm. ApocaDoc permalink
Sat, Nov 28, 2009 from London Daily Telegraph: Who's to blame for Climategate? ...East Anglia is now ground zero in a controversy which just might influence the entire future of our planet. A little over a week ago, hundreds of internal emails written by scientists working at the CRU were obtained by a hacker and posted on the internet, some of which appeared to show that researchers had deliberately faked evidence of global warming by manipulating statistics.... Phil Jones, the 57-year-old director of the CRU, is the man who has suddenly found himself the number one target of climate change conspiracy theorists the world over after he sent the most damaging of all the emails exposed by the anonymous hacker. In one message, dated November 1999, he wrote: "I've just completed Mike's trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 to hide the decline." ...	"Climategate" will later look like just one more bump on the road to ruin. ApocaDoc permalink
Fri, Nov 27, 2009 from Associated Press: The challenge in Copenhagen: reshaping the world Next month's climate summit in Copenhagen seeks to transform the way we run the planet, from the generation of energy, to the building of homes and cities, to the shaping of the landscape. It would also shift wealth from rich to poor countries in the process. No wonder a deal will be tough to cut. In recent weeks, prospects brightened, then dimmed, then revived again... The divide over Copenhagen's goals reflects an abiding distrust between manufacturing powerhouses that built vast riches over 200 years, while spewing carbon dioxide and other industrial gases into the atmosphere, and countries still struggling to end hunger within their borders. ...	Where's the Antichrist when you need him/her? ApocaDoc permalink
Fri, Nov 27, 2009 from Washington Post: 'Cash for Clunkers,' household edition In U.S. history, there may have been no better time to own a junk car, a rattling old fridge and a leaking dishwasher. On the heels of its ballyhooed "Cash for Clunkers" program for cars, the federal government is expected to finalize details in the coming weeks of another tax-supported shopping extravaganza, known as "Cash for Appliances." Supported by $300 million from the economic stimulus, the program will offer rebates to consumers who buy energy-efficient refrigerators, dishwashers, air conditioners and other appliances to replace their older models. ...	Anything... to prop up this crumbling empire... just a little while longer. ApocaDoc permalink
Fri, Nov 27, 2009 from Southport Visitor: Stationary motorists in Sefton could be fined for leaving engines running if plans are approved PLANS to fine motorists who leave their engines on when stationary in Sefton have been proposed. The Environmental Protection Department (EPD) is seeking authorisation for plans to hand drivers on the spot fines of up to £40 if they do not switch off their vehicle when stood still for more than a couple of minutes. This has come after the EPD received a number of complaints about stationary cars being left with their engine running whilst waiting at level crossing barriers, as well as waiting for buses and delivery vehicles to move on. In particular, numerous complaints about bus drivers leaving engines on for up to 30 minutes have been received and concerned members of the public brought up the issue during the recent consultation process. ...	Idling cars are the devil's smokestack. 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!
Fri, Nov 27, 2009 from Science: Americans' Eating Habits More Wasteful Than Ever After their biggest meal of the year, Americans might reflect on the fate of those moldering Thanksgiving leftovers. Nearly 40 percent of the food supply in the United States goes to waste, according to a new study, and the problem has been getting worse. "The numbers are pretty shocking," says Kevin Hall, a quantitative physiologist at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) in Bethesda, Maryland.... Much of the waste is probably happening at home, say experts. A study published earlier this year by Jeffery Sobal, a sociologist at Cornell University, and colleagues examined food waste in Tompkins County, New York, through interviews. They found that production accounted for 20 percent of waste, distribution for about another 20 percent, and consumers for the remaining 60 percent. "Food waste used to be a cultural sin," Sobal says. ...	Now, apparently, food waste is a virtue. ApocaDoc permalink
Thu, Nov 26, 2009 from Toronto Star: Why media tell climate story poorly "The media (are) giving an equal seat at the table to a lot of non-qualified scientists," Julio Betancourt, a senior scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey, told a group of environment and energy reporters during a week-long learning retreat in New Mexico.... "The scientific evidence reported in peer-reviewed journals is growing by the day, and it suggests the pace of climate change has surpassed the worst-case scenarios predicted just a few years ago.... More difficult is that scientists such as Betancourt are realizing the climate changes observed are not happening in a gradual, predictable fashion but, instead, in sudden steps. Systems reach a certain threshold of environmental stress and then "pop," they act quickly to restabilize. ...	A "retreat" for "reporters"? I smell a "conspiracy." Those "reporters" and "scientists" are making "billions" selling this "story." ApocaDoc permalink
Thu, Nov 26, 2009 from Agence France-Presse: Climate change to cost trillions, say economists Estimates vary widely on the costs of damage from climate change, easing these impacts and taming the carbon gas stoking the problem, but economists agree the bill is likely to be in the trillions of dollars. Figures depend on different forecasts for greenhouse-gas emissions and the timeline for reaching them. In addition, key variables remain sketchy. How will rainfall, snowfall, storm frequency and ocean levels look a few decades from now? How will they affect a specific country or region? And how fast will nations introduce low-carbon technologies, carbon taxes and other policies that alter energy use? Despite these uncertainties, economists share a broad consensus: climate change will ultimately cost thousands of billions of dollars, a tab that keeps rising as more carbon enters the atmosphere. ...	And what's the APR (compounded) on that? ApocaDoc permalink
Thu, Nov 26, 2009 from Horsetalk: Zebra, asiatic ass migrations left in tatters Southern Africa's plains zebras and the asiatic wild ass have been identified among animals whose migratory habits have been left in tatters. A quarter of the world's migrating species are suspected to no longer migrate at all because of human changes to the landscape, and all of the world's large-scale terrestrial migrations have been severely reduced. A recent research paper has presented the first analysis of dwindling mass migrations, and noted the plight of the plains zebra (Equus quagga) and the asiatic wild ass (Equus hemionus), which live in central Asia.... All 24 species in the current study lost migration routes and were reduced in number of individuals. The analysis found drastic curbing for six species in particular -- the plains zebra, asiatic wild ass, the springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis), black wildebeest (Connochaetes gnou), the blesbok (Damaliscus dorcas) and the scimitar horned oryx (Oryx dammah) of northern Africa. These species either no longer migrate or are impossible to evaluate as migratory animals. ...	This is how the zebra lost its spots. ApocaDoc permalink
Thu, Nov 26, 2009 from ENS, via DesdemonaDespair: Azeri fishermen lament vanished shrimp "It's been two years since the shrimps vanished from the Apsheron shore of the Caspian. And in these last few days, I have been returning home with almost nothing. Maybe 200-250 grams of small shrimps end up in my nets, but no one buys them. I give them to friends who fish to use as bait." From Pirallahi, which juts into the Caspian Sea from the Apsheron peninsula some 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of Baku, oil platforms are visible a kilometer offshore, and ecologists blame the pollution caused by the oil industry for the collapse in the shrimp population.... He says shrimps rely on minute water plants and animals for food, but the sea floor has become heavily polluted with oil recently, meaning the micro-organisms have died.... ...	The shrunken shrimp's shilent shriek. ApocaDoc permalink
Wed, Nov 25, 2009 from Forbes: China executes 2 for role in tainted milk scandal BEIJING -- China executed a dairy farmer and a milk salesman for their roles in the sale of contaminated baby formula - severe punishments that Beijing hopes will assuage public anger, reassure importers and put to rest one of the country's worst food safety crises. The two men executed Tuesday were the only people put to death in a scheme to boost profits by lacing milk powder with the industrial chemical melamine; 19 other people were convicted and received lesser sentences. At least six children died after drinking the adulterated formula, and more than 300,000 were sickened. ...	Wouldn't a slap on the wrist have sufficed? ApocaDoc permalink
Wed, Nov 25, 2009 from Agence France-Presse: Dead Sea needs world help to stay alive The Dead Sea may soon shrink to a lifeless pond as Middle East political strife blocks vital measures needed to halt the decay of the world's lowest and saltiest body of water, experts say. The surface level is plunging by a metre (three feet) a year and nothing has yet been done to reverse the decline because of a lack of political cooperation as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The shoreline has receded by more than a kilometre (around a mile) in some places and the world-famous lake, a key tourism destination renowned for the beneficial effect of its minerals, could dry out by 2050, according to some calculations. ...	Calling it "Dead" sure can't be helping... ApocaDoc permalink
Wed, Nov 25, 2009 from Agence France-Presse: Climate science update: from bad to worse PARIS, France -- The planet could warm by seven degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) this century, a figure that lies at the farthest range of expert predictions made only two years ago, scientists said on Tuesday. The study is the biggest overview on global warming since the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a landmark report in 2007. Several authors of the new paper were part of that Nobel-winning group. Entitled the "Copenhagen Diagnosis," the 64-page summary is pitched at the December 7-18 UN conference in Denmark tasked with forging a planet-wide deal to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. ...	Let's just go w/ Celsius as 7 doesn't sound NEARLY as bad as 10.8. ApocaDoc permalink
Wed, Nov 25, 2009 from ABC News: POLL: Fewer Republicans and Conservatives Believe Global Warming Is Happening The number of Americans who believe global warming is occurring has declined to its lowest since 1997, though at 72 percent, it's still a broad majority. The drop has steepened in the last year-and-a-half -- almost exclusively among conservatives and Republicans... Belief that Earth is warming peaked at 85 percent in 2006, then flattened before turning back. Even with the decline, Americans who think global warming probably is occurring outnumber those who think not by nearly 3-1, 72 percent to 26 percent. ...	Having opinions about global warming is a luxury we can no longer afford. ApocaDoc permalink
Wed, Nov 25, 2009 from Environmental Health News: Inhaling Human Pathogens With Cigarette Smoke Cigarettes contain hundreds of different strains of bacteria, including many human pathogens that may play a role in lung diseases and respiratory infections, new research shows. Most health research has focused on the impact of chemicals in cigarettes and the particulates that are produced when tobacco is burned. But a new study, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, paints the most complete picture to date of the bacteria in tobacco, suggesting that the germs could be another potential source of infection and disease. The research -- which shows that smokers are inhaling live bacteria -- is the first time cigarettes have been implicated as a source of potentially pathogenic microbes.... Smoking cigarettes harms almost every organ system in the human body. The chemicals and heavy metals found in tobacco -- nearly 3,000 of them -- and the particulates get most of the blame for the harmful effects of cigarettes, such as lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, emerging research points to smoking as a risk factor for respiratory illnesses such as the common cold, influenza, asthma, bacterial pneumonia and interstitial lung disease. ...	Not to mention the 4.5 trillion butts discarded on the planet each year. ApocaDoc permalink
Tue, Nov 24, 2009 from Science Daily: Is Global Warming Unstoppable? In a provocative new study, a University of Utah scientist argues that rising carbon dioxide emissions -- the major cause of global warming -- cannot be stabilized unless the world's economy collapses or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day.... "Stabilization of carbon dioxide emissions at current rates will require approximately 300 gigawatts of new non-carbon-dioxide-emitting power production capacity annually -- approximately one new nuclear power plant (or equivalent) per day," Garrett says. "Physically, there are no other options without killing the economy."... That "constant" is 9.7 (plus or minus 0.3) milliwatts per inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar. So if you look at economic and energy production at any specific time in history, "each inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar would be supported by 9.7 milliwatts of primary energy consumption," Garrett says. Garrett tested his theory and found this constant relationship between energy use and economic production at any given time by using United Nations statistics for global GDP (gross domestic product), U.S. Department of Energy data on global energy consumption during 1970-2005, and previous studies that estimated global economic production as long as 2,000 years ago. Then he investigated the implications for carbon dioxide emissions. ...	Can't we just wish really really hard? ApocaDoc permalink
Tue, Nov 24, 2009 from Washington Post: Six years later, gender-bending fish in our water supply remain a mystery What's the problem with the Potomac River -- and could whatever it is spell problems for those of us who drink its water? In 2003, scientists discovered something startling in the Potomac, from which at least 3 million Washington area residents get their drinking water: Male fish were growing eggs. But six years later, a government-led research effort still hasn't answered those two questions. Scientists say they still aren't sure which pollutants are altering the fish, or whether the discovery poses any threat to people's health. The job is not easy: Scientists are looking for wisps of hormone-mimicking pollutants in the Potomac's vast, moving soup. ...	I would imagine these intersex fish are a mystery to themselves. ApocaDoc permalink
Tue, Nov 24, 2009 from Associated Press: CO2 curve ticks upward as key climate talks loom The readings at this 3 km high station show an upward curve as the world counts down to climate talks: Global warming gases have built up to record levels in the atmosphere, from emissions that match scientists' worst-case scenarios. Carbon dioxide concentrations this autumn are hovering at around 385 parts per million, on their way to a near-certain record high above 390 in the first half of next year, at the annual peak. "For the past million years we've never seen 390. You have to wonder what that's going to do," said physicist John Barnes, the observatory director. One leading atmospheric scientist, Stephen Schneider, sees "coin-flip odds for serious outcomes for our planet". ...	You mean ... we might survive? 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, Nov 24, 2009 from Agence France-Presse: Petrol inhalation causes road-rage rats Breathing in fumes from petrol made lab rats more aggressive, a finding that has wide implications for urban pollution, according to a study published on Tuesday. Cairo University researcher Amal Kinawy exposed three groups of rats to either clean air, vapour from leaded petrol or vapour from unleaded petrol. Dissection of the rats showed that those exposed to petrol (US gasoline), had big fluctuations in a key group of neurotransmitters -- chemicals used for exchanging messages between neurons -- in three areas of the brain. In addition, rats exposed to unleaded petrol showed indications of neurological change. Their brain cells looked like they had been damaged by rogue molecules called free radicals. ...	Maybe being caged and tested is what pissed them off. ApocaDoc permalink
Mon, Nov 23, 2009 from CIDRAP: Clusters of resistant H1N1 cases reported in UK, US Health officials in Wales today announced the identification of a cluster of patients in a Cardiff hospital who are infected with oseltamivir-resistant pandemic H1N1 influenza. Also today, Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., reported that oseltamivir-resistant H1N1 viruses were found in four very sick patients hospitalized there over the past 6 weeks. A Duke press release said all four patients had been in the same hospital unit, but it did not specify how many were there at the same time.... "It took some time before seasonal H1N1 became widely Tamiflu-resistant [a fact that became clear last winter], and I suspect the same pattern will apply with 2009 H1N1 virus," he added. "At the moment there is no cause for alarm." ...	"At the moment" hasn't worked out so well, these last few years. ApocaDoc permalink
Mon, Nov 23, 2009 from Fast Company: GoodGuide iPhone App Scans Bar Codes for Environmental and Health Ratings When I first learned about GoodGuide last March, I was excited at the prospect of a Web site that lets consumers get detailed environmental, health, and social info on more than 50,000 products and companies. Then came the obligatory iPhone app to let people quickly get the scoop on orange juice brands and cleaning supplies while standing in the supermarket. And now GoodGuide has announced its most exciting innovation yet: an updated iPhone app that scans barcodes for health and environmental ratings. The process is simple. You just hit the scan tab on the app, point the phone at a product's barcode, and voila, instant product ratings on baby shampoo, yogurt, and everything in between. So even the laziest among us have no excuse to slack on social responsibility. And did I mention that the app is free? ...	Now... when can we scan each other? ApocaDoc permalink
Mon, Nov 23, 2009 from The Economist: Socked A mysterious decline in the numbers of spawning salmon has become one of the rites of autumn in British Columbia, bringing worries of financial and job losses, threats of extinction and a perplexing lack of answers. This season only 1.7m of the 10.4m sockeye salmon that were forecast to return to the Fraser river in fact made it -- a 50-year low. That prompted Stephen Harper, Canada's prime minister, to ask Bruce Cohen, a justice of British Columbia's Supreme Court, to hold an inquiry into the causes of the sockeye's decline. Applause was muted. Four other federal inquiries held over the past three decades have failed to halt the decline. ...	The sockeyes have been coldcocked. ApocaDoc permalink
Mon, Nov 23, 2009 from Washington Post: The ultimate crop rotation In recent months, the Ethiopian government began marketing abroad one of the hottest commodities in an increasingly crowded and hungry world: farmland...This impoverished and chronically food-insecure Horn of Africa nation is rapidly becoming one of the world's leading destinations for the booming business of land leasing, by which relatively rich countries and investment firms are securing 40-to-99-year contracts to farm vast tracts of land.... The harshest critics of the practice conjure images of poor Africans starving as food is hauled off to rich countries. ...	And what's so new about that? ApocaDoc permalink
Mon, Nov 23, 2009 from AP, via Raw Story: Oceans rising faster than expected as climate change exceeds grimmest models Since the 1997 international accord to fight global warming, climate change has worsened and accelerated -- beyond some of the grimmest of warnings made back then. As the world has talked for a dozen years about what to do next, new ship passages opened through the once frozen summer sea ice of the Arctic. In Greenland and Antarctica, ice sheets have lost trillions of tons of ice. Mountain glaciers in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa are shrinking faster than before.... "The latest science is telling us we are in more trouble than we thought," Janos Pasztor, climate adviser to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.... "The message on the science is that we know a lot more than we did in 1997 and it's all negative," said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "Things are much worse than the models predicted." ...	That's what makes science so exciting: unpredictability! ApocaDoc permalink
Mon, Nov 23, 2009 from Fort Worth Star-Telegram: State is asking Barnett Shale drillers to voluntarily cut air pollution State environmental regulators want natural gas companies to voluntarily emit less air pollution after tests showed high levels of a cancer-causing chemical near wells in the Barnett Shale gas field....Air samples showed significant levels of benzene in several locations. One sample taken downwind from a tank seven miles west of DISH showed a level of 1,000 parts per billion, which is more than five times the commission's short-term exposure limit of 180 parts per billion. That level is the equivalent of a person sniffing a can of gasoline, and it shows the need for more tests, including long-term sampling, Honeycutt said. A sample at another site found benzene at 500 parts per billion. Long-term exposure to benzene -- a year or more -- can lead to health problems including anemia, immune disorders and leukemia. ...	Sounds like a plan! ApocaDoc permalink
Mon, Nov 23, 2009 from New York Times: Sewers at Capacity, Waste Poisons Waterways A little after 1 a.m., with a harder rain falling, Owls Head reached its capacity and workers started shutting the intake gates. That caused a rising tide throughout Brooklyn's sewers, and untreated feces and industrial waste started spilling from emergency relief valves into the Upper New York Bay and Gowanus Canal. "It happens anytime you get a hard rainfall," said Bob Connaughton, one the plant's engineers. "Sometimes all it takes is 20 minutes of rain, and you've got overflows across Brooklyn."... In the last three years alone, more than 9,400 of the nation's 25,000 sewage systems -- including those in major cities -- have reported violating the law by dumping untreated or partly treated human waste, chemicals and other hazardous materials into rivers and lakes and elsewhere, according to data from state environmental agencies and the Environmental Protection Agency. But fewer than one in five sewage systems that broke the law were ever fined or otherwise sanctioned by state or federal regulators, the Times analysis shows. ...	What are oceans, lakes, and streams for, if not to dump our shit in? ApocaDoc permalink
Mon, Nov 23, 2009 from Greenpeace: Final voyage of the Japanese whaling fleet... Following a week of potentially crippling budgetary reviews and a high-profile visit from US President Barack Obama to Japan, the so-called 'scientific' whaling fleet crept out of port. Greenpeace called for the departure to be the program's last.... This year, the fleet's Antarctic hunt will be subsidized by $8.8 million of taxpayer money. However, the program already operates at a loss due to lack of demand for whale meat -- the wholesale price of whale meat has just been lowered for the second time this year in an effort to stimulate the low demand -- and program costs are set to increase.... With well over 9,000 minke whales killed in 22 years and no useful data produced, Japan's so-called 'research' in the Antarctic is an international embarrassment. ...	"No useful data"? Those are 9,000 data points. ApocaDoc permalink