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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from

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Species Collapse:	(3)
Plague/Virus:	(1)
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This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
global warming ~ anthropogenic change ~ ocean warming ~ massive die-off ~ carbon emissions ~ melting glaciers ~ aquifers depletion ~ ecosystem interrelationships ~ coral bleaching ~ economic myopia ~ people rise up

ApocaDocuments (30) gathered this week:
Sun, Sep 26, 2010 from The Independent: Australia faces worst plague of locusts in 75 years But the rains feeding the continent's fourth-longest river are not the undiluted good news you might expect. For the cloudbursts also create ideal conditions for an unwelcome pest - the Australian plague locust. The warm, wet weather that prevailed last summer meant that three generations of locusts were born, each one up to 150 times larger than the previous generation. After over-wintering beneath the ground, the first generation of 2010 is already hatching. And following the wettest August in seven years, the climate is again perfect. The juveniles will spend 20 to 25 days eating and growing, shedding their exoskeletons five times before emerging as adults, when population pressure will force them to swarm. It is impossible to say how many billions of bugs will take wing, but many experts fear this year's infestation could be the worst since records began - 75 years ago. All that one locust expert, Greg Sword, an associate professor at the University of Sydney, would say was: "South Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria are all going to get hammered." ...	I'm sure I've heard about the "plague of locusts" thing somewhere... ApocaDoc permalink
Sun, Sep 26, 2010 from New Haven Register: Zombie Dump: 'Tire Pond' land fill rising from the dead on Hamden-North Haven line Only a few pieces of rubber poke out of the ground at the 27-acre expanse that once was a pond choked with millions of old tires. The tires are now buried underneath about 1.4 million cubic yards of soil and sedimentation that since 2002 have been poured into the 140-foot deep clay pit on the Hamden-North Haven line known as the tire pond.... "We are slowly closing in on the final prize, which is the complete closure of the site," said William J. Sigmund III, an environmental analyst with the state Department of Environmental Protection.... But the state-controlled tire pond is far from dormant. Trucks recently began rumbling through the gates, full of waste that has nowhere else to go. Tons of contaminated waste from the Newhall clean-up project in Hamden are arriving daily at the tire pond. Nearby residents in Hamden and North Haven who had hoped the tire pond was dead and buried are nervous it's rising up again, like a toxic zombie ready to leak contaminants into the groundwater and soil. ...	On Golden Tire Pond, with Zombies. ApocaDoc permalink
Sun, Sep 26, 2010 from Associated Press: 5 infected with deadly pneumonic plague in Tibet Chinese authorities say five people have been sickened with pneumonic plague in Tibet and that the deadly disease has killed one of them. The Tibetan regional health department says the cases were reported in Laduo, a village in Lang county in the remote region. The department said in a statement Sunday that the first case was found Sept. 23 and that the patient died of a severe lung infection. The remaining four people have been quarantined. The disease can kill in as few as 24 hours if left untreated. ...	It's the combination of the silent "p" and the plosive "p" that's sooooo terrifying. ApocaDoc permalink
Sun, Sep 26, 2010 from Wall Street Journal: Farmland: The Next Boom? The world has consumed more food than it has produced in nine of the past 10 years, Susan Payne, chief executive of agricultural investment firm Emergent Asset Management, told the World Agricultural Investment Conference in London this week. Population is rising fast; another billion mouths to feed will probably be added in just in the next 15 years.... We've already seen trouble. There were food riots in some countries two years ago. Wheat, coffee and sugar prices have rocketed this summer. Canaries in the coal mine? "We expect to see a resource war around 2020," says Ms. Payne.... Charmion McBride, head of agriculture for Insight Investment, says the amount of arable land per person on the planet has halved in about 40 years.... Famously, land has also proven a terrific hedge against inflation. It has boomed when prices skyrocketed--such as during the two world wars, and the 1970s. There is a serious risk that we will see a surge in inflation down the road: You could argue the governments need it. No wonder investors have been bidding up the prices of other inflation hedges, such as gold and inflation-protected bonds. Why not land? ...	Oddly, they missed an opportunity to mention "Peak Land." ApocaDoc permalink
Sun, Sep 26, 2010 from Anthony Doerr, in The Morning News, via OnlyInItForTheGold: Planet Zoo and the Cliff During my sophomore year, 1992, 1,500 scientists, including more than half the living Nobel laureates, admonished in their Warning to Humanity: "A great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated." So what have we done? Not much. From 1992 to 2007, global CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels rose 38 percent. Emissions in 2008 rose a full 2 percent despite a global economic slump. Honeybees are dying by the billions, amphibians by the millions, and shallow Caribbean reefs are mostly dead already. Our soil is disappearing faster than ever before, half of all mammals are in decline, and a recent climate change model predicts that the Arctic could have ice-free summers by 2013. Unchecked, carbon emissions from China alone will probably match the current global level by 2030.... Sure, it's socially acceptable nowadays to compost your coffee grounds and turn off your thermostat and grow strawberries on the porch, but it's still considered uncool to suggest that the American capitalist system is untenable.... Maybe even more astounding, they've found antibiotic-resistant E. coli in French Guiana, in the intestines of Wayampi Indians--people who have never taken antibiotics.... Eventually the ice caps will resolidify; new species will arise, the forests will teem once more. It's Homo sapiens we need to worry about. Some geologists have taken to calling the past 8,000 years or so the Anthropocene Period -- a time when we've burned coal, impounded rivers, and reconfigured ecosystems. And now, in our lifetimes, we're learning that perhaps this period is untenable, and like billions of species before us, we are not immune to extinction. ...	In zoos, primates fling their shit everywhere. We try telling them not to, but it doesn't do much good. ApocaDoc permalink
Sat, Sep 25, 2010 from Mail and Guardian: South Africa is nearing peak coal, say scientists In the case of South African coal, the studies show production has already reached its peak, or soon will. "It is commonly believed that South Africa has abundant coal reserves which will last 200 years or more,'' says Jeremy Wakeford, chair of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (Aspo) in South Africa, in the organisation's latest newsletter. "But recent research [from] three scientific journals suggests that usable reserves are much smaller than previously thought, and that annual production could reach a peak and begin to decline within a decade -- or might even have peaked already.'' Wakeford says that "given the country's overwhelming dependence on coal, this issue has huge ramifications for our future development path''. Coal provides 70 percent of the country's energy supply, supports 90 percent of electricity generation, is used to make a quarter of the country's liquid fuels using the Sasol process and is a big earner of foreign exchange through exports to foreign users.... Wakeford said that leaving aside social and environmental concerns around carbon dioxide emissions, water scarcity, pollution and health impacts, entrenching dependence on a depleting fossil fuel is taking the country down a cul-de-sac. ...	"Leaving aside the fatal consequences, shooting oneself in the head is bad economic policy." ApocaDoc permalink
Sat, Sep 25, 2010 from AGU: Groundwater depletion rate accelerating worldwide In recent decades, the rate at which humans worldwide are pumping dry the vast underground stores of water that billions depend on has more than doubled, say scientists who have conducted an unusual, global assessment of groundwater use. These fast-shrinking subterranean reservoirs are essential to daily life and agriculture in many regions, while also sustaining streams, wetlands, and ecosystems and resisting land subsidence and salt water intrusion into fresh water supplies. Today, people are drawing so much water from below that they are adding enough of it to the oceans (mainly by evaporation, then precipitation) to account for about 25 percent of the annual sea level rise across the planet, the researchers find. Soaring global groundwater depletion bodes a potential disaster for an increasingly globalized agricultural system, says Marc Bierkens of Utrecht University in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and leader of the new study. "If you let the population grow by extending the irrigated areas using groundwater that is not being recharged, then you will run into a wall at a certain point in time, and you will have hunger and social unrest to go with it," Bierkens warns. "That is something that you can see coming for miles." ...	If Nature didn't want that water used, she'd have buried it far from where humans could find it. ApocaDoc permalink
Sat, Sep 25, 2010 from SolveClimate: Conservationists Go Funny With Online Videos But while satirists like Colbert provide some of the most stinging commentary on the political scene today, conservationists are often categorized as too uptight, singularly focused or angst-ridden to yuk it up. Two prominent environmental organizations are evidently laughing off that criticism this campaign season. Both the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) released irreverent online videos this week that bite back at conservative climate deniers and the Tea Party movement. LCV's quirky and animated "Tea Time with Sarah Palin" features the former governor--a "patriot as pure as Alaska snow"--as a talk show host on a "network" called Flat Earth TV praising seven Republican Senate candidates for their skepticism about the science of global warming.... The two-minute Sierra Club spot, "Rand Paul: In His Own Words," strings together snippets of the Senate candidate's insights about coal mining, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and how limiting greenhouse gases would mean a regulatory agency run amuck and an end to capitalism. Palin makes a cameo appearance as an endorser.... Humor disarms, Palmer said, and makes people more open to being influenced. The video won't change many minds but it will interest, excite and motivate people who accept the science behind climate change, he added. ...	A fine beginning. Now let's see if we can shift away from ad hominem humor, shall we? ApocaDoc permalink
Sat, Sep 25, 2010 from National Geographic: Whale Sharks Killed, Displaced by Gulf Oil? The Gulf oil spill fouled a vital stretch of feeding habitat for whale sharks, possibly killing some of the world's largest fish, new research suggests. An estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil (one barrel equals 42 gallons, or 159 liters) flowed into an area south of the Mississippi River Delta, where of one-third of all northern Gulf of Mexico (map) whale shark sightings have occurred in recent years, scientists say.... Sightings confirmed that the animals were unable to avoid the slick at the surface, where the giant fish may feed for seven to eight hours a day. The oil may have clogged the fish's gills, suffocating them, or it might have contaminated their prey--though no dead whale sharks have been found, Hoffmayer noted.... "At the end of the day, if these animals were feeding in an area where there was surface oil, and if they ingested oil, there is a good possibility that they died and sank to the bottom. At this point we have no idea how many animals have been impacted." ...	At what point do man-made species murders become genocides? ApocaDoc permalink
Fri, Sep 24, 2010 from New Scientist: Out-of-this-world proposal for solar wind power Forget wind power or conventional solar power, the world's energy needs could be met 100 billion times over using a satellite to harness the solar wind and beam the energy to Earth - though focussing the beam could be tricky. The concept for the so-called Dyson-Harrop satellite begins with a long metal wire loop pointed at the sun. This wire is charged to generate a cylindrical magnetic field that snags the electrons that make up half the solar wind. These electrons get funnelled into a metal spherical receiver to produce a current, which generates the wire's magnetic field - making the system self-sustaining. Any current not needed for the magnetic field powers an infrared laser trained on satellite dishes back on Earth, designed to collect the energy. Air is transparent to infrared so Earth's atmosphere won't suck up energy from the beam before it reaches the ground.... A relatively small Dyson-Harrop satellite using a 1-centimetre-wide copper wire 300 metres long, a receiver 2 metres wide and a sail 10 metres in diameter, sitting at roughly the same distance from the sun as the Earth, could generate 1.7 megawatts of power - enough for about 1000 family homes in the US.... [Unfortunately, to] beam power from a Dyson-Harrop satellite to Earth, one "would require stupendously huge optics, such as a virtually perfect lens between maybe 10 to 100 kilometres across," he says. ...	Very cool, except for that impractical part. ApocaDoc permalink
Fri, Sep 24, 2010 from Mongabay, via DesdemonaDespair: Colossal coral bleaching kills up to 95 percent of corals in the Philippines It is one of the most worrisome observations: fast massive death of coral reefs. A severe wide-scale bleaching occurred in the Philippines leaving 95 percent of the corals dead. The bleaching happened as the result of the 2009-2010 El Nino, with the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia waters experiencing significant thermal increase especially since the beginning of 2010.... Now, the majority of the coral are dead and are mostly covered by algae while some are already showing signs of rubble.... The consequence of this large-scale event is far from being fully known but fish diversity and populations will be highly affected. Livelihood depending on small sustainable fishing activities will see their income significantly reduced. Tourism will suffer greatly and tourists activities to replace diving will be needed. Prior to this year's bleaching, it was estimated that about 85 percent of the reefs have been damaged or destroyed in the Philippines, now the current estimate is likely to be close to 95 percent. ...	Apocaiku: 'neath tropic waters / the few corals remaining / sway to the Ghost Dance ApocaDoc permalink
Fri, Sep 24, 2010 from North Carolina State University, via EurekAlert: Mimicking nature, water-based 'artificial leaf' produces electricity A team led by a North Carolina State University researcher has shown that water-gel-based solar devices - "artificial leaves" - can act like solar cells to produce electricity. The findings prove the concept for making solar cells that more closely mimic nature. They also have the potential to be less expensive and more environmentally friendly than the current standard-bearer: silicon-based solar cells. The bendable devices are composed of water-based gel infused with light-sensitive molecules - the researchers used plant chlorophyll in one of the experiments - coupled with electrodes coated by carbon materials, such as carbon nanotubes or graphite.... "We do not want to overpromise at this stage, as the devices are still of relatively low efficiency and there is a long way to go before this can become a practical technology," Velev says. "However, we believe that the concept of biologically inspired 'soft' devices for generating electricity may in the future provide an alternative for the present-day solid-state technologies." ...	If we do this right, we can have R40 spray-on insulation that powers our homes! ApocaDoc permalink
Fri, Sep 24, 2010 from National Geographic: "Sea Snot" Explosion Caused by Gulf Oil Spill? The Gulf of Mexico oil spill sparked an explosion of sticky clumps of organic matter that scientists call sea snot, according to ongoing research. The boom likely precipitated a sea-snot "blizzard" in Gulf waters, researchers say. And as the clumps sank, they may have temporarily wiped out the base of the food chain in the spill region by scouring all small life from the water column.... Tiny plants in the ocean called phytoplankton produce a mucus-like substance when stressed, and it's possible that exposure to the Deepwater Horizon oil caused them to pump out more of the sticky stuff than usual. This abundance of "mucus" made the naturally occurring marine-snow particles--usually about a few millimeters wide--even stickier. "Everything they collide with in their path they collect and take with them," said project leader Passow, who's currently tracking marine snow aboard the research vessel Oceanus. ...	A "sea-snot blizzard"? This is one hell of a hurricane season. 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, Sep 23, 2010 from New York Times: The 'Hockey Stick' Lives Yet while the attacks continue, the "hockey stick" graph's basic premise -- that the planet's recent warming is unprecedented over at least the last millennium -- continues to draw support from a growing number of independent studies. Two new studies bolstering the "hockey stick" hypothesis were published just recently. One that appeared this month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters analyzed seashell deposits on the North Atlantic seafloor and determined that 20th-century warming in the region "had no equivalent during the last thousand years." Another study, in The Journal of Geophysical Research, analyzed ice cores from glaciers in the eastern Bolivian Andes dating back to 400 A.D. "The last decades of the past millennium are characterized again by warm temperatures that seem to be unprecedented in the context of the last 1,600 years," the researchers concluded. A study published in September 2009 in the journal Science, meanwhile, found that temperatures in the Arctic in the last decade were likely warmer than any time since the birth of Christ. ...	I think we need to consider the penalty box. ApocaDoc permalink
Thu, Sep 23, 2010 from NIH, via ScienceDaily: Higher Than Predicted Human Exposure to the Toxic Chemical Bisphenol A or BPA, New Study Indicates Researchers have discovered that women, female monkeys and female mice have major similarities when it comes to how bisphenol A (BPA) is metabolized, and they have renewed their call for governmental regulation when it comes to the estrogen-like chemical found in many everyday products.... "This study provides convincing evidence that BPA is dangerous to our health at current levels of human exposure," said Fredrick vom Saal, Curators' professor of biological sciences at the University of Missouri. "The new results clearly demonstrate that rodent data on the health effects of BPA are relevant to predictions regarding the health effects of human exposure to BPA. Further evidence of human harm should not be required for regulatory action to reduce human exposure to BPA." BPA is one of the world's highest production-volume chemicals, with more than 8 billion pounds made per year. It can be found in a wide variety of consumer products, including hard plastic items such as baby bottles and food-storage containers, the plastic lining of food and beverage cans, thermal paper used for receipts, and dental sealants. The findings in the current study suggest that human exposure to BPA is much higher than some prior estimates and is likely to be from many still-unknown sources, indicating the need for governmental agencies to require the chemical industry to identify all products that contain BPA. ...	Sounds to me like further studies are needed. Wouldn't wanna go off half-cocked, now would we? ApocaDoc permalink
Thu, Sep 23, 2010 from NOAA: Scientists Find 20 Years of Deep Water Warming Leading to Sea Level Rise Scientists analyzing measurements taken in the deep ocean around the globe over the past two decades find a warming trend that contributes to sea level rise, especially around Antarctica. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide, cause heating of the Earth. Over the past few decades, at least 80 percent of this heat energy has gone into the ocean, warming it in the process. "Previous studies have shown that the upper ocean is warming, but our analysis determines how much additional heat the deep ocean is storing from warming observed all the way to the ocean floor," said Sarah Purkey, an oceanographer at the University of Washington and lead author of the study. This study shows that the deep ocean - below about 3,300 feet - is taking up about 16 percent of what the upper ocean is absorbing.... "A warming Earth causes sea level rise in two ways," said Gregory Johnson, a NOAA oceanographer at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, and the study's co-author. "The warming heats the ocean, causing it to expand, and melts continental ice, adding water to the ocean. The expansion and added water both cause the sea to encroach on the land." ...	That's just the ocean giving the stressed earth a warm hug. ApocaDoc permalink
Thu, Sep 23, 2010 from Reuters: Big economies don't see climate pact this year-U.S. World powers are not aiming for a legally binding pact to fight global warming at a U.N. meeting in Mexico this year and are trying to stop backsliding from a 2009 agreement, the United States said on Tuesday. U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern, speaking after a meeting of the Major Economies Forum in New York, reiterated the U.S. pledge to cut its emissions some 17 percent by 2020 compared to 2005 levels but declined to outline how that would be done in the absence of U.S. climate legislation... Stern said some countries from the roughly 190-nation U.N. grouping had moved away from commitments made under the non-binding "Copenhagen Accord" last year to curb greenhouse gas emissions and acknowledged what has become largely accepted among climate watchers: no treaty would come out of Cancun. ...	This sounds suspiciously like pre-surrender. ApocaDoc permalink
Wed, Sep 22, 2010 from EPOCA: Shellfish feel the burn: damage linked to atmospheric CO2 Last week, the National Academy of Sciences released a report on research of what has been called "the other carbon problem"--ocean acidification.... The NAS report says that we're way behind in studying this problem, which wasn't even fully recognized until recently. Just how far behind we are is made clear by a paper that will be released this week by PNAS, which reveals that two species of commercially harvested shellfish are likely to already be suffering increased mortality due to ocean acidification.... The interesting twist in the new work is that the authors also run the experiment under preindustrial CO2 levels of about 250ppm (actual levels were closer to 280ppm). For both species of shellfish, the mortality was much lower and development proceded more quickly. For the quahog, viability doubled (from 20 percent to 40 percent), while for the bay scallop, viability went from 43 percent to 74 percent. The animals made major developmental milestones more quickly--metamorphosis at day 14 occurred in half the animals at preindustrial CO2 levels, but that dropped to less than seven percent at modern levels. The authors helpfully point out that they've eliminated predation in their lab conditions. If the animals were subject to being eaten, the weaker shells that form at higher CO2 levels would almost certainly increase the mortality.... According to the paper, it's actually been over 24 million years since levels are likely to have been this high, and many shellfish have diversified more recently than that; any changes in CO2 in the intervening time have also been far more gradual than the current pace. ...	This wasn't supposed to happen until long after I was dead! ApocaDoc permalink
Wed, Sep 22, 2010 from Miller-McCune: Climate Change Could Spell Disaster for National Parks Glacier National Park in Montana, one of the 10 oldest parks in the United States, is celebrating its centennial this year, but its glaciers won't be around for another 100 years: They will melt away by 2030, if not sooner, because of global warming. In California, Joshua Tree National Park is preparing to celebrate its 75th anniversary in 2011, but the trees themselves, iconic symbols and "life centers" of the Mojave Desert, are projected to die out this century. Joshua trees need winter freezes to flower and produce seed, and the Mojave is heating up...In a strategic plan released this month, National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis calls climate change "the greatest threat to the integrity of our national parks that we have ever experienced." ...	Even more of a threat... than snowmobiles? ApocaDoc permalink
Wed, Sep 22, 2010 from New York Times: Extreme Heat Bleaches Coral, and Threat Is Seen This year's extreme heat is putting the world's coral reefs under such severe stress that scientists fear widespread die-offs, endangering not only the richest ecosystems in the ocean but also fisheries that feed millions of people. From Thailand to Texas, corals are reacting to the heat stress by bleaching, or shedding their color and going into survival mode. Many have already died, and more are expected to do so in coming months. Computer forecasts of water temperature suggest that corals in the Caribbean may undergo drastic bleaching in the next few weeks. ...	Life's a bleach. ApocaDoc permalink
Tue, Sep 21, 2010 from Climatewire: Climate Change Skeptics Sweeping GOP Senate Primaries Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe stood on the Senate floor last year to declare 2009 "the year of the skeptic." Turns out he jumped the gun. This year, a host of Republican Senate hopefuls are trumpeting their rejection of climate science on the campaign trail. Christine O'Donnell became the latest to enter the spotlight last week when she rode tea party support to knock off Rep. Mike Castle -- one of eight House Republicans who voted for cap-and-trade climate legislation last summer -- in Delaware's open-seat GOP Senate primary. She joins Nevada's Sharron Angle -- who has dismissed man-made global warming as a "mantra of the left" -- Wisconsin's Ron Johnson -- who blames warming on "sun spots" -- Florida's Marco Rubio, Alaska's Joe Miller and Colorado's Ken Buck as tea party-backed Republican Senate candidates who reject the science connecting human greenhouse gas emissions to climate change. ...	The Age of the Nimrod has truly begun! ApocaDoc permalink
Tue, Sep 21, 2010 from Financial Times: Arid cities face future without water Nestling in Yemen's rugged highlands, the city of Sana'a has hosted ancient dynasties and survived countless foreign invaders during its more than 2,500 years of existence.... Yet today Sana'a is facing a crisis that has the potential to threaten its existence as the Yemeni capital. Man and nature have combined to rob it of its most precious resource - water. "If we continue at this rate, water will be completely gone from Sana'a in the next 10-12 years," says a Yemeni government official.... In 2008, the equivalent of $500m in diesel subsidies was used to pump water for agriculture, almost half of it in the Sana'a basin, the official adds. ...	Dang! I keep forgetting we can't just grow forever! ApocaDoc permalink
Tue, Sep 21, 2010 from The ApocaDocs: Help us get to 350 jokes by 10/10/10! Environmentalists are, according to most conservative pundits, a humorless lot. That's the rap, that's the rep, that's the registration. They think we're far "too serious," getting all "the ecosystem is collapsing" and all "if we don't all wear burlap we'll consume up the world." The ApocaDocs beg to disagree. In support of 350.org's 10/10/10 initiative, we are gathering from our readers the 350 best jokes, quips, one-liners, puns, sarcasms, ironies, or three-deniers-in-a-bars that you can provide, by 10/10/10. We can have a sane ecosystem restoration movement AND a bit of a laugh as we do it. Come join in the fun -- as of now, only 324 to go! http://www.apocadocs.com/350jokes.html ...	You think the deniers will believe this stuff is funny? ApocaDoc permalink
Tue, Sep 21, 2010 from CBC: Northwest Passage traffic up in 2010 The number of ships travelling through the Northwest Passage has doubled this year, prompting at least one Arctic sovereignty expert to call for more enforcement in the increasingly ice-free Arctic waterway. The Canada Border Services Agency says 18 ships have cleared customs in Inuvik, N.W.T. -- at the western end of the Northwest Passage -- so far this year, and the navigation season is not even over yet. By comparison, only seven ships cleared customs there in 2009, according to the agency. "It is a little bit tricky -- lots of fog and ice," B�rje Ivarsson, a Swedish adventurer who just finished a two-year journey from Russia to Inuvik on a 30-foot boat, told CBC News. "It's quite a shortcut if you're living in the north of Europe to get over to Alaska," Ivarsson said of the Northwest Passage. "It's a good adventure, too." The increase in marine traffic is largely a result of climate change opening up the passage, said Rob Huebert, the associate director for the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary. Huebert said many people have talked about the Northwest Passage's potential for years, and now it's starting to happen. "I think that we'll often go back to 2010 and say that was the turning point, that was the time when it turned from theory to actuality," he said. ...	I wonder what we'll call the point that was once the North Pole, when we're sailing through it. ApocaDoc permalink
Tue, Sep 21, 2010 from Inter Press Service: ARGENTINA: Fighting to Save Glaciers as They Retreat BUENOS AIRES, Sep 19 (IPS) - Argentina's glaciers, along with Chile's the most extensive of South America, manifest the damage caused by climate change, while they also face threats from mining and major transportation infrastructure projects. A law to protect them has been postponed yet again. Glaciers are vast reserves of freshwater, vital for feeding rivers, lakes and underground water tables. But rising global temperatures are shrinking their ability to serve that function. "Climate change is the main cause of glacier retraction, but also affecting them are the petroleum industry, large-scale mining, high-impact tourism and infrastructure projects," glaciologist Ricardo Villalba, director of the Argentine Institute of Snow and Glacier Research and Environmental Sciences (IANIGLA), told Tierramerica. From 1984 to 2004, glacier decline in eight areas studied averaged between 10 and 15 percent, he said. In some cases, the loss was greater, such as the Upsala glacier, in the southern province of Santa Cruz, which is shrinking rapidly. It is the second largest glacier in South America, with an area of approximately 870 square kilometres. ...	No country for old glaciers. ApocaDoc permalink
Tue, Sep 21, 2010 from Melbourne Age: Call for mandatory 'green' study University students would be required to undertake "environmental literacy" subjects covering basic climate science and how their chosen field of study contributes to climate change under a proposal from the National Tertiary Education Union. The union, which represents academics and other university staff, says students are not being prepared well enough for the challenges posed by climate change under current curriculums, particularly those destined to work in high emissions industries. "The understanding of climate science is going to be essential for everyone in the future," the union's NSW secretary, Genevieve Kelly, said. "It shouldn't just be limited to people studying environmental science or choosing to focus on the environmental aspects of their discipline. It's a vital educational outcome." ...	Great idea. But let's start with kindergarten. Now. 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, Sep 21, 2010 from Wall Street Journal: New Smog Proposals From EPA Draw Fire A proposed crackdown on smog by the Environmental Protection Agency is fueling resistance from businesses groups concerned about costs, Republicans who say it'll be a drag on the economy--and some heartland Democrats engaged in tough election battles this fall. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has dramatically stepped up the pace and scope of regulatory activity since 2009. She has pushed sweeping rules to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions linked to climate change, challenged coal companies over their mining practices, and questioned the methods energy companies are using to drill for natural gas. Now Ms. Jackson is proposing to redefine what constitutes unsafe levels of ground-level ozone, a primary ingredient in smog. ...	Where there's smog... there's fire! ApocaDoc permalink
Mon, Sep 20, 2010 from Irish Times: Study finds danger in GM herbicide Glyphosate Herbicides frequently used in conjunction with genetically modified soya are highly toxic and can cause damage to human health, a summary of scientific studies has claimed. Glyphosate, a chemical found in herbicides commonly used on GM crops, damages human embryonic cells and placental cells when exposed to concentrations below those recommended for agricultural use, according to the study which was published in Brussels last week. Most GM crops are engineered to tolerate glyphosate - the most common formulation of which is Roundup - a herbicide manufactured by US multinational Monsanto.... [The study] also found that mice, rabbits and rats fed genetically modified soya beans suffered serious health side affects including liver, kidney, heart and reproduction problems. ...	I didn't realize we'd have to GM everything to be RoundUp-Ready. ApocaDoc permalink
Mon, Sep 20, 2010 from The Independent: Shucks!: Why British oysters are off the menu Yet, after all that, the British oyster industry is now teetering on the brink of a new crisis. A new virus, which has never before been seen in Britain, has wiped out more than eight million oysters at a farm in Whitstable. The OsHV-1 virus is, ironically enough for a disease which attacks a foodstuff that has for centuries been regarded as an aphrodisiac, a form of herpes.... Though the disease has no effect on humans, it has an 80 per cent death-rate among oysters and no known cure. "It is catastrophic," according to John Bayes, who runs a farm at the centre of the infected area, Seasalter Shellfish, which last year produced 14,000 tons of oysters worth �30m. He fears a "total wipe-out" of the significant investment he has made in seeding new oyster beds.... "All living organisms have herpes, some people say, but it only presents itself when they are in poor condition," says Richard Green.... "It's quite different from salmon farming where you introduce intensive amounts of feed and antibiotics into the water. All oysters need is good clean water. An oyster is only as good as the water in which it grows. An oyster is a barometer of water quality." ...	It's tough to use a barometer if it's dying. ApocaDoc permalink
Mon, Sep 20, 2010 from Voice of Russia: Permafrost temp rise in Siberia: 3 degrees This year's anomalous heat has told also on the Arctic regions. The Murmansk forum will outline some guidelines for the study of its impact on the region's wildlife. Speaking on the subject Aleksandr Frolov, the head of hydrometeorology and environment monitoring said: "The anomalous heat on the European territories was felt in Siberia and the European parts of the Arctic, be it even with a lower amplitude. The western parts of the Arctic had no ice - and that's another anomaly. We monitor the climatic changes in the Arctis using our 49 research stations including 3 observatories that are quite well-equipped, and satellites. Another important goal is the study of permafrost in Siberia and Yakutia that was also affected last summer." "The rise of the upper temperature level of the permafrost amounted to 3 degrees, and that that's a serious thing given that houses there are built on pillars, and if permafrost starts to melt, the pillars may sink with cracks in the walls of the houses. Then there are oil and gas pipelines and other infrastructure laid down in the permafrost. We are speaking about big cities - Norilsk, Dudinka and Vorkuta. Besides The world's northern areas and their southern extremities can also be affected by temperature rises, spelling trouble to up to 800 million people. If the temperatures rise above 2 degrees or the trend of their steady growth can in the coming two decades result in the 57 centimeter level rise of the world ocean," said Sergei Shoigu, the Minister for Emergency Situations and President of the Russian Geographic Society. ...	Is that three degrees Fubar, or three degrees Collapse? ApocaDoc permalink