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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from

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Species Collapse:	(4)
Plague/Virus:	(2)
Climate Chaos:	(7)
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This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
ecosystem interrelationships ~ oil issues ~ water issues ~ anthropogenic change ~ health impacts ~ toxic buildup ~ ocean warming ~ climate impacts ~ tipping point ~ deniers ~ drought

ApocaDocuments (29) gathered this week:
Sun, Oct 24, 2010 from ScienceDaily: From Bees to Coral Reefs: Mutualisms Might Be More Important to Global Ecosystem Than Previously Thought Mutually beneficial partnerships among species may play highly important but vastly underrecognized roles in keeping the Earth's ecosystems running, a group of evolutionary biologists suggests in a study.... Experts from several fields joined forces in this study and published their conclusions in Ecology Letters, one of the most influential journals in the field of ecology. "The alarmist view is that if you disrupt an interaction, you lose the interaction, you lose the community, and, ultimately, the ecosystem," Bronstein said. "We are trying to challenge people to make that explicit and to figure out whether their data support that. We need to ask, 'What is the range of possible things that can happen?'" "It is not all doom-and-gloom," lead author E. Toby Kiers added. "There are clear cases in which mutualisms show a surprising ability to adapt to global change." ...	Not to sound alarmist, but we're screwing it up!! ApocaDoc permalink
Sun, Oct 24, 2010 from NUVO Newsweekly: A ringside seat at the end of the world: Republicans are smarter than scientists! As we approach the mid-term election, we are learning that, by and large, Republicans running for office this year are highly intelligent people. They are so intelligent they are even smarter than scientists! That's right. Despite scientific proof that carbon emissions cause higher temperatures and that human beings are creating that very rise in carbon emissions, Republicans instead believe that our rocketing global temperatures are the result of natural geologic cycles or liberal propaganda. ...	Let's form a third party called the Dumbocrats! ApocaDoc permalink
Sun, Oct 24, 2010 from NPR: GOP Victory May Be Defeat For Climate Change Policy The more carbon that gets released into the atmosphere, the higher the average temperature rises. That's a scientific fact. Human activities, such as driving, flying, building and even turning on the lights, are the biggest contributor to the release of carbon. That too, is a fact. And yet the majority of Republicans running for House and Senate seats this year disagree. Ken Buck, the GOP senate candidate in Colorado admits he's a climate change denier. Ron Johnson, who leads in the polls of Wisconsin's senatorial race, has said that "it is far more likely that [climate change] is just sunspot activity or something just in the geologic eons of time where we have changes in the climate." And when Christine O'Donnell, the Republican candidate for Senate in Delaware, was asked whether human activity contributes to global warming, she said, "I don't have an opinion on that." Conservatives in Congress are turning against the science behind climate change. That means if Republicans take control this November, there's little hope for climate change policy. ...	I have an opinion, Ms. O'Donnell, that you and your GOP cohorts are not fit for duty. ApocaDoc permalink
Sun, Oct 24, 2010 from New Scientist: Vaccines could help elephantiasis spread PARASITIC worms can adjust their survival strategy based on their host's immune response. This means potential vaccines against elephantiasis might make the infection spread more easily through communities. Elephantiasis infects 120 million people a year in Africa and Asia. Tiny filaria worms carried by mosquitoes block the lymph vessels that normally drain fluid from limbs or genitals, which then swell to grotesque proportions. The only prevention is a yearly dose of worming drugs, but fewer than half the people at risk receive them. Work is under way on a vaccine, but Simon Babayan at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and colleagues, have discovered that some vaccines may make the worms worse. When filaria worms in mice sense that the mouse is mounting a strong immune reaction, they change their life cycle, producing more offspring in the blood earlier. This helps the worm ensure that it will be picked up and transmitted by another mosquito despite the immune attack. ...	Isn't evolution just amazing? ApocaDoc permalink
Sat, Oct 23, 2010 from NOLA.com: Massive stretches of weathered oil spotted in Gulf of Mexico Just three days after the U.S. Coast Guard admiral in charge of the BP oil spill cleanup declared little recoverable surface oil remained in the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana fishers Friday found miles-long strings of weathered oil floating toward fragile marshes on the Mississippi River delta.... The captains said most of their sightings have occurred during stretches of calm weather, similar to what the area has experienced most of this week. On Friday reports included accounts of strips of the heavily weathered orange oil that became a signature image of the spill during the summer. One captain said some strips were as much as 400 feet wide and a mile long.... "If this was tar balls floating around, that would be one thing, but these reports are of mats of weathered oil, and that can cause serious problems if it gets into the marsh," he said The reports are a great concern to wildlife officials. The Mississippi delta is a primary wintering ground for hundreds of thousands of ducks and geese, some of which already have begun arriving. ...	It's the undigestible parts, floating. ApocaDoc permalink
Sat, Oct 23, 2010 from Associated Press: Horror disease hits Uganda A disease whose progression and symptoms seem straight out of a horror movie but which can be treated has killed at least 20 Ugandans and sickened more than 20,000 in just two months. Jiggers, small insects which look like fleas, are the culprits in the epidemic which causes parts of the body to rot. They often enter through the feet. Once inside a person's body, they suck the blood, grow and breed, multiplying by the hundreds. Affected body parts -- buttocks, lips, even eyelids -- rot away...The insects breed in dirty, dusty places. The medical name for the parasitic disease is tungiasis, which is caused by the female sand fly burrowing into the skin. It exists in parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, besides sub-Saharan Africa...health workers are telling residents of the 12 affected districts in Uganda that jiggers thrive amid poor hygienic conditions. ...	Praise the Lord and pass the hand sanitizer. ApocaDoc permalink
Sat, Oct 23, 2010 from BBC: Nagoya biodiversity talks stall on cash and targets Conservation groups have expressed concern that a major UN conference on nature protection is stalling, with some governments accused of holding the process hostage to their own interest. Their warning comes halfway through the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting in Nagoya, Japan. During negotiations some countries have proposed weaker rather than stronger targets for protection, they say. Some developing countries say the West is not meeting their concerns. "The most optimistic assessment is that we have not gone far towards a deal," said Muhtari Aminu-Kano, senior policy advisor with BirdLife International.... "It's your usual story - it's people putting their national interests far above the importance of biodiversity." ...	I'm all for supporting biodiversity. Just not in my backyard. ApocaDoc permalink
Fri, Oct 22, 2010 from Reuters: Plants clean air pollution better than expected Plants, especially some trees under stress, are even better than expected at scrubbing certain chemical pollutants out of the air, researchers reported on Thursday. "Plants clean our air to a greater extent than we had realized," Thomas Karl of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, a federally funded research center based in Boulder, Colorado, said in a statement. "They actively consume certain types of air pollution." Scientists have long known that plants take in carbon dioxide, a naturally occurring gas that can build up in the atmosphere and trap heat beneath it. But they did not know that some plants excel at sucking up a class of chemicals known as oxygenated volatile organic compounds, or oVOCs. ...	I always clean better when I'm under stress! ApocaDoc permalink
Fri, Oct 22, 2010 from BBC: Warming destabilises freshwater aquatic ecosystems Future warming could have "profound implications" for the stability of freshwater ecosystems, a study warns. Researchers said warmer water affected the distribution and size of plankton - tiny organisms that form the basis of food chains in aquatic systems. The team warmed plankton-containing vessels by 4C (7F) - the temperature by which some of the world's rivers and lakes could warm over the next century.... "Essentially, what we observed within the phytoplankton (microscopic plants) community was that it switched from a system that was dominated by larger autotrophs (plants that photosynthesise) to a system that was dominated by smaller autotrophs with a lower standing biomass." Dr Yvon-Durocher added that a greater abundance, but lower overall biomass, of smaller phytoplankton had "very important implications for the stability of plankton food webs".... "This meant that the distribution of biomass between plants and animals changed from a... situation where you had a large amount of plants and a smaller amount of animal consumers to an 'inverted pyramid' where you have a smaller quantity of plant biomass and a larger amount of animal biomass," he told BBC News. ...	I eat the food pyramid upside down. Why not the rivers? ApocaDoc permalink
Fri, Oct 22, 2010 from The Washington Post: Sea ice melting as Arctic temperature rises The temperature is rising again in the Arctic, with the sea ice extent dropping to one of the lowest levels on record, climate scientists reported Thursday.... Atmospheric scientists concerned about global warming focus on the Arctic because that is a region where the effects are expected to be felt first, and that has been the case in recent years. There was a slowdown in Arctic warming in 2009, but in the first half of 2010 warming has been near a record pace, with monthly readings over 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 Fahrenheit) above normal in northern Canada, according to the report card released Thursday. ...	Earth's canary -- the Arctic -- is flying on a wing and a prayer. ApocaDoc permalink
Fri, Oct 22, 2010 from Environmental Health News: Pesticides taint one-fifth of kids' food More than one-quarter of the food eaten by a small number of U.S. children contained pesticides, confirming again that food is a source of chemical exposures for youngsters. Researchers measured 14 varieties of pesticides in the fruits, vegetables and juices tested. While many studies have measured levels of pesticides in various foodstuffs on grocery shelves and a few have looked at levels excreted from the body, little has been known about the level of pesticides found in the food that children actually consume. This study attempted to capture the pesticide levels of foods just as they were prepared and in the amounts eaten by the children. It has long been known that pesticide exposure presents a health risk to infants and children. Food is one of the main sources of exposure. ...	What. You'd rather they eat bugs? ApocaDoc permalink
Fri, Oct 22, 2010 from Scientific American: Sequencing the "Exposome": Researchers Take a Cue from Genomics to Decipher Environmental Exposure's Links to Disease Anxious about BPA? Petrified of pesticides? Plenty of scientific literature shows that concerns about certain chemicals' potential to up the risk for chronic disease are justified. And although genetics can predispose a person to many ills, more than half of disease risk -- and possibly as much as 90 percent -- likely stem from environmental factors, according to recent epidemiological research. Hard data -- of the quality now gleaned from genetic studies -- however, has been lacking in the environmental field. And if there is to be any hope of untangling the complex web of risks behind chronic diseases, many scientists argue, researchers need to develop an "exposome," a highly detailed map of environmental exposures that might occur throughout a lifetime, which can be mapped onto the etiology (the study of causes) of major illnesses, including cancer, diabetes and heart disease. ...	But I don't want to know! ApocaDoc permalink
Thu, Oct 21, 2010 from CBC: Canada's marine ecosystems face threat: report A multi-year study by the federal government has produced a troubling report card on the health of Canada's marine environments, with major changes detected in all three oceans. Vanishing sea species, warming water temperatures and a new wave of contaminants have struck Canada's marine ecosystems, according to the document from the federal Fisheries Department. The 38-page report was released, without fanfare, this summer.... "What we do know, from a biodiversity trend perspective, is that things have been getting worse -- much worse," said Dalhousie University's Jeff Hutchings, who reviewed a draft of the report card for Environment Canada. "What we don't know, to be fair, is what the consequences of those reductions will always be. But we have reasonable evidence in some instances to know that they're not going to be good."... Overfishing has caused numerous commercial fish stocks to plummet. For example, the report said that one Pacific herring stock is "at record low levels of abundance." In the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, warming ocean temperatures have decimated ivory gull populations by more than 80 per cent since the 1980s. ...	They told me Canada would benefit from global warming. 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, Oct 21, 2010 from Mongabay: World needs to protect 32 million square kilometers of ocean in two years According to goals set in 2002 by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the World Summit on Sustainable Development, nations must spend the next two years catching-up on creating ocean reserve. Currently, about 1.17 percent of the ocean is under some form of protection, but the 2002 goal was 10 percent by 2012. That means protecting over 32.5 million square kilometers of the ocean, twice the size of Russia. According to a recent report, Global Ocean Protection by the Nature Conservancy, not only is the world failing on its goals to protect a significant portion of the ocean, it's also failing to protect 10 percent of various marine ecosystems. "Overall the shortfall in our achievements is quite shocking," says Mark Spalding with The Nature Conservancy and an editor of the report. "We attained only one tenth of our target. Even that statistic is buoyed up by a handful of giant marine parks, leaving a greater shortfall in many areas where the pressures are most intense. We need to realize that marine protection isn't just about nature, it's about ourselves. If we can't manage and sustain our seas in their entirety, humans will be high on the list of losers." ...	These aren't the management practices taught in B-school. ApocaDoc permalink
Thu, Oct 21, 2010 from Guardian: India set to be first country to publish 'natural wealth' accounts India is today expected to become the first country in the world to commit to publishing a new set of accounts which track the nation's plants, animals, water and other "natural wealth" as well as financial measurements such as GDP. The announcement is due to be made at a meeting of world governments in Japan to try to halt global destruction of biodiversity, and it is hoped that such a move by a major developing economy will prompt other countries to join the initiative. Work on agreeing common measures, such as the value of ecosystems and their "services" for humans - from relaxation to clean air and fertile soils - will be co-ordinated by the World Bank, which hopes it can sign up 10-12 nations and publish the results by 2015 at the latest. The move fulfils one of the key demands of a major report also being published today at the Japan meeting, a UN study of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB). ...	C'mon, if humans didn't build it, does it really count? ApocaDoc permalink
Thu, Oct 21, 2010 from PhysOrg: Climate change may create tipping points for populations, not just species When species respond in different ways to the same amount of warming, it becomes more difficult for ecologists to predict future biological effects of climate change--and to plan for these effects. In a study published this week in the journal Nature, University of Wyoming ecologist Daniel Doak and Duke University ecologist William Morris report on a long-term study of arctic and alpine plants. The results show why some species may be slow to shift their geographic ranges in the face of climate change, and why we might expect to see sudden shifts as warming continues.... However, the researchers' results don't indicate that these plants, or other species, will be unaffected by warming conditions. By looking at the performance of individual plants in particularly hot and cold years, they found that the compensatory effects across moderately cold to moderately warm years (lower survival balanced by more rapid growth) will not hold up with increased warming. Instead, in the warmest years at all study sites, both survival and growth of the plants fell. "Up to a point," says Doak, "we may see little effect of warming for many organisms. But past a climatic tipping point, the balance of opposing effects of warming will likely cease, leading to subsequent rapid declines in populations." ...	So far, so good! ApocaDoc permalink
Wed, Oct 20, 2010 from Live Science: End of the Earth Postponed It's a good news/bad news situation for believers in the 2012 Mayan apocalypse. The good news is that the Mayan "Long Count" calendar may not end on Dec. 21, 2012 (and, by extension, the world may not end along with it). The bad news for prophecy believers? If the calendar doesn't end in December 2012, no one knows when it actually will - or if it has already. A new critique, published as a chapter in the new textbook "Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World" (Oxbow Books, 2010), argues that the accepted conversions of dates from Mayan to the modern calendar may be off by as much as 50 or 100 years. ...	Something else to worry about: We don't know which day* is doomsday!* ApocaDoc permalink
Wed, Oct 20, 2010 from Mongabay: Already Critically Endangered, bluefin tuna hit hard by BP oil disaster Using satellite data from the European Space Agency, researchers estimate that over 20 percent of juvenile Atlantic bluefin tuna in the Gulf of Mexico were killed by the BP oil spill. Although that percentage may not seem catastrophic, the losses are on top of an 82 percent decline in the overall population over the past three decades due to overfishing. The population plunge has pushed the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to categorize the fish as Critically Endangered, its highest rating before extinction. Given the perilous state of bluefin tuna worldwide, the US National Marine Fisheries Service announced in September, following the BP oil spill, that it would consider listing the species under the Endangered Species Act. ... "The federal government could have predicted the effects of the spill during spawning season prior to the disaster; listing Atlantic bluefin tuna as endangered will prevent such an oversight from ever occurring again." A report by WWF has warned that if fishing continues the bluefin tuna will likely be functionally extinct by 2012. ...	There's always more fish in the sea. ApocaDoc permalink
Wed, Oct 20, 2010 from PhysOrg: Biodegradable foam plastic substitute made from milk protein and clay Amid ongoing concern about plastic waste accumulating in municipal landfills, and reliance on imported oil to make plastics, scientists are reporting development of a new ultra-light biodegradable foam plastic material made from two unlikely ingredients: The protein in milk and ordinary clay. The new substance could be used in furniture cushions, insulation, packaging, and other products, they report in the ACS' Biomacromolecules, a monthly journal. David Schiraldi and colleagues explain that 80 percent of the protein in cow milk is a substance called casein, which already finds uses in making adhesives and paper coatings. But casein is not very strong, and water can wash it away. To beef up casein, and boost its resistance to water, the scientists blended in a small amount of clay and a reactive molecule called glyceraldehyde, which links casein's protein molecules together. The scientists freeze-dried the resulting mixture, removing the water to produce a spongy aerogel, one of a family of substances so light and airy that they have been termed "solid smoke." To make the gossamer foam stronger, they cured it in an oven, then tested its sturdiness. They concluded that it is strong enough for commercial uses, and biodegradable, with almost a third of the material breaking down within 30 days. ...	Consumers will probably complain about it being too noisy. ApocaDoc permalink
Wed, Oct 20, 2010 from Telegraph.co.uk: World must start putting a value on nature Natural goods and services, such as the pollination provided by bees or filtration of water by wetlands, should be included in a nation's economic value in the same way as GDP, according to a major new United Nations report. The ground-breaking move was suggested at a UN meeting of more than 190 countries in Nagoya, Japan to discuss the loss of wildlife around the world.... Allowing nature to remain unaccounted for within the economy would lead to the continuing rapid extinction of species and huge financial losses. At current rates 1.3 - 2.8 trillion pounds worth of damage is done every year just cutting down trees.... "Teeb can have the same impact for biodiversity as Stern had for climate change and will be a useful tool to help reduce the loss of species and habitats ... economically, we have to take action to reduce the loss of our natural environment before the cost becomes too high," she said. ...	But if we start measuring Nature as if it counted, our entire economic model will be threatened! ApocaDoc permalink
Tue, Oct 19, 2010 from NSF/NCAR, via EurekAlert: Drought may threaten much of globe within decades The United States and many other heavily populated countries face a growing threat of severe and prolonged drought in coming decades, according to results of a new study by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist Aiguo Dai. The detailed analysis concludes that warming temperatures associated with climate change will likely create increasingly dry conditions across much of the globe in the next 30 years. The drought may reach a scale in some regions by the end of the century that has rarely, if ever, been observed in modern times.... While regional climate projections are less certain than those for the globe as a whole, Dai's study indicates that most of the western two-thirds of the United States will be significantly drier by the 2030s.... "We are facing the possibility of widespread drought in the coming decades, but this has yet to be fully recognized by both the public and the climate change research community," Dai says. "If the projections in this study come even close to being realized, the consequences for society worldwide will be enormous." ...	Only this time, the great clouds of the dustbowl will be laced with unknown toxins from corporate farms. ApocaDoc permalink
Tue, Oct 19, 2010 from National Geographic: Winds Slowing Around the World, Study Suggests Around the world, surface winds are slowing down, a new study says. Strangely enough, the alleged culprits aren't new buildings but new trees. The easing breezes--if also detected higher up--could affect movements of air pollution but may not necessarily give the wind power industry a case of the doldrums, experts say. For the new study, published Sunday by the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists analyzed nearly 30 years' worth of wind speed data collected from more than 800 land-based weather stations, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, where long-term wind-data collection has been most reliable. The average annual surface wind speed in countries in mid-northern latitudes--including the United States, China, and Russia--had dropped by as much as 15 percent, from about 10.3 miles (17 kilometers) an hour to about 9 miles (14 kilometers) an hour, the study found.... But reforestation can explain only about 60 percent of the wind speed reductions, the study says. Changes in air circulation due to global warming may be responsible for the rest, but more studies are needed to be sure, according to Vautard. ...	That's not what the hurricanes are sayin'. ApocaDoc permalink
Tue, Oct 19, 2010 from AP, via HuffingtonPost: Oil spill 6 months on: a 'concussion' not death blow ... The spill wasn't the near-death blow initially feared. Nor is it the glancing strike that some relieved experts and officials said it was in midsummer. "It is like a concussion," said Larry McKinney, who heads the Gulf of Mexico research center at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. "We got hit hard and we certainly are seeing some symptoms of it."... [T]he Georgia scientists say the samples smelled like an auto repair shop. They took 78 cores of sediment and only five had live worms in them. Usually they would all have life, said University of Georgia scientist Samantha Joye. She called it a "graveyard for the macrofauna."... "I think populations are going to be affected for years to come," said Diane Blake, a Tulane University biochemist. "This is going to cause selective (evolutionary) pressure that's going to change the Gulf in ways we don't even know yet."... After 1989's much smaller Exxon Valdez spill, it took awhile for the effects on Alaska's herring to be noticed, but the once prolific species crashed to extremely low levels. While other species in Prince William Sound recovered, the herring population has yet to bounce back. And Gulf researchers are wondering if that sort of thing will happen again. ...	Seems to me more like a stroke than a concussion. ApocaDoc permalink
Tue, Oct 19, 2010 from BBC: Warning over 'terrible' northern seabird breeding Seabird breeding has been "terrible" in some northerly areas such as Orkney and Shetland, RSPB Scotland has warned. The 700 Arctic terns present at the start of the breeding season on the Shetland island of Mousa failed to produce a single chick. The organisation said the situation was "similarly miserable" on Orkney. The RSPB's Doug Gilbert said: "The terrible season for critical colonies in the far north warns us that seabird populations remain in real danger." ...	We need to tern this in a different direction. ApocaDoc permalink
Tue, Oct 19, 2010 from CBC: David Suzuki targets 'dirty dozen' toxic ingredients The David Suzuki Foundation took aim Tuesday at a "dirty dozen" chemicals that are found in 80 per cent of the most common cosmetic products and urged better labelling laws to help consumers avoid them. In a report on a chemical survey, the foundation said it got 6,200 volunteers to check the ingredients listed on 12,550 everyday cosmetic products, including shampoo, toothpaste, lipstick and skin cleanser. When the results came in, four out of five products on the list of 12, 550 were found to contain at least one of the 12 chemicals, said Lisa Gue, the group's health policy analyst.... 1 - BHA and BHT. Used in moisturizers as preservatives, the suspected endocrine disruptors may cause cancer and are known to be harmful to fish and other wildlife 2 - Coal-tar dyes such as p-phenylenediamine and colours listed as CI followed by five digits. Used in some hair dyes, may be contaminated with heavy metals toxic to the brain. 3 - DEA, cocamide DEA and lauramide DEA. Used in some creamy and foaming moisturizers and shampoos. Can react to form nitrosamines, which may cause cancer. Harmful to fish and other wildlife. 4 - Dibuytl phthalate. Used as a plasticizer in some nail-care products. Suspected endocrine disrupter and reproductive toxicant. Harmful to fish and other wildlife. 5 - Formaldehyde releasing preservatives such as DMDM hydantoin, diazolidinyl urea, imidazolidinyl urea, methenamine, quarternium-15 and sodium hydroxymethylglycinate. Used in a variety of cosmetics. Slowly release small amounts of formaldehyde, which causes cancer.... ...	I want make sure I leave a beautiful corpse. ApocaDoc permalink
Mon, Oct 18, 2010 from New York Times: Lake Mead Hits Record Low Level Sometime between 11 and noon on Sunday, the water level in Lake Mead, the massive reservoir whose water fills the taps of millions of people across the Southwest, fell lower than it ever has since it was filled 75 years ago. Even as a flurry of thunderstorms dropped rain on the Las Vegas area, with as much as an inch falling in the mountains to the north, Lake Mead's level dropped to 1,083.18 feet above sea level just before noon, and fell further, to 1,083.09, by 9 local time Monday morning.... Lake Mead's levels are still eight feet above the level at which a shortage is officially declared and limited rationing could go into effect.... But Barry Nelson, a senior policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said: "This strikes me as such an amazing moment. It's three-quarters of a century since they filled it. And at the three-quarter-century mark, the world has changed."... Mr. Nelson said that the 11-year drought, which has caused the Colorado River to deliver considerably less water than its users have been promised, "reflects weather patterns that are what climate models predict for an era of climate change." "Either these are early indicators of climate change or conditions we should expect more of in the future," he concludes. ...	2010 just keeps rackin' up the records! 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.
Mon, Oct 18, 2010 from Scientific American: Melting Ice Turns 10,000 Walruses into Landlubbers The lumbering marine mammals normally spend their summers resting on the ice as it floats north, making periodic dives to the ocean floor to forage for food. But this year, as in 2007 and 2009, a lack of ice in the eastern Chukchi Sea has driven thousands of walruses to congregate on land instead.... "This is the third time in the last four years that this has happened, and we're still learning and looking for patterns," Jay said. "Anything could have happened. In 2008, there was enough ice that stayed over the [continental] shelf that they never did come ashore, but we were kind of betting the odds they would come to shore again this year."... One of their initial studies, published last week, found "a clear trend of worsening conditions" for the animals through the end of this century. "Our biggest concern right now is stampeding," said Bruce Woods, a spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife Service's Alaska regional office. "That's the big risk posed to these animals." That's because the intensely social -- but easily spooked -- animals have congregated in numbers that dwarf their normal groupings of up to 500 animals. ...	There's a worsening trend of evidence supporting "a clear trend of worsening conditions." ApocaDoc permalink
Mon, Oct 18, 2010 from AP: Canada-US pipeline on hold amid oil's recent woes The steel is staged, and crews are waiting to lay the last and most expensive leg of TransCanada Corp.'s multibillion-dollar pipeline network that would carry Canadian oil to refineries along the Gulf Coast. Yet final U.S. government approval for the massive project, once assumed to be on a fast track, is now delayed indefinitely, with little official explanation. The company had hoped to begin laying pipe by the end of the year, but those prospects have dimmed.... The massive pipeline network - about five times the length of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline - is designed to move 1.5 million barrels of Canadian oil daily to U.S. refineries.... Opponents of the Keystone XL project describe the 1,980-mile pipeline as an ecological disaster waiting to happen, and land owners are angry that TransCanada has threatened to use eminent domain to obtain the easements it needs for the project. ...	"Eminent domain"!? That pipeline carries the blood of a tyrant. ApocaDoc permalink
Mon, Oct 18, 2010 from AP, via PhysOrg: UN meeting on saving species opens in Japan Delegates from more than 190 nations kicked off a U.N. conference Monday aimed at ensuring the survival of diverse species and ecosystems threatened by pollution, exploitation and habitat encroachment. But the two-week marathon talks of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity face some of the same divisions between rich and poor nations over what actions to take that have bogged down global climate negotiations. Scientists warn that unless we start doing more to protect species, extinctions will spike and the intricately interconnected natural world will be damaged with devastating consequences. "We're on the verge on the major extinction spasm," said Russ Mittermeier, president of Conservation International and a field biologist who has spent decades studying primates. "Healthy ecosystems are the underpinnings of human development."... Scientists estimate that the Earth is losing species 100 to 1,000 times the historical average. They warn that's pushing the Earth toward its sixth big extinction phase, the greatest since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago. ...	If we can cause the Sixth Extinction, why can't we kill off bedbugs? ApocaDoc permalink