ApocaDocuments (15) gathered this week:
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Sun, Sep 25, 2011
from Treehugger, via DesdemonaDespair:
Bill Clinton: World must prepare for climate refugees
"I think that you have to assume that because of climate change, there are going be a lot more refugees," Clinton said.
"And that the laws which exist, and the systems of support that exist, not just the US but elsewhere, were basically built for a different time when you might have a surge of refugees from this country or a surge from that country, because of a particular political upheaval or a particular natural disaster. And that's almost certainly going to not work now." [...]
"I think that in general we should become more open to immigration again," Clinton said. "Keeping people in limbo is a waste of human potential." ...
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Why can't these refugees work on making limbo a better place to waste away?
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Sun, Sep 25, 2011
from AP, via PhysOrg:
The American 'allergy' to global warming: Why?
Tucked between treatises on algae and prehistoric turquoise beads, the study on page 460 of a long-ago issue of the U.S. journal Science drew little attention.
"I don't think there were any newspaper articles about it or anything like that," the author recalls.
But the headline on the 1975 report was bold: "Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?" And this article that coined the term may have marked the last time a mention of "global warming" didn't set off an instant outcry of angry denial.
In the paper, Columbia University geoscientist Wally Broecker calculated how much carbon dioxide would accumulate in the atmosphere in the coming 35 years, and how temperatures consequently would rise. His numbers have proven almost dead-on correct. Meanwhile, other powerful evidence poured in over those decades, showing the "greenhouse effect" is real and is happening. And yet resistance to the idea among many in the U.S. appears to have hardened....
These changes will feed on themselves: Released methane leads to warmer skies, which will release more methane. Ice-free Arctic waters absorb more of the sun's heat than do reflective ice and snow, and so melt will beget melt. The frozen Arctic is a controller of Northern Hemisphere climate; an unfrozen one could upend age-old weather patterns across continents. ...
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That was more than 35 years ago. Thank goodness we've evolved since then!
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Fri, Sep 23, 2011
from UCLA, via EurekAlert:
UCLA scientists find H1N1 flu virus prevalent in animals in Africa
UCLA life scientists and their colleagues have discovered the first evidence of the H1N1 virus in animals in Africa. In one village in northern Cameroon, a staggering 89 percent of the pigs studied had been exposed to the H1N1 virus, commonly known as the swine flu.
"I was amazed that virtually every pig in this village was exposed," said Thomas B. Smith, director of UCLA's Center for Tropical Research and the senior author of the research. "Africa is ground zero for a new pandemic. Many people are in poor health there, and disease can spread very rapidly without authorities knowing about it."
H1N1 triggered a human pandemic in the spring of 2009, infecting people in more than 200 countries. In the U.S., it led to an estimated 60 million illnesses, 270,000 hospitalizations and 12,500 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The virus, known scientifically as Influenza A (H1N1), is made up of genetic elements of swine, avian and human influenza viruses. The pigs in Cameroon, the researchers say, were infected by humans. ...
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At least it's only prevalent in animals, and not humans.
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Thu, Sep 22, 2011
from EnvironmentalResearchWeb:
Arctic sea ice reaches minimum 2011 extent, the second lowest in the satellite record
The blanket of sea ice that floats on the Arctic Ocean appears to have reached its lowest extent for 2011, the second lowest recorded since satellites began measuring it in 1979, according to the University of Colorado Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center....
While this year's September minimum extent was greater than the all-time low in 2007, it remains significantly below the long-term average and well outside the range of natural climate variability, according to scientists involved in the analysis. Most scientists believe the shrinking Arctic sea ice is tied to warming temperatures caused by an increase in human-produced greenhouse gases pumped into Earth's atmosphere. ...
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All the news stories last week were about a record. See how those warmists exaggerate?
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Thu, Sep 22, 2011
from ScienceDaily:
'Emerging Contaminants of Concern' Detected Throughout Narragansett Bay Watershed, U.S.
Rainer Lohmann, associate professor of chemical oceanography, and graduate student Victoria Sacks, with the help of 40 volunteers, tested for the presence of the chemicals in 27 locations. The compounds were found at every site....
The three compounds the researchers measured, which scientists refer to as "emerging contaminants of concern," are: triclosans, antibacterial agents found in many personal care products and which have been identified as posing risks to humans and the environment; alkylphenols, widely used as detergents and known to disrupt the reproductive system; and PBDEs, industrial products used as flame retardants on a wide variety of consumer products. PBDEs have been banned because they cause long-term adverse effects in humans and wildlife.
PBDEs, methyltriclosan and triclosan were found in highest concentrations in the Blackstone River, Woonasquatucket River and in upper Narragansett Bay, while some detergents were detected at similar levels at nearly every site. ...
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Let's just redefine these compounds as modern-day spices. Problem solved!
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Thu, Sep 22, 2011
from Mongabay:
Indigenous Peruvians blockade river against 'murderous' oil company
Over the weekend more than 100 Shuar indigenous people, also known as Wampis, blockaded the Morona River in Peru in an effort to stop exploratory oil drilling by Canadian-owned Talisman Energy. The blockade in meant to prevent oil drilling in an area of the Peruvian Amazon known as Block 64, home to four indigenous tribes in total and the Pastaza River Wetland Complex, a Ramsar wetland site.
"We do not consider the oil company as a creator of jobs but instead as murderous, criminal and abusive. We do not want Talisman in the Wampis territory," a statement from the Shuar reads pointing to Talisman Energy's track record in Peru as well as alleged human rights abuses in Sudan during the nation's civil war. The company sold off its Sudan holdings in 2003 after international criticism, while a lawsuit in the US against Talisman was thrown out due to sufficient admissible evidence. The US Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
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Just build 'em condos, feed 'em HoHos, and they'll shut up.
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Wed, Sep 21, 2011
from London Guardian:
Times Atlas is 'wrong on Greenland climate change'
Leading scientists have accused the world's top cartographers of making a blunder in their representation of the effects of climate change in Greenland, prompting a robust defence by the map-makers' publisher.
Maps in the 13th edition of the Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, published last week, show large areas of the eastern and southern coasts of Greenland coloured brown and pink, and the permanent ice cap now covering a significantly smaller area than it did in the 1999 12th edition of the atlas. The atlas suggests that 300,000 sq km, or 15 percent, of Greenland's ice cover had been lost in the period...
But seven researchers at Cambridge University's Scott Polar Research Institute backed by glaciologists in the US, Europe and elsewhere, have said that both the maps and the figure of 15 percent are wrong. ...
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T'was a bit of a bloody blunder naming it Greenland in the first place, roight?
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Wed, Sep 21, 2011
from New York Times:
For Obama, Peer Pressure from Nobel Laureates
With his approval rating among American voters at an all-time low, President Obama could use a little support from his peers. But this month nine fellow recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and the Dalai Lama, sent the president a letter urging him to veto the construction of a huge pipeline that would bring bring crude oil to the United States from Canada.
On Monday, the letter was published as an advertisement in The Washington Post. It reads in part: "The night you were nominated for president, you told the world that under your leadership -- and working together -- the rise of the oceans will begin to slow and the planet will begin to heal. You spoke of creating a clean energy economy. This is a critical moment to make good on that pledge." ...
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Obama may be tarred and feathered by these otherwise peaceful souls.
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Wed, Sep 21, 2011
from CBS News:
EPA grants air permit to Shell for Arctic drilling
Shell Oil Co. on Monday took a step closer to tapping vast petroleum reserves off Alaska's Arctic coasts when the federal Environmental Protection Agency approved an air quality permit for one of the company's drilling vessels.
The EPA approved the air permit for the drilling vessel Noble Discover, which Shell hopes to use for exploratory wells in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska's northwest coast, and its support fleet of oil spill response and supply vessels.
Shell Alaska spokesman Curtis Smith said the permit was a hopeful step.
"The delivery of final air permits for our exploration program is another in a series of recent, positive developments and adds to our confidence that we will be drilling our offshore Alaska leases by July of next year," Smith said in an email. ...
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Way to go, EPA! That'll get the GOP on your side.
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Tue, Sep 20, 2011
from Los Angeles Times:
China closes solar-panel plant after protests
Authorities ordered a solar-panel manufacturing plant in eastern China to close after four days of protests by hundreds of villagers who have accused the facility of causing air and water pollution, Chinese media reported Monday.
The decision is an indication of the growing power of environmental protesters to sway government policy in China. As many as 500 villagers participated in the protests near Haining, an industrial city of 640,000 in coastal Zhejiang province.
The plant's operator, JinkoSolar, a New York Stock Exchange-listed company, issued a public apology Monday. ...
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Iconoclastic renegade Americans could learn a thing or two from the docile Chinese.
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Tue, Sep 20, 2011
from PhysOrg:
Humanity falls deeper into ecological debt: study
Humankind will slip next week into ecological debt, having gobbled up in less then nine months more natural resources than the planet can replenish in a year, researchers said Tuesday....
At its current pace of consumption humankind will need, by 2030, a second globe to satisfy its voracious appetites and absorb all its waste, the report calculated.
Earth's seven billion denizens -- nine billion by mid-century -- are using more water, cutting down more forests and eating more fish than Nature can replace, it said.
At the same time, we are disgorging more CO2, pollutants and chemical fertilizers than the atmosphere, soil and oceans can soak up without severely disrupting the ecosystems that have made our planet such a comfortable place for homo sapiens to live.
Counting down from January 1, the date when human activity exceeds its budget -- dubbed "Earth Overshoot Day" -- had receded by about three days each year since 2001.
The tipping point into non-sustainability happened sometime in the 1970s, said the Oakland, California-based Global Footprint Network, which issued the report.
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C'mon, Nature, get cracking!
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Tue, Sep 20, 2011
from Reuters:
"Missing" global heat may hide in deep oceans
The mystery of Earth's missing heat may have been solved: it could lurk deep in oceans, temporarily masking the climate-warming effects of greenhouse gas emissions, researchers reported on Sunday.
Climate scientists have long wondered where this so-called missing heat was going, especially over the last decade, when greenhouse emissions kept increasing but world air temperatures did not rise correspondingly.
The build-up of energy and heat in Earth's system is important to track because of its bearing on current weather and future climate... Computer simulations suggest most of it was trapped in layers of oceans deeper than 1,000 feet (305 metres) during periods like the last decade when air temperatures failed to warm as much as they might have. ...
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That's where I'd hide the heat.
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Tue, Sep 20, 2011
from London Independent:
Antibiotics losing the fight against deadly bacteria
Our last line of defence against bacterial infections is fast becoming weakened by a growing number of deadly strains that are resistant to even the strongest antibiotics, according to new figures given to The Independent on Sunday by the Health Protection Agency (HPA).
The disturbing statistics reveal an explosion in cases of super-resistant strains of bacteria such as E.coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae, a cause of pneumonia and urinary tract infections, in less than five years.... Years of over-prescribing antibiotics, bought over the counter in some countries, and their intensive use in animals, enabling resistant bacteria to enter the food chain, are among the factors behind the global spread...In a statement issued during a WHO conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, last week, the organisation warned that doctors and scientists throughout Europe fear the "reckless use of antibiotics" risks a "return to a pre-antibiotic era where simple infections do not respond to treatment, and routine operations and interventions become life-threatening." ...
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Just so we have more than fireflies to light our operating rooms.
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Want more context?
Try reading our book FREE online:
Humoring the Horror of the Converging Emergencies!
More fun than a barrel of jellyfish!
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Tue, Sep 20, 2011
from Environmental Health News:
Gender-bent fish found downstream of pharmaceutical plants.
A French study finds that more than three-quarters of wild gudgeon fish examined had a mix of male and female traits in their sex organs if they lived directly downstream to a plant that manufactures pharmaceutical drugs.
Exposure to the chemical mix discharged from the nearby drug plant may contribute to the abnormalities, the researchers report in the journal Environmental International. The study is important because it is the first to link discharge from a drug manufacturing plant -- rather than a sewage treatment plant -- with physical and chemical changes in fish living downstream.
The researchers found that up to 80 percent of the fish they tested were intersex -- that is, the fish had both male and female characteristics in their ovaries or testis. Intersex indicates endocrine disruption in fish that can foreshadow larger effects on fish populations because of reductions in breeding abilities. ...
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These fish are mainlining the good shit!
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Tue, Sep 20, 2011
from University of Florida via ScienceDaily:
Invasive Amphibians, Reptiles in Florida Outnumber World, Study Finds
Florida has the world's worst invasive amphibian and reptile problem, and a new 20-year study led by a University of Florida researcher verifies the pet trade as the No. 1 cause of the species' introductions... Florida law prohibits the release of non-native species without a state permit, but offenders cannot be prosecuted unless they are caught in the act. To date, no one in Florida has been prosecuted for the establishment of a non-indigenous animal. Researchers urge lawmakers to create enforceable policies before more species reproduce and become established. The study names 56 established species: 43 lizards, five snakes, four turtles, three frogs and a caiman, a close relative of the American alligator. ...
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Where I come from we call these invasives Snowbirds.
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