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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(4)
Plague/Virus:(3)
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This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
contamination  ~ faster than expected  ~ global warming  ~ anthropogenic change  ~ bad policy  ~ arctic meltdown  ~ climate impacts  ~ food safety  ~ smart policy  ~ methane release  ~ permafrost meltdown  



ApocaDocuments (5) matching "climate impacts" from this week
[see full week] ~ [see all stories tagged "climate impacts"]
Sat, Dec 20, 2008
from The Economist:
Fiddling with words as the world melts
...At this pace, it seems hard to believe that a global deal on emissions targets (reconciling new emitters with older ones) can be reached next December at a meeting in Copenhagen, seen as a make-or-break time for UN efforts to cool the world. In the background of the Poznan meeting, there was mild optimism (and a reluctance by others to put fresh cards on the table) ahead of an expected change of stance by an Obama administration in America; resentment (among the poor and green) over the refusal of Japan and Canada to promise deeper cuts; and strong demands from China for the transfer of technology from the rich to others. In the final hours of the conference, the governments of small, sinking island nations were delighted to learn that they, and not some global body, would control a fund to help them adapt to a warming world. Their mood changed when it became known that no extra money had been set aside for this purpose. ...


If we don't stop squabbling about all this and get busy, we're screwed.

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Fri, Dec 19, 2008
from Christian Science Monitor:
World's oceans turning acidic faster than expected
Parts of the world's oceans appear to be acidifying far faster than scientists have expected. The culprit: rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere pumped into the air from cars, power plants, and industries. The Southern Ocean represents one of the most high-profile examples. There, scientists estimate that the ocean could reach a biologically important tipping point in wintertime by 2030, at least 20 years earlier than scientists projected only three years ago. Among the vulnerable: a tiny form of sea snail that serves as food for a wide range of fish. Similar trends are appearing in more temperate waters, say researchers. The studies suggest the CO2-emission targets being considered for a new global warming treaty are likely to be inadequate to prevent significant, long-lasting changes in some ocean basins. ...


The only thing going slower than expected is us, doing something about it!

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Thu, Dec 18, 2008
from UCLA, via EurekAlert:
No quick or easy technological fix for climate change, researchers say
Global warming, some have argued, can be reversed with a large-scale "geoengineering" fix, such as having a giant blimp spray liquefied sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere or building tens of millions of chemical filter systems in the atmosphere to filter out carbon dioxide. But Richard Turco, a professor in the UCLA Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and a member and founding director of UCLA's Institute of the Environment, sees no evidence that such technological alterations of the climate system would be as quick or easy as their proponents claim and says many of them wouldn't work at all.... "The size distribution of the particles is critical," Turco said. "If the particles are too large, that will actually create a warming effect, a greenhouse warming. Small particles are not useful because they don't reflect much radiation; you need something in between, and we have shown that is hard to achieve reliably." ...


I do believe in Tech Fixes, I do believe in Tech Fixes, I do I do I do I do....

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Wed, Dec 17, 2008
from Queen:
Study links ecosystem changes in temperate lakes to climate warming
The scientists studied changes over the last few decades in the species composition of small, microscopic algae preserved in sediments from more than 200 lake systems in the northern hemisphere. These algae dominate the plankton that float at or near the surface of lakes, and serve as food for other larger organisms. Striking ecosystem changes were recorded from a large suite of lakes from Arctic, alpine and temperate ecozones in North America and western Europe. Aquatic ecosystem changes across the circumpolar Arctic were found to occur in the late-19th and early 20th centuries. These were similar to shifts in algal communities, indicating decreased ice cover and related changes, over the last few decades in the temperate lakes.... "The widespread occurrence of these trends is particularly troubling as they suggest that climatically-induced ecological thresholds have already been crossed, even with temperature increases that are below projected future warming scenarios for these regions," adds Dr. Paterson.... "We are entering unchartered territory, the effects of which can cascade throughout the entire ecosystem," concludes Dr. Smol. ...


Whattaya do if you discover a rogue fire? You put it out!

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Tue, Dec 16, 2008
from AP News:
More than 2 trillion tons of ice melted in Arctic since '03
More than 2 trillion tons of land ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted since 2003, according to new NASA satellite data that show the latest signs of what scientists say is global warming. More than half of the loss of landlocked ice in the past five years has occurred in Greenland, based on measurements of ice weight by NASA's GRACE satellite, said NASA geophysicist Scott Luthcke. The water melting from Greenland in the past five years would fill up about 11 Chesapeake Bays, he said, and the Greenland melt seems to be accelerating.... A second study suggests even larger amounts of frozen methane are trapped in lakebeds and sea bottoms around Siberia and they are starting to bubble to the surface in some spots in alarming amounts, said Igor Semiletov, a professor at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. In late summer, Semiletov found methane bubbling up from parts of the East Siberian Sea and Laptev Sea at levels that were 10 times higher than they were in the mid-1990s, he said based on a study this summer. ...


Don'tcha hate it when they use numbers you can't understand? I mean, who can get their mind around "eleven Chesapeake bays"?

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