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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(5)
Plague/Virus:(3)
Climate Chaos:(17)
Resource Depletion: (6)
Biology Breach:(9)
Recovery:(11)
This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
global warming  ~ climate impacts  ~ smart policy  ~ carbon emissions  ~ ocean acidification  ~ ecosystem interrelationships  ~ toxic water  ~ alternative energy  ~ technical cleverness  ~ sustainability  ~ unintended consequences  



ApocaDocuments (9) matching "climate impacts" from this week
[see full week] ~ [see all stories tagged "climate impacts"]
Sun, Mar 1, 2009
from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
States' patchwork ballast rules has a few holes
A battle to force overseas ships to stop dumping biological pollution in the Great Lakes is taking shape in the harbors of Wisconsin. The state Department of Natural Resources recently released a proposed set of ballast water discharge rules for oceangoing vessels that is far stricter than anything that has been adopted by any other Great Lakes state except New York. Ballast water is used to steady less-than-full cargo ships and is a problem for the Great Lakes because oceangoing vessels traveling from distant countries can arrive with tanks teeming with unwanted organisms. Those foreign species can wreak havoc on the environment when the ballast is flushed as cargo is loaded. Congress has been talking about a uniform national ballast law for the better part of a decade, with little to show for it. ...


Sorry... but I just crapped a pile of quagga mussels on your couch!

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Sun, Mar 1, 2009
from Associated Press:
Part of Lone Star State now driest region in the nation
LUBBOCK -- Central Texas cattle raiser Gerry Shudde remembers Texas' drought of record in the 1950s when his family's ranch sometimes got a couple of 4-inch rainfalls a year. But the drought ongoing now is far different. "This is just cut off completely," the 74-year-old rancher said. "In a lot of ways, it's worse." Across the nation's No. 2 agricultural state, drought conditions are evaporating stock tanks, keeping many crop farmers from planting into long-parched soil, forcing cattle producers to cull their herds, and dropping water levels in state lakes. Despite hurricanes Dolly, Gustav and Ike soaking Texas in 2008, almost every part of the state -- nearly 97 percent -- is experiencing some drought, according to the most recent U.S. Drought Monitor map, released Feb. 26. ...


Can I still wash my car?

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Sat, Feb 28, 2009
from New York Times:
Why 2007 I.P.C.C. Report Lacked 'Burning Embers' Diagram
Several authors of the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the projected effects of global warming now say they regret not pushing harder to include an updated diagram of climate risks in the report. The diagram, known as "burning embers," is an updated version of one that was a central feature of the panel's preceding climate report in 2001. The main opposition to including the diagram in 2007, they say, came from officials representing the United States, China, Russia and Saudi Arabia. That frustration led them to seek publication of the climate-risk diagram in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In emails and phone interviews over the past week, several of researchers said the diagram was omitted in favor of written descriptions of levels of risk from increments of warming. Some scientists thought that the diagram's smears of color, reflecting gradients of risk, were too subjective. But Stephen H. Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford University who has been involved in writing the I.P.C.C. reports since 1988, said the real opposition came from a bloc of countries that thought the colorful diagram was too incendiary.... "Unfortunately governments of 5 fossil fuel dependent and producing nations opposed it.... No matter how much New Zealand, small islands states, Canada, Germany, Belgium and the UK said this was an essential diagram, China, the U.S., Russia and the Saudis said it was too much of a "judgment". ...


That information was too hot to handle.

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Sat, Feb 28, 2009
from Purdue University, via EurekAlert:
Prehistoric global cooling caused by CO2, research finds
Ice in Antarctica suddenly appeared-- in geologic terms-- about 35 million years ago. For the previous 100 million years the continent had been essentially ice-free. The question for science has been, why? What triggered glaciers to form at the South Pole? ... Additional computer modeling of the cooling suggests that the cooling was caused by a reduction of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Even after the continent of Antarctica had drifted to near its present location, its climate was subtropical. Then, 35.5 million years ago, ice formed on Antarctica in about 100,000 years, which is an "overnight" shift in geological terms. ...


Maybe some long-vanished civilization decided to stop using Frelxamitite and Wanklerifs for transportation and energy -- because they were screwing up the atmosphere.

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Thu, Feb 26, 2009
from New Scientist:
How to survive the coming century
ALLIGATORS basking off the English coast; a vast Brazilian desert; the mythical lost cities of Saigon, New Orleans, Venice and Mumbai; and 90 per cent of humanity vanished. Welcome to the world warmed by 4 degrees C. Clearly this is a vision of the future that no one wants, but it might happen. Fearing that the best efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions may fail, or that planetary climate feedback mechanisms will accelerate warming, some scientists and economists are considering not only what this world of the future might be like, but how it could sustain a growing human population. They argue that surviving in the kinds of numbers that exist today, or even more, will be possible, but only if we use our uniquely human ingenuity to cooperate as a species to radically reorganise our world. The good news is that the survival of humankind itself is not at stake: the species could continue if only a couple of hundred individuals remained. But maintaining the current global population of nearly 7 billion, or more, is going to require serious planning. ...


Sorry, but I gotta ask: How come? Why do we have to continue to "grow" as a species.

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Thu, Feb 26, 2009
from The Daily Climate:
Saving the oceans: 'Mission Possible'
...[oceanographer and coral reef geologist Jeonie] Kleypas is one of the world's experts on the effects of climate change on the world's coral reefs, testifying to Congress and presenting papers around the world. She believes that societies must immediately and drastically reduce worldwide carbon emissions, but is also training her research to see if there are ways "to bolster coral reef health so they can weather the climate crisis."....Like many scientists, she struggles to find ways to impart the importance of biodiversity to humans in ways both poetic and prosaic. Losing a third of the coral species on a reef, she says, "is like losing a third of the colors from a Van Gogh painting." Reaching for a different demographic, she adds, "The loss of biodiversity is like having a football team with only tight ends." ...


Or maybe it's like losing all the vowels from the word " p c l ps ."

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Tue, Feb 24, 2009
from New Scientist:
Lizards will roast in a warming world
GLOBAL warming is set to make life distinctly uncomfortable for reptiles and other cold-blooded animals. Unable to produce heat, they rely on strategies such as moving from colder to warmer areas to function. Soon that might not be an option for tropical species. Many species will need to adapt to climate change to survive, so Michael Kearney of the University of Melbourne, Australia, and his team designed a model to get an idea of how cold-blooded species, or ectotherms, would fare. They make up the majority of the world's species. The researchers first assessed how an ectotherm's body temperature would change with body shape and colour, and surrounding environment. They then used satellite data to model wind speed, shade and air temperature in a warmer world. For most ectotherms, a body temperature of 30 to 35 degrees C is ideal, with performance declining at higher and lower temperatures. Above 40 degrees C can be lethal. Kearney's model showed that on a summer's day in the shade, a 3 degrees C rise in average temperature - the mid-range estimate for the end of this century - would send the body temperature of ectotherms in Australia's tropical deserts over 40 degrees C for at least an hour... ...


On the plus side... they will have cooked themselves for my dinner!

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Mon, Feb 23, 2009
from The Louisville Courier-Journal:
Indiana ash ponds pollute bird habitat, drinking water
The ash ponds at the nation's third-largest coal plant near here have contaminated a new wildlife sanctuary for endangered birds and the drinking water of a neighboring community. And while a federal agency and the company that owns the Gibson plant, Duke Energy, have taken steps to alleviate both problems, advocates say the situation underscores the need for a fresh look at the hazards of coal combustion waste. Congress and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency promised such a review following the 1.1billion-gallon ash slide in Tennessee in December that smothered several hundred acres. The House Natural Resources Committee is weighing national standards for ash impoundments, and the new EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, has promised to study whether national standards are needed to prevent toxic contaminants in ash from polluting water. ...


They are nothing but a bunch of ash-holes!

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Mon, Feb 23, 2009
from Washington Post:
Climate Fears Are Driving 'Ecomigration' Across Globe
Adam Fier recently sold his home, got rid of his car and pulled his twin 6-year-old girls out of elementary school in Montgomery County. He and his wife packed the family's belongings and moved to New Zealand -- a place they had never visited or seen before, and where they have no family or professional connections. Among the top reasons: global warming. Halfway around the world, the president of Kiribati, a Pacific nation of low-lying islands, said last week that his country is exploring ways to move all its 100,000 citizens to a new homeland because of fears that a steadily rising ocean will make the islands uninhabitable. ...


Another buzzword: Ecomigration! Here's one we Docs like: RUN LIKE HELL!

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