[About the Project] [About the ApocaDocs] [About Equal Share] [TwitterFollow: apocadocs] SEARCH More than 6,000 stories! OUR BOOK IS NOW IN PRINT! Humoring the Horror of the Converging Emergencies 94 color pages $24.99 Read FREE online! Explore: Play: It's weekly, funny, and free! Play: Click for paper-free fun! Ads for potentially microfunding this site: Apocadocument Weekly Archives: Sep 26 - Dec 31, 1969 Sep 19 - Sep 26, 2011 Sep 12 - Sep 19, 2011 Sep 5 - Sep 12, 2011 Aug 29 - Sep 5, 2011 Aug 22 - Aug 29, 2011 Aug 15 - Aug 22, 2011 Aug 8 - Aug 15, 2011 Aug 1 - Aug 8, 2011 Jul 25 - Aug 1, 2011 Jul 18 - Jul 25, 2011 Jul 11 - Jul 18, 2011 Jul 4 - Jul 11, 2011 Jun 27 - Jul 4, 2011 Jun 20 - Jun 27, 2011 Jun 13 - Jun 20, 2011 Jun 6 - Jun 13, 2011 May 30 - Jun 6, 2011 May 23 - May 30, 2011 May 16 - May 23, 2011 May 9 - May 16, 2011 May 2 - May 9, 2011 Apr 25 - May 2, 2011 Apr 18 - Apr 25, 2011 Apr 11 - Apr 18, 2011 Apr 4 - Apr 11, 2011 Mar 28 - Apr 4, 2011 Mar 21 - Mar 28, 2011 Mar 14 - Mar 21, 2011 Mar 6 - Mar 14, 2011 Feb 27 - Mar 6, 2011 Feb 20 - Feb 27, 2011 Feb 13 - Feb 20, 2011 Feb 6 - Feb 13, 2011 Jan 30 - Feb 6, 2011 Jan 23 - Jan 30, 2011 Jan 16 - Jan 23, 2011 Jan 9 - Jan 16, 2011 Jan 2 - Jan 9, 2011 Dec 26 - Jan 2, 2011 Dec 19 - Dec 26, 2010 Dec 12 - Dec 19, 2010 Dec 5 - Dec 12, 2010 Nov 28 - Dec 5, 2010 Nov 21 - Nov 28, 2010 Nov 14 - Nov 21, 2010 Nov 7 - Nov 14, 2010 Nov 1 - Nov 7, 2010 Oct 25 - Nov 1, 2010 Oct 18 - Oct 25, 2010 Oct 11 - Oct 18, 2010 Oct 4 - Oct 11, 2010 Sep 27 - Oct 4, 2010 Sep 20 - Sep 27, 2010 Sep 13 - Sep 20, 2010 Sep 6 - Sep 13, 2010 Aug 30 - Sep 6, 2010 Aug 23 - Aug 30, 2010 Aug 16 - Aug 23, 2010 Aug 9 - Aug 16, 2010 Aug 2 - Aug 9, 2010 Jul 26 - Aug 2, 2010 Jul 19 - Jul 26, 2010 Jul 12 - Jul 19, 2010 Jul 5 - Jul 12, 2010 Jun 28 - Jul 5, 2010 Jun 21 - Jun 28, 2010 Jun 14 - Jun 21, 2010 Jun 7 - Jun 14, 2010 May 31 - Jun 7, 2010 May 24 - May 31, 2010 May 17 - May 24, 2010 May 10 - May 17, 2010 May 3 - May 10, 2010 Apr 26 - May 3, 2010 Apr 19 - Apr 26, 2010 Apr 12 - Apr 19, 2010 Apr 5 - Apr 12, 2010 Mar 29 - Apr 5, 2010 Mar 22 - Mar 29, 2010 Mar 15 - Mar 22, 2010 Mar 7 - Mar 15, 2010 Feb 28 - Mar 7, 2010 Feb 21 - Feb 28, 2010 Feb 14 - Feb 21, 2010 Feb 7 - Feb 14, 2010 Jan 31 - Feb 7, 2010 Jan 24 - Jan 31, 2010 Jan 17 - Jan 24, 2010 Jan 10 - Jan 17, 2010 Jan 3 - Jan 10, 2010 Dec 27 - Jan 3, 2010 Dec 20 - Dec 27, 2009 Dec 13 - Dec 20, 2009 Dec 6 - Dec 13, 2009 Nov 29 - Dec 6, 2009 Nov 22 - Nov 29, 2009 Nov 15 - Nov 22, 2009 Nov 8 - Nov 15, 2009 Nov 1 - Nov 8, 2009 Oct 26 - Nov 1, 2009 Oct 19 - Oct 26, 2009 Oct 12 - Oct 19, 2009 Oct 5 - Oct 12, 2009 Sep 28 - Oct 5, 2009 Sep 21 - Sep 28, 2009 Sep 14 - Sep 21, 2009 Sep 7 - Sep 14, 2009 Aug 31 - Sep 7, 2009 Aug 24 - Aug 31, 2009 Aug 17 - Aug 24, 2009 Aug 10 - Aug 17, 2009 Aug 3 - Aug 10, 2009 Jul 27 - Aug 3, 2009 Jul 20 - Jul 27, 2009 Jul 13 - Jul 20, 2009 Jul 6 - Jul 13, 2009 Jun 29 - Jul 6, 2009 Jun 22 - Jun 29, 2009 Jun 15 - Jun 22, 2009 Jun 8 - Jun 15, 2009 Jun 1 - Jun 8, 2009 May 25 - Jun 1, 2009 May 18 - May 25, 2009 May 11 - May 18, 2009 May 4 - May 11, 2009 Apr 27 - May 4, 2009 Apr 20 - Apr 27, 2009 Apr 13 - Apr 20, 2009 Apr 6 - Apr 13, 2009 Mar 30 - Apr 6, 2009 Mar 23 - Mar 30, 2009 Mar 16 - Mar 23, 2009 Mar 9 - Mar 16, 2009 Mar 1 - Mar 9, 2009 Feb 22 - Mar 1, 2009 Feb 15 - Feb 22, 2009 Feb 8 - Feb 15, 2009 Feb 1 - Feb 8, 2009 Jan 25 - Feb 1, 2009 Jan 18 - Jan 25, 2009 Jan 11 - Jan 18, 2009 Jan 4 - Jan 11, 2009 Dec 28 - Jan 4, 2009 Dec 21 - Dec 28, 2008 Dec 14 - Dec 21, 2008 Dec 7 - Dec 14, 2008 Nov 30 - Dec 7, 2008 Nov 23 - Nov 30, 2008 Nov 16 - Nov 23, 2008 Nov 9 - Nov 16, 2008 Nov 2 - Nov 9, 2008 Oct 27 - Nov 2, 2008 Oct 20 - Oct 27, 2008 Oct 13 - Oct 20, 2008 Oct 6 - Oct 13, 2008 Sep 29 - Oct 6, 2008 Sep 22 - Sep 29, 2008 Sep 15 - Sep 22, 2008 Sep 8 - Sep 15, 2008 Sep 1 - Sep 8, 2008 Aug 25 - Sep 1, 2008 Aug 18 - Aug 25, 2008 Aug 11 - Aug 18, 2008 Aug 4 - Aug 11, 2008 Jul 28 - Aug 4, 2008 Jul 21 - Jul 28, 2008 Jul 14 - Jul 21, 2008 Jul 7 - Jul 14, 2008 Jun 30 - Jul 7, 2008 Jun 23 - Jun 30, 2008 Jun 16 - Jun 23, 2008 Jun 9 - Jun 16, 2008 Jun 2 - Jun 9, 2008 May 26 - Jun 2, 2008 May 19 - May 26, 2008 May 12 - May 19, 2008 May 5 - May 12, 2008 Apr 28 - May 5, 2008 Apr 21 - Apr 28, 2008 Apr 14 - Apr 21, 2008 Apr 7 - Apr 14, 2008 Mar 31 - Apr 7, 2008 Mar 24 - Mar 31, 2008 Mar 17 - Mar 24, 2008 Mar 10 - Mar 17, 2008 Mar 2 - Mar 10, 2008 Feb 24 - Mar 2, 2008 Feb 17 - Feb 24, 2008 Feb 10 - Feb 17, 2008 Feb 3 - Feb 10, 2008 Jan 27 - Feb 3, 2008 Jan 20 - Jan 27, 2008 Jan 13 - Jan 20, 2008 Jan 6 - Jan 13, 2008 Dec 30 - Jan 6, 2008 Dec 23 - Dec 30, 2007 Dec 16 - Dec 23, 2007 Dec 9 - Dec 16, 2007 Dec 2 - Dec 9, 2007

DocWatch faster than expected Twitterit? News stories about "faster than expected," with punchlines: http://apocadocs.com/d.pl?faster+than+expected Related Scary Tags: arctic meltdown  ~ global warming  ~ holyshit  ~ climate impacts  ~ anthropogenic change  ~ carbon emissions  ~ death spiral  ~ feedback loop  ~ rising sea level  ~ ocean acidification  ~ ocean warming   Fri, Jun 10, 2016 from http://phys.org/news/2014-07-vapor-global-amplifier.html#: New study confirms water vapor as global warming amplifier "The study is the first to confirm that human activities have increased water vapor in the upper troposphere," said Brian Soden, professor of atmospheric sciences at the UM Rosenstiel School and co-author of the study.... Using the set of climate model experiments, the researchers showed that rising water vapor in the upper troposphere cannot be explained by natural forces, such as volcanoes and changes in solar activity, but can be explained by increased greenhouse gases, such as CO2.... Climate models predict that as the climate warms from the burning of fossil fuels, the concentrations of water vapor will also increase in response to that warming. This moistening of the atmosphere, in turn, absorbs more heat and further raises the Earth's temperature. ... Oh, right. Physics! ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Mar 29, 2016 from Cosmos Magazine: Arctic sea ice hits a record low wintertime maximum The Arctic Ocean ice cap peaked for the winter on 24 March at 14.52 million square kilometres - a record low and 20,000 square kilometres less than the previous record low maximum extent. The 13 smallest maximum extents on the satellite record have happened in the last 13 years. Record high temperatures were recorded in December, January and February around the world. In the Artic average air temperatures were up to 5.5 degrees C above average at the edges of the ice pack. ... Talk about opportunities for improvement!! ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Mar 23, 2016 from New York Magazine: New Paper Suggests Catastrophic Climate Shifts May Be Decades Away Using computer models, evidence from ancient episodes of climate change, and modern observations, Hansen and his team arrived at one essential conclusion: The melting of the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets will set off a vicious cycle that dramatically accelerates the pace of climate change. The key concept here is ocean "stratification," a process by which cold, fresh meltwater rises to the ocean surface while warmer salt water is pushed beneath. (The Washington Post notes that an "anomalously cold 'blob' of ocean water" has been detected off the southern coast of Greenland.) That warmer salt water would eventually reach the base of the ice sheets, melting them from below, thus spurring more stratification, which would then spur more melting, which would then spur more stratification, which would spur more warming, until our grandchildren are all swallowed by the sea. But that's not all! Hansen's paper also projects that the influx of cold meltwater in the North Atlantic region, combined with warmer equatorial waters, would drive midlatitude cyclones so strong, the waves would be capable of thrusting gigantic boulders ashore. ... All Systems Are Pointing. Any Solutions Are Prerequisites. Atlantic Seaboard Aquatically Plundered. Awkward Statements Acronyming Panic: A.S.A.P.! ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Mar 16, 2016 from Globe & Mail (Canada): Winter ice coverage in Arctic sea reaching record low, scientists warn Scientists warn that the area covered by this winter's Arctic sea ice could turn out to be the lowest ever measured. The news comes on top of a long season of freakishly warm weather at the top of the planet, including above-freezing days at the North Pole and a months-long string of temperature records. "The winter, overall, has been extremely warm in the Arctic," said Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado. ... The Arctic had the same sort of Wimpter that we had! ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Mar 14, 2016 from PhysOrg: Degrading ice wedges reshape Arctic permafrost and landscape The wedges, which can be the size of a house, gradually formed over hundreds or even thousands of years as water seeped into permafrost cracks. On the ground surface, they form polygon shapes roughly 15-30 meters wide--a defining characteristic of northern landscapes.... Ice wedge degradation has been observed before in individual locations, but this is the first study to determine that rapid melting has become widespread throughout the Arctic. "Here we're combining observations from people working in the field across the Arctic--Russia, Canada and Alaska--where we're seeing the same ice wedge melting phenomenon," said Liljedahl, the lead author of the study.... "It's really the tipping point for the hydrology," Liljedahl said. "Suddenly you're draining the landscape and creating more runoff, even if the amount of precipitation remains the same. Instead of being absorbed by the tundra, the snowmelt water will run off into lakes and larger rivers. It really is a dramatic hydrologic change across the tundra landscape." ... Wouldn't you expect a wedge to have a tipping point? ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Mar 11, 2016 from ClimateCentral: CO2 in the atmosphere rose more in 2015 than scientists have ever seen in a single year ... "Carbon dioxide levels are increasing faster than they have in hundreds of thousands of years," Pieter Tans, lead scientist of NOAA's Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network, said in a statement. The rate of increase in carbon dioxide concentrations is 200 times faster than the previous extreme jump between 11,000 and 17,000 years ago, when levels rose 80 ppm over about 6,000 years.... Michael Mann, an atmospheric science professor and director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, who is unaffiliated with NOAA, said the carbon dioxide milestone shouldn't be over-interpreted. "This spike is almost certainly due in substantial part to the ongoing El Niño event, which is a fleeting effect that increases carbon dioxide concentrations temporarily," Mann said. "Carbon dioxide concentrations are a lagging indicator, and they don't accurately reflect recent trends in the more important variable -- our actual carbon emissions." ... CO2 is the gift that keeps on giving, for a thousand years. ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Dec 23, 2015 from PNAS, in Washington Post: Bad news: Scientists say we could be underestimating Arctic methane emissions "...The fact that this was done not just at one site, but multiple sites, is a breakthrough in our ability to quantify [methane] budgets for tundra ecosystems." The researchers found that cold-season methane emissions are not only not negligible -- they're pretty significant. While emissions varied somewhat from one site to the next, Zona said that, overall, emissions from September to May accounted for about half of all the methane emitted from those sites throughout the entire year. This might seem a little baffling when you consider the fact that methane is generally released as Arctic soil thaws -- a process that should be most pronounced during the warmest part of the year. Zona said the key to understanding where cold-season emissions come from lies in the way Arctic soil is structured and how it reacts to changes in temperature. ... Oh, right: bacteria never sleep! ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Nov 10, 2015 from CommonDreams: Overheated Planet Entering 'Uncharted Territory at Frightening Speed' With new evidence that the concentration of greenhouse gases broke yet another record in 2014, the head of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned on Monday that the warming planet is hurtling "into uncharted territory at a frightening speed." The United Nations weather agency's latest Greenhouse Gas Bulletin (pdf) reports that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) reached 397.7 parts per million (ppm) in 2014, substantially beyond the 350ppm level deemed "safe" by scientists to avoid global warming.... "Every year we report a new record in greenhouse gas concentrations," Jarraud continued. "Every year we say that time is running out. We have to act NOW to slash greenhouse gas emissions if we are to have a chance to keep the increase in temperatures to manageable levels." ... That scientist sounds as if he actually knows about this stuff. Can we have a different pundit, please? ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Aug 16, 2015 from Christian Science Monitor: World Resource Overdraft: Planet Earth crosses into ecological red Planet Earth crossed into the ecological red Friday. Thursday marked Earth Overshoot Day - the day when the world's population officially exhausts all the natural resources the Earth can generate in a single year, as defined by the sustainability think tank, Global Footprint Network.... GFN estimates that the current population demands the resources of 1.6 Earths. ... Humans have always been overachievers. ApocaDoc permalink Mon, May 18, 2015 from PhysOrg: Ocean currents disturb methane-eating bacteria Offshore the Svalbard archipelago, methane gas is seeping out of the seabed at the depths of several hundred meters. These cold seeps are a home to communities of microorganisms that survive in a chemosynthetic environment - where the fuel for life is not the sun, but the carbon rich greenhouse gas.... There is a large, and relatively poorly understood, community of methane-consuming bacteria in this environment. They gorge on the gas, control its concentration in the ocean, and stop it from reaching the ocean surface and released into the atmosphere.... "We were able to show that strength and variability of ocean currents control the prevalence of methanotrophic bacteria", says Lea Steinle from University of Basel and the lead author of the study, "therefore, large bacteria populations cannot develop in a strong current, which consequently leads to less methane consumption." ... Bubble, bubble, roil and trouble, microbes fail and methanes double. ApocaDoc permalink Sat, May 2, 2015 from New Zealand Herald: Hundreds of methane gas flares found off coast of Gisborne, NZ "Preliminary indications are that methane is reaching the ocean surface - this is the first time this has been measured in New Zealand," he said. "However, to understand how much methane, and then what this means for atmospheric contributions, will require detailed analysis of the data."... The discovery of this high concentration of gas flares in shallow water depths - 100m-300m - on an active tectonic subduction zone was unique, as gas seeps usually occurred much deeper, at 600m to 1000m below the surface. The team identified methane gas in the sediment and in the ocean, and vast areas of methane hydrates - ice-like frozen methane - below the seafloor. This year's research voyage continued the work of an international project focusing on the interactions between gas hydrates and slow-moving landslides called SCHLIP - Submarine Clathrate Hydrate Landslide Imaging Project. ... You say "clathrate" as if it's a real word! ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Apr 2, 2015 from Yale360: How Long Can Oceans Continue To Absorb Earth's Excess Heat? The ocean has been heating at a rate of around 0.5 to 1 watt of energy per square meter over the past decade, amassing more than 2 X 1023 joules of energy -- the equivalent of roughly five Hiroshima bombs exploding every second -- since 1990. Vast and slow to change temperature, the oceans have a huge capacity to sequester heat, especially the deep ocean, which is playing an increasingly large uptake and storage role. That is a major reason the planet's surface temperatures have risen less than expected in the past dozen or so years, given the large greenhouse gas hike during the same period, said Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research... But scientists say that when the cycle eventually swings back to its positive, warm phase, which history suggests could occur within a decade, the winds will wind down, the pumping will let up, and buried heat will rise back into the atmosphere. "There's a hint this might already be starting to happen," said Matthew England, an ocean sciences professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.... Scientists are also learning that the ocean has gained more heat, and at greater depth, than they had realized. That means the entire climate is even more out-of-whack than is evident today.... The long-term heat gain in the top 700 meters (.43 miles) of the world’s oceans has likely been underestimated by as much as half, according to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories research scientist Paul Durack. ... Our ocean heat has grown / Vaster than empires / and more slow ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Mar 26, 2015 from Pictou Advocate (Nova Scotia): Town council hears need for snow equipment "It's just an exceptional (winter)," Funk said, noting six major snow storms in February and extreme temperature changes that have made it impossible to do things like popularly plowing back intersections. "I've been in the snow business for 35 years and the number of (flash) freezes this winter is unusual," he said. "The equipment has worked well. It's just not up to the winter we've had. We can hope this is not a bell weather of climate change to come." ... We can hope. 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! Wed, Mar 11, 2015 from The Independent: March: Arctic sea ice near its all-time winter low and could break previous record Sea ice in the Arctic is near its all-time minimum for the end of winter and could break the previous record within the next two weeks if it fails to grow, according to the latest satellite data. The area of the Arctic covered by floating sea ice is already the lowest for this time of year, highlighting the long-term warming trend experienced by the region in both winter and summer months. Sea ice expands and contracts with the seasons but satellite data collected since the 1970s shows that it is retreating further and further during the summer months compared to 20 or 30 years ago. Sea ice in summer has shrunk by 30 per cent on average over the past 30 years while average temperatures in the Arctic have risen by about 4C - more than 3C warmer than the global average. ... If only I'd shorted Arctic futures -- I'd be set for life. ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Jan 1, 2015 from Guardian: Time is running out on climate denial -- But is it running out fast enough? In short, if we take action to slow global warming, the worst case scenario involves draconian government regulations that trigger an economic recession. If we don't, the worst case scenario involves an economic recession too, but also a host of other global and societal catastrophes. Although Craven doesn't look at the probabilities of these worst case scenarios, they're also heavily weighted towards the case for taking action to curb global warming. There are lots of options to slow global warming that don't involve drastic government regulation, and that can even be beneficial for the economy. If we decide that we've gone too far in cutting carbon pollution, it's relatively easy to scale back government policies.... In other words, if we take too much action to curb climate change, the worst case scenario (upper left grid) is easily avoided. If we don't take enough action, we may not be able to avoid some of the worst consequences in the bottom right grid. ... There's no "us" in "deniers." ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Nov 30, 2014 from Desmog.ca: Environment Canada Study Reveals Oilsands Tailings Ponds Emit Toxins to Atmosphere Five Times Higher Levels than Reported There are more than 176 square kilometres of tailings ponds holding waste from oilsands development in the area around Fort McMurray, Alberta. According to new research released from Environment Canada, those tailings ponds are emitting much higher levels of toxic and potentially cancer-causing contaminants into the air than previously reported. As the Canadian Press reports, Environment Canada scientist Elisabeth Galarneau is the first to conduct field studies in the region and her research confirms that previous estimates of chemical release into the air have been massively underestimated. "We found that there actually does appear to be a net flow of these compounds going from water to air," Galarneau told the Canadian Press. "It's just a bit under five times higher from the ponds than what's been reported." ... Almost five times as much? Let's attribute that to sampling error. ApocaDoc permalink Sat, Oct 25, 2014 from Mother Jones: Climate Change Is Kicking the Insurance Industry's Butt Global warming is increasing the risk of damage to lives and property from natural disasters beyond what many insurers are willing to shoulder. And most insurance companies aren't taking adequate steps to change that trend, the survey found. That's a problem even if you don't live by the coast: When private insurers back out, the government is left to pick up much of the damage costs; already, the federal flood insurance program is one of the nation's largest fiscal liabilities. Ceres, an environmental nonprofit, evaluated the climate risk management policies of 330 large insurance companies operating in the United States. The results are worrying. Only nine companies, 3 percent of the total, earned the highest ranking.... ... It's strange, to imagine that somehow consequences could result from our actions. Aren't we protected from such craziness by the rules of the universe? ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Oct 23, 2014 from University of Arizona, via ScienceDaily: As permafrost soils thaw soil microbes amplify global climate change Tiny soil microbes are among the world's biggest potential amplifiers of human-caused climate change, but whether microbial communities are mere slaves to their environment or influential actors in their own right is an open question. Now, research by an international team of scientists from the U.S., Sweden and Australia, led by University of Arizona scientists, shows that a single species of microbe, discovered only very recently, is an unexpected key player in climate change.... The new research nails down the role of the new microbe, finding that the sheer abundance of Methanoflorens, as compared to other microbial species in thawing permafrost, should help to predict their collective impact on future climate change.... "But we find that in thawing permafrost, most methane initially doesn't come from acetate as previously assumed, but the other pathway. This ratio then shifts towards previous estimates as the frozen soils are turned into wetlands and acetate becomes the preferred carbon source." ... Anything called Methanoflorens -- "Methane's Flower" -- scares the bejeezis out of me. ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Sep 23, 2014 from National Geographic: New Reports Offer Clearest Picture Yet of Rising Greenhouse Gas Emissions Two days before the UN Climate Summit in New York, three new studies paint the clearest picture yet of rising greenhouse gas emissions and the dwindling opportunity for staving off the worst impacts--and also of at least one way that huge undertaking might be shared fairly among the nations of the world.... In Nature Geoscience, Friedlingstein and his colleagues write that the world has already used up two thirds of the CO2 emissions quota that scientists say will keep the planet from warming more than 2?C (3.6?F). Beyond that temperature threshold, serious consequences are expected from sea-level rise and widespread disruption of weather patterns.... The researchers consider two basic principles for distributing the global emissions quota: "inertia," under which countries would continue to emit the same share of global emissions as they do now, and "equity," under which countries would be allowed to emit according to their population, with per capita emissions being the same everywhere. ... As long as only property owners are allowed to vote! ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Sep 11, 2014 from Guardian: Amazon deforestation jumps 29 percent last year The destruction of the world's largest rainforest accelerated last year with a 29 percent spike in deforestation, according to final figures released by the Brazilian government on Wednesday that confirmed a reversal in gains seen since 2009. Satellite data for the 12 months through the end of July 2013 showed that 5,891 sq km of forest were cleared in the Brazilian Amazon, an area half the size of Puerto Rico. Fighting the destruction of the Amazon is considered crucial for reducing global warming because deforestation worldwide accounts for 15 percent of annual emissions of heat-trapping gases, more than the entire transportation sector. Besides being a giant carbon sink, the Amazon is a biodiversity sanctuary, holding billions of species yet to be studied. ... That biodiversity will just have to go somewheres else. There's money waiting to be made! ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Aug 27, 2014 from Sydney Morning Herald: Climate change may disrupt global food system within a decade, World Bank says "The challenges from waste to warming, spurred on by a growing population with a rising middle-class hunger for meat, are leading us down a dangerous path," Professor Kyte told the Crawford Fund 2014 annual conference in Canberra on Wednesday. "Unless we chart a new course, we will find ourselves staring volatility and disruption in the food system in the face, not in 2050, not in 2040, but potentially within the next decade," she said, according to her prepared speech. ... If we "chart a new course" then... what happens to the "old course"? ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Aug 20, 2014 from The Conversation, via TruthOut: The Way the Wind Blows May Not Be Enough to Prevent Ocean "Dead Zones" From Growing The world's oceans are plagued with the problem of "dead zones", areas of high nutrients (such as nitrogen and phosphorus) in which plankton blooms cause a major reduction of oxygen levels in the water. Sea creatures need oxygen to breathe just as we do, and if oxygen levels fall low enough marine animals can suffocate. This commonly happens around coastlines where fertilisers are washed from fields into rivers and the sea, but also mid-ocean, where currents trap waters in gyres (large systems of rotating ocean currents). To date most studies have shown that these dead zones have been growing with global warming. But a recent study published in Science by Curtis Deutsch and colleagues suggests that the ocean's largest anoxic zone - where there has been a total depletion of oxygen - in the eastern tropical North Pacific, may in fact shrink due to weakening trade winds caused by global warming.... Warming also encourages water stratification, where the water separates into layers based on temperature or salinity, creating a physical barrier that prevents oxygen reaching deeper waters. Previous studies have predicted a weakening of trade winds in tropical areas, but have also forecasted changes to low-pressure weather fronts over coastlines that would lead to stronger winds, sufficient to replace any upwelling effect lost by weaker trade winds. ... Well, generally, caloric upwelling is 'generally well' and well displayed (but alas not comprehensive). Next question? ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Aug 18, 2014 from TED: Beautiful and Sad GIFs that Show what's Happening to the Ocean Scientist Sylvia Earle (TED Talk: My wish: Protect our oceans) has spent the past five decades exploring the seas. During that time, she's witnessed a steep decline in ocean wildlife numbers -- and a sharp incline in the number of ocean deadzones and oil drilling sites. An original documentary about Earle's life and work premieres today on Netflix.... Below, four ocean infographic then-and-now-gifs from the film. What happened to the coral reefs? -- What happened to tuna, sharks, and cod? -- The number of ocean deadzones then and now -- The number of Gulf Coast oil drilling sites then and now... ... "Then" is as much "now" as "now" was "then," if any future is presaged by a past. That means that, ergo, it's clear there is no need to complicate matters with comparisons. No need to pay attention to change, or to the present. Carry on. ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Jul 27, 2014 from Telegraph (UK): Sea temperature off Plymouth hotter than California Ocean temperatures have a soared to a seven-year high off southwest Britain - making our seas as hot as California. Marine scientists say the water has reached 20.4C (68.7F) off Start Bay, Devon, and 20.1C (68.2F) off Perranporth, Cornwall. That is even warmer than readings taken from Santa Monica beach in Los Angeles, where its currently lagging behind at 19.4C (66.9F) and only 8C short of the sea temperature in Bali. Temperatures off the British coast are also rising by almost 4C a month - twice as fast as normal.... "Increasing sea temperatures will change the community structure and certain species will be better adpated to the warmer temperatures. That's both the microscopic plants, the phytoplankton and the large plants, the kelp. "Jellyfish tend to like warm waters so there might be an increase in the jellyfish population although bathers shouldn;t be unduly concerned." Meanwhile hot temperatures blowing in from Europe are bringing with it pollutants and these are reacting with sunlight to produce a soup of chemical smog which endangers health. ... It ain't the temperature, it's the toxic haze. ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Jul 16, 2014 from TruthOut: Arctic Warming and Increased Weather Extremes: The National Research Council Speaks A new report from the National Research Council (NRC) details the findings of recent Arctic research: Arctic sea ice in all seasons is declining and the rate of loss is increasing. Multiple lines of study show this is impacting weather outside of the Arctic. Increased energy (heat) in the Arctic is slowing the progress of the jet stream around globe, allowing weather systems to linger, increasing the risk of severe weather happening more often in any one place.... In our old climate, we sort-of knew how it behaved. We had decades and even centuries of records to use to project changes into the future. But all of this historical data may be of much less use in the future as the baseline physics have now changed. Even more critical, the short term is now very important as tipping points may appear at any time. Because of 20 years of delay in controlling climate pollution, we are experiencing more warming faster than we would have if we had of begun to address climate pollutants as was suggested decades ago. Because we are warming faster, the risk of climate tipping points is higher. This discussion point states that recent Arctic changes may have "pushed the atmosphere into a new state with different variability." What they mean by variability is that the extremes get more extreme. ... I'd rather not listen to those guys. They use too many big words! ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Jul 1, 2014 from Telegraph (UK): The race to stop Las Vegas from running dry America's most decadent destination has been engaged in a potentially catastrophic gamble with nature and now, 14 years into a devastating drought, it is on the verge of losing it all. "The situation is as bad as you can imagine," said Tim Barnett, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "It's just going to be screwed. And relatively quickly. Unless it can find a way to get more water from somewhere Las Vegas is out of business. Yet they're still building, which is stupid." The crisis stems from the Las Vegas's complete reliance on Lake Mead, America's largest reservoir, which was created by the Hoover Dam in 1936 - after which it took six years to fill completely.... Mr Barnett predicts it may be a "dead pool" that provides no water by about 2036. The lake currently looks as if someone has removed a giant plug from it. Around its edges a strip of bleached rock known locally as the "bath tub ring" towers like the White Cliffs of Dover, showing where the water level used to be. Pyramid-shaped mountains rise from the shallow waters. ... If I draw the Ace of Spades, I'll have a Royal Flush! 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, Jun 24, 2014 from GOC, via CommonDreams: Global Ocean Commission says rescue needed within five years The world's oceans face irreparable damage from climate change and overfishing, with a five-year window for intervention, an environmental panel said Tuesday. Neglecting the health of the oceans could have devastating effects on the world's food supply, clean air, and climate stability, among other factors. The Global Oceans Commission, an environmental group formed by the Pew Charitable Trust, released a report (PDF) addressing the declining marine ecosystems around the world and outlining an eight-step "rescue package" to restore growth and prevent future damage to the seas. The 18-month study proposes increased governance of the oceans, including limiting oil and gas exploration, capping subsidies for commercial fishing, and creating marine protected areas (MPAs) to guard against pollution, particularly from plastics.... Government subsidies for high seas fishing total at least $30 billion a year and are carried out by just ten countries, the report said. About 60 percent of such subsidies encourage unsustainable practices like the fuel-hungry "bottom trawling" of ocean floors -- funds that could be rerouted to conservation efforts or employment in coastal areas. ... Five whole years? We have time for far more study, I think. ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Jun 20, 2014 from AP, via HuffingtonPost: Ebola In West Africa Is 'Totally Out Of Control,' Doctors Without Borders Says The Ebola outbreak ravaging West Africa is "totally out of control," according to a senior official for Doctors Without Borders, who says the medical group is stretched to the limit in its capacity to respond. The current outbreak has caused more deaths than any other on record, said another official with the medical charity. Ebola has been linked to more than 330 deaths in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, according to the latest numbers from the World Health Organization.... "The reality is clear that the epidemic is now in a second wave," Janssens said. "And, for me, it is totally out of control." The outbreak, which began in Guinea either late last year or early this year, had appeared to slow before picking up pace again in recent weeks, including spreading to the Liberian capital for the first time. ... I yearn for "Diseases With Borders." ApocaDoc permalink Sat, Jun 14, 2014 from Phys.org: Third warmest May in satellite record might portend record-setting El Nino May 2014 was the third warmest May in the 35-year satellite-measured global temperature record, and the warmest May that wasn't during an El Niño Pacific Ocean warming event, according to Dr. John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. The global average temperature for May was 0.33 C (about 0.59 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than seasonal norms for the month. The warmest May was in 1998, during the "El Niño of the century." Temperatures in May 1998 were 0.56 C (about 1.0 degrees F) warmer than normal. May 2010--also an El Niño month--was second warmest at 0.45 C (0.81 degrees F). ... I believe our goal is to always be #1, not #3, AM I RIGHT?? Can we not kick ass? What did I SAY?? CAN WE NOT KICK MORE OF NATURE'S ASS?? ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Jun 11, 2014 from University of Edinburgh, via ScienceDaily: Warming climates intensify greenhouse gas given out by oceans Fresh insight into how the oceans can affect CO2 levels in the atmosphere shows that rising temperatures can indirectly increase the amount of the greenhouse gas emitted by the oceans. Scientists studied a 26,000-year-old sediment core taken from the Gulf of California to find out how the ocean's ability to take up atmospheric CO2 has changed over time. They tracked the abundance of the key elements silicon and iron in the fossils of tiny marine organisms, known as plankton, in the sediment core. Plankton absorb CO2 from the atmosphere at the ocean surface, and can lock away vast quantities of carbon.... Researchers found that those periods when silicon was least abundant in ocean waters corresponded with relatively warm climates, low levels of atmospheric iron, and reduced CO2 uptake by the oceans' plankton. Scientists had suspected that iron might have a role in enabling plankton to absorb CO2. However, this latest study shows that a lack of iron at the ocean surface can limit the effect of other key elements in helping plankton take up carbon. ... I wonder if ocean acidity's effect on plankton might also be a factor? ApocaDoc permalink Thu, May 29, 2014 from AP, via HuffingtonPost: World On Brink Of Sixth Great Extinction, Species Disappearing Faster Than Ever Before Species of plants and animals are becoming extinct at least 1,000 times faster than they did before humans arrived on the scene, and the world is on the brink of a sixth great extinction, a new study says.... "We are on the verge of the sixth extinction," Pimm said from research at the Dry Tortugas. "Whether we avoid it or not will depend on our actions." The work, published Thursday by the journal Science, was hailed as a landmark study by outside experts. ... Alas, poor species. We knew them, Horatio, small fellows of infinite jest, of most excellent fancies. ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Apr 3, 2014 from NOAA, via TriplePundit: Tropical Pacific Ocean Acidification Occuring Much Faster Than Expected, NOAA Finds Change is taking place in the tropical Pacific Ocean, where NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) researchers have found that carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations have increased as much as 65 percent faster than atmospheric CO2 since 1998. Rising CO2 concentrations of this magnitude indicate that tropical Pacific waters are acidifying as fast as ocean waters in the polar regions, which may have grave repercussions for marine food webs, biodiversity, fisheries and tourism. ... Tourism threatened? OMG! ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Mar 21, 2014 from NASA, via The Guardian: Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for 'irreversible collapse'? The two key solutions are to reduce economic inequality so as to ensure fairer distribution of resources, and to dramatically reduce resource consumption by relying on less intensive renewable resources and reducing population growth: "Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion." The NASA-funded HANDY model offers a highly credible wake-up call to governments, corporations and business - and consumers - to recognise that 'business as usual' cannot be sustained, and that policy and structural changes are required immediately. ... Well, as long as we don't have to hurry too fast. ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Mar 19, 2014 from McClatchy: Study: Rockies' wildflower season 35 days longer because of climate change The Rocky Mountain wildflower season has lengthened by over a month since the 1970s, according to a study published Monday that found climate change is altering the flowering patterns of more species than previously thought. Flowers used to bloom from mid-May to early September, but the season now lasts 35 days longer, from April to mid-September, according to researchers who collected 39 years of data at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory near Crested Butte, Colo.... The scientific paper is the latest to document one of the strongest signs that global warming is shaking up the natural world. Scientists studying phenology - the timing of seasonal events in nature - are observing rapid shifts in when flowers bloom, trees leaf out and bees, birds and butterflies appear in the spring. ... Nothing smells so sweet as the apocalypse in the Rockies. ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Feb 20, 2014 from NASA: NASA satellites see Arctic surface darkening faster The retreat of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is diminishing Earth's albedo, or reflectivity, by an amount considerably larger than previously estimated, according to a new study that uses data from instruments that fly aboard several NASA satellites.... As the sea ice melts, its white reflective surface is replaced by a relatively dark ocean surface. This diminishes the amount of sunlight being reflected back to space, causing Earth to absorb an increasing amount of solar energy. The Arctic has warmed by 3.6 F (2 C) since the 1970s. The summer minimum Arctic sea ice extent has decreased by 40 percent during the same time period. These factors have decreased the region's albedo, or the fraction of incoming light that Earth reflects back into space -- a change that the CERES instruments are able to measure. ... albedone for ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Jan 19, 2014 from Telegraph (UK): UK weather: mild spell causes birds to break into song and flowers to bloom ... Wildlife experts have received dozens of reports of snowdrops blooming across the UK, nearly a month before they would normally be expected.... Some birds have also been recorded nesting while the first reports of song thrush singing arrived on 13 January now several have been spotted around the country.... "For insects and amphibians it is not so rosy. Ladybirds, for example, have finite energy reserves and nectar at this time of year will be thin on the ground, so they might not make it through to the spring. "Similarly frogs only get one chance to breed each year and if it gets very cold the spawn can freeze and will be lost if they are fooled into breeding too early." Since the start of January much of the country has seen temperatures in double figures, with the average temperature for the whole country last week being around 47.6 degrees F.... However, the heavy rain, strong winds and tidal surges that have accompanied the mild conditions have also taken their toll on many species. Waterfowl such as ducks, which have been nesting earlier than usual due to the mild conditions, had their nests destroyed by flooding. Sussex Wildlife Trust has reported swallows nesting and several species of butterflies on its nature reserve. ... Jeez, wildlife -- toughen up! ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Dec 3, 2013 from National Research Council: Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change: Anticipating Surprises Although there is still much to learn about abrupt climate change and abrupt climate impacts, to willfully ignore the threat of abrupt change could lead to more costs, loss of life, suffering, and environmental degradation. The time is here to be serious about the threat of tipping points so as to better anticipate and prepare ourselves for the inevitable surprises. ... Uh-oh: this language is how the National Research Council expresses panic. ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Nov 26, 2013 from University of Alaska Fairbanks, via EurekAlert: Study: Arctic seafloor methane releases double previous estimates The seafloor off the coast of Northern Siberia is releasing more than twice the amount of methane as previously estimated, according to new research results published in the Nov. 24 edition of the journal Nature Geoscience. The East Siberian Arctic Shelf is venting at least 17 teragrams of the methane into the atmosphere each year. A teragram is equal to 1 million tons. "It is now on par with the methane being released from the arctic tundra, which is considered to be one of the major sources of methane in the Northern Hemisphere," said Natalia Shakhova, one of the paper's lead authors and a scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. "Increased methane releases in this area are a possible new climate-change-driven factor that will strengthen over time."... ... I'm making mine a double, too. ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Sep 25, 2013 from CBC: Monarch butterfly numbers drop to new lows Monarch butterflies appear headed for a perhaps unprecedented population crash, according to scientists and monarch watchers who have been keeping tabs on the species in their main summer home in Eastern and Central North America. There had been hope that on their journey north from their overwintering zone in Mexico, the insects' numbers would build through the generations, but there's no indication that happened. Only a small number of monarchs did make it to Canada this summer to propagate the generation that has now begun its southern migration to Mexico, and early indications are that the past year's record lows will be followed by even lower numbers this fall.... "Based on what I saw this year, I'm very concerned they're not going to bounce back that well, and my fear is I'm going to see them extinct within my lifetime," Burkhard said.... Taylor says that "in the Midwest, we're seeing a tremendous loss of habitat due to the type of agriculture that been adopted here, Roundup-ready corn and soybeans, which has taken the milkweeds out of those row crops, and we're seeing overzealous management of roadside marshes, excessive use of herbicides here and there." ... Guess that means fewer hurricanes this season! ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Sep 15, 2013 from Seattle Sun-Times: Actual journalism on ocean acidification Imagine every person on Earth tossing a hunk of CO2 as heavy as a bowling ball into the sea. That's what we do to the oceans every day.... Scientists once considered that entirely good news, since it removed CO2 from the sky. Some even proposed piping more emissions to the sea. But all that CO2 is changing the chemistry of the ocean faster than at any time in human history. Now the phenomenon known as ocean acidification -- the lesser-known twin of climate change -- is helping push the seas toward a great unraveling that threatens to scramble marine life on a scale almost too big to fathom, and far faster than first expected.... "There's a train wreck coming and we are in a position to slow that down and make it not so bad," said Stephen Palumbi, a professor of evolutionary and marine biology at Stanford University. "But if we don't start now the wreck will be enormous."... Roughly a quarter of organisms studied by researchers actually do better in high CO2. Another quarter seem unaffected. But entire marine systems are built around the remaining half of susceptible plants and animals.... [T]he winners will mostly be the weeds."... The pace of change has caught everyone off guard. ... ... the weeds, the vermin, the generalists that reproduce quickly. Plague of rats, weeds, and insects, anyone? ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Sep 15, 2013 from PLoS One, via ScienceDaily: Unprecedented Rate and Scale of Ocean Acidification Found in the Arctic Acidification of the Arctic Ocean is occurring faster than projected, according to new findings published in the journal PLoS ONE. The increase in rate is being blamed on rapidly melting sea ice, a process that may have important consequences for health of the Arctic ecosystem.... The new research shows that acidification in surface waters of the Arctic Ocean is rapidly expanding into areas that were previously isolated from contact with the atmosphere due to the former widespread ice cover. "A remarkable 20 percent of the Canadian Basin has become more corrosive to carbonate minerals in an unprecedented short period of time. Nowhere on Earth have we documented such large scale, rapid ocean acidification" according to lead researcher and ocean acidification project chief, U.S. Geological Survey oceanographer Lisa Robbins.... "Not only is the ice cover removed leaving the surface water exposed to human-made carbon dioxide, the surface layer of frigid waters is now fresher, and this means less calcium and carbonate ions are available for organisms." ... Kinda stands to reason: there ain't no ocean icidification going on! ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Sep 1, 2013 from Washington Post: The oceans are acidifying at the fastest rate in 300 million years. How worried should we be? The world's oceans are turning acidic at what's likely the fastest pace in 300 million years. Scientists tend to think this is a troubling development. But just how worried should we be, exactly?... As humans keep burning fossil fuels, the oceans are absorbing more and more carbon-dioxide. That staves off (some) global warming, but it also makes the seas more acidic -- acidity levels have risen 30 percent since the Industrial Revolution.... One study published last year in Climatic Change suggested that the loss of mollusks -- one of the easier-to-forecast effects of acidification -- could cost the world around $100 billion per year by the end of the century. The main variable here is how much China and other fast-growing countries are likely to depend on these species for food in the future. ... O, for acidity-resistant pterapods and krill! ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Aug 15, 2013 from ScienceAlert: Ocean acidity continues to increase A unique comparison of coastal water monitoring near Australia's Davis Station in East Antarctica has shown significant changes in ocean chemistry over the past 16 years. The study, published in The Journal of Marine Chemistry, shows a marked and somewhat unexpected increase in the acidity of the seawater in the region.... 'The surprise was that the change in acidity was so large, indicating that natural and human induced changes have combined to amplify ocean acidity in this region,' said Mr Roden. ... If he's surprised, we should be a little suspicious of his conclusions, since "faster than expected" is the new normal. ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Aug 9, 2013 from The Asahi Shimbun, via Desdemona: Radioactivity levels in Fukushima groundwater increase 47-fold over 5 days Radioactivity levels soared 47-fold over just five days in groundwater from a monitoring well on the ocean side of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the plant operator said Aug. 5. Tokyo Electric Power Co. said 56,000 becquerels of radioactive substances, including strontium, were detected per liter of groundwater sampled on Aug. 5 in the "No. 1-5" monitoring well, which is adjacent to the turbine building for the No. 1 reactor. The previous measurement for the well water was made on July 31. ... It's a nuclear trickledown! ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Jun 16, 2013 from McGill, via EurekAlert: Study of oceans' past raises worries about their future A McGill-led international research team has now completed the first global study of changes that occurred in a crucial component of ocean chemistry, the nitrogen cycle, at the end of the last ice age. The results of their study confirm that oceans are good at balancing the nitrogen cycle on a global scale. But the data also shows that it is a slow process that may take many centuries, or even millennia, raising worries about the effects of the scale and speed of current changes in the ocean.... "We are changing the planet in ways we are not even aware of," says Galbraith. "You wouldn't think that putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere would change the amount of nitrogen available to fish in the ocean, but it clearly does. It is important to realize just how interconnected everything is." ... Interconnecteness means always having to say you're sorry. ApocaDoc permalink Mon, May 27, 2013 from Washington Post: Russia to pack up Arctic ice station after cracks develop in ice floe Russia is evacuating a drifting Arctic research station that was supposed to last until September, because the ice it is built on is starting to break up. The cracks are another indication of the rapid decline of the Arctic ice sheet -- especially so because the encampment is on the Canadian side of the Arctic Sea, where the ice is oldest and most durable.... In years past, drift stations have remained in operation for 12 months or longer, with the exception of 2010, when an early breakup also caused a premature evacuation. One station in the Soviet era, called North Pole-22, was launched Sept. 13, 1973, and stayed in service until April 8, 1982. ... Don'tcha just hate it when unexpected cracks appear in the fundament? ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Apr 25, 2013 from RTCC: CO2 level nears 400ppm climate milestone Global atmospheric CO2 concentration is edging towards the 400 parts per million (ppm) mark for the first time in millions of years. That's the expectation of scientists at the Mauna Loa recording station in Hawaii, widely regarded as the most reliable record of atmospheric CO2.... The annual peak is in May just before summer plant growth sucks more CO2 out of the atmosphere. Levels have risen every year since recording began. Scripps estimates that the 400ppm mark could be breached this year and if not, it will definitely be broken in 2014. These levels were last sustained 3.2-5 million years ago when temperatures were 2-3 degrees C warmer. "I wish it weren't true, but it looks like the world is going to blow through the 400ppm level without losing a beat," said Scripps geophysicist Ralph Keeling, whose father Dave established the network of remote CO2 monitoring. "At this pace we'll hit 450ppm within a few decades," said Ralph Keeling. ... What's a number, anyway, but some arbitrary identification of a measurable amount? ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Apr 15, 2013 from Reuters: Scientists find Antarctic ice is melting faster The summer ice melt in parts of Antarctica is at its highest level in 1,000 years, Australian and British researchers reported on Monday, adding new evidence of the impact of global warming on sensitive Antarctic glaciers and ice shelves. Researchers from the Australian National University and the British Antarctic Survey found data taken from an ice core also shows the summer ice melt has been 10 times more intense over the past 50 years compared with 600 years ago. ... Antarctic: the other melting Arctic. ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Mar 8, 2013 from AP, via Yahoo: Recent heat spike unlike anything in 11,000 years A new study looking at 11,000 years of climate temperatures shows the world in the middle of a dramatic U-turn, lurching from near-record cooling to a heat spike. Research released Thursday in the journal Science uses fossils of tiny marine organisms to reconstruct global temperatures back to the end of the last ice age. It shows how the globe for several thousands of years was cooling until an unprecedented reversal in the 20th century. Scientists say it is further evidence that modern-day global warming isn't natural, but the result of rising carbon dioxide emissions that have rapidly grown since the Industrial Revolution began roughly 250 years ago.... "In 100 years, we've gone from the cold end of the spectrum to the warm end of the spectrum," Marcott said. "We've never seen something this rapid. Even in the ice age the global temperature never changed this quickly." ... Those scientists act as if time was something more than just a theory. ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Feb 11, 2013 from UMich, via PNAS, via PhysOrg: Sunlight stimulates release of climate-warming gas from melting Arctic permafrost, study says Ancient carbon trapped in Arctic permafrost is extremely sensitive to sunlight and, if exposed to the surface when long-frozen soils melt and collapse, can release climate-warming carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere much faster than previously thought.... They found that sunlight increases bacterial conversion of exposed soil carbon into carbon dioxide gas by at least 40 percent compared to carbon that remains in the dark. The team, led by Rose Cory of the University of North Carolina, reported its findings in an article to be published online Feb. 11 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.... Tremendous stores of organic carbon have been frozen in Arctic permafrost soils for thousands of years. If thawed and released as carbon dioxide gas, this vast carbon repository has the potential to double the amount of the heat-trapping greenhouse gas in the atmosphere on a timescale similar to humanity's inputs of carbon dioxide due to the burning of fossil fuels. ... I, too, prefer to remain in the dark. ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Feb 4, 2013 from Arctic News: Dramatic increase in methane in the Arctic in January 2013 ... Sea ice is declining at exponential pace. The big danger is that a huge rise of temperatures in the Arctic will destabilize huge amounts of methane currently held in the seabed. Comprehensive and effective action is needed now to avoid catastrophe.... As said, there appears to be a strong relationship between the location of the high levels of methane and the contours of land and sea ice, as illustrated by the above animation. There appears to be little relationship between methane levels and depth of the sea, as illustrated by the animation on the right. ... Hah! Those environmenterrorist nuts won't be able to blame this one on humans! ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Jan 31, 2013 from Washington Post: China now burning as much coal as the rest of the world combined China's coal use grew 9 percent in 2011, rising to 3.8 billion tons. At this point, the country is burning nearly as much coal as the rest of the world combined. Coal, of course, is the world's premier fossil fuel, a low-cost source of electricity that kicks a lot of carbon-dioxide up into the atmosphere. And China's growing appetite is a big reason why global greenhouse-gas emissions have soared in recent years, even as the United States and Europe have managed to curtail their coal use and cut their carbon pollution. Will this last? That's the big question. Chinese coal use slipped a bit in 2012 as the country's economy slowed. And the International Energy Agency expects Chinese coal demand to taper off in the coming years, growing at a slower 3.7 percent annual pace between 2011 and 2016. Other projections suggest that China coal use will peak by 2030, as the nation shifts to cleaner forms of energy. ... They manufacture more worthless crap than the rest of the world combined, too... could there be a connection? ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Jan 27, 2013 from Guardian: Nicholas Stern: 'I got it wrong on climate change - it's far, far worse' Lord Stern, author of the government-commissioned review on climate change that became the reference work for politicians and green campaigners, now says he underestimated the risks, and should have been more "blunt" about the threat posed to the economy by rising temperatures. In an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Stern, who is now a crossbench peer, said: "Looking back, I underestimated the risks. The planet and the atmosphere seem to be absorbing less carbon than we expected, and emissions are rising pretty strongly. Some of the effects are coming through more quickly than we thought then." The Stern review, published in 2006, pointed to a 75 percent chance that global temperatures would rise by between two and three degrees above the long-term average; he now believes we are "on track for something like four ". Had he known the way the situation would evolve, he says, "I think I would have been a bit more blunt. I would have been much more strong about the risks of a four- or five-degree rise." ... In a few years, we may all have 20-20 hindsight. ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Jan 15, 2013 from USA Today: Climate change report: Seas rising, heat waves ahead Climate change is already affecting how Americans live and work, and evidence is mounting that the burning of fossil fuels has roughly doubled the probability of extreme heat waves, the Obama administration said Friday ... The 400-page report, required by a 1990 U.S. law, comes as 2012 set a century-plus record for hottest year in the United States. As Americans grapple with such extreme weather, President Obama has called for a national conversation on climate change. ... Obama: from mum on the subject to all talky talky. ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Jan 14, 2013 from New York Times: On Scale of 0 to 500, Beijing's Air Quality Tops 'Crazy Bad' at 755 That day the Air Quality Index, which uses standards set by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, had crept above 500, which was supposed to be the top of the scale. So what phrase ["Crazy bad"] is appropriate to describe Saturday's jaw-dropping reading of 755 at 8 p.m., when all of Beijing looked like an airport smokers' lounge? Though an embassy spokesman said he did not immediately have comparative data, Beijing residents who follow the Twitter feed said the Saturday numbers appeared to be the highest recorded since the embassy began its monitoring system in 2008. ... I just want one more, before it's too late. ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Jan 9, 2013 from Live Science: Arctic Snow Cover Shows Steep Decline The blanket of snow that covers Arctic regions for most of the year has been shrinking at an increasing pace over the past decade, researchers say. A recent study found an overall decrease in Arctic snow-cover extent (snow that covers the Arctic at the end of the spring) from 1967 through 2012, and an acceleration of snow loss after the year 2003. The rate of snow-cover loss in June between 1979 and 2012 was 17.6 percent per decade (relative to the 1979-2000 mean), which is greater than the rate of September sea-ice decline during that same period, the researchers say....The link between snow-cover and sea-ice extent is not completely understood. "But if you remove snow cover earlier, you're creating the potential to send warmer air out over the ocean. It can't be good for sea ice if you lose the snow early," study researcher Chris Derksen, a cryosphere scientist at Environment Canada in Toronto... ... At this point I suggest we stop paying attention to the Arctic! ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Jan 9, 2013 from New York Times: Australian Forecasters Add New Colors to Temperature Charts to Capture Record Heat It's so hot that the government weather agency added two new colors -- deep purple and pink -- to temperature charts to convey the new record highs being measured in the worst heat wave ever recorded down under, as The Age newspaper reported today. For the moment, while extreme and widespread heat is predicted to persist, the country looks to be avoiding the new purple zone. Here's an animation of the national heat forecast through the weekend... ... Smooooke... on the water... a fire in the sky. They burned down the gamblin' house. And Swiss time was runnin' out. ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Jan 1, 2013 from New York Times: Light Absorption Speeding Arctic Ice Melt The record-setting disappearance of Arctic sea ice this fall was an indication to many climate scientists and ice experts that the pace of climate change was outstripping predictions. Now a new study published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters provides a look at a dynamic that may further accelerate the process: the rate at which the ocean underneath the ice absorbs sunlight ... the more the ice melts in late summer, the more first-year ice replaces multiyear ice, and the warmer the ocean beneath the ice becomes, accelerating the melting process. ... This feedback loop is insatiable. ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Dec 23, 2012 from BBC: West Antarctic Ice Sheet warming twice earlier estimate A new analysis of temperature records indicates that the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet is warming nearly twice as fast as previously thought. US researchers say they found the first evidence of warming during the southern hemisphere's summer months. They are worried that the increased melting of ice as a result of warmer temperatures could contribute to sea-level rise.... The results indicate an increase of 2.4C in average annual temperature between 1958 and 2010. "What we're seeing is one of the strongest warming signals on Earth," says Andrew Monaghan, a co-author and scientist at the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research.... "The fact that temperatures are rising in the summer means there's a prospect of WAIS not only being melted from the bottom as we know it is today, but in future it looks probable that it will be melting from the top as well," he said. ... C'mon, Anti-arctica, willya stop being so darned positive! ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Nov 29, 2012 from Live Science: Sea Levels Rising Faster Than Projected New satellite measurements suggest that global sea levels are rising faster than the most recent projections by the United Nations' climate change panel. The new report found that sea levels are rising at an annual rate of 0.12 inches (3.2 millimeters) -- 60 percent faster than the best estimate of 0.08 inches (2 millimeters) per year, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calculated in 2007. ... Only thing slower than projected is our response to climate change. ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Nov 21, 2012 from Discovery Channel: Greenland Loses 200 Billion Tons Ice Per Year Glacier-covered Greenland has had an average net loss of 200 billion tons of ice every year since 2003, confirm scientists who are studying the changing mass of the island using satellite data. The latest analysis backs up the previously reported trend without even including the last two summers of record-breaking ice melts. "Greenland is really the place where everyone agrees that (the ice melt) is definitely accelerating with time and there is a big contribution to sea level rise," said researcher Isabella Velicogna of the University of California at Irvine (UCI). Just how much is 200 billion tons of ice? Roughly, it's the amount needed to fill enough railroad coal cars to encircle the Earth 800 times. ... Where's my bucket? ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Nov 5, 2012 from Kitchener Record: Spring snow pack in the Arctic disappearing fast, Environment Canada warns The spring snow pack in the Arctic is disappearing at a much faster rate than anticipated even by climate change models, says a new study by Environment Canada researchers. That has implications for wildlife, vegetation and ground temperatures, say the scientists, who looked at four decades of snow data for the Canadian Arctic and beyond. Combined with recent news that the Arctic sea ice retreated to an all-time low this summer, it suggests climate change may be happening much faster than expected, said Dr. Chris Derksen, a research scientist for Environment Canada and one of the study's authors. ... Seems our response to faster than expected events is slower than hoped for. ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Nov 5, 2012 from Geological Society of America: Why Seas Are Rising Ahead of Predictions: Estimates of Rate of Future Sea-Level Rise May Be Too Low Sea levels are rising faster than expected from global warming, and University of Colorado geologist Bill Hay has a good idea why. The last official IPCC report in 2007 projected a global sea level rise between 0.2 and 0.5 meters by the year 2100. But current sea-level rise measurements meet or exceed the high end of that range and suggest a rise of one meter or more by the end of the century. "What's missing from the models used to forecast sea-level rise are critical feedbacks that speed everything up," says Hay... One of those feedbacks involves Arctic sea ice, another the Greenland ice cap, and another soil moisture and groundwater mining. ... Feedbacks will eat us up! ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Oct 24, 2012 from The Telegraph: Australia's Antarctic airstrip melts Researchers said global warming has caused the glacial ice on the runway to turn to mush just four years after it was built for about 30 million pounds. It was due to receive about 20 flights each summer but only six have been able to land in the past two years. The runway was supposed to service Australia's three stations on the continent, Casey, Davis and Mawson. The stations can also be supplied via an American runway or by ships, which take about a fortnight to arrive from Tasmania. The flights take less than five hours. The Australian Antarctic Division said global warming was causing the ice to melt faster than had been expected. Six flights are due to land on the runway in the coming months but none will be permitted in January. ... Hold the de-icing! Stat! ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Sep 23, 2012 from New York Times: Greenland's 'Ice Quakes' May Set a Record One of the more amazing facts about the ongoing destruction of the Greenland ice sheet is that it is producing earthquakes that can be detected worldwide. Now, fresh evidence is at hand to show that these "ice quakes" are spreading to previously quiescent parts of Greenland. We're only in September, but it seems increasingly likely that 2012 will set a record for such quakes.... The striking thing about this paper is the evidence that glacial earthquakes, and the ice loss they represent, have spread to one of the coldest parts of Greenland, in the far northwest. From 2000 to 2010, 66 glacial earthquakes occurred at northwestern glaciers that in previous decades had produced virtually none. The paper describes this as "a major expansion in the number of glaciers producing glacial earthquakes and the geographic range of those glaciers." ... If I was a quake, I'd be moving north too! ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Sep 10, 2012 from The Daily Climate: Patagonian glaciers melting in a hurry, report finds Ice fields in southern South America are rapidly losing volume and in most cases thinning at even the highest elevations, contributing to sea-level rise at "substantially higher" rates than observed from the 1970s through the 1990s, according to a study published Wednesday. The rapid melting, based on satellite observations, suggests the ice field's contribution to global sea-level rise has increased by half since the end of the 20th century, jumping from 0.04 millimeters per year to about .07 mm, and accounting for 2 percent of annual sea-level rise since 1998. The southern and northern Patagonian ice fields are the largest mass of ice in the southern hemisphere outside of Antarctica. The findings spell trouble for other glaciers worldwide, according to the study's lead author, Cornell University researcher Michael Willis. ... Patagoing ... going ... gone. ApocaDoc permalink Sat, Sep 8, 2012 from BBC: Arctic ice melt 'like adding 20 years of CO2 emissions' The loss of Arctic ice is massively compounding the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, ice scientist Professor Peter Wadhams has told BBC Newsnight. White ice reflects more sunlight than open water, acting like a parasol. Melting of white Arctic ice, currently at its lowest level in recent history, is causing more absorption. Prof Wadhams calculates this absorption of the sun's rays is having an effect "the equivalent of about 20 years of additional CO2 being added by man". The sea ice extent at 26 August (white) is markedly different from the 1979-2000 average (orange line) The Cambridge University expert says that the Arctic ice cap is "heading for oblivion". ... "Oblivion"? Is that in Ohio? ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Aug 28, 2012 from AFP: The spiralling cost of invasive species "Invasive species have a huge impact worldwide. In some countries, the cost is astronomical," says Dave Richardson, director of the Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology at South Africa's University of Stellenbosch.... Invasive species inflict more than $1.4 trillion (1.12 trillion euros) in damage each year, or five percent of global GDP, according to an estimate made 11 years ago.... "It's the globalisation of nature, and we're going to have a hard time stopping it," he said. ... I was led to believe globalization was a good thing. ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Aug 23, 2012 from Guardian: Arctic sea ice levels to reach record low within days Arctic sea ice is set to reach its lowest ever recorded extent as early as this weekend, in "dramatic changes" signalling that man-made global warming is having a major impact on the polar region. With the melt happening at an unprecedented rate of more than 100,000 sq km a day, and at least a week of further melt expected before it begins to reform ahead of the northern winter, satellites are expected to confirm the record - currently set in 2007 - within days.... "In the last few days it has been losing 100,000 sq km a day, a record in itself for August. A storm has spread the ice pack out, opening up water, bringing up warmer water. Things are definitely changing quickly." Because ice thickness, volume, extent and area are all measured differently, it may be a week before there is unanimous agreement among the world's cryologists (ice experts) that 2012 is a record year. Four out of the nine daily sea ice extent and area graphs kept by scientists in the US, Europe and Asia suggest that records have already been broken. ... It's as bad as the state of Kristin Stewart and Robert Pattinson's relationship! ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Aug 14, 2012 from Guardian: Rate of Arctic summer sea ice loss is 50 percent higher than predicted Sea ice in the Arctic is disappearing at a far greater rate than previously expected, according to data from the first purpose-built satellite launched to study the thickness of the Earth's polar caps. Preliminary results from the European Space Agency's CryoSat-2 probe indicate that 900 cubic kilometres of summer sea ice has disappeared from the Arctic ocean over the past year. This rate of loss is 50 percent higher than most scenarios outlined by polar scientists and suggests that global warming, triggered by rising greenhouse gas emissions, is beginning to have a major impact on the region. In a few years the Arctic ocean could be free of ice in summer, triggering a rush to exploit its fish stocks, oil, minerals and sea routes. ... If that were 900 cubic miles, well, we'd be talking real meltdown. ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Jul 26, 2012 from Guardian: Loss of Arctic sea ice '70 percent man-made' The radical decline in sea ice around the Arctic is at least 70 percent due to human-induced climate change, according to a new study, and may even be up to 95 percent down to humans - rather higher than scientists had previously thought.... He found that a climate system called the Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation (AMO) was a dominant source of variability in ice extent. The AMO is a cycle of warming and cooling in the North Atlantic that repeats every 65 to 80 years - it has been in a warming phase since the mid-1970s.... "We could only attribute as much as 30 percent [of the Arctic ice loss] to the AMO," he said. "Which implies that the rest is due to something else, and this is most likely going to be man-made global change." ... Thank goodness 30 percent is well within the "natural variation" meme. ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Jul 17, 2012 from CBC Canada: Pacific Ocean acid levels jeopardizing marine life The Pacific Ocean is growing more acidic at a much faster rate than anticipated, scientists say, putting everything from corals to mussels in jeopardy. Researchers say carbon dioxide from the atmosphere forms carbonic acid in the ocean, changing the seawater enough that it can dissolve the shells of coral and shellfish. The water off the west coast of Vancouver Island is changing at an unprecedented rate, meaning vulnerable life forms in the ocean's food chain must adapt or die. ... We knew the oceans would boil. ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Jul 6, 2012 from NSIDC, via Guardian: Arctic sea-ice levels at record low for June Sea ice in the Arctic has melted faster this year than ever recorded before, according to the US government's National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC). Satellite observations show the extent of the floating ice that melts and refreezes every year was 318,000 square miles less last week than the same day period in 2007, the year of record low extent, and the lowest observed at this time of year since records began in 1979. Separate observations by University of Washington researchers suggest that the volume of Arctic sea ice is also the smallest ever calculated for this time of year.... The increased melting is believed to be a result of climate change. Arctic temperatures have risen more than twice as fast as the global average over the past half century. ... Apocaiku: Unfreezing our ice/ faster than all history/ yet onward we burn. ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Jun 11, 2012 from Anchorage Alaska Dispatch: Arctic tundra transforming into forest much quicker than expected Rising summer temperatures have triggered an arboreal facelift across a vast swath of Eurasian tundra, transforming patches of Arctic prairie into forest much faster than scientists ever thought possible. Instead of trees slowly invading from the south over the course of centuries, stands of existing dwarf willows and alders have responded to the changing climate on their own -- growing up and branching out into groves of small trees during mere decades, according to a new detailed analysis published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change... The speed and scale of the change reported in the latest study -- as much as 15 percent of the willow and alder in the area had bloomed into six-foot-high groves over 30 to 40 years -- suggests that Arctic warming has the potential to dramatically accelerate, while creating new woodsy ecosystems in the process. Since forested areas absorb more solar energy than grassy tundra, the spread of trees will also help jumpstart warming -- some climate models predict an extra two to four degrees Fahrenheit. This temperature rise, in turn, will promote even more forest growth. ... What a beautiful, cruel, spiral. ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Jun 11, 2012 from Reuters, via Guardian: Climate change rate could be faster than thought, study suggests China's carbon emissions could be nearly 20 percent higher than previously thought, a new analysis of official Chinese data showed on Sunday, suggesting the pace of global climate change could be even faster than currently predicted. China has already overtaken the US as the world's top greenhouse gas polluter, producing about a quarter of mankind's carbon pollution that scientists say is heating the planet and triggering more extreme weather.... Scientists say the world is already racing towards a warming of 2 degrees Celsius or more in coming decades because of the rapid growth in emissions from burning fossil fuels and deforestation. Adding another billion tonnes into computer models would accelerate the pace of expected warming. ... Faster than the extremely cautious scientific community predicted? How surprising. ApocaDoc permalink Thu, May 31, 2012 from NOAA, via Christian Science Monitor: Arctic passes 400 parts per million milestone Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn't quite a surprise, because it's been rising at an accelerating pace. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395. So far, only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will follow soon.... Before the Industrial Age, levels were around 275 parts per million.... It's been at least 800,000 years -- probably more -- since Earth saw carbon dioxide levels in the 400s, Butler and other climate scientists said. ... Do they even have milestones on dead-end roads? ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Apr 27, 2012 from Associated Press: Study: Antarctic ice melting from warm water below Antarctica's massive ice shelves are shrinking because they are being eaten away from below by warm water, a new study finds. That suggests that future sea levels could rise faster than many scientists have been predicting. The western chunk of Antarctica is losing 23 feet of its floating ice sheet each year. Until now, scientists weren't exactly sure how it was happening and whether or how man-made global warming might be a factor. The answer, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, is that climate change plays an indirect role -- but one that has larger repercussions than if Antarctic ice were merely melting from warmer air. ... Antarctica: the other doomed pole. ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Apr 17, 2012 from EnvironmentalResearchWeb: Satellite observes rapid ice shelf disintegration in Antarctic Now, with ten years of observations using its Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR), Envisat has mapped an additional loss in Larsen B's area of 1790 sq km over the past decade.... "The northern Antarctic Peninsula has been subject to atmospheric warming of about 2.5 degrees C over the last 50 years - a much stronger warming trend than on global average, causing retreat and disintegration of ice shelves."... The Envisat observations of the Larsen Ice Shelf confirm the vulnerability of ice shelves to climatic warming and demonstrate the importance of ice shelves for the stability of glaciers upstream. ... If we renamed it Proarctica, would we treat it differently? ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Apr 10, 2012 from Michael Tobis, Planet 3.0: Disequilibrium is not Your Friend If a place is ten degrees above normal at a time of one degree of global warming, it does not make sense to say that one degree is due to climate change, and nine degrees "would have happened anyway", even in a statistical sense. It implies that the dynamics of the system are the same under perturbation. Is that a realistic presumption in the absence of other evidence? I think it shows a weak understanding of general systems principles to make that case.... Sure enough, the distribution of regional anomalies isn't just shifting to the warm side. It's also getting broader. It seems to me surprising that anyone expected anything different. The presumption that global warming should be expected to be a benign and gradual process has no basis in anything but tradition. Any basis in general systems theory indicates the opposite.... And this is why "global warming" is an inadequate name for what is happening. Climate is changing very quickly. Some of the slower parts of the system are just starting to wake up. We are entering a period of increasing disequilibrium, and what we are seeing is unequivocally worse than we expected. ... I don't think "Stop Global Disequilibration" will fit on a bumper sticker. ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Apr 9, 2012 from ScienceDaily: Spectre of Untreatable Malaria: Emergence of Artemisinin-Resistance On Thai-Myanmar Border Evidence that the most deadly species of malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, is becoming resistant to the front line treatment for malaria on the border of Thailand and Myanmar was reported in The Lancet April 5. This increases concern that resistance could now spread to India and then Africa as resistance to other antimalarial drugs has done before. Eliminating malaria might then prove impossible.... Professor Francois Nosten, Director of the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit, said: "We have now seen the emergence of malaria resistant to our best drugs, and these resistant parasites are not confined to western Cambodia. This is very worrying indeed and suggests that we are in a race against time to control malaria in these regions before drug resistance worsens and develops and spreads further. The effect of that happening could be devastating. Malaria already kills hundreds of thousands of people a year -- if our drugs become ineffective, this figure will rise dramatically." ... Thailand and Malaria are where, on the map? ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Apr 3, 2012 from HuffingtonPost: Missouri Bats Discovered With Deadly 'White Nose' Fungus A disease that has killed millions of bats across multiple states and Canada has been found in Missouri, marking its advent west of the Mississippi River and spelling possible trouble for agriculture in the region, officials said Monday. White nose syndrome has been confirmed in three bats in two caves in Lincoln County, north of St. Louis, the Missouri Department of Conservation said. The name describes a white fungus found on the faces and wings of infected bats and has not been found to infect humans or other animals. Scientists estimate the ailment has killed at least 5.7 million bats in 16 states and Canada.... "White-nose syndrome in Missouri is following the deadly pattern it has exhibited elsewhere," Mollie Matteson, a bat specialist with the conservation group Center for Biological Diversity said in a release. "First the fungus shows up on a few healthy bats. A couple of years later, the disease strikes. And if the pattern continues, we can expect that in another few years, the majority of Missouri's hibernating bats will be dead." ... Sorry for your upcoming Mis-e-ry, Miss-ou-ri. ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Apr 1, 2012 from AFP, via Yahoo: 2 degrees C warming target now 'out of reach' -- ex UN climate chief The UN's former climate chief on Tuesday said the global warming pledge he helped set at the Copenhagen Summit little more than two years ago was already unattainable. "I think two degrees is out of reach," Yvo de Boer, former executive secretary of the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said on the sidelines of a conference here on June's Rio+20 summit.... "The two degrees is lost but that doesn't mean for me we should forget about it," de Boer said in the interview with AFP. "It is a very significant target, it's not just a target that was plucked out of the air, it refers to trying to limit a number of impacts."... On Sunday, 20 winners of the Blue Planet Prize, one of the world's most prestigious green awards, said there was only a "50-50" chance of limiting warming to 3 C (5.4 F). There were "serious risks" of a 5 C (9.0 F) rise, a temperature last seen on the planet 30 million years ago. ... Those scientists -- they're always such extremists. ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Mar 12, 2012 from PIK, via EurekAlert: Greenland ice sheet may melt completely with 1.6 degrees global warming The Greenland ice sheet is likely to be more vulnerable to global warming than previously thought. The temperature threshold for melting the ice sheet completely is in the range of 0.8 to 3.2 degrees Celsius global warming, with a best estimate of 1.6 degrees above pre-industrial levels, shows a new study by scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Today, already 0.8 degrees global warming has been observed. Substantial melting of land ice could contribute to long-term sea-level rise of several meters and therefore it potentially affects the lives of many millions of people. ... I'm prepped! ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Mar 1, 2012 from NASA, via Science Daily: Thickest Parts of Arctic Ice Cap Melting Faster A new NASA study revealed that the oldest and thickest Arctic sea ice is disappearing at a faster rate than the younger and thinner ice at the edges of the Arctic Ocean's floating ice cap. The thicker ice, known as multi-year ice, survives through the cyclical summer melt season, when young ice that has formed over winter just as quickly melts again. The rapid disappearance of older ice makes Arctic sea ice even more vulnerable to further decline in the summer, said Joey Comiso, senior scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., and author of the study, which was recently published in Journal of Climate.... Comiso compared the evolution of the extent and area of multi-year ice over time, and confirmed that its decline has accelerated during the last decade, in part because of the dramatic decreases of 2008 and 2012. He also detected a periodic nine-year cycle, where sea ice extent would first grow for a few years, and then shrink until the cycle started again. This cycle is reminiscent of one occurring on the opposite pole, known as the Antarctic Circumpolar Wave, which has been related to the El Nino-Southern Oscillation atmospheric pattern. If the nine-year Arctic cycle were to be confirmed, it might explain the slight recovery of the sea ice cover in the three years after it hit its historical minimum in 2008, Comiso said. ... Don't we always prefer stuff fresh? ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Feb 15, 2012 from Mongabay: Arctic warms to highest level yet as researchers fear tipping points Last year the Arctic, which is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth due to global climate change, experienced its warmest twelve months yet. According to recent data by NASA, average Arctic temperatures in 2011 were 2.28 degrees Celsius (4.1 degrees Fahrenheit) above those recorded from 1951-1980. As the Arctic warms, imperiling its biodiversity and indigenous people, researchers are increasingly concerned that the region will hit climatic tipping points that could severely impact the rest of the world. ... I so wish this was a sci-fi film instead of reality. ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Feb 12, 2012 from AFP: 2C warming goal now 'optimistic' - French scientists French scientists unveiling new estimates for global warming said on Thursday the 2 C (3.6 F) goal enshrined by the United Nations was "the most optimistic" scenario left for greenhouse-gas emissions. The estimates, compiled by five scientific institutes, will be handed to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for consideration in its next big overview on global warming and its impacts. The report -- the fifth in the series -- will be published in three volumes, in September 2013, March 2014 and April 2014. The French team said that by 2100, warming over pre-industrial times would range from two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) to 5.0 C (9.0 F). The most pessimistic scenarios foresee warming of 3.5-5.0 C (6.3-9.0 F), the scientists said in a press release. Achieving 2C, "the most optimistic scenario," is possible but "only by applying climate policies to reduce greenhouse gases," they said. ... D'ya feel optimistic, punk? ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Jan 6, 2012 from Christian Science Monitor: Climate change models flawed, extinction rate likely higher than predicted As climate change progresses, the planet may lose more plant and animal species than predicted, a new modeling study suggests. This is because current predictions overlook two important factors: the differences in how quickly species relocate and competition among species, according to the researchers, led by Mark Urban, an ecologist at the University of Connecticut. Already evidence suggests that species have begun to migrate out of ranges made inhospitable by climate change and into newly hospitable territory. "We have really sophisticated meteorological models for predicting climate change," Urban said in a statement. "But in real life, animals move around, they compete, they parasitize each other and they eat each other. The majority of our predictions don't include these important interactions." ... "Real life"? Didn't we already innovate ourselves out of that mess? ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Dec 30, 2011 from InsideClimate News: As Climate Change Worsens, Scientists Feel Increasing Pressure to Speak Out Factors contributing to climate change are moving faster than predicted and pushing us toward planetary conditions unlike any humans have ever known -- this was one of the salient themes to emerge from this month's meeting of the American Geophysical Union, the world's largest gathering of earth and space scientists. Some scientists think we've already crossed that boundary and are, as Jonathan Foley, director of the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment, said, "in a very different world than we have ever seen before." ... Musta been one helluva fun meeting. ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Dec 29, 2011 from Associated Press: Bugs may be resistant to genetically modified corn One of the nation's most widely planted crops -- a genetically engineered corn plant that makes its own insecticide -- may be losing its effectiveness because a major pest appears to be developing resistance more quickly than scientists expected. ... Curses, foiled again. ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Dec 27, 2011 from Tierramerica: No Time Left to Adapt to Melting Glaciers The water supplied by the glaciers of the Cordillera Blanca, vital to a huge region of northwest Peru, is decreasing 20 years sooner than expected, according to a new study. Water flows from the region's melting glaciers have already peaked and are in decline, Michel Baraer, a glaciologist at Canada's McGill University, told Tierramérica. This is happening 20 to 30 years earlier than forecasted... When glaciers begin to shrink in size, they generate "a transitory increase in runoff as they lose mass," the study notes. However, Baraer explained, the water flowing from a glacier eventually hits a plateau and from this point onwards there is a decrease in the discharge of melt water. "The decline is permanent. There is no going back." ... "At a glacial pace" is quickly becoming a phrase subject to reinterpretation. ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Nov 30, 2011 from University of Alaska, via EurekAlert: Abrupt permafrost thaw increases climate threat As the Arctic warms, greenhouse gases will be released from thawing permafrost faster and at significantly higher levels than previous estimates, according to survey results from 41 international scientists published in the Nov. 30 issue of the journal Nature. Permafrost thaw will release approximately the same amount of carbon as deforestation, say the authors, but the effect on climate will be 2.5 times bigger because emissions include methane, which has a greater effect on warming than carbon dioxide.... The authors estimate that the amount of carbon released by 2100 will be 1.7 to 5.2 times larger than reported in recent modeling studies, which used a similar warming scenario. "The larger estimate is due to the inclusion of processes missing from current models and new estimates of the amount of organic carbon stored deep in frozen soils," Abbott said. "There's more organic carbon in northern soils than there is in all living things combined; it's kind of mind boggling." ... Tell it to DURBAN! ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Nov 17, 2011 from Labspaces: Erratic, extreme day-to-day weather puts climate change in new light The first climate study to focus on variations in daily weather conditions has found that day-to-day weather has grown increasingly erratic and extreme, with significant fluctuations in sunshine and rainfall affecting more than a third of the planet. Princeton University researchers recently reported in the Journal of Climate that extremely sunny or cloudy days are more common than in the early 1980s, and that swings from thunderstorms to dry days rose considerably since the late 1990s. These swings could have consequences for ecosystem stability and the control of pests and diseases, as well as for industries such as agriculture and solar-energy production, all of which are vulnerable to inconsistent and extreme weather, the researchers noted.... Constant fluctuations in severe conditions could alter how the atmosphere distributes heat and rainfall, as well as inhibit the ability of plants to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, possibly leading to higher levels of the greenhouse gas than currently accounted for. ... I think it's time to invent the Tentumbrella™. ApocaDoc permalink Sat, Nov 5, 2011 from AP, via LA Times: Biggest-ever jump seen in global warming gases The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped last year by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world's efforts are at slowing man-made global warming. The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst-case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago. "The more we talk about the need to control emissions, the more they are growing," said John Reilly, co-director of MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. The world pumped about 564 million more tons of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009. That's an increase of 6 percent. That amount of extra pollution eclipses the individual emissions of all but three countries -- China, the United States and India, the world's top producers of greenhouse gases. It is a "monster" increase that is unheard of, said Gregg Marland, a professor of geology at Appalachian State University, who has helped calculate Department of Energy figures in the past. ... Is that a cliff we're speeding toward, or is it just a wall? ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Oct 6, 2011 from PhysOrg: Why climate models underestimate Arctic sea ice retreat In recent decades, Arctic sea ice has suffered a dramatic decline that exceeds climate model predictions. The unexpected rate of ice shrinkage has now been explained by researchers at CNRS, Université Joseph Fourier and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They argue that climate models underestimate the rate of ice thinning, which is actually about four times faster than calculations. This model bias is due to the poor representation of the sea ice southward drift out of the Arctic basin through the Fram Strait. When this mechanism was taken into account to correct the discrepancy between simulations and observations, results from the new model suggested that there will be no Arctic sea ice in summer by the end of the century. ... Underestimates may be underestimated. ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Sep 28, 2011 from New York Times: Climate Change and the Exodus of Species To most humans, so far, climate change is still more of an idea than an experience. For other species, it is an immediate reality. Many will be left behind as the climate alters, unable to move quickly enough or with nowhere to move to. Others are already adapting. An iconic example of these swift changes is the recent discovery that Atlantic and Pacific populations of bowhead whales -- long kept apart by the frozen Arctic -- are now overlapping in the open waters of the Northwest Passage. A team of scientists from the University of York examined the movement of 2,000 animal and plant species over the past decade. According to their study, published in Science last month, in their exodus from increasing heat, species have moved, on average, 13.3 yards higher in altitude -- twice the predicted rate -- and 11 miles higher in latitude -- three times faster than expected. These changes have happened most rapidly where the climate has warmed the most. Chris Thomas, an author of the study, says, these changes "are equivalent to animals and plants shifting away from the equator at around 20 centimeters per hour" for the past 40 years. ... Eat. my. dust. ApocaDoc permalink 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. ... All the news stories last week were about a record. See how those warmists exaggerate? ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Sep 12, 2011 from Mongabay, and others: Northwest Passage open as sea ice falls to lowest cover ever recorded Arctic sea ice cover fell to its lowest level on record, report researchers from the University of Bremen.... Heygster said this year's mark is "most probably" the lowest Arctic sea ice extent "since the last climate optimum about 8,000 years ago." He added that the record could be extended if sea ice continues to melt in coming weeks. Sea ice is no longer melting from the surface; instead if it melting from underneath due to warmer water below.... Melting of sea ice opened the Northwest Passage to navigation again this summer. The ice retreat has set off a scramble between Canada, Russia, the U.S., Denmark, Sweden and Norway which are all seeking to claim rights to the Arctic's rich mineral and gas deposits.... Predictions range widely, but many experts expect the Arctic to be free of sea ice entirely within a few decades. By almost all standards, however, sea ice is disappearing faster than expected, partly a consequence of a positive feedback loop triggered by retreating ice. ... Some days, saying "I told you so" doesn't help. At all. ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Sep 12, 2011 from RealClimate: The unnoticed melt A rainy summer might be one reason for an apparent lack of public attention with respect to the ongoing sea-ice loss. Another reason, however, is possibly the fact that we scientists have failed to make sufficiently clear that a major loss of sea ice during the early summer months is climatologically more important than a record minimum in September.... Because of its high albedo (reflectivity), sea ice reflects most of the incoming sunlight and helps to keep the Arctic cold throughout summer. The relative importance of this cooling is largest when days are long and the input of solar radiation is at its maximum, which happens at the beginning of summer. If, like this year, sea-ice extent becomes very low already at that time, solar radiation is efficiently absorbed throughout all summer by the unusually large areas of open water within the Arctic Ocean.... This feedback loop, which is often referred to as the ice-albedo feedback, also delays the formation of new sea ice in autumn because of the accompanying surplus in oceanic heat storage.... ... [T]he loss of Arctic sea ice can still be slowed down and eventually stopped if an efficient reduction of CO2 emissions were to become reality soon. Last week, however, it became obvious once more how unlikely such scenario is: On 30th August, Exxon announced a deal with Rosneft, the Russian state oil company. As part of this deal, Exxon will invest more than US$2 billion to support Rosneft in the exploitation of oil reserves in the Kara Sea, which is part of the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia. One requirement for the success of this deal: a further retreat of Arctic sea ice. Given that climate model simulations indeed all project such further retreat of Arctic sea ice, it seems that at least to some degree, managers of big oil companies have started to make business decisions based on climate-model simulations. That may be good news. Or not. ... Mila Kunis won this year's Guy's Choice "Holy Grail of Hot" Award. She's hot, but not Holy Grail hot. ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Sep 8, 2011 from EnvironmentalResearchWeb: Last two winters' warm extremes more severe than their cold snaps During the last two winters, some regions of the northern hemisphere experienced extreme cold not seen in recent decades. But at the same time, the winters of 2009-10 and 2010-11 were also marked by more prominent, although less newsworthy, extreme warm spells. New research examines daily wintertime temperature extremes since 1948 The study finds that the warm extremes were much more severe and widespread than the cold extremes during the northern hemisphere winters of 2009-10 (which featured an extreme snowfall episode on the East Coast dubbed "snowmaggedon") and 2010-11. Moreover, while the extreme cold was mostly attributable to a natural climate cycle, the extreme warmth was not, the study concludes.... "Over the last couple of years, natural variability seemed to produce the cold extremes, while the warm extremes kept trending just as one would expect in a period of accelerating global warming," says Scripps climate researcher Alexander Gershunov, a report co-author. ... Acceleration is just what we need to make the economy grow! ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Sep 2, 2011 from PAFOA: The Grey Man: Invisibility The Grey Man NEVER draws attention to himself by word, dress, action, or mannerism. The Young Grey Man is dismissed as a wimp, the Older as a doddering old fool. The Grey Man derives great inner satisfaction from having this portrayal of himself accepted by all he meets, for it means he is succeeding in his disguise of his actual persona. The Grey Man is a private man. He practices with his weaponry in private, or only with his fellow Grey Men, always in a secluded location. If he must resort to use of a public facility, he schedules his practice for times when he is likely to be the only one there. At such times he would probably wear bright clothing, to be remembered only as 'that guy in the red jacket and sunglasses', a quite different person from his usual persona. If right-handed, he would always occupy the leftmost station on a NRA bullseye pistol range, with his back to an observer, or the rightmost one for riflery or combat pistol practice. He would not have his name emblazoned on clothing or equipment, nor would he have any noteworthy affiliation proclaimed on his cap. "He's just a guy. Comes every Wednesday morning for his coffeebreak. Always pays cash."... It helps the Survivor to build up this persona of The Grey Man gradually and over time. The anti-gun sheeple neighbors will quickly rat out the 'Patriot' who is always loudly declaiming about his 'Rights' and 'what will happen if they try to take my guns'. The Grey Man goes far out of his way never to offend anyone, imitating the duck which appears calm on the surface of his pond whilst paddling like hell under the surface.... Making the other guy waste precious time in assessing the situation is a big part of staying alive. Practice being grey now, while there's time to build your skills. ... I think I'd rather be a "green man." ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Jul 21, 2011 from Mother Jones: Get Used to New Weather Extremes We're seeing records fall in all directions this year--wettest, driest, warmest, coldest, snowiest, stormiest, fieriest--across the globe. In the US alone, in the month of July alone, 1,079 total heat records have been broken or tied. That's 559 broken, 520 tied...so far. The map below, generated today at NOAA's US Records page, shows how records have fallen nationwide, including in Alaska and Hawaii.... In fact, every state except Delaware has broken heat records so far this month. In Iowa yesterday, the heat index exceeded 130deg F/54.4deg C--an extremely rare occurrence in this part of the world. According to Jeff Masters, writing at his Wunderblog, the only place where a 130 deg F heat index is common is along the shores of the Red Sea in the Middle East.... According to the National Interagency Fire Center, the number of wildfires in the US as of the beginning of July this year is 36,424...and counting. These wild lands blazes have burned 4.8 million acres. That's an average of 132 acres per fire--which, by the way, is the largest burned acreage ever recorded in the US during this time period.... ... I think that's called "unnatural variation." ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Jul 15, 2011 from Reuters: As CO2 levels rise, land becomes less able to absorb CO2 Scientists say land ecosystems are an essential brake on the pace of climate change because plants soak up large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) as they grow. This also boosts the level of carbon in soils. But in a study published in the British journal Nature on Thursday, scientists say rising levels of planet-warming CO2 will trigger an increased release of two other far more potent greenhouse gases from soils, rice paddies and wetlands. "Our results suggest that the capacity of land ecosystems to slow climate warming has been overstated," the authors, led by Kees Jan van Groenigen of Northern Arizona University in the United States, conclude.... But rising levels of nitrous oxide and methane offsets some of the benefit. Van Groenigen and colleagues calculated that a surge in the release of greenhouse gases from soils would negate at least 16.6 percent of the previously estimated climate change fighting potential of increased carbon storage in the landscape. This means the pace of global warming could in fact be faster than previously thought and that complex computer models that scientists use to project the impacts of climate change would need to be adjusted, van Groenigen told Reuters. ... More is less. ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Jul 14, 2011 from Guardian: Arctic may be ice-free within 30 years Sea ice in the Arctic is melting at a record pace this year, suggesting warming at the north pole is speeding up and a largely ice-free Arctic can be expected in summer months within 30 years. The area of the Arctic ocean at least 15 percent covered in ice is this week about 8.5m sq kilometres - lower than the previous record low set in 2007 - according to satellite monitoring by the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado. In addition, new data from the University of Washington Polar Science Centre, shows that the thickness of Arctic ice this year is also the lowest on record. In the past 10 days, the Arctic ocean has been losing as much as 150,000 square kilometres of sea a day, said Mark Serreze, director of the NSIDC. "The extent [of the ice cover] is going down, but it is also thinning. So a weather pattern that formerly would melt some ice, now gets rid of much more. There will be ups and downs, but we are on track to see an ice-free summer by 2030. It is an overall downward spiral." ... Again? That news is so "last year." ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Jul 5, 2011 from EnvironmentalResearchWeb: Going beyond the IPCC 'worst case' In order to see how climate models react over a wide range of greenhouse gas concentrations, researchers in the US have modelled emissions scenarios that are significantly higher than the IPCC's "worst case" scenarios. They found - perhaps unsurprisingly - that the extent of climate change will be significantly worse than for the IPCC's A1FI scenario. "Relative to the A1FI scenario, our highest scenario results in an additional 2 deg C (3.6F) of global mean warming above A1FI levels by 2100, a complete loss of Arctic summer sea ice by 2070 and an additional 43 percent sea level rise due to thermal expansion above A1FI levels by 2100," said Ben Sanderson from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in the US.... The team also assumed that the shares of primary energy derived from different fuel sources remain fixed over time at 2000 levels; that is, the carbon intensity of energy supply is assumed to remain constant. In the second scenario (AllCoal), the researchers make more extreme assumptions. They maintain the A1FI per capita energy projection, but assume population follows the UN high scenario as implemented in the IPCC A2 scenario, reaching 15 billion by 2100. They also make the bounding assumption that all new demand for primary energy is satisfied by coal. "This assumption is not intended to represent a plausible future, but a useful thought experiment that could help inform the exploration of upper bounds on emissions," said Sanderson. "It is astounding, for example, that this combination of assumptions leads to emissions in 2100 that are about four times those in the A1FI scenario, or about 105 gigatonnes of carbon per year." ... "Astounding" only if you believe in common sense directing the actions of societies. ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Jul 4, 2011 from University of Arizona, via EurekAlert: Warming ocean layers will undermine polar ice sheets faster than expected Warming of the ocean's subsurface layers will melt underwater portions of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets faster than previously thought, according to new University of Arizona-led research. Such melting would increase the sea level more than already projected. The research, based on 19 state-of-the-art climate models, proposes a new mechanism by which global warming will accelerate the melting of the great ice sheets during this century and the next. The subsurface ocean layers surrounding the polar ice sheets will warm substantially as global warming progresses, the scientists found. In addition to being exposed to warming air, underwater portions of the polar ice sheets and glaciers will be bathed in warming seawater.... "Ocean warming is very important compared to atmospheric warming because water has a much larger heat capacity than air," Yin said. "If you put an ice cube in a warm room, it will melt in several hours. But if you put an ice cube in a cup of warm water, it will disappear in just minutes."... Co-author Jonathan T. Overpeck said, "This does mean that both Greenland and Antarctica are probably going melt faster than the scientific community previously thought." ... You mean that isn't the second hand? ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Jul 1, 2011 from MSNBC: Report: Twenty-five years since global temperatures were below average It's been more than 300 months since the average global average temperature was below average, scientists and the U.S. government said in the annual State of the Climate report released Tuesday. The experts tracked 41 climate indicators, four more than in the previous year, and "they all show a continued tendency," said Tom Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center. "The indicators show unequivocally that the world continues to warm." "There is a clear and unmistakable signal from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans," added Peter Thorne of the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites at North Carolina State University.... At the NOAA briefing, Karl added that the Greenland ice sheet lost more mass last year than any year in the last decade. Melting of the land-based ice sheets in places like Greenland, Antarctica and other regions has raised concerns about rising sea levels worldwide. "The arctic is changing faster that most of the rest of the world," added Walt Meier, a research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado. "This has long been expected." In addition, he said, the September Arctic sea ice extent was the third smallest in 30 years, older, thicker sea ice is disappearing, there is a shorter duration of snow cover, and the permafrost is melting. ... Is that a new average reality hitting our head or are you just mad to see us? ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Jul 1, 2011 from PhysOrg: 'Goat plague' threat to global food security and economy must be tackled, experts warn "Goat plague," or peste des petits ruminants (PPR), is threatening global food security and poverty alleviation in the developing world, say leading veterinarians and animal health experts in this week's Veterinary Record.... It's important to control the infection because it spreads quickly through goat herds and sheep flocks, decimating their numbers, and taking a terrible financial toll on the farmers and families who depend on these animals for their livelihoods, say the authors. And it has also spread to wildlife species, many of which are endangered or threatened.... They go on to say that there has been a reluctance to tackle the issue because sheep and goats are considered to be of lesser economic value than cattle, and their shorter working lives mean that it would cost more to eradicate PPR. But they warn: "The ever advancing spread of PPR has made the economic impact of the disease, and consequently the benefits of its eradication, much greater. The imperative for coordinated action is therefore much stronger." ... Goats? Who cares about goats? ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Jun 30, 2011 from NOAA: State of the Climate for 2010 (PDF of slideshow) Global average surface temperature among the two warmest of the instrumental record ~~ Greenland's ice sheet lost more mass in 2010 than at any time in the past ten years ~~ Consistent and unmistakable signal from the top of the atmosphere to the bottom of the oceans ~~ Many extreme events at regional and local levels ~~ Trends in snow cover duration, permafrost, and vegetation continued or accelerated ~~ Record-setting temperatures along entire western Greenland, both near the ground and higher in the atmosphere ~~ 2010 report tracks 41 climate indicators. Long-term trends continue to show the world is warming. ... All that, in twelve slides?!? ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Jun 28, 2011 from CBC: Rapid melting of Arctic sea ice possibly explained Scientists have long puzzled over why Arctic sea ice is retreating at up to three times the rate that climate models say it should. In an effort to answer that question, a group of U.K-based explorers walked more than 500 kilometres of sea ice in the High Arctic, taking temperature readings of the ocean below them. They found a layer of cold, salty water about 200 metres down that they suspect has come from the melting of first-year ice. That meltwater has forced the relatively warmer water to the surface, where it's speeding up the decay of more ice.... The report concluded that sea ice retreat is 30 years ahead of where scientists thought it would be.... Year-old ice, however, remains fairly salty. And when it melts, it produces meltwater that's denser than the relatively fresh water from older ice. As multi-year ice declines throughout the Arctic, more of the saltier meltwater from younger ice is mixing into the ocean. That colder, denser water sinks more quickly and forces less dense water from deeper in the ocean up to the surface. Because fresh meltwater is colder than seawater, that means relatively warm water is being forced upwards. And that, said Boxall, may be part of the reason that sea ice is melting so much faster than anyone thought it would. ... I'm so glad to understand the physics of the freight train bearing down on me. ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Jun 28, 2011 from TomDispatch: Michael Klare, The Energy Landscape of 2041 Let's see: today, it's a story about rising sea levels. Now, close your eyes, take a few seconds, and try to imagine what word or words could possibly go with such a story. Time's up, and if "faster," "far faster," "fastest," or "unprecedented" didn't come to mind, then the odds are that you're not actually living on planet Earth in the year 2011. Yes, a new study came out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that measures sea-level rise over the last 2,000 years and -- don't be shocked -- it's never risen faster than now. Earlier in the week, there was that report on the state of the oceans produced by a panel of leading marine scientists. Now, close your eyes and try again. Really, this should be easy. Just look at the previous paragraph and choose "unprecedented," and this time pair it with "loss of species comparable to the great mass extinctions of prehistory," or pick "far faster" (as in "the seas are degenerating far faster than anyone has predicted"), or for a change of pace, how about "more quickly" as in "more quickly than had been predicted" as the "world's oceans move into 'extinction' phase."... This will be a war because the future profitability, or even survival, of many of the world's most powerful and wealthy corporations will be at risk, and because every nation has a potentially life-or-death stake in the contest. For giant oil companies like BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell, an eventual shift away from petroleum will have massive economic consequences.... In the meantime, the struggle for energy resources is guaranteed to grow ever more intense for a simple reason: there is no way the existing energy system can satisfy the world's future requirements. It must be replaced or supplemented in a major way by a renewable alternative system or, forget Westphalia, the planet will be subject to environmental disaster of a sort hard to imagine today. ... Surely we would have woken up to what we were doing by then and changed our entire way of doing things... wouldn't we? ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Jun 20, 2011 from BBC: World's oceans in 'shocking' decline The oceans are in a worse state than previously suspected, according to an expert panel of scientists. In a new report, they warn that ocean life is "at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history". They conclude that issues such as over-fishing, pollution and climate change are acting together in ways that have not previously been recognised. The impacts, they say, are already affecting humanity.... "The findings are shocking," said Alex Rogers, IPSO's scientific director and professor of conservation biology at Oxford University. "As we considered the cumulative effect of what humankind does to the oceans, the implications became far worse than we had individually realised. "We've sat in one forum and spoken to each other about what we're seeing, and we've ended up with a picture showing that almost right across the board we're seeing changes that are happening faster than we'd thought, or in ways that we didn't expect to see for hundreds of years." ... I hear Britney is showing off plenty of skin on her new "Femme Fatale" tour! ApocaDoc permalink Sat, Jun 18, 2011 from Guardian: Warning: extreme weather ahead Drought zones have been declared across much of England and Wales, yet Scotland has just registered its wettest-ever May. The warmest British spring in 100 years followed one of the coldest UK winters in 300 years. June in London has been colder than March. February was warm enough to strip on Snowdon, but last Saturday it snowed there. Welcome to the climate rollercoaster, or what is being coined the "new normal" of weather. What was, until quite recently, predictable, temperate, mild and equable British weather, guaranteed to be warmish and wettish, ensuring green lawns in August, now sees the seasons reversed and temperature and rainfall records broken almost every year. When Kent receives as much rain (4mm) in May as Timbuktu, Manchester has more sunshine than Marbella, and soils in southern England are drier than those in Egypt, something is happening. Sober government scientists at the centre for hydrology and ecology are openly using words like "remarkable", "unprecedented" and "shocking" to describe the recent physical state of Britain this year, but the extremes we are experiencing in 2011 are nothing to the scale of what has been taking place elsewhere recently.... Last month, Oxfam reported that while the number of "geo-physical" disasters - such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions - has remained more or less constant, those caused by flooding and storms have increased from around 133 a year in 1980s to more than 350 a year now. ... There's something about that 350 number that rings a bell. ApocaDoc permalink Fri, May 13, 2011 from National Research Council, via New York Times: Scientists' Report Stresses Urgency of Limiting Greenhouse Gas Emissions The nation's scientific establishment issued a stark warning to the American public on Thursday: Not only is global warming real, but the effects are already becoming serious and the need has become "pressing" for a strong national policy to limit emissions of heat-trapping gases.... "The risks associated with doing business as usual are a much greater concern than the risks associated with engaging in ambitious but measured response efforts," the report concludes. "This is because many aspects of an 'overly ambitious' policy response could be reversed or otherwise addressed, if needed, through subsequent policy change, whereas adverse changes in the climate system are much more difficult (indeed, on the time scale of our lifetimes, may be impossible) to 'undo.'"... The report's authors -- an unusual combination of climate scientists, businessmen and politicians -- said they were very aware that the political mood on climate change had changed significantly from when the committee was formed in 2009.... But Representative Joe L. Barton, Republican of Texas, who has been leading the charge against further regulating carbon emissions, swiftly dismissed the council's findings in an interview Thursday. "I see nothing substantive in this report that adds to the knowledge base necessary to make an informed decision about what steps -- if any -- should be taken to address climate change," Mr. Barton said. ... Silly scientists. All we need to do is Cntrl-Alt-Delete and restart the ecosystem. ApocaDoc permalink Sun, May 8, 2011 from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: As Climate Changes, Methane Trapped Under Arctic Ocean Could Bubble to the Surface A two-part study by scientists from the U.S Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Los Alamos National Laboratory paints one of the most detailed pictures yet of how climate change could impact millions of tons of methane frozen in sediment beneath the Arctic Ocean. Methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases. The initial phase of the project found that buried deposits of clathrates, which are icy crystalline compounds that encase methane molecules, will break apart as the global temperature increases and the oceans warm. In the second phase, the scientists found that methane would then seep into the Arctic Ocean and gradually overwhelm the marine environment's ability to break down the gas. Supplies of oxygen, nutrients, and trace metals required by methane-eating microbes would dwindle year-by-year as more methane enters the water. After three decades of methane release, much of the methane may bubble to the surface -- where it has the potential to accelerate climate change.... Their research counters the view held by some scientists that the oceans will always consume big plumes of methane. Indeed, small-scale methane releases have been seeping from seafloor vents for eons. In these cases, hungry ocean-dwelling microbes quickly oxidize most of the methane before it escapes into the atmosphere. But this cycle will be disrupted if the Arctic region's vast stores of clathrates break apart and unleash a rash of new methane seeps, the scientists found. "Large-scale methane releases have a greater impact than we anticipated," adds Reagan. "When this happens, microbes cannot consume all of the methane because there isn't enough oxygen to fuel them." ... How dare the physics and biology of the Arctic waters impede our continuous growth and prosperity! ApocaDoc permalink Thu, May 5, 2011 from Associated Press: Climate scientists told to 'stop speaking in code' Scientists at a major conference on Arctic warming were told Wednesday to use plain language to explain the dramatic melt in the region to a world reluctant to take action against climate change. An authoritative report released at the meeting of nearly 400 scientists in Copenhagen showed melting ice in the Arctic could help raise global sea levels by as much as 5 feet this century, much higher than earlier projections…Prominent U.S. climate scientist Robert Corell said researchers must try to reach out to all parts of society to spread awareness of the global implications of the Arctic melt. "Stop speaking in code. Rather than 'anthropogenic,' you could say 'human caused,'" Corell said. ... Or you could just say: We're fucked. ApocaDoc permalink Tue, May 3, 2011 from AP: New report confirms Arctic melt accelerating A new assessment of climate change in the Arctic shows the ice in the region is melting faster than previously thought and sharply raises projections of global sea level rise this century.... A summary of the key findings obtained by the AP on Tuesday shows Arctic temperatures during that period were the highest since measurements began in 1880.... It said melting Arctic glaciers and ice caps are projected to help raise global sea levels by 35 to 63 inches ... by 2100. That's up from a 2007 projection of 7 to 23 inches ... by the U.N.'s scientific panel on climate change. ... That's only a factor of three. Pfft. ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Apr 22, 2011 from Alaska Dispatch: Arctic glacier meltdown accelerates Glaciers in the Canadian High Arctic -- home to about one third of the world's ice outside of the continental sheets of Antarctica and Greenland -- are melting away much faster than anybody realized. Between 2004 and 2009, the frigid runoff from the ice tongues of Ellesmere, Baffin and hundreds of other islands in the Canadian Far North would have filled Lake Erie three quarters full, according to a new study published this week in the journal of Nature. Toward the end of that period, the accumulated meltdown had surpassed the runoff from the glaciers rimming the Gulf of Alaska and became the greatest single contributor to global sea-level rise outside the continental sheets... ... Happy Earth Day ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Apr 21, 2011 from EnvironmentalResearchWeb: "Epidemiological" study demonstrates climate-change effects on forests An 18-year study of 27,000 individual trees by National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded scientists finds that tree growth and fecundity - the ability to produce viable seeds - are more sensitive to climate change than previously thought. The results, published tomorrow in the journal Global Change Biology, identify earlier spring warming as one of several factors that affect tree reproduction and growth. They also show summer drought as an important but overlooked risk factor for tree survival, and that species in four types of trees - pine, elm, beech, and magnolia - are especially vulnerable to climate change.... "The problem is, the models scientists have used to predict forest responses focus almost solely on spatial variation in tree species abundance - their distribution and density over geographic range."... "Trees are much more sensitive to climate variation than can be interpreted from regional climate averages." ... This is a classic case of judging the forest by its trees. ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Apr 15, 2011 from BBC: Exploring the 'oceans crisis' What marked this week's event - convened by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean - as something a bit different was the melange of expertise in the same room. Fisheries experts traded studies with people studying ocean acidification; climate modellers swapped data with ecologists; legal wonks formulated phrases alongside toxicologists. They debated, discussed, queried, swapped questions and answers. Pretty much everyone said they'd learned something new - and something a bit scary.... It's fairly well-known now, for example, that the impacts of climate change on coral reefs can be delayed by keeping the reef healthy - by preventing local pollution, keeping fish stocks high and blocking invasive species. So a policy to reduce climate impacts can mean curbing fishing or pollution, which might in turn mean changing farming practices to prevent fertiliser run-off. In places, filter-feeding fish are apparently living in sediments containing so many particles of plastic that it makes up half of each mouthful. Other pollutants such as endocrine-disrupting ("gender-bending") chemicals gather on the plastic surfaces - which obviously can be harmful to the fish. So a "healthy fisheries" policy might again involve regulating pollutants.... Josh Reichert, head of the Pew Environment Group, likening the current situation to... "... driving towards the edge of a cliff while taking copious notes along the way. "For years the science has gotten better, and the problem has become worse. Better science will enhance our understanding of the dilemma we face but will not resolve it - we depend on government to do that, and the challenge we face is getting government to act." ... Notes? That drive is being digitally recorded! ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Apr 3, 2011 from The Independent: Glaciers melting at fastest rate in 350 years, study finds Some mountain glaciers are melting up to 100 times faster than at any time in the past 350 years. The findings, based on a new ice loss calculation technique developed by studying the glaciers of Patagonia in South America, have worrying implications for crop irrigation and water supplies around the world. The quantity of ice lost from Patagonia is equivalent to a fifth more than the contents of Lake Erie, one of the Great Lakes of North America. Scientists behind the discovery claim their findings show that the rate of melting at the start of the 20th century was much slower than previously calculated, but that over the past 30 years it has been significantly faster than suspected.... The figures show the contribution to sea level rise is increasing, though still at a low level, but what alarmed the team most was that the rate of loss has sped up rapidly since 1980. "The glaciers have lost a lot less ice up until 30 years ago than had been thought. The real killer is that the rate of loss has gone up 100 times above the long-term average. It's scary," said Professor Glasser, who carried out the study with the University of Exeter and Stockholm University. ... I thought Patagonia was just an outdoor clothing line. ApocaDoc permalink Sat, Mar 12, 2011 from New York Times: Polar Ice Loss Is Accelerating, Scientists Say ...On Wednesday, a research team led by a NASA scientist unveiled a new study that is sure to stir debate on the topic. The paper concludes that ice loss from both Greenland and Antarctica is accelerating, and that the ice sheets' impact on the rise in sea levels in the first half of the 21st century will be substantially higher than previous studies had projected. The increasing ice loss means that, for the first time, Greenland and Antarctica appear to be adding more to sea-level rise than the world's other reserves of ice -- primarily mountain glaciers, which are also melting because of rising temperatures. In 2006 alone, the study estimated that the two ice sheets lost roughly 475 billion metric tons of ice.... If the rates of melting observed in the study were to continue, the ice sheets could add nearly six inches to the rise in global sea levels in the next forty years -- a far larger contribution than the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the international scientific body, has projected. ... Six inches in 40 years? I can crawl away from that! ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Mar 8, 2011 from NASA, via ScienceDaily: Melting Ice Sheets Now Largest Contributor to Sea Level Rise The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating pace, according to a new NASA-funded satellite study. The findings of the study -- the longest to date of changes in polar ice sheet mass -- suggest these ice sheets are overtaking ice loss from Earth's mountain glaciers and ice caps to become the dominant contributor to global sea level rise, much sooner than model forecasts have predicted.... The nearly 20-year study reveals that in 2006, a year in which comparable results for mass loss in mountain glaciers and ice caps are available from a separate study conducted using other methods, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets lost a combined mass of 475 gigatonnes a year on average. That's enough to raise global sea level by an average of 1.3 millimeters (.05 inches) a year... The pace at which the polar ice sheets are losing mass was found to be accelerating rapidly. Each year over the course of the study, the two ice sheets lost a combined average of 36.3 gigatonnes more than they did the year before.... "What is surprising is this increased contribution by the ice sheets is already happening. If present trends continue, sea level is likely to be significantly higher than levels projected by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007. Our study helps reduce uncertainties in near-term projections of sea level rise." ... I hear Charlie Sheen is #winning! ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Mar 3, 2011 from NOAA: Significant Climate Anomalies and Events of 2010 ... Anomalies? What anomalies? ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Jan 20, 2011 from Reuters: Climate change growing risk for insurers: industry Insurers are struggling to assess the risks from climate change, industry officials say, with the floods in Australia and Brazil highlighting the potential losses from greater extremes of weather. Scientists say a warmer world will cause more intense drought, floods, cyclones as well as rising sea levels and the insurance industry says the number of weather-related disasters has already soared over the past several decades.... "There is still a fair amount of uncertainly as to climate change and the attribution of climate change to natural events or man-made and therefore it has not translated yet into the pricing," Yves Guerard, secretary-general of the Ottawa-based International Actuarial Association, told Reuters.... Overall losses from weather-related natural catastrophes rose by a factor of 3 in the period 1980-2009, taking inflation into account, while insured losses from such events increased by a factor of about 4 during the same period. Total insured losses from natural disasters in 2010 was $37 billion, it says. While taking into account rising wealth, population and urbanization, "there is evidence indicating that the growing number of weather-related catastrophes most probably cannot be fully explained without climate change," the company says. ... Insurance is only worth the economy it's printed on. ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Jan 18, 2011 from Medill National Security Journalism Initiative: Losing the Andes glaciers Glacier melt hasn't caused a national crisis in Peru, yet. But high in the Andes, rising temperatures and changes in water supply have decimated crops, killed fish stocks and forced entire villages to question how they will survive for another generation. U.S. officials are watching closely because without quick intervention, they say, the South American nation could become an unfortunate case study in how climate change can destabilize a strategically important region and, in turn, create conditions that pose a national security threat to Americans thousands of miles away. "Think what it would be like if the Andes glaciers were gone and we had millions and millions of hungry and thirsty Southern neighbors," said former CIA Director R. James Woolsey. "It would not be an easy thing to deal with." ... Kind of a bummer for those Southern neighbors as well. ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Dec 27, 2010 from NPR: Small Beetles Massacre The Rockies' Whitebark Pines The Whitebark pine trees in the high-elevation areas of America's Northern Rockies have stood for centuries. But these formerly lush evergreen forests are disappearing at an alarmingly fast rate; what remains are eerie stands of red and gray snags. Warmer climates have sparked an outbreak of a voracious mountain pine beetle that is having devastating consequences for whitebarks and the wildlife that depend on them... As entomologist Jesse Logan looks up at snow-covered slopes speckled with skeletons of dead trees, he says the massacre is happening faster than even he expected. More than a decade ago, Logan predicted that with global warming, these tiny, ravenous beetles would start to thrive here. At the time, other insect experts were skeptical. But in recent years, winter cold snaps haven't been nearly as brutal as usual. ... This, my friends, is the Age of Skeptics Are Usually Wrong. ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Dec 9, 2010 from The ApocaDocs: 2010 Year in Review from the ApocaDocs The shocking truth ripped from the headlines! An appalling sense of humor in full display! The TOP 100 STORIES selected from the 1600+ news items archived and bequipped by the ApocaDocs in 2010, our The Year in Review displays not just the most holy shit, death-spiral-ish stories of the year, but also many of our favorite quips ("holy shit" stories tend to bring out the quipsters in both of us). All displayed in staggering CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER to help recap the year. You'll find yourself asking "What, all this, and it's only June!?!" Groans, grimaces, and guffaws abound in this rollercoaster reprise of a most eventful year. ... How could you keep it to only a hundred? ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Dec 6, 2010 from University of Guelph, via EurekAlert: Northern wildfires threaten runaway climate change, study reveals Climate change is causing wildfires to burn more fiercely, pumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than previously thought, according to a new study to be published in Nature Geosciences this week. This is the first study to reveal that fires in the Alaskan interior - an area spanning 18.5 million hectares - have become more severe in the past 10 years, and have released much more carbon into the atmosphere than was stored by the region's forests over the same period. "When most people think of wildfires, they think about trees burning, but most of what fuels a boreal fire is plant litter, moss and organic matter in surface soils," said University of Guelph professor Merritt Turetsky, lead author of the study. "These findings are worrisome because about half the world's soil carbon is locked in northern permafrost and peatland soils. This is carbon that has accumulated in ecosystems a little bit at a time for thousands of years, but is being released very rapidly through increased burning."... "This includes longer snow-free seasons, changes in vegetation, loss of ice and permafrost, and now fire, which is shifting these systems from a global carbon sink toward a carbon source."... "Over the past 10 years, burned area has doubled in interior Alaska, mostly because of increased burning late in the fire season," said co-author Eric Kasischke, a University of Maryland professor. ... Statistically, don't most runaways return home? ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Nov 23, 2010 from University of Hawaii, via EurekAlert: Study could mean greater anticipated global warming Current state-of-the-art global climate models predict substantial warming in response to increases in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. The models, though, disagree widely in the magnitude of the warming we can expect. The disagreement among models is mainly due to the different representation of clouds. Some models predict that global mean cloud cover will increase in a warmer climate and the increased reflection of solar radiation will limit the predicted global warming. Other models predict reduced cloudiness and magnified warming.... Having evaluated the model's simulation of present-day conditions, the researchers examined the response of simulated clouds in a warmer climate such as it might be in 100 years from now. The tendency for clouds to thin and cloud cover to reduce was more pronounced in this model than in any of the current global models. Co-author Kevin Hamilton concludes, "If our model results prove to be representative of the real global climate, then climate is actually more sensitive to perturbations by greenhouse gases than current global models predict, and even the highest warming predictions would underestimate the real change we could see." ... Is that a cumulonimbus in your pocket, or are you just sad to see me? ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Nov 9, 2010 from Huffington Post: Beak Deformities On The Rise: Causes Unknown For Birds' Avian Keratin Disorder Scientists have observed the highest rate of beak abnormalities ever recorded in wild bird populations in Alaska and the Northwest, a study by two federal scientists said. The U.S. Geological Survey study on beak deformities in northwestern crows in Alaska, Washington and British Columbia follows a trend found earlier in Alaska's black-capped chickadees. "The prevalence of these strange deformities is more than 10 times what is normally expected in a wild bird population," said research biologist Colleen Handel.... The cause of the deformity - called "avian keratin disorder" - hasn't been determined, Handel said. An estimated 17 percent of adult northwestern crows are affected by the disorder in coastal Alaska.... The abnormality sometimes is accompanied by elongated claws, abnormal skin or variations in feather color. Van Hemert said the disorder first was noticed in significant numbers around 1999. It has increased dramatically over the past decade, affecting 6.5 percent of adult black-capped chickadees in Alaska annually. Biologists have documented more than 2,100 affected individuals and increasing numbers of other species, such as nuthatches and woodpeckers, have been spotted with beak deformities.... In the past, large clusters of beak deformities have been associated with environmental pollutants such as organochlorines in the Great Lakes region and selenium from agricultural runoff in California.... The increasing occurrence of deformities in multiple bird species with broad geographic distribution suggests that avian keratin disorder is spreading, they said. ... Scientists: we need a catchier name than avian keratin disorder for this meme to go viral. ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Nov 5, 2010 from Nature.com: Ocean pH dropping faster than expected Thanks to rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, some Arctic waters are already experiencing pH dips that could be harmful to sea life. What's more, this acidification seems to be happening more rapidly than models have predicted.... "Models are probably underestimating at least by a few years the impact of ocean acidification in the Arctic," says Jeremy Mathis, a chemical oceanographer at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. "We don't know what the organisms' responses are yet, but the conditions are already there to potentially be disruptive to the ecosystems."... One important source of carbonate ions is aragonite, a particularly soluble form of calcium carbonate. Seawater is usually saturated with aragonite. However a recent study in Biogeosciences estimated that by 2016, according to the IPCC's mid-range emissions projections, aragonite will fall below this level in some Arctic waters for at least one month a year. By the end of the century, it predicts that the entire Arctic Ocean could be under-saturated with respect to aragonite. "But we don't have to wait until 2016," says Mathis. "We're already seeing places in the Arctic where these under-saturations are happening now." High latitude waters in the Arctic and Antarctic are particularly sensitive to pH changes, as cold waters absorb more gas than warm waters.... The news gets worse. Several speakers on the panel, including Richard Feely, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who has been leading large-scale ocean surveys of acidification, warned that the acidity of seawater could double by the end of the century. ... Whoops! My bad! Erroneous moi! Ich bin ausgeguilty! Can we move on now? ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Oct 4, 2010 from EnvironmentalResearchWeb: Greenhouse amplification: gases may have hidden kick Emissions of methane and nitrous oxide (N2O) will cause temperature rises one-fifth higher than previously believed, because of the effects of carbon-climate feedbacks. So say researchers from Canada who have carried out a modelling study. "The mechanism is that emission of other greenhouse gases leads to warming, which in turn leads to emissions of carbon dioxide from soil and from the ocean," Nathan Gillett of Environment Canada told environmentalresearchweb. "This additional carbon dioxide leads to additional warming, thereby amplifying the effect of the non-carbon-dioxide greenhouse gases over and above the warming that would have occurred without this carbon-cycle feedback."... Greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide are estimated to have caused about 37 percent of the total greenhouse-gas forcing. And mitigation strategies that include a range of gases are likely to be 30-40 percent cheaper than those focusing on carbon dioxide alone. ... I'm sure that's a lot of hot air. ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Oct 1, 2010 from Reuters: Analysis: Soaring Chinese Economy At Odds With Climate Goals Just last year experts at the International Energy Agency proposed a target for China's carbon emissions to peak in 2020 before declining if the world were to be saved from devastating climate change. Too late now. Figures from energy firm BP showed earlier this year that Chinese emissions will steamroll through the Paris-based IEA's 2020 peak target next year, nearly a decade early, with no sign of slowing down. China, which hosts U.N. climate talks next week for the first time, is promoting what it calls ambitious plans to boost energy efficiency and curb emissions. But its supercharged growth means even with rapid efficiency gains it cancels out other global efforts to combat climate change. China already emits a quarter of the world's CO2, the main gas contributing to global warming, making it the world's top emitter ahead of the United States. Its emissions have more than doubled since 2000. ... There is no stopping this bull in the china shop called earth. ApocaDoc permalink 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 Wed, Sep 15, 2010 from ClimateProgress: Serreze: Arctic is "continuing down in a death spiral." National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) director Mark Serreze slammed the anti-science disinformers yesterday: "There are claims coming from some communities that the Arctic sea ice is recovering, is getting thicker again. That's simply not the case. It's continuing down in a death spiral. Every bit of evidence we have says the ice is thinning. That means there's less energy needed to melt it out than there used to be."... Arctic sea ice volume, extent, and area continue to shrink apace as we approach the dramatic end to this year's melt season. The NSIDC tells me extent dropped to 4.76 million square kilometers today -- which is below the majority of even the most recent expert predictions logged with the Study of Environmental Arctic Change... ... Pretty soon there'll be nothing to get in the way of oil exploration! ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Sep 7, 2010 from Sydney Morning Herald, from DesdemonaDespair: 20 years left: mammals plunge into extinction in northern Australia At dusk, the dry savannah of the Kimberley was once alive with the scuttling and foraging of the burrowing bettong, a marsupial whose ''countless numbers'' were marvelled at by early surveyors. Along with many species of quolls, bandicoots, possums and marsupial rats, the bettongs had thrived for millions of years in northern Australia, surviving ice ages, surging sea levels and human hunters. But many of these natives are unlikely to survive another decade or two, according to a new report which reveals an abrupt, stunning plunge towards mass extinction in the past few years. At the 136 sites across northern Australia that have been repeatedly surveyed since 2001, the mammal populations have dropped by an average of 75 per cent. The number of sites classified as ''empty'' of mammal activity rose from 13 per cent in 1996 to 55 per cent in 2009. ''Twenty years ago we would go out and it would be a bonanza of native animals,'' a Charles Darwin University researcher, John Woinarski, said. ''Now we hardly catch anything - it's silent.'' ... It's the burrowing bettong's Gallipoli. ApocaDoc permalink Sat, Aug 21, 2010 from Yale360: Extent of Mangrove Forests Less Than Previous Estimates, Survey Shows The first comprehensive survey of the world's mangrove forests using satellite imagery reveals that the vital ecosystems are 12 percent smaller than earlier estimates and are swiftly disappearing. ... The scientists, reporting their findings in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography, estimated that more than half of the world's mangrove forests have disappeared, with a third being lost from 1980 to 2000. Mangrove forests, which grow in tropical and sub-tropical tidal zones, are among the most important ecosystems on the planet, providing habitat for marine life and preventing coastal erosion. But human activity, such as shrimp farming, as well as storms and rising seas, have taken a heavy toll on mangrove forests. The survey showed that 42 percent of mangrove forests are located in Asia, 21 percent in Africa, 15 percent in North and Central America, 12 percent in Oceania, and 11 percent in South America. Only 7 percent of remaining mangrove forests are currently protected by parks and reserves. ... Let's create womangroves, so they can reproduce faster! ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Aug 17, 2010 from Telegraph, via DesdemonaDespair: Ice sheet in Greenland melting at record rate The Greenland ice sheet is melting at a record rate due to global warming, according to a British-led expedition currently taking measurements from the treacherous glaciers.... The finding immediately raises fears about the long term effect on rising sea levels and ultimately 'positive feedbacks' as water absorbs more heat than ice, therefore speeding up the warming effect.... "It is not a freak event and is certainly a manifestation of warming. This year marks yet another record breaking melt year in Greenland; temperatures and melt across the entire ice sheet have exceeded those in 2007 and of historical records."... The new research comes as scientists from Pennsylvania State University warned that temperature rise of between 2C and 7C would cause the entire ice mass of Greenland to melt, resulting in 23ft rise in sea level. ... Maybe I can get my beachfront property by just stayin' home! ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Aug 16, 2010 from New York Times: Portugal on track for 45 percent renewable energy this year Five years ago, the leaders of this sun-scorched, wind-swept nation made a bet: To reduce Portugal's dependence on imported fossil fuels, they embarked on an array of ambitious renewable energy projects -- primarily harnessing the country's wind and hydropower, but also its sunlight and ocean waves. Today, Lisbon's trendy bars, Porto's factories and the Algarve's glamorous resorts are powered substantially by clean energy. Nearly 45 percent of the electricity in Portugal's grid will come from renewable sources this year, up from 17 percent just five years ago. Land-based wind power -- this year deemed "potentially competitive" with fossil fuels by the International Energy Agency in Paris -- has expanded sevenfold in that time. And Portugal expects in 2011 to become the first country to inaugurate a national network of charging stations for electric cars. ... Gosh. I wonder if that could be done in America. ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Aug 10, 2010 from Guardian: Greenland ice sheet faces 'tipping point in 10 years' The entire ice mass of Greenland will disappear from the world map if temperatures rise by as little as 2C, with severe consequences for the rest of the world, a panel of scientists told Congress today.... "Sometime in the next decade we may pass that tipping point which would put us warmer than temperatures that Greenland can survive," Alley told a briefing in Congress, adding that a rise in the range of 2C to 7C would mean the obliteration of Greenland's ice sheet. The fall-out would be felt thousands of miles away from the Arctic, unleashing a global sea level rise of 23ft (7 metres), Alley warned. Low-lying cities such as New Orleans would vanish. "What is going on in the Arctic now is the biggest and fastest thing that nature has ever done," he said.... "While we don't believe it is possible to lose an ice sheet within a decade, we do believe it is possible to reach a tipping point in a few decades in which we would lose the ice sheet in a century." ... Thank God! Long after I'm dead! ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Aug 2, 2010 from NC State University, via EurekAlert: 'Ribbit Radio' shows frog populations likely overestimated Scientists track amphibian populations because these animals are sensitive to changes in their environment and can serve as "canaries in the coal mine" to give researchers early warnings about pollution or other ecological problems. But new research from North Carolina State University shows that data from the largest amphibian monitoring program in the country may have flaws that, if uncorrected, could result in overestimates of frog populations.... Simons and his co-authors wanted to test the accuracy of these surveys by using the "Bird Radio" system Simons developed previously to test the accuracy of bird census methods. The system, renamed "Ribbit Radio," consists of a series of remotely controlled playback devices that can be used to mimic populations of calling frogs. The researchers set up "Ribbit Radio" in a field and used it to test how well observers identify frog species. Simons says the researchers immediately noted a lot of "false positives" in the data - meaning that some observers were saying they heard species that were not played by the "Ribbit Radio" system. ... If those amphibians would just fill out their census forms! ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Jul 22, 2010 from GMA News: Adaptation critical in fight vs climate change - CCC As the country braces for the possible arrival of stronger typhoons this year, the Climate Change Commission (CCC) said adaptation is the "critical aspect" in the fight against climate change. CCC, the government arm tasked to promote climate change mitigation and adaptation, said it will forge an agreement with the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) to ensure that aggressive adaptation measures will be advocated in all levels of governance. CCC vice-chairman Secretary Heherson Alvarez said the CCC will sign this month a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the DILG and the Centre for Initiatives and Research in Climate Change Adaptation (CIRCA) of Albay province. ... I propose we RLH (Run Like Hell)! ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Jul 21, 2010 from New York Times: A Russian Warning on Retreating Ice Sea ice in the Arctic is again in rapid retreat this summer, putting the region on pace to match the record lows seen in 2007, the head of Russia's environmental agency said Tuesday, according to a Bloomberg News report.... Mr. Frolov told Bloomberg that the fast pace of the melt could mean that the North Pole could be ice-free during the summer within just few a decades, far sooner than previously estimated. Arctic waterways typically choked with ice are now opening up, he said. ... They said it wouldn't happen till long after I was dead! ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Jul 13, 2010 from The Daily Climate: Climate change can be hazardous to your health Extreme weather induced by climate change has dire public health consequences, as heat waves threaten the vulnerable, storm runoff overwhelms city sewage systems and hotter summer days bake more pollution into asthma-inducing smog, scientists say. The United States - to say nothing of the developed world - is unprepared for such conditions predicted by myriad climate models and already being seen today, warn climate researchers and public health officials... Last week, as the East Coast stewed its way through the first heat wave of the summer, researchers at Stanford University published a study suggesting exceptionally long heat waves and extreme temperatures could be commonplace in the United States within 30 years - sooner than expected. ... Sooner than expected, but still time to blow it off! ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Jun 8, 2010 from CBC: Iceberg melting sinks sculpture project Sculptures by Dutch artist Ap Verheggen are sitting under 500 metres of water, after the iceberg on which they were placed melted too quickly. Verheggen set the two sculptures Dog Sled Riders adrift on an iceberg off Greenland to draw attention to climate change. But global warming happened a little too quickly for the artist, whose project is supported by the World Wildlife Fund. The iceberg was to take several years to float down the Davis Strait to Newfoundland and Labrador, after calving from the Greenland glacier in March. But an average high temperature record for the Arctic was set in May and the iceberg collapsed in a matter of months. Last week the iceberg was seen floating off Uummannaq, a tiny island in the northwest of Greenland, but on Thursday, the iceberg collapsed.... The curvy, five-metre long sculptures depict the outline of an Inuit directing a dog sled team with a long whip, in homage to an Inuit way of life that is disappearing because of climate change. ... Comedy, tragedy -- and irony. Mush! ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Jun 7, 2010 from KWGN: A deadly week on Colo. rivers Rivers and streams across Colorado are running dangerously high as the sudden warm weather melts the mountain snow faster than expected. Northern Colorado is under a flood advisory through Tuesday night because of heavy runoff. Estes Park officials continued to monitor the Big Thompson and Fall rivers, which came close to overflowing Saturday. Sandbags were placed around the Estes Park post office, but the water receded on Sunday. The fast-moving water may have played a role in several drowning fatalities and at least one disappearance.... The weather service highly discourages rafting, kayaking, fishing and other water activities due to the conditions. Warm weather continues across the state on Monday and temperatures could reach 97 in Denver. ... Rocky Mountain hiiiiigh... ApocaDoc permalink Fri, May 28, 2010 from Science (AAAS): Extensive Methane Venting to the Atmosphere from Sediments of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf Remobilization to the atmosphere of only a small fraction of the methane held in East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) sediments could trigger abrupt climate warming, yet it is believed that sub-sea permafrost acts as a lid to keep this shallow methane reservoir in place. Here, we show that more than 5000 at-sea observations of dissolved methane demonstrates that greater than 80 percent of ESAS bottom waters and greater than 50 percent of surface waters are supersaturated with methane regarding to the atmosphere. The current atmospheric venting flux, which is composed of a diffusive component and a gradual ebullition component, is on par with previous estimates of methane venting from the entire World Ocean. Leakage of methane through shallow ESAS waters needs to be considered in interactions between the biogeosphere and a warming Arctic climate. ... I hear Lindsay Lohan has a new gal-pal. ApocaDoc permalink Fri, May 28, 2010 from NOAA: April 2010 warmest ever April 2010 was characterized by very warm conditions across much of the world. Warmer-than-average conditions during April 2010 were present across much of the world's land areas. The warmest anomalies occurred in southern Asia, northern Africa, the north central and northeastern U.S., Canada, Europe, and parts of northern Russia. Although much of the world's land area was engulfed by warmer-than-average temperatures, cooler-than-average conditions prevailed across Argentina, Mongolia, eastern and southern Russia, and most of China.... Sea surface temperatures (SST) during April 2010 were the warmest on record, with an anomaly of 0.57°C (1.03°F) above the 20th century average. ... Overall, the combined global land and ocean surface temperature anomaly for April 2010 was the warmest April on record since records began in 1880. The previous record was set in 1998. The combined global land and ocean temperature anomaly was 0.76°C (1.37°F) above the 20th century average. ... April is the cruelest month. ApocaDoc permalink Fri, May 7, 2010 from Channel 4 News: Concern over impact of rising ocean acidity Five yeas ago, no one outside a very small group of ocean scientists had heard of ocean acidification. Now, it's one of the most worrying phenomena confronting those who care about the radical changes that seem to be happening on our planet. Worrying enough to compel a team of three UK scientists to camp on the sea ice floating on top of the Arctic Ocean for 35 days in conditions as tough as anywhere on the planet.... Their initial findings may suggest this pristine ocean is already more acidic than others, and that the chemical balance of the ocean may already be becoming unfavourable for the tiny plankton that live there.... Acidified oceans become worse at soaking up planet warming carbon dioxide. And that's a big deal-- like giant liquid rainforests-- they currently mop up half of the carbon dioxide we churn out. When it comes to the Arctic, it couldn't happen in a worse place. Because it's so cold, the Arctic Ocean absorbs more than its fair share of carbon dioxide. Even though it's a small ocean compared to many, this makes it disproportionally important in cooling our planet. If you want to get a picture of how grave the problem of ocean acidification may be -- the Arctic is a smart place to start. ... See? More proof that the scientific establishment is anti-progress! ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Apr 23, 2010 from McClatchy Newspapers: Report: Ocean acidification rising at unprecedented rate With the oceans absorbing more than 1 million tons of carbon dioxide an hour, a National Research Council study released Thursday found that the level of acid in the oceans is increasing at an unprecedented rate and threatening to change marine ecosystems. The council said the oceans were 30 percent more acidic than they were before the Industrial Revolution started roughly 200 years ago, and the oceans absorb one-third of today's carbon dioxide emissions. Unless emissions are reined in, ocean acidity could increase by 200 percent by the end of the century and even more in the next century, said James Barry, a senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California and one of the study's authors... Also testifying was actress Sigourney Weaver, who made passing references to her roles in "Alien" and "Avatar" while urging Congress to pass global climate change legislation. ... She did not, however, make any reference to her role in Tadpole. ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Apr 21, 2010 from Scientific American (per DesdemonaDespair): Antarctica ice sheets: 'Our models may be dramatically underestimating' danger Withered by summer heat, Arctic sea ice has shrunk to record low coverage several times since 2005, only to rebound to within 95 percent of its long-term average extent this winter. By comparison, Antarctica, with some 90 percent of the world's glacial reserves, has generally shed ice in more stately fashion. However, emerging evidence from an Antarctic geological research drilling program known as ANDRILL suggests that the southernmost continent has had a much more dynamic history than previously suspected--one that could signal an abrupt shrinkage of its ice sheets at some unknown greenhouse gas threshold, possibly starting in this century. Especially troubling, scientists see evidence in the geological data that could mean the vast East Antarctic Ice Sheet, which holds at least four-fifths of the continent's ice, is less resistant to melting than previously thought.... According to the simulation, the East ice sheet melts only when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are at least eight times higher than preindustrial levels. The ice sheet's so-called hysteresis, or resistance to change, is now in doubt. Modeler and geologist Robert DeConto of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, says the policy implications are grim. "Our models may be dramatically underestimating how much worse it's going to get," he says, noting that many population centers worldwide are within a few meters of sea level. Looking at signs of meltwater in the early Miocene, DeConto says, "we're seeing ice retreat faster and more dramatically than any model predicts." ... Hysteresical. ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Apr 20, 2010 from KTVU: Climate Damage Confirmed To Be Serious, Extensive Internationally respected Mbari ocean chemist Peter Brewer says 85 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from automobiles and fossil fuel power plants, their output equaling a million tons of carbon dioxide every hour dissolving into the ocean. "In the long term future, where there'll be a huge swath of ocean, that will be inhospitable to marine life," said Brewer. Research published Friday suggested that deep oceans are hiding heat that will likely accelerate global warming, spawn repeated El Nino's and quicken ocean catastrophes.... The net effect experts say, is greenhouse gas levels are greater now and rising faster than at any time humans have been on earth "We're putting so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that the biosphere just can't catch up," said Baldocchi.... But scientists like Brewer and Baldocchi are pessimistic, saying climate change is happening too fast. "I think we're going to have these changes, I wish we didn't, we better work hard to try and undo them, but right now there's not a good path for doing that," said Brewer. "Sure we'll live, we'll survive, it just might not be a very nice world.," said Baldocchi. ... I ain't fallin' for it. I demand a 145,322nd opinion. ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Apr 19, 2010 from NUVO Newsweekly: Bill McKibben's must-read "Eaarth" Bill McKibben, the writer who first brought the reality of global warming to the mainstream reader 20 years ago with The End of Nature, is understandably feeling a little dark. Well, not a little dark, a lot dark. And who can blame him. The past twenty years have created more carbons, more methane, and more pain. Progress is hard to find; hope even harder. And so he intentionally misspells our planet's name to make a point: that we no longer live on the same planet. McKibben describes this old planet in this way. "For the ten thousand years that constitute human civilization, we've existed in the sweetest of sweet spots." This "sweet spot" has turned sour, and the first half of Eaarth is a relentless, panoramic accounting of just how bad it's gotten, worldwide, from artic melt to extreme weather to the growth of dengue fever. This litany of global woe, he says, "Should come as body blows, as mortar barrages, as sickening thuds... Name a major feature of the earth's surface and you'll find massive change." ... Me? I'm building a rocketship to Maars. ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Apr 11, 2010 from New York Times: Paul Krugman: Building a Green Economy You might think that this uncertainty weakens the case for action, but it actually strengthens it. As Harvard's Martin Weitzman has argued in several influential papers, if there is a significant chance of utter catastrophe, that chance -- rather than what is most likely to happen -- should dominate cost-benefit calculations. And utter catastrophe does look like a realistic possibility, even if it is not the most likely outcome. Weitzman argues -- and I agree -- that this risk of catastrophe, rather than the details of cost-benefit calculations, makes the most powerful case for strong climate policy. Current projections of global warming in the absence of action are just too close to the kinds of numbers associated with doomsday scenarios. It would be irresponsible -- it's tempting to say criminally irresponsible -- not to step back from what could all too easily turn out to be the edge of a cliff.... And in a more general sense, given the twists and turns of American politics in recent years -- since 2005 the conventional wisdom has gone from permanent Republican domination to permanent Democratic domination to God knows what -- there has to be a real chance that political support for action on climate change will revive. If it does, the economic analysis will be ready. We know how to limit greenhouse-gas emissions. We have a good sense of the costs -- and they're manageable. All we need now is the political will. ... "Political will"? What's that? ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Apr 7, 2010 from Scientific American: Climate Scientist Hansen Wins $100,000 Prize U.S. climate scientist James Hansen won a $100,000 environmental prize Wednesday for decades of work trying to alert politicians to what he called an unsolved emergency of global warming. Hansen, born in 1941, will visit Oslo in June to collect the Sophie Prize, set up in 1997 by Norwegian Jostein Gaarder, the author of the 1991 best-selling novel and teenagers' guide to philosophy "Sophie's World." "Hansen has played a key role for the development of our understanding of human-induced climate change," the prize citation said.... "We really have an emergency," Hansen said in a video link with the prize panel in Oslo about feared climate changes such as a thaw of ice sheets on Greenland or Antarctica or a loss of species of animals and plants in a warming world. ... When asked what he'd do with the money, Hansen said "I've been hankering for a Ford Escalade for awhile now." ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Mar 29, 2010 from EnergyBoom.com: Research Showing Carbon Emissions at All Time High -- And Accelerating Data taken at at Norway's Zeppelin station on the Arctic Svalbard archipelago indicates an increase in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere -- in spite of 2009's economic downturn, and efforts to improve global emissions. Researchers from the Norwegian Polar Institute and Stockholm University -- where the aforementioned data was examined -- found carbon dioxide levels rose to a median 393.71 parts per million of the atmosphere in the first two weeks of March from 393.17 in the same period of 2009, extending years of gains. But perhaps what is most disconcerting about the information is how carbon emissions appear to be accelerating, which is surprising many.... The data "seem to show that we continue to emit as if there was no tomorrow," Kim Holmen, director of research at the Norwegian Polar Institute, said of the carbon readings. ... Prove to me that "tomorrow" is more than a theory. ApocaDoc permalink Sat, Mar 20, 2010 from Digital Journal: Expert Says Policy Makers Underestimate Climate Change Problems In a peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Oceanography, March 2010, Greene, Cornell professor of Earth and Atmospheric Science, has published a paper called "A Very Inconvenient Truth" along with colleagues D. James Baker, professor of the William J. Clinton Foundation and Daniel H. Miller of the Roda Group, Berkeley, California. They conclude that the United Nations Panel on Climate Change of 2007 underestimated the specific dangers that man-made climate change has created. The social problems now and in the future are considerable, according to these scientists.... "Of course, greenhouse gas emissions will not stop tomorrow, so the actual temperature increase will likely be significantly larger, resulting in potentially catastrophic impacts to society unless other steps are taken to reduce the Earth's temperature." ... Don't worry -- we'll get back to preindustrial levels eventually! ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Mar 10, 2010 from American Chemical Society: World crude oil production may peak a decade earlier than some predict In a finding that may speed efforts to conserve oil and intensify the search for alternative fuel sources, scientists in Kuwait predict that world conventional crude oil production will peak in 2014 -- almost a decade earlier than some other predictions. Their study is in ACS' Energy & Fuels, a bi-monthly journal.... The new study describe development of a new version of the Hubbert model that accounts for these individual production trends to provide a more realistic and accurate oil production forecast. Using the new model, the scientists evaluated the oil production trends of 47 major oil-producing countries, which supply most of the world's conventional crude oil. They estimated that worldwide conventional crude oil production will peak in 2014, years earlier than anticipated. The scientists also showed that the world's oil reserves are being depleted at a rate of 2.1 percent a year. The new model could help inform energy-related decisions and public policy debate, they suggest. ... I better sell my Hummer -- and fast. ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Mar 8, 2010 from Otago Daily Times (NZ): Tide of acid-ocean fear rolls over oyster industry The collapse began rather unspectacularly. In 2005, when most of the millions of Pacific oysters in this tree-lined estuary failed to reproduce, the shellfish growers of Willapa Bay, Washington state largely shrugged it off. In a region that provides one-sixth of the nation's oysters -- the epicentre of the West Coast's $US111 million ... oyster industry -- everyone knows nature can be fickle. But then the failure was repeated in 2006, 2007 and 2008. It spread to an Oregon hatchery that supplies baby oysters to shellfish nurseries from Puget Sound to Los Angeles. Eighty percent of that hatchery's oyster larvae died, too. Now, as the US oyster industry heads into the fifth summer of its most unnerving crisis in decades, scientists are pondering a disturbing theory. They suspect water that rises from deep in the Pacific Ocean -- icy seawater that surges into Willapa Bay and is pumped into seaside hatcheries -- may be corrosive enough to kill baby oysters. If true, that could mean shifts in ocean chemistry associated with carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil fuels may be impairing sea life faster and more dramatically than expected. ... Good thing I prefer clams. ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Mar 7, 2010 from Bard College, via Reuters and DesdemonaDespair: Arctic melt to cost up to $24 trillion by 2050: report Arctic ice melting could cost global agriculture, real estate and insurance anywhere from $2.4 trillion to $24 trillion by 2050 in damage from rising sea levels, floods and heat waves, according to a report released on Friday.... "The Arctic is the planet's air conditioner and it's starting to break down," he said. The loss of Arctic Sea ice and snow cover is already costing the world about $61 billion to $371 billion annually from costs associated with heat waves, flooding and other factors, the report said. The losses could grow as a warmer Arctic unlocks vast stores of methane in the permafrost. The gas has about 21 times the global warming impact of carbon dioxide. Melting of Arctic sea ice is already triggering a feedback of more warming as dark water revealed by the receding ice absorbs more of the sun's energy, he said. That could lead to more melting of glaciers on land and raise global sea levels. ... Sorry, can't repair it -- I can't find anyone who carries the parts! ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Feb 26, 2010 from New Scientist: Arctic arch failure leads to sea-ice exodus Every winter the Arctic ice cap is penned in by curved barriers of ice spanning the straits that lead out of the Arctic Ocean. Now it seems that some of these ice arches are failing to form. The resulting exodus of sea ice into the Atlantic and Pacific could affect ocean circulation and marine life.... During most years, large blocks of sea ice clump together in mid-January to build one or two arches across the strait. The arches usually persist for around six months, acting as dams to prevent the ice from floating away. Then in 2007, the warmest year on record in the Arctic, no arches formed and vast quantities of sea ice were lost. "Around 1 per cent of Arctic ice by area went down the Nares Strait that year; more than double the usual amount," says Kwok. The next year wasn't much better -- only one weak arch formed and broke down after two months. Last year provided a brief respite, but so far in 2010 there is no sign of any arches in the strait. ... Is there some way to move the logjam in Washington up there? ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Feb 17, 2010 from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution: Team finds subtropical waters flushing through Greenland fjord Waters from warmer latitudes -- or subtropical waters -- are reaching Greenland's glaciers, driving melting and likely triggering an acceleration of ice loss, reports a team of researchers led by Fiamma Straneo, a physical oceanographer from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). "This is the first time we've seen waters this warm in any of the fjords in Greenland," says Straneo. "The subtropical waters are flowing through the fjord very quickly, so they can transport heat and drive melting at the end of the glacier."... Deep inside the Sermilik Fjord, researchers found subtropical water as warm as 39 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius). The team also reconstructed seasonal temperatures on the shelf using data collected by 19 hooded seals tagged with satellite-linked temperature depth-recorders. The data revealed that the shelf waters warm from July to December, and that subtropical waters are present on the shelf year round. "This is the first extensive survey of one of these fjords that shows us how these warm waters circulate and how vigorous the circulation is," says Straneo. "Changes in the large-scale ocean circulation of the North Atlantic are propagating to the glaciers very quickly -- not in a matter of years, but a matter of months. It's a very rapid communication." ... "Subtropical" and "Greenland" should never appear together in a headline. ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Feb 16, 2010 from Yale 360: An Ominous Warning on the Effects of Ocean Acidification But when the scientists examined the sediment that had formed 55 million years ago, the color changed in a geological blink of an eye. "In the middle of this white sediment, there's this big plug of red clay," says Andy Ridgwell, an earth scientist at the University of Bristol. In other words, the vast clouds of shelled creatures in the deep oceans had virtually disappeared. Many scientists now agree that this change was caused by a drastic drop of the ocean's pH level. The seawater became so corrosive that it ate away at the shells, along with other species with calcium carbonate in their bodies. It took hundreds of thousands of years for the oceans to recover from this crisis, and for the sea floor to turn from red back to white.... Indeed, its speed and strength -- Ridgwell estimate that current ocean acidification is taking place at ten times the rate that preceded the mass extinction 55 million years ago -- may spell doom for many marine species, particularly ones that live in the deep ocean. "This is an almost unprecedented geological event," says Ridgwell. ... Only ten times as fast as before there was even an economy? We can do better! ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Feb 14, 2010 from TIME Magazine: How Global Warming will Change Ecosystems ...It's reasonable to expect, for example, that ecosystems will change as plants and animals respond to a rising thermometer -- but how do you measure the change of an ecosystem that may consist of hundreds or even thousands of species?... A team of scientists led by Stephen Thackeray, an expert on lake ecology at the United Kingdom's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, has combed through observations of more than 700 species of fish, birds, mammals, insects, amphibians, plankton and a wide variety of plants across the U.K. taken between 1976 and 2005, and found a consistent trend: more than 80 percent of "biological events" -- including flowering of plants, ovulation among mammals and migration of birds -- are coming earlier today than they were in the 1970s. On average, these events are occurring about 11 days earlier, and the pace of change has been accelerating with every decade. ... If everything comes earlier and earlier how will I ever catch up? ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Feb 12, 2010 from TIME Magazine: Glaciers: Changing at a Less Than Glacial Pace ...a new study published in the Feb. 12 issue of Science indicates that the balance of the world's ice may be shifting faster than scientists thought, which may have consequences in a warming world. A team of scientists traveled to the Spanish island of Mallorca, where they visited a coastal cave that has been submerged off and on by the Mediterranean Sea for hundreds of thousand of years, as glacial periods have waxed and waned. They dated the layers of the mineral calcite, which were deposited by the seawater in rings on the cave walls, as on a bathtub.... "It's fair to say that this means glaciers may change somewhat faster than we once inferred," says Jeffrey Dorale, a geoscientist at the University of Iowa and the lead author of the Science paper. ... Maybe we need a different word for "glaciers." How about raciers? ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Feb 11, 2010 from Guardian, via DesdemonaDespair: Climate changes desynchronizing biological cycles in Britain The analysis confirms that spring and summer are occurring earlier, but also shows that this trend appears to be accelerating. The shift could pose problems for animals, birds and fish that rely on springtime flowering of plants to supply food for their young.... The new study compiled 25,000 records of springtime trends for 726 species of plants, animals, plankton, insects, amphibians, birds and fish across land, sea and freshwater habitats. It analysed them for changes in the timing of lifecycle events, such as egg laying, first flights and flowering, a science known as phenology. The results showed that more than 80 percent of trends between 1976 and 2005 indicated earlier seasonal events. On average, the study showed the seasonal timing of reproduction and population growth shifted forward by eleven days over the period, and that the change has accelerated recently. ... If springtime comes early, won't Punxatawny Phil always see his shadow? ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Feb 10, 2010 from UC Davis, via EurekAlert: Climate 'tipping points' may arrive without warning, says top forecaster A new University of California, Davis, study by a top ecological forecaster says it is harder than experts thought to predict when sudden shifts in Earth's natural systems will occur -- a worrisome finding for scientists trying to identify the tipping points that could push climate change into an irreparable global disaster. "Many scientists are looking for the warning signs that herald sudden changes in natural systems, in hopes of forestalling those changes, or improving our preparations for them," said UC Davis theoretical ecologist Alan Hastings. "Our new study found, unfortunately, that regime shifts with potentially large consequences can happen without warning -- systems can 'tip' precipitously. This means that some effects of global climate change on ecosystems can be seen only once the effects are dramatic. By that point returning the system to a desirable state will be difficult, if not impossible." ... And how, pray tell, have we been doing with warnings? ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Feb 9, 2010 from London Financial Times: Melting ice alters way of life in Iqaluit ...The polar ice helps keep the earth cool, as snow and ice reflect sunlight while the permafrost traps methane, a potent greenhouse gas. But a new report published by the Pew Environment Group says that global warming is altering the Arctic ecosystem in a way never seen before by humans. It predicts that the Arctic, which has had sea ice for more than 800,000 years, might lose summer sea ice as soon as 2030 and estimates that the melting Arctic will lead to a 3-to-6 deg C increase in the earth's temperature over the next century. During the Ice Age, the earth's temperature changed by 4.5 deg C... "The Arctic is the planet's air conditioner, and it's starting to break down," says Eban Goodstein, a resource economist at Bard College in New York and one of the authors of the study. "Half measures to stop global warming are unlikely to succeed, and delaying action will mean future environmental costs could be overwhelmed by the massive pulse of heating from a broken air conditioner," he says. ... Maybe we can find a giant fan instead. ApocaDoc permalink Sat, Feb 6, 2010 from Sydney Morning Herald: Arctic ice melt worst than 'most pessimistic' models: study Climate change is transforming the Arctic environment faster than expected and accelerating the disappearance of sea ice, scientists said on Friday in giving their early findings from the biggest-ever study of Canada's changing north. The research project involved more than 370 scientists from 27 countries who collectively spent 15 months, starting in June 2007, aboard a research vessel above the Arctic Circle. It marked the first time a ship has stayed mobile in Canada's high Arctic for an entire winter... Models predicted only a few years ago that the Arctic would be ice-free in summer by the year 2100, but the increasing pace of climate change now suggests it could happen between 2013 and 2030... ... So our pessimistic models were actually optimistic? ApocaDoc permalink Sat, Feb 6, 2010 from Canwest News Service: Arctic melting to cost $2.4 trillion U.S. by 2050: Study IQALUIT — The global cost of Arctic melting could reach $2.4 trillion U.S. by 2050 if current warming trends continue, according to a study released Friday. "The cumulative cost of the melting Arctic in the next 40 years is equivalent to the annual gross domestic products of Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom combined," according to the authors of the study prepared for the Pew Environment Group... The study notes that the Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the planet. According to the findings, Arctic melting this year alone will be "equal to 40 per cent of all U.S. industrial emission this year or (similar to) bringing on line more than 500 large coal-burning power plants"... ... You mean we can spend our way out of this? ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Dec 21, 2009 from Yale University, via EurekAlert: Global temperatures could rise more than expected, new study shows The kinds of increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide taking place today could have a significantly larger effect on global temperatures than previously thought, according to a new study led by Yale University geologists. Their findings appear December 20 in the advanced online edition of Nature Geoscience.... Their reconstructed CO2 concentrations for the past five million years was used to estimate Earth-system climate sensitivity for a fully equilibrated state of the planet, and found that a relatively small rise in CO2 levels was associated with substantial global warming 4.5 million years ago. They also found that the global temperature was 2 to 3 degrees Celsius higher than today while CO2 levels were only between about 365 and 415 parts per million (ppm) -- similar to today's concentration of about 386 ppm.... "Since there is no indication that the future will behave differently than the past, we should expect a couple of degrees of continued warming even if we held CO2 concentrations at the current level." ... You mean we can learn from the past? Why didn't anyone tell me? ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Dec 11, 2009 from National Geographic News: 2000-2010: A Decade of (Climate) Change A decade ago, global climate change was largely considered a problem for the distant future. But it seems that future has come sooner than predicted. ...In 1997, a study published in the journal Nature tallied the value of 17 services provided by the environment, including water purification through wetlands, pollination, and recreation. The total was estimated at U.S. $33 trillion. The findings were largely ignored by policy makers, according to Stuart Pimm, a conservation biologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who wrote an accompanying perspective piece on the study. Here we are just over a decade later and people are talking about tens of billions of dollars in financing to help developing countries do things like reduce carbon emissions from deforestation, he said. To me, that's the story of the decade, added Pimm... ... Has this guy never heard of Michael Jackson, Anna Nicole Smith, etc.? Get a life, loser! ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Nov 23, 2009 from Washington Post: The ultimate crop rotation In recent months, the Ethiopian government began marketing abroad one of the hottest commodities in an increasingly crowded and hungry world: farmland...This impoverished and chronically food-insecure Horn of Africa nation is rapidly becoming one of the world's leading destinations for the booming business of land leasing, by which relatively rich countries and investment firms are securing 40-to-99-year contracts to farm vast tracts of land.... The harshest critics of the practice conjure images of poor Africans starving as food is hauled off to rich countries. ... And what's so new about that? ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Nov 23, 2009 from AP, via Raw Story: Oceans rising faster than expected as climate change exceeds grimmest models Since the 1997 international accord to fight global warming, climate change has worsened and accelerated -- beyond some of the grimmest of warnings made back then. As the world has talked for a dozen years about what to do next, new ship passages opened through the once frozen summer sea ice of the Arctic. In Greenland and Antarctica, ice sheets have lost trillions of tons of ice. Mountain glaciers in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa are shrinking faster than before.... "The latest science is telling us we are in more trouble than we thought," Janos Pasztor, climate adviser to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.... "The message on the science is that we know a lot more than we did in 1997 and it's all negative," said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "Things are much worse than the models predicted." ... That's what makes science so exciting: unpredictability! ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Nov 15, 2009 from London Times: Climate change catastrophe took just months Six months is all it took to flip Europe's climate from warm and sunny into the last ice age, researchers have found. They have discovered that the northern hemisphere was plunged into a big freeze 12,800 years ago by a sudden slowdown of the Gulf Stream that allowed ice to spread hundreds of miles southwards from the Arctic.... The new description, reminiscent of the Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow, emerged from one of the most painstaking studies of past climate changes yet attempted. ... Isn't "Hollywood being right" one of the Seven Signs of the Apocalypse? ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Nov 12, 2009 from The Daily Climate: The escape route Some ideas are the stuff of science fiction: 15 trillion mirrors positioned in orbit to shield the planet from the sun's rays; a fleet of blimps 20 kilometers up feeding a constant stream of sulfur into the stratosphere; a navy of robot-controlled ships prowling the world's oceans, spraying seawater skyward to generate reflective clouds. Others are more mundane: Plant trees to soak up carbon dioxide or paint roofs white to reflect sunlight. Most are unproven. All have major drawbacks. None offset ocean acidification. But the concept is gaining more traction as politicians, confronted with the ugly reality of trying to wean economies off fossil fuels, cast about for a strategy that will work if climate changes quickly or in nasty ways. ... I know! Let's engineer a whole new planet! ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Nov 1, 2009 from Times Online (UK): Methane's impact on global warming far higher than previously thought The effects of a critical greenhouse gas on global warming have been significantly underestimated, according to research suggesting that emissions controls and climate models may need to be revised Methane's impact on global temperatures is about a third higher than generally thought because previous estimates have not accounted for its interaction with airborne particles called aerosols, NASA scientists found. When this indirect effect of the potent greenhouse gas is included one tonne of methane has about 33 times as much effect on the climate over 100 years as a tonne of carbon dioxide, rather than 25 times as in standard estimates. ... And when, pray tell, will we finally see an "our models underestimated the Earth's natural resilience" story? ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Oct 26, 2009 from University of California - Berkeley via ScienceDaily: Treaty To Limit Carbon Dioxide Should Be Followed By Similar Limits On Other Greenhouse Pollutants When world leaders meet in Copenhagen in December to hash out a treaty limiting carbon dioxide emissions, they should begin planning a future summit to address other pollutants -- from soot to ozone -- that don't remain in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, but nevertheless are major contributors to global warming. That is the view of University of California, Berkeley, researcher Stacy C. Jackson, who presents her arguments in a policy piece appearing in the Oct. 23 issue of the journal Science.... Pollutants like soot and ozone are well-known greenhouse pollutants, but scientists and policy makers have focused most of their attention on the gorillas in the room: carbon dioxide and, to a lesser extent, methane -- pollutants that have had the biggest historical impact on global warming.... Numerous recent studies, however, have found the impacts of global warming accelerating, with faster melting of glaciers and sea ice and higher temperatures than predicted by climate models. ... Can't we just deal with everything at once? ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Oct 15, 2009 from Environmental Science and Technology: UN update: climate change hitting sooner and stronger With a handful of weeks remaining before the climate convention meeting in Copenhagen, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has released an updated summary of the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report, Climate Change Science Compendium 2009, warns that many predictions that were at the upper ranges of 2007 IPCC forecasts are increasingly likely, and some events that were seen previously as probable over the long term are on the verge of occurring or are occurring already. "The pace and the scale of climate change is accelerating, along with the confidence among researchers in their forecasts," UNEP Director Achim Steiner states in the document. The analysis incorporates results from more than 400 major studies published since 2007 and addresses impacts on Earth systems, glaciers and ice sheets, oceans, and ecosystems. Increasingly, scientists are framing some of these transformations as "commitments"--inevitabilities that will play out even after the climate stabilizes. ... The only thing that seems to be going SLOWER is our ability to respond to the crisis! ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Oct 8, 2009 from BusinessGreen: Is the sun setting on oil supplies? There is a "significant risk" that global oil supplies could peak within the next decade, according to a major new report which warns that increased oil price volatility and dwindling supplies will impact businesses far sooner than officially suggested.... It also warns that the UK government is not alone in being unprepared for this scenario, which would result in rising oil prices and increased price volatility. "In our view, forecasts which delay a peak in conventional oil production until after 2030 are at best optimistic and at worst implausible," said the report's chief author Steve Sorrell. "And given the world's overwhelming dependence upon oil and the time required to develop alternatives, 2030 isn't far away." The report downplays the implications of recent big oil discoveries, such as those announced in the Gulf of Mexico, arguing that with oil demand currently running at 80 million barrels a day even big finds would only delay a peak in supplies by a few days or weeks. ... Hmmm... that commute is a little daunting, by bicycle. ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Oct 4, 2009 from London Guardian: Arctic seas turn to acid, putting vital food chain at risk Carbon-dioxide emissions are turning the waters of the Arctic Ocean into acid at an unprecedented rate, scientists have discovered. Research carried out in the archipelago of Svalbard has shown in many regions around the north pole seawater is likely to reach corrosive levels within 10 years. The water will then start to dissolve the shells of mussels and other shellfish and cause major disruption to the food chain. By the end of the century, the entire Arctic Ocean will be corrosively acidic....About a quarter of the carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere by factories, power stations and cars now ends up being absorbed by the oceans. That represents more than six million tonnes of carbon a day. This carbon dioxide dissolves and is turned into carbonic acid, causing the oceans to become more acidic. "We knew the Arctic would be particularly badly affected when we started our studies but I did not anticipate the extent of the problem," said Gattuso. ... Oy. Speaking of acid, my stomach is killing me! ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Sep 30, 2009 from World Bank, via DesdemonaDespair: World Bank estimates climate change to cost developing nations $100 billion a year Developing countries will need to spend as much as $100 billion annually for the next 40 years to adapt to more extreme and severe weather changes, according to a World Bank study issued on Wednesday. The report said poorer countries would need to invest in large-scale infrastructure projects to cope with floods, drought, heatwaves and more frequent and intense rainfall if the Earth's temperature rose by 2 degrees Celsius by 2050. "Faced with the prospect of huge additional infrastructure costs, as well as drought, disease and dramatic reductions in agricultural productivity, developing countries need to be prepared for the potential consequences of unchecked climate change," said Katherine Sierra, World Bank vice president for sustainable development. ... How do you squeeze blood from a dessicated corpse? ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Sep 28, 2009 from London Guardian: Met Office warns of catastrophic global warming in our lifetimes Unchecked global warming could bring a severe temperature rise of 4C within many people's lifetimes, according to a new report for the British government that significantly raises the stakes over climate change. The study, prepared for the Department of Energy and Climate Change by scientists at the Met Office, challenges the assumption that severe warming will be a threat only for future generations, and warns that a catastrophic 4C rise in temperature could happen by 2060 without strong action on emissions.... The Met Office scientists used new versions of the computer models used to set the IPCC predictions, updated to include so-called carbon feedbacks or tipping points, which occur when warmer temperatures release more carbon, such as from soils. When they ran the models for the most extreme IPCC scenario, they found that a 4C rise could come by 2060 or 2070, depending on the feedbacks. Betts said: "It's important to stress it's not a doomsday scenario, we do have time to stop it happening if we cut greenhouse gas emissions soon." ... There's no need to panic... IF WE ACT RIGHT NOW!!!! ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Sep 25, 2009 from AP News: Planned emission cuts still mean far hotter Earth Earth's temperature is likely to jump nearly 6 degrees between now and the end of the century even if every country cuts greenhouse gas emissions as proposed, according to a United Nations update. Scientists looked at emission plans from 192 nations and calculated what would happen to global warming. The projections take into account 80 percent pollution cuts from the U.S. and Europe by 2050, which are not sure things.... "We are headed toward very serious changes in our planet," said Achim Steiner, head of the U.N.'s environment program, which issued the update on Thursday. Even if the developed world cuts its emissions by 80 percent and the developing world cuts theirs in half by 2050, as some experts propose, the world is still facing a 3-degree (1.7 degree Celsius) increase by the end of the century, said Robert Corell, a prominent U.S. climate scientist who helped oversee the update. ... And when next year's UNEP update comes in....? ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Sep 24, 2009 from London Independent: Ancient glaciers are disappearing faster than ever Melting ice is pouring off Greenland and Antarctica into the sea far faster than was previously realised because of global warming, new scientific research reveals today. The accelerating loss from the world's two great land-based ice sheets means a rise in sea levels is likely to happen even more quickly than UN scientists suggested only two years ago, the findings by British scientists suggest. Although floating ice, such as that in the Arctic Ocean, does not add to sea-level rise when it melts as it is already displacing its own mass in the water, melting ice from the land raises the global sea level directly. At present it is thought that land-based ice melt accounts for about 1.8mm of the current annual sea level rise of 3.2mm – the rest is coming from the fact that water expands in volume as it warms. But the new findings, published online today in the journal Nature, imply that this rate is likely to increase. ... Maybe it's melting faster 'cause we're watching it! ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Sep 11, 2009 from IRIN News (UN): MALAWI: Mayi Chambo, 'We have destroyed a lot in a short period' Degradation of the environment is reaching alarming levels in Nkaya in southern Malawi, where people have to walk ever greater distances to collect firewood and water. Mayi Chambo, a village head in Nkaya, blamed charcoal makers for the deforestation. This is her story. "In the 1980s we had lush forests here. The rains used to come in time, the soil was fertile and water was not a problem. It was after 1994 when we started experiencing problems that have to do with the environment. People from other areas began settling here in search for fertile soil and products from our forests. "Soon the trees started to disappear -- people wanted rafters for their newly built houses. Even the demand for fuel wood increased because the population had also increased. People began to clear forests for new fields.... "They are lured by the money they generate from selling charcoal in the cities, especially in Blantyre [Malawi's second city]. But should we let these people destroy everything because of a bag of charcoal that costs K500 (US$3.57) only? That is not acceptable.... "If we continue to destroy our forests at the pace we are going, we will soon have a desert here. The signs are already showing. We do not get the rains in good time, and when we have the rains they are always associated with flooding. The soil needs a lot of fertilizer for the crops to produce, but how many families can afford fertilizer here? Most of us are poor. "We have destroyed a lot in a short period of time and we are paying heavily for that." ... Microcosms within microcosms... ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Sep 10, 2009 from Associated Press: Effects of Arctic warming seen as widespread Arctic warming is affecting plants, birds, animals and insects as ice melts and the growing season changes, scientists report in a new review of the many impacts climate change is having on the far north. As the global climate changes, the Arctic Circle has been warming faster than other regions and scientists have documented a series of affects on wildlife in the region... "The Arctic as we know it may soon be a thing of the past," Eric Post, an associate professor of biology at Penn State University, said in a statement. ... Arctic... tock...tic...tock... ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Sep 1, 2009 from London Guardian: The Sermilik fjord in Greenland: a chilling view of a warming world It is calving season in the Arctic. A flotilla of icebergs, some as jagged as fairytale castles and others as smooth as dinosaur eggs, calve from the ice sheet that smothers Greenland and sail down the fjords. The journey of these sculptures of ice from glaciers to ocean is eerily beautiful and utterly terrifying. The wall of ice that rises behind Sermilik fjord stretches for 1,500 miles (2,400km) from north to south and smothers 80 percent of this country. It has been frozen for 3m years. Now it is melting, far faster than the climate models predicted and far more decisively than any political action to combat our changing climate. If the Greenland ice sheet disappeared sea levels around the world would rise by seven metres, as 10 percent of the world's fresh water is currently frozen here. ... Sounds to me like we are fjucked. ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Aug 31, 2009 from Agence France-Presse: Swine flu spreading at 'unbelievable' rate: WHO chief Swine flu spreads four times faster than other viruses and 40 percent of the fatalities are young adults in good health, the world's top health official warned in an interview appearing Saturday. "This virus travels at an unbelievable, almost unheard of speed," World Health Organisation Director General Margaret Chan told France's Le Monde daily in an interview. "In six weeks it travels the same distance that other viruses take six months to cover," Chan said. "Sixty percent of the deaths cover those who have underlying health problems," Chan said. "This means that 40 percent of the fatalities concern young adults -- in good health -- who die of a viral fever in five to seven days. ... Another way to put this would be that pigs are flying. ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Aug 31, 2009 from Associated Press: Climate trouble may be bubbling up in Far North ...Pure methane, gas bubbling up from underwater vents, escaping into northern skies, adds to the global-warming gases accumulating in the atmosphere. And pure methane escaping in the massive amounts known to be locked in the Arctic permafrost and seabed would spell a catastrophe. Is such an unlocking under way? Researchers say air temperatures in northwest Canada, in Siberia and elsewhere in the Arctic have risen more than 2.5 C (4.5 F) since 1970 — much faster than the global average. The summer thaw is reaching deeper into the frozen soil, at a rate of 4 centimeters (1.5 inches) a year, and a further 7 C (13 F) temperature rise is possible this century... ... How many carbons does it burn up to have to add Fahrenheit equivalencies! ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Aug 30, 2009 from Agence France-Presse: Melting glaciers threaten 'Nepal tsunami' ...Scientists say the Imja Glacier above Dengboche is retreating by about 70 metres (230 feet) a year, and the melting ice has formed a huge lake that could devastate villages downstream if it bursts. The trend is not new. Nepal's International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), which has studied the Himalayas for three decades, says many of the country's glaciers have been retreating for centuries. But ICIMOD glaciologist Samjwal Ratna Bajracharya said this was now happening at an alarming speed, with temperatures in the Himalayas rising at a much faster rate than the global average. ... Something tells me: not even duct tape can fix this... ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Aug 24, 2009 from Canadian Press: Climate change doubles tundra plant life, boosting shrubs, grasses Climate change is already having a dramatic effect on plants in the High Arctic, turning the once rocky tundra a deep shade of green and creating what could be another mechanism speeding up global warming. In a new study to be published in the November issue of the journal Ecology, University of British Columbia geographer Greg Henry has, for the first time, confirmed that rapidly rising temperatures in the Arctic are creating major changes in the plants that live there... the average temperature in the area has increased by about 2.5 C -- "an extremely rapid change," says Henry... Henry said the new, denser, shrubbier tundra could speed up global warming even further simply because that vegetation is darker and absorbs more solar energy. Previous studies have suggested that a global spread of thicker plant growth on the tundra could have the same effect as doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. ... Say, maybe shrubs would make the perfect biofuel. ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Aug 7, 2009 from Guardian (UK): Climate change melting US glaciers at faster rate, study finds Climate change is melting America's glaciers at the fastest rate in recorded history, exposing the country to higher risks of drought and rising sea levels, a US government study of glaciers said today. The long-running study of three "benchmark" glaciers in Alaska and Washington state by the US geological survey (USGS) indicated a sharp rise in the melt rate over the last 10 or 15 years. Scientists see the three -- Wolverine and Gulkana in Alaska and South Cascade in Washington -- as representative of thousands of other glaciers in North America. "The observations show that the melt rate has definitely increased over the past 10 or 15 years," said Ed Josberger, a USGS scientist. "This certainly is a very strong indicator that climate change is occurring and its effects on glaciers are virtually worldwide." The survey also found that all three glaciers had begun melting at the same higher rate -- although they are in different climate regimes and some 1,500 miles apart. ... That theory biting us in the ass once again with facts? Well, at least it's consistent. ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Jul 24, 2009 from Newsweek: Climate-Change Calculus: Why it's even worse than we feared. Among the phrases you really, really do not want to hear from climate scientists are: "that really shocked us," "we had no idea how bad it was," and "reality is well ahead of the climate models." Yet in speaking to researchers who focus on the Arctic, you hear comments like these so regularly they begin to sound like the thumping refrain from Jaws: annoying harbingers of something that you really, really wish would go away.... The loss of Arctic sea ice "is well ahead of" what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecast, largely because emissions of carbon dioxide have topped what the panel—which foolishly expected nations to care enough about global warming to do something about it—projected. "The models just aren't keeping up" with the reality of CO2 emissions, says the IPY's David Carlson. Although policymakers hoped climate models would prove to be alarmist, the opposite is true, particularly in the Arctic.... But estimates of how much carbon is locked into Arctic permafrost were, it turns out, woefully off. "It's about three times as much as was thought, about 1.6 trillion metric tons, which has surprised a lot of people," says Edward Schuur of the University of Florida. ... Stop it! Hasn't Brangelina done something recently? ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Jul 21, 2009 from Mongabay: Global ocean temperatures at warmest level since 1880 Global ocean temperatures rose to the warmest on record, according to data released last week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The combined average global land and ocean surface temperature for June was second-warmest since global recording-keeping began in 1880.... Worldwide sea surface temperatures were 62.56 F (16.99 C), or 1.06 degrees F (0.59 C) above the 20th century average of 61.5 F (16.4 C).... The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for June 2009 was the second warmest on record after 2005... ... Just mere coincidence that this is happening now. Move along. Nothing to see here. ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Jul 20, 2009 from YouTube, et al.: 'Doc Michael lets loose the dogs of fear In June of 2009, I gave what I consider my most important speech to date, at the Association of American University Presses' annual meeting. It was the last presentation in the last Plenary session of the meeting, and allowed me to talk about the two issues that matter most to me: saving scholarly publishing, and saving civilization. In 16 minutes. My friend Paul Murphy, of RAND Publishing, took guerrilla video footage of most of the speech, and then edited my Powerpoint in, bless his heart. It is available below, via YouTube. (Thanks, Paul!)... "But CO2 does something much worse. While we bicker with global-warming deniers, the ocean is getting more acidic. Excess CO2 plus ocean produces carbonic acid. Ocean acidification is a clear and present danger. A slight rise in acidity dramatically affects calcium-carbonate-based lifeforms, like most plankton, shellfish, and coral, the cornerstones of the ocean biosphere.... If, over the next decade, humans continue doing what we have done for the last fifty years, then we will construct our own hell, and our grandchildren will curse our names." ... Does a speech count as news, even from the heart, if it happens at a conference? Of scholarly publishers? ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Jul 9, 2009 from Bloomberg News: Arctic Ocean's Ice Layer Thins 'Dramatically,' Study Concludes The layer of ice over the Arctic Ocean has thinned "dramatically" this decade, with its thin seasonal blanket for the first time making up a bigger portion of the total ice than the thicker, older coat, a study said. Scientists from NASA and the University of Washington in Seattle surveyed the ocean's ice sheet from 2003 through 2008 using observations from the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite, or ICESat, to make the first estimate of its thickness and volume.... The researchers found that the Arctic Ocean's ice layer thinned by about 2.2 feet over four winters, or about 7 inches a year, while the area covered by older, thicker ice shrank by about 42 percent, or 595,000 square miles -- almost the land area of Alaska. In 2003, 62 percent of the ocean's ice cover was older, thicker ice, with 38 percent in seasonal layers, the researchers found. Five years later, 68 percent of the ice cap was made up of seasonal ice. ... Good thing that it's natural variation, and that we're not responsible. What a coincidence that unprecedented change is happening at this time in history! ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Jul 6, 2009 from 3news (New Zealand): Antarctica melting faster than expected Antarctica is melting faster than expected, a conference was told earlier this week. Professor Peter Barrett of Victoria University's Antarctic Research Centre told the Annual Antarctic Conference in Auckland that the rate of ice loss was up 75 percent since 1996, and was increasing quickly.... Research centre director Professor Tim Naish, led a team of researchers who drilled deep into the Antarctic rock and discovered ancient records from the last time atmospheric CO2 reached the level it was now approaching. They found that 3 million to 5 million years ago, seas were warm enough to melt a large chunk of Antarctica's ice when atmospheric CO2 was only slightly higher than today. ... Surely Antarctica would be the antithesis of what the Arctic is doing, right? ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Jun 29, 2009 from Paul Krugman, New York Times: Betraying the Planet: Denial is Treason A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases. And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn't help thinking that I was watching a form of treason -- treason against the planet. To fully appreciate the irresponsibility and immorality of climate-change denial, you need to know about the grim turn taken by the latest climate research. The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists expected: ice caps are shrinking, arid zones spreading, at a terrifying rate. And according to a number of recent studies, catastrophe -- a rise in temperature so large as to be almost unthinkable -- can no longer be considered a mere possibility. It is, instead, the most likely outcome if we continue along our present course. ... That Nobel Prize? Just a theory. ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Jun 25, 2009 from Irish Times: Political paralysis as clock ticks on climate change ... And that's why we have scientists. Their job is to collate and then make sense of the physical data gleaned from close observation of the world around them. They are by training a cautious, sceptical, even prickly bunch with a notoriously low tolerance for fools. As Thomas Huxley memorably put it: "The great tragedy of science -- the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact." Which is why the findings of a poll of scientists attending a climate conference in Denmark in March were so alarming. About 60 per cent of respondents said that yes, in theory it was still possible to prevent global average temperature rises exceeding 2 degrees C -- the accepted point beyond which runaway climate chaos awaits. There is however a yawning chasm between scientific necessity and what is politically acceptable. Some 86 per cent believed the 2-degree threshold will in fact be crossed. Most reckoned an apocalyptic 4-5 degrees this century is on the cards. In other words, they believe humanity can still save itself, but will choose not to. Scientists are not themselves robots. As one respondent commented: "My optimism is not primarily due to scientific facts, but to hope." Another explained: "As a mother of young children, I choose to believe there's a chance, and work hard towards it." ... Just don't raise my taxes!!! ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Jun 15, 2009 from National Academies: Science Academies Urge Faster Response to Climate Change In a joint statement, the science academies of the G8 countries, plus Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa, called on their leaders to "seize all opportunities" to address global climate change that "is happening even faster than previously estimated." The signers, which include U.S. National Academy of Sciences President Ralph J. Cicerone, urged nations at the upcoming Copenhagen climate talks to adopt goals aimed at reducing global emissions by 50 percent by 2050. The academies also urged the G8+5 governments, meeting in Italy next month, to "lead the transition to an energy efficient and low carbon economy, and foster innovation and research and development for both mitigation and adaptation technologies." ... Who are these guys? Extremists? ApocaDoc permalink Mon, May 18, 2009 from University of Texas, via EurekAlert: Arctic river deltas may hold clues to future global climate Mead Allison, senior research scientist at The University of Texas at Austin's Jackson School of Geosciences and co-author of the study, said Arctic river deltas have been neglected as records of past climate because the far north is a challenging and expensive environment to work in and it only came to be seen as a bellwether for climate change in the last decade or so.... Scientists don't know whether large river deltas are a net source or a net sink of carbon. Do they store more carbon than they produce? That's a critical question because carbon dioxide is a major greenhouse gas. Large river deltas are the interface between the land and the oceans and they deliver large amounts of carbon carried along in sediments. As humans alter river systems by adding nutrients from fertilizers, damming water for power and diverting water for drinking and farming, they may be shifting the ability of those systems to fix, burn and store carbon. "It's a glaring gap in our understanding of the global carbon cycle," Allison said. "It's a potential gotcha in the global climate models. Each river system is different, but we have to get a handle on the net effects." Arctic river deltas are critical to explore, the researchers reason, because the largest changes in climate are projected for the Arctic. Large amounts of carbon are stored in Arctic permafrost. As those soils thaw, rivers will transport much of their organic carbon to the oceans. As global warming speeds up the melting of shorefast ice (ice attached to the shore), it will likely accelerate coastal erosion from storms, providing a further supply of organic carbon to the coastal zone. ... As if there might be feedback systems we didn't already understand. Using the past as prologue? A waste of resources. ApocaDoc permalink Sat, May 9, 2009 from BBC: 'Climate threat' to Tibet region Rising temperatures in Tibet are threatening droughts and floods, which could endanger millions of people, China's top weather official warned. Climate change "has accelerated glacial shrinkage" which has already led to swollen lakes, said Zheng Guoguang. He said that if the warming continued, many of those living in western China would face "floods in the short-term and drought in the long-run". Beijing says it wants to tackle climate change yet ensure economic development. Experts say more than 400 million people in China are already living with the problem of desertification, partly brought on by climate change. ... Let's just blame it on the Dalai Lama. ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Apr 28, 2009 from London Guardian: Arctic CO2 levels growing at an 'unprecedented rate', say scientists Figures from a measuring station in northern Norway show that CO2 levels are increasing by 2-3 parts per million every year... The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached a record high, according to the latest figures released by an internationally regarded measuring station in the Arctic. The measurements suggest that the main greenhouse gas is continuing to increase in the atmosphere at an alarming rate despite the downturn in dip in the rate of increase of the global economy. Levels of the gas at the Zeppelin research station on Svalbard, northern Norway, last week peaked at over 397 parts per million (ppm), an increase of more than 2.5ppm on 2008. ... This is CO2 MUCH of an increase!!! ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Apr 9, 2009 from London Guardian: Obama climate adviser open to geo-engineering to tackle global warming The global warming situation has become so dire that Barack Obama's chief scientific adviser has raised with the president the possibility of massive-scale technological fixes to alter the climate known as 'geo-engineering'. John Holdren, who is a member of the president's cabinet, said today the drastic measures should not be "off the table" in discussions on how best to tackle climate change.... The suite of mega-technological fixes includes everything from placing mirrors in space that reflect sunlight from the Earth, to fertilising the oceans with iron to encourage the growth of algae that can soak up atmospheric carbon dioxide. Another option is to seed clouds which bounce the sun's rays back into space so they do not warm the Earth's surface. Such global-scale technological solutions to climate change may seem fantastical, but increasing numbers of scientists argue that the technologies should at least be investigated. ... Let's not rule out asking the Justice League to help. ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Apr 7, 2009 from San Francisco Chronicle: Arctic ice getting thinner, fading fast Ice in the ocean surrounding the Arctic is thinner than it's been in 30 years, and there's much less of it, say scientists who are monitoring the effects of climate change. At the same time, another team of climate scientists is predicting from earlier data that the Arctic's ice cover has been melting so rapidly over the past few years that much of it could be gone within another three decades. ... Ice getting thinner... Humans getting fatter.... Is there a connection here? ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Apr 5, 2009 from Reuters: Ice bridge holding Antarctic ice shelf cracks up An ice bridge which had apparently held a vast Antarctic ice shelf in place during recorded history shattered on Saturday and could herald a wider collapse linked to global warming, a leading scientist said. "It's amazing how the ice has ruptured. Two days ago it was intact," David Vaughan, a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey, told Reuters of a satellite image of the Wilkins Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula. The satellite picture, from the European Space Agency (ESA), showed that a 40 km (25 mile) long strip of ice believed to pin the Wilkins Ice Shelf in place had splintered at its narrowest point, about 500 meters wide. ... By "cracks up," I'm presuming they don't mean its funnybone was tickled. ApocaDoc permalink Sat, Apr 4, 2009 from Montreal Gazette: Climate clock is ticking We have already crossed some critical climate thresholds. The world not only has to drastically cut back its greenhouse gas emissions but also begin to take steps to deal with the inevitable changes that global warming will cause. The much-feared tipping points - which would cause massive icecap and ice shield melting, and plunge the world headlong into severe weather systems, causing broad devastation and rising seas - seem increasingly probable. This is why, scientists say, the United Nations climate talks that began this week in Bonn, Germany, and will culminate in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December, are so important. They are a last chance for the world to come to its senses and negotiate an agreement to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions. ... It's time to stop tiptoeing around tipping points. ApocaDoc permalink Sat, Apr 4, 2009 from Reuters: Wordie Ice Shelf has disappeared: scientists One Antarctic ice shelf has quickly vanished, another is disappearing and glaciers are melting faster than anyone thought due to climate change, U.S. and British government researchers reported on Friday. They said the Wordie Ice Shelf, which had been disintegrating since the 1960s, is gone and the northern part of the Larsen Ice Shelf no longer exists. More than 3,200 square miles (8,300 square km) have broken off from the Larsen shelf since 1986. Climate change is to blame, according to the report from the U.S. Geological Survey and the British Antarctic Survey, available at pubs.usgs.gov/imap/2600/B. "The rapid retreat of glaciers there demonstrates once again the profound effects our planet is already experiencing -- more rapidly than previously known -- as a consequence of climate change," U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement. ... Wordie up! Wordie... down... ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Apr 3, 2009 from Associated Press: Arctic sea ice is melting faster than expected, study shows Arctic sea ice is melting so fast that most of it could be gone in 30 years. A new analysis of changing conditions in the region, using complex computer models of weather and climate, says conditions that had been forecast for the end of the century could occur much sooner. A change in the amount of ice is important because the white surface reflects sunlight back into space. When ice is replaced by dark ocean water, the sunlight can be absorbed, warming the water and increasing the warming of the planet. ... Thirty years? That's all the time in the world. ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Apr 2, 2009 from Los Angeles Times: Report outlines possible effects of warming on California As California warms in coming decades, farmers will have less water, the state could lose more than a million acres of cropland and forest fire rates will soar, according to a broad-ranging state report released Wednesday. The document, which officials called the "the ultimate picture to date" of global warming's likely effect on California, consists of 37 research papers that examine an array of issues including water supply, air pollution and property losses. Without actions to limit greenhouse gas emissions, "severe and costly climate impacts are possible and likely across California," warned state environmental protection secretary Linda Adams. The draft Climate Action Team Report, an update of a 2006 assessment, concludes that some climate change effects could be more serious than previously thought. ... This "more serious than previously thought" remark is getting a little too familiar. ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Mar 26, 2009 from New Scientist: Arctic meltdown is a threat to humanity "I AM shocked, truly shocked," says Katey Walter, an ecologist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. "I was in Siberia a few weeks ago, and I am now just back in from the field in Alaska. The permafrost is melting fast all over the Arctic, lakes are forming everywhere and methane is bubbling up out of them." Back in 2006, in a paper in Nature, Walter warned that as the permafrost in Siberia melted, growing methane emissions could accelerate climate change. But even she was not expecting such a rapid change. "Lakes in Siberia are five times bigger than when I measured them in 2006. It's unprecedented. This is a global event now, and the inertia for more permafrost melt is increasing." ...What is certain is that the Arctic is warming faster than any other place on Earth. While the average global temperature has risen by less than 1 degree C over the past three decades, there has been warming over much of the Arctic Ocean of around 3 degrees C. In some areas where the ice has been lost, temperatures have risen by 5 degrees C. ... She's just being ... emotional. ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Mar 25, 2009 from Oregon State University, via EurekAlert: New wheat disease could spread faster than expected These historical studies of both plant and animal diseases show that some pathogens that can be carried through the air can actually accelerate as they move, and can become widespread problems much faster than had been thought possible.... ["T]his new study confirms that it is crucial to get prepared for the rapid spread of a new variety of wheat stem rust that appeared in Uganda in 1999." That new type of wheat stem rust, Mundt said, has the potential to attack 75 percent of the world's known wheat varieties, and in a bad year might cause up to 50 percent crop losses in some parts of the world. ... [--] and butter, [--] and chocolate... please, Lord, give us this day our daily [--]. ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Mar 18, 2009 from Gulf Times (Qatar): Warning over ocean acidity The study predicts "dangerous" levels of ocean acidification and severe consequences for organisms called marine calcifiers, which form chalky shells. It says: "We find the future rate of surface ocean acidification and environmental pressure on marine calcifiers very likely unprecedented in the past 65mn years." ... He said: "If we do not cut carbon dioxide emissions deeply, and soon, the consequences of ocean acidification will stand out against the broad reaches of geologic time. Those consequences will remain embedded in the geologic record as testimony from a civilisation that had the wisdom to develop high technology but did not develop the wisdom to use it wisely." ... You mean... they'll know what fools we were? ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Mar 15, 2009 from London Times: Artificial trees and brightened clouds may help to cool us down THE threat of devastating climate change is now so great that some scientists say it is time to investigate a Plan B - geo-engineering on a planetary scale. Such methods of altering the world’s climate may become necessary, they say, unless emissions of greenhouse gases fall within five years. Ideas that were once the realm of science fiction - such as creating artificial trees to absorb carbon dioxide, or reflecting sunlight away from the Earth - are coming under serious scrutiny as temperatures and CO2 emissions continue to rise. The issue has become so pressing that the Royal Society, Britain’s national academy of science, is preparing a report on the feasibility of geo-engineering.... One method under detailed analysis is to make clouds brighter – especially in the Pacific where the ocean temperature has great influence on world climate.... Professor Stephen Salter of Edinburgh University is investigating how ships could spray droplets of sea water into the atmosphere where they would evaporate, leaving tiny salt crystals to rise on air currents into the clouds. The crystals would act as “nuclei” around which water vapour could condense and thus increase the reflective power of the clouds, bouncing more of the sun’s energy back into space. ... I've looked at clouds from both sides now... ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Mar 15, 2009 from Climate Wire: Scientists are grim, economists more optimistic about climate change's effects COPENHAGEN -- Scientists are gloomy; economists are more upbeat. Such was the bottom line of an epic, three-day international congress of climate change experts that ended here yesterday. At the congress, it seemed that all the scientists had to share with their peers was bad news, but a number of economists saw the climate crisis rather as an historic opportunity to reorganize the world economy and develop new, clean and job-creating activities. At the opening of yesterday's session, Lord Nicholas Stern, former chief economist for the World Bank, added his own dose of gloom by saying that his now-famous report on the risks of global warming, written for the British government in 2006, had underestimated them. "The reason is that emissions are growing faster than we thought, the absorption capacity of the planet is less than we thought, the probability of high temperatures is likely higher than we thought, and some of the effects are coming faster than we thought," he explained. ... Good Lord! ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Mar 10, 2009 from Scitizen.com: Jeffrey Brown and the Net Oil Exports Crisis The genesis of his rather radical views--radical, that is, for a Texas oilman--are a simple question he asked himself several years ago: What happens to oil exports in a world with constrained oil supplies? ... His pondering led to the creation of the the Export Land Model. It goes something like this: A hypothetical oil exporter--let's call it Export Land--has reached its peak in oil production. Assume domestic users consume half of all the oil produced in Export Land at the moment; assume a 5 percent annual decline rate for production; and assume a 2½ percent annual increase in domestic consumption. The result is that Export Land reaches zero exports in an astonishingly short nine years. ... The ExportLand Emirates will be so sad to lose their buddies in ImportLand. ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Mar 10, 2009 from National Research Council, via EurekAlert: Acknowledging the 'change' in climate change Currently many state and local governments and private organizations are basing decisions -- such as how and where to build bridges or implement zoning laws -- on the assumption that current climate conditions will continue, an assumption that is no longer valid. Informing Decisions in a Changing Climte, new from the National Research Council, recommends principles for federal agencies to follow when conveying climate change information to these decision makers, and assesses whether a larger federal initiative to disseminate such information is needed. ... You mean we're not done yet with this climate change thing? ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Mar 5, 2009 from Reuters: Arctic summer ice could vanish by 2013: expert The Arctic is warming up so quickly that the region's sea ice cover in summer could vanish as early as 2013, decades earlier than some had predicted, a leading polar expert said on Thursday. Warwick Vincent, director of the Center for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec, said recent data on the ice cover "appear to be tracking the most pessimistic of the models", which call for an ice free summer in 2013. The year "2013 is starting to look as though it is a lot more reasonable as a prediction. But each year we've been wrong -- each year we're finding that it's a little bit faster than expected," he told Reuters. The Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world and the sea ice cover shrank to a record low in 2007 before growing slightly in 2008. In 2004 a major international panel forecast the cover could vanish by 2100. Last December, some experts said the summer ice could go in the next 10 or 20 years. ... That's four years of bliss! ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Feb 24, 2009 from Science Alert (Australia): Warm oceans slow coral growth It's official: the biggest and most robust corals on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) have slowed their growth by more than 14 per cent since the "tipping point" year of 1990. Evidence is strong that the decline has been caused by a synergistic combination of rising sea surface temperatures and ocean acidification.... "It is cause for extreme concern that such changes are already evident, with the relatively modest climate changes observed to date, in the world's best protected and managed coral reef ecosystem," according to AIMS scientist and co-author Dr Janice Lough.... "The data suggest that this severe and sudden decline in calcification is unprecedented in at least 400 years," said AIMS scientist and principal author Dr Glenn De'ath. ... I don't wanna hear no scientists saying "severe and sudden" or "extreme concern" about anything. ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Feb 24, 2009 from New York Times: Many Plans to Curtail Use of Plastic Bags, but Not Much Action SEATTLE -- Last summer, city officials here became the first in the nation to approve a fee on paper and plastic shopping bags in many retail stores. The 20-cent charge was intended to reduce pollution by encouraging reusable bags. But a petition drive financed by the plastic-bag industry delayed the plan. Now a far broader segment of Seattle's bag carriers -- its voters -- will decide the matter in an election in August. Even in a city that likes to be environmentally conscious, the outcome is uncertain. "You have to be really tone-deaf to what's going on to think that the economic climate is not going to affect people," said Rob Gala, a legislative aide to the city councilman who first sponsored the bill for the 20-cent fee. ... So... why don't we just bag the plastic altogether! ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Feb 24, 2009 from Washington Post: MIT Group Increases Global Warming Projections Report: High odds of warming over 5 degrees C (9 degrees F) if no action New research from MIT scientists shows that in the absence of stringent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, 21st century climate change may be far more significant than some previous climate assessments had indicated. The new findings, released this month by MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, showed significantly increased odds that by the end of the century warming would be on the high end of the scale for a so-called "no policy scenario" as compared with similar studies completed just six years ago. The main culprits: the cycling of heat and carbon dioxide in the climate system are now better understood and projections of future greenhouse gas emissions have increased. The results also showed that even if nations were to act quickly to reduce emissions, it is more likely that warming would be greater than previous studies had shown. However, the increase in projected temperatures under the "policy scenario" was not as large as for the no policy scenario. ... MIT: Massachusetts Institute of Terror! ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Feb 22, 2009 from London Daily Telegraph: Scientists capture dramatic footage of Arctic glaciers melting in hours Glaciologist Jason Box has been testing a Moulin, a shaft that allows water to travel from the glacier's surface to its bottom, in a glacier on the Greenland ice cap to find out how fast it is melting. Dr Box said: "The Moulin is the epicentre of our concern because all the water is running down at this one point. "It's just bottomless, no light escapes." Balanced on the edge of an ice sheet the team used a flow meter to measure the water speed.... The team found that in just one day 42 million litres fresh water drained down this one Moulin. Dr Box thinks there are hundreds, possibly thousands more Moulins across the Greenland ice cap. Greenland is losing enough water each year to cover Germany a metre deep. Dr Box, from Ohio State University, thinks the way to combat melting glaciers is to cover them with blankets that will reflect the sun's rays. ... Blankets... now that's thinking outside the Dr. Box! ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Feb 20, 2009 from London Guardian: Melt-pools 'accelerating Arctic ice loss' New research has revealed that melt-water pooling on the Arctic sea ice is causing it to melt at a faster rate than computer models had previously predicted. Scientists have been struggling to understand why the northern sea ice has been retreating at a faster rate than estimated by the most recent assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in 2007. The IPCC's computer models had simulated an average loss of 2.5 percent in sea ice extent per decade from 1953 to 2006. But in reality the Arctic sea ice had declined at a rate of about 7.8 percent per decade. Arctic sea ice has retreated so much that in September 2007 it covered an all-time low area of 4.14m km sq, surpassing by 23 percent the previous all-time record set in September 2005. And during the summer of 2008, the north-west and north-east passages - the sea routes running along the Arctic coastlines of northern America and northern Russia, normally perilously clogged with thick ice – were ice-free for the first time since records began in 1972. Part of the reasons for the discrepancy has to do with melt ponds, which are pools of melted ice and snow that form on the sea ice when it is warmed in spring and summer. As they are darker than ice and snow, they absorb solar radiation rather than reflect it, which accelerates the melting process. ... As Homer Simpson would say: Albe-d'oh! ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Feb 18, 2009 from NOAA, via Mongabay: CO2 levels rise to a new record Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations climbed 2.28 parts-per-million (ppm) in 2008 to the highest level in at least 650,000 years -- and possibly 20 million years -- reports NOAA. The average annual growth rate of CO2 concentrations this decade is now 2.1 ppm a year or 40 percent higher than that of the 1990s. CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are increasing at four times the rate of the previous decade.... Some scientists, including James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, warn that CO2 levels must be kept below 350 ppm to avoid serious impacts from climate change. CO2 concentrations are presently around 386 ppm. ... Guinness didn't want to see this. ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Feb 17, 2009 from New Scientist: North Atlantic is world's 'climate superpower' IF EVER there was a superpower of the oceans, the North Atlantic, with its ability to control global weather systems, is it. The bad news is that this region also happens to be especially sensitive to the effects of climate change, so what is happening there could affect the world. The planet's climate goes through periodic convulsions that affect every region simultaneously. The most recent were in the early 1940s and mid-1970s. The latter coincided with the start of more frequent El Nino events in the Pacific and a strong global warming trend.... But the findings will leave most climate scientists more worried. Today's climate is changing most dramatically in the far North Atlantic, with record warming and ice loss in recent years. If the climate's "tipping point" resides in these waters, then nature's synchronised chaos could unleash unexpectedly sudden and severe consequences. ... Why does Science always give us bad news? Can't reality fit our desires? ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Feb 15, 2009 from BBC (UK): Global warming 'underestimated' The severity of global warming over the next century will be much worse than previously believed, a leading climate scientist has warned. Professor Chris Field, an author of a 2007 landmark report on climate change, said future temperatures "will be beyond anything" predicted. Prof Field said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report had underestimated the rate of change. He said warming is likely to cause more environmental damage than forecast.... "We are basically looking now at a future climate that is beyond anything that we've considered seriously in climate policy," he said. ... Underestimated?! Even by the ApocaDocs? ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Feb 10, 2009 from NPR: Cholera Exhausts Zimbabwean Health Care System In December, the World Health Organization's worst-case scenario for Zimbabwe's cholera outbreak was that 60,000 people might become infected before the end of March. But already, nearly 70,000 cases of cholera have been reported. Despite the fact that cholera is relatively easy to treat and to prevent with basic hygiene and appropriate sanitation, more than 3,300 people have died of the disease since the outbreak began in August 2008, according to the WHO. A simple treatment of oral rehydration can save most lives, but health experts who have visited Zimbabwe recently say those measures simply aren't available because the economy is in meltdown. ... Let's hope Zimbabwe shall overcome their problems. ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Feb 9, 2009 from BusinessGreen: Emergency Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen to be held in March Climate change scientists are to hold an emergency summit in Copenhagen next month to collate the latest findings in climate science and step up pressure on the UN negotiating process to ensure any deal agreed later this year is informed by the scientific realities of global warming. The International Scientific Congress on Climate Change will run from 10-12 March and is being organised by the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU), including the University of Copenhagen, Yale, UC Berkeley, Tokyo, Oxford and Cambridge. It will feature keynotes from IPCC Chairman Dr. RK Pachauri, Lord Nicholas Stern, and President of the European Commission Jose M. Barroso, as well as a raft of the world's top climate scientists and will address the extent to which a "technological fix" to climate change is now possible, the likely costs of inaction, and the scale of the global security threat climate change presents. In addition, the conference aims to "bridge the four year data gap left by the leading global scientific body on climate change -- the IPCC -- with its latest reports". ... On the one hand, Great! Informed emergency measures are required. On the other, Gaah! It is that bad! ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Feb 9, 2009 from Times Online (UK): Polar ice caps melting faster THE ice caps are melting so fast that the world's oceans are rising more than twice as fast as they were in the 1970s, scientists have found. They have used satellites to track how the oceans are responding as billions of gallons of water reach them from melting ice sheets and glaciers. The effect is compounded by thermal expansion, in which water expands as it warms, according to the study by Anny Cazenave of the National Centre for Space Studies in France. These findings come at the same time as a warning from an American academic whose research suggests Labour's policies to cut carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050 are doomed. ... Can't we just turn back the clock? ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Jan 27, 2009 from Salt Lake Tribune: In climate fight, a time for civil disobedience? Take the train. Dial down your heat. Write your senator. Taking those individual steps surely helps in the battle against global warming. But, scientists and advocates warn, it's no longer enough to fend off climate disaster. Get ready, some of them say, to hijack oil-lease sales (like a college student did in Utah), to climb smokestacks in protest (like Greenpeace activists did in England), to trespass at power plants (like demonstrators plan to do in Washington, D.C.). It's time, these environmentalists say, for some good, old-fashioned civil disobedience -- the types of nonviolent acts proven effective by the famous (Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks) and the faceless (students at Tiananmen Square, anti-war protesters on college campuses, women suffragists in street marches). ... You mean I can't just e-mail and text and answer polls to save the earth? ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Jan 25, 2009 from London Guardian: Living on thin ice ...Based on occasional submarine journeys and more recently satellite data, charts of the total area of Arctic sea ice have shown a gradual decline over the past 40 years. Then, in 2007, the line on the chart appeared to drop off a cliff, plunging below 5,000,000 sq km a full three decades ahead of forecasts. The dramatic events of two summers ago, when a Russian submarine rushed to plant a flag under the pole and Canadian and European governments tersely laid rival claims to sovereignty, led many scientists to warn that the Arctic sea ice could disappear entirely during the summer months much sooner than had been feared. Most experts agree on the impact this will have on 5m Arctic inhabitants and the rest of the world - from the loss of the unique habitat that exists under the ice to rising global sea levels and possible changes to the ocean circulation and the weather patterns of the whole planet. Yet forecasts for when this will happen range from just four years to the end of the century. The reason is that very little is understood about the depth and density of the sea ice, and therefore the total volume of water frozen at the top of the world. This is what Hadow's Catlin Arctic Survey - appropriately sponsored by an insurance company - hopes to put right by providing the much-needed data about how much ice is left, and so help work out how much time we have to prepare for what is probably the most immediate, truly global threat of climate change. ... Of all the climate tipping points, the Arctic melt may be the tippiest point of all. ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Jan 18, 2009 from Canwest News Service: Climate warming 'highly unusual' says new study A major U.S. government report on Arctic climate, prepared with information from eight Canadian scientists, has concluded that the recent rapid warming of polar temperatures and shrinking of multi-year Arctic sea ice are "highly unusual compared to events from previous thousands of years." The findings, released Friday, counter suggestions from skeptics that such recent events as the opening of the Northwest Passage and collapse of ice shelves in the Canadian Arctic are predictable phenomena that can be explained as part of a natural climate cycle rather than being driven by elevated carbon emissions from human activity. A summary of the report -- described as "the first comprehensive analysis of the real data we have on past climate conditions in the Arctic," by U.S. Geological Survey director Mark Myers -- warns that "sustained warming of at least a few degrees" is probably enough "to cause the nearly complete, eventual disappearance of the Greenland ice sheet, which would raise sea level by several metres." ... The CO2 emissions from skeptics straining to explain away global warming just went up a couple ppm. ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Jan 16, 2009 from China.org.cn: Returning to 'normal' is no longer an option In the first half of the year, volatile commodity prices, especially for food and oil, hit the world's poorest people hard. In the second half was the global financial catastrophe. Yet, could the crises of food, fuel and finance that we experienced last year simply be three canaries in the coal mine? What if these are just the early warning signals that our current economic system is not sustainable at a much deeper level? ... Those of us in middle age today in richer countries are the third successive generation to benefit from the natural resource bubble that our first world economy has exploited since the mid-20th century. It is highly unlikely -- unless we make some deep, structural changes to how we manage our economy -- that our children and their children will experience the same sense of progress and wealth. ... A "natural resource bubble"? How absurd! House prices will always go up! ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Jan 2, 2009 from London Independent: Climate scientists: it's time for 'Plan B' An emergency "Plan B" using the latest technology is needed to save the world from dangerous climate change, according to a poll of leading scientists carried out by The Independent. The collective international failure to curb the growing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has meant that an alternative to merely curbing emissions may become necessary. The plan would involve highly controversial proposals to lower global temperatures artificially through daringly ambitious schemes that either reduce sunlight levels by man-made means or take CO2 out of the air. This "geoengineering" approach – including schemes such as fertilising the oceans with iron to stimulate algal blooms – would have been dismissed as a distraction a few years ago but is now being seen by the majority of scientists we surveyed as a viable emergency backup plan that could save the planet from the worst effects of climate change, at least until deep cuts are made in CO2 emissions. What has worried many of the experts, who include recognised authorities from the world's leading universities and research institutes, as well as a Nobel Laureate, is the failure to curb global greenhouse gas emissions through international agreements, namely the Kyoto Treaty, and recent studies indicating that the Earth's natural carbon "sinks" are becoming less efficient at absorbing man-made CO2 from the atmosphere. ... What the hell. Let's skip B and go right to Plan C! ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Jan 2, 2009 from The Economist: Troubled waters -- the ocean collapse The evidence abounds. The fish that once seemed an inexhaustible source of food are now almost everywhere in decline: 90 percent of large predatory fish (the big ones such as tuna, swordfish and sharks) have gone, according to some scientists. In estuaries and coastal waters, 85 percent of the large whales have disappeared, and nearly 60 percent of the small ones. Many of the smaller fish are also in decline. Indeed, most familiar sea creatures, from albatrosses to walruses, from seals to oysters, have suffered huge losses. All this has happened fairly recently. Cod have been caught off Nova Scotia for centuries, but their systematic slaughter began only after 1852; in terms of their biomass (the aggregate mass of the species), they are now 96 percent depleted. The killing of turtles in the Caribbean (99 percent down) started in the 1700s. The hunting of sharks in the Gulf of Mexico (45-99 percent, depending on the variety) got going only in the 1950s. ... You mean the ocean is a finite resource? Why didn't anyone tell me? ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Jan 1, 2009 from Guardian (UK): Slowdown of coral growth extremely worrying, say scientists Coral growth across the Great Barrier Reef has suffered a "severe and sudden" slowdown since 1990 that is unprecedented in the last four centuries, according to scientists. The researchers analysed the growth rates of 328 coral colonies on 69 individual reefs that make up the 1,250 mile-long Great Barrier Reef, off north-east Australia. They found that the rate at which the corals were laying down calcium in their skeletons dropped by 14.2 percent between 1990 and 2005.... the most probable explanation for the drop in the growth rate of the corals' calcium carbonate skeletons is acidification of the water due to rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. More acid water makes it more difficult for the coral polyps to grab the minerals they need to build their skeletons from the sea water. ... Please don't tell me "more study is needed..."! ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Jan 1, 2009 from New Scientist: More polar bears going hungry The number of undernourished bears has tripled in a 20-year period.... In 1985 and 1986 the proportion of bears fasting was 9.6 and 10.5 per cent respectively. By 2005 and 2006 this had risen to 21.4 and 29.3 per cent... "If the ice continues to contract, which seems inevitable, polar bears will become even more nutritionally disadvantaged. The study proves polar bears are in serious trouble," says Rick Steiner, a marine conservationist at the University of Alaska in Anchorage. ... "Nutritionally disadvantaged"? Should we be considering the polar bear just "collateral damage"? ApocaDoc permalink 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! ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Dec 18, 2008 from Times Online (UK): Seas will rise faster than predicted, say scientists Sea levels will rise much faster than previously forecast because of the rate that glaciers and ice sheets are melting, a study has found. Research commissioned by the US Climate Change Science Program concludes that the rises will substantially exceed forecasts that do not take into account the latest data and observations. The adjusted outlook, announced at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, suggests that recent predictions of a rise of between 7in and 2ft over the next century are conservative. ... YAFTE -- yet another "faster than expected"... ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Dec 18, 2008 from BBC: Changes 'amplify Arctic warming' ...Theory predicts that as ice is lost in the Arctic, more of the ocean's surface will be exposed to solar radiation and will warm up. When the autumn comes and the Sun goes down on the Arctic, that warmth should be released back into the atmosphere, delaying the fall in air temperatures. Ultimately, this feedback process should result in Arctic temperatures rising faster than the global mean. Dr [Julienne] Stroeve and colleagues have now analysed Arctic autumn (September, October, November) air temperatures for the period 2004-2008 and compared them to the long term average (1979 to 2008). The results, they believe, are evidence of the predicted amplification effect. "You see this large warming over the Arctic ocean of around 3C in these last four years compared to the long-term mean," explained Dr Stroeve. ... Sing with me: Tiiiiiimmmeee.... is NOT on our side.... ApocaDoc permalink 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! ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Dec 17, 2008 from Oregon State University, via EurekAlert: Some climate impacts happening faster than anticipated A report released today at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union provides new insights on the potential for abrupt climate change and the effects it could have on the United States, identifying key concerns that include faster-than-expected loss of sea ice, rising sea levels and a possibly permanent state of drought in the American Southwest.... While concluding that some projections of the impact of climate change have actually been too conservative -- as in the case of glacier and ice sheets that are moving and decaying faster than predicted -- others may not pose as immediate a threat as some scenarios had projected, such as the rapid releases of methane or dramatic shifts in the ocean current patterns that help keep Europe warm.... The "overarching" recommendation of the report is the need for committed and sustained monitoring of these climatic forces that could trigger abrupt climate change, the researchers concluded. ... "Sustained monitoring" is all well and good -- but let's also do some "sustained remediation," shall we? ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Dec 15, 2008 from Ohio State University, via EurekAlert: Greenland's glaciers losing ice faster this year than last year, which was record-setting itself Researchers watching the loss of ice flowing out from the giant island of Greenland say that the amount of ice lost this summer is nearly three times what was lost one year ago.... [T]he loss of ice since the year 2000 is 355.4 square miles (920.5 square kilometers), or more than 10 times the size of Manhattan. "We now know that the climate doesn't have to warm any more for Greenland to continue losing ice," Box said. "It has probably passed the point where it could maintain the mass of ice that we remember. "But that doesn't mean that Greenland's ice will all disappear. It's likely that it will probably adjust to a new 'equilibrium' but before it reaches the equilibrium, it will shed a lot more ice. ... Equilibria have no natural state -- they only equilibrate in relation to a static environment. Which we no longer have. ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Dec 15, 2008 from Guardian (UK): Global oil supply will peak in 2020, says energy agency Global oil production will peak much earlier than expected amid a collapse in petroleum investment due to the credit crunch, one of the world's foremost experts has revealed. Fatih Birol, chief economist to the International Energy Agency, told the Guardian that conventional crude output could plateau in 2020, a development that was "not good news" for a world still heavily dependent on petroleum. The prediction came as oil companies from Saudi Arabia to Canada cut their capital expenditure on new projects in response to a fall in oil prices, moves that will further reduce supply in future. ... My Hummer says the gas tank is full! ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Dec 12, 2008 from Toronto Globe and Mail: Scientists predict seasonal ice-free Arctic by 2015 QUEBEC -- Ice in the Canadian Arctic is melting at such an alarming pace due to climate change that the North will be seasonally ice free in six years, according to a study released yesterday from a groundbreaking scientific expedition. The dawning of a seasonal ice-free Canadian Arctic is upon us, said David Barber, one of the leading scientists on the 15-month expedition, adding the consequences for Inuit communities, the wildlife and the entire northern ecosystem are unpredictable. And it is happening much faster than anyone anticipated, he said, noting that only two years ago a seasonal ice-free Arctic was predicted by 2030. "I now believe that the Arctic will be out of multiyear ice in the summertime as early as 2015; it is coming very quickly," Dr. Barber said. "The whole system is in a very rapid rate of change. ... The Arctic is telling us that climate change is coming quicker and stronger." ... Quick! Someone distract me with a story about Amy Winehouse or Britney Spears. ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Dec 11, 2008 from Mongabay: Climate change will transform the chemical makeup of the ocean "The ocean's calcium cycle is closely linked to atmospheric carbon dioxide and the processes that control seawater's acidity," co-author of the paper, Ken Caldeira, adds. Already, increasing acidification of the ocean is decimating certain populations of coral. In past research Caldeira has pointed out that an increasingly acidic ocean will doom the world's fishing industry and degrade 98 percent of the world's coral reefs in less than fifty years.... "as CO2 increases and weather patterns shift, the chemical composition of our rivers will change, and this will affect the oceans. This will change the amount of calcium and other elements in ocean salts." "What we learned from this work is that the ocean system is much more sensitive to climate change than we have previously appreciated," Griffith adds. ... At least nothing in the ocean depends on calcium! Whew! ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Dec 11, 2008 from Guardian (UK): At Poznan, no one is listening to Peak Oil The community of nations have been talking for more than 18 years now about how to stop humanity's remorseless effort to cook its own home. These gabfests have largely been action-free zones. I have attended too many of them, but this year it was time to risk my blood-pressure on another.... One of my missions was an effort to raise the peak oil issue. I suspect that most of the 9,000-plus attendees -- diplomats, lobbyists and journalists -- may have little idea how strong the evidence is that a global energy crisis lurks just a few years in the future, and that it will have massive implications for climate change policymaking.... This year, for the first time, the IEA has conducted an oilfield-by-oilfield study of the world's existing oil reserves. It shows that the fields currently in production are running out alarmingly fast. The average depletion rate of 580 of the world's largest fields, all past their peak of production, is fully 6.7 percen per annum. ... Lalalala. Thank God there's only one crisis to be considered. ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Dec 10, 2008 from London Independent: Climate change: A battle for the planet Summing up what many scientists, environmentalists and politicians now think about the threat of climate change is simple: the world is drinking in the last chance saloon. Time is still available to tackle the warming of the atmosphere, which every government (including that of George Bush) today accepts is real, and being caused by human actions. But the window of opportunity is rapidly closing, and the last chance for the world to act in concert to bring the process under control is clearly visible: it is the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen scheduled for December 2009. ... Whew! We have one more year to enjoy denial! ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Dec 10, 2008 from Straight.com: Gwynne Dyer: Four harsh truths about climate change About 70 interviews, a dozen countries, and 18 months later, I have reached four conclusions that I didn’t even suspect when I began the process. The first is simply this: the scientists are really scared. Their observations over the past two or three years suggest that everything is happening a lot faster than climate models predicted. This creates a dilemma, because for the past decade they have been struggling against a well-funded campaign that cast doubt on climate change. Now, finally, people and even governments are listening. Even in the United States, the world headquarters of climate-change denial, 85 percent of the population now sees climate change as a major issue, and both major presidential candidates promised 80-percent cuts in American emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. The scientists are understandably reluctant at this point to announce publicly that their predictions were wrong, that it's really much worse, and that the targets will have to be revised. Most of them are waiting for overwhelming proof that climate change really is moving faster, even though they are already privately convinced that it is. ... When the scientists are afraid to admit they were underestimating -- well, it means they've been well-trained by the last eight years of ignorant "leadership." ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Dec 9, 2008 from London Guardian: Too late? Why scientists say we should expect the worst ... The cream of the UK climate science community sat in stunned silence as [climate scientist Kevin] Anderson pointed out that carbon emissions since 2000 have risen much faster than anyone thought possible, driven mainly by the coal-fuelled economic boom in the developing world. So much extra pollution is being pumped out, he said, that most of the climate targets debated by politicians and campaigners are fanciful at best, and "dangerously misguided" at worst. In the jargon used to count the steady accumulation of carbon dioxide in the Earth's thin layer of atmosphere, he said it was "improbable" that levels could now be restricted to 650 parts per million (ppm)....At 650ppm, the same fuzzy science says the world would face a catastrophic 4C average rise. ... ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Nov 30, 2008 from Agence France-Presse: Climate change gathers steam, say scientists PARIS (AFP)-- Earth's climate appears to be changing more quickly and deeply than a benchmark UN report for policymakers predicted, top scientists said ahead of international climate talks starting Monday in Poland. Evidence published since the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change's (IPCC) February 2007 report suggests that future global warming may be driven not just by things over which humans have a degree of control, such as burning fossil fuels or destroying forest, a half-dozen climate experts told AFP. Even without additional drivers, the IPCC has warned that current rates of greenhouse gas emissions, if unchecked, would unleash devastating droughts, floods and huge increases in human misery by century's end. But the new studies, they say, indicate that human activity may be triggering powerful natural forces that would be nearly impossible to reverse and that could push temperatures up even further. At the top of the list for virtually all of the scientists canvassed was the rapid melting of the Arctic ice cap. ... Those IPCC findings ... are sooooo yesterday. ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Nov 24, 2008 from University of Chicago, via EurekAlert: Ocean growing more acidic faster than once thought University of Chicago scientists have documented that the ocean is growing more acidic faster than previously thought. In addition, they have found that the increasing acidity correlates with increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a paper published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Nov. 24.... "The acidity increased more than 10 times faster than had been predicted by climate change models and other studies," Wootton said. "This increase will have a severe impact on marine food webs and suggests that ocean acidification may be a more urgent issue than previously thought, at least in some areas of the ocean." The ocean plays a significant role in global carbon cycles. When atmospheric carbon dioxide dissolves in water it forms carbonic acid, increasing the acidity of the ocean. During the day, carbon dioxide levels in the ocean fall because photosynthesis takes it out of the water, but at night, levels increase again. The study documented this daily pattern, as well as a steady increase in acidity over time. ... It burns! It burns! ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Nov 12, 2008 from Euractiv.com: Existing climate actions 'not good enough', EU warned Global warming is driving major environmental changes more quickly than expected, with the Earth's average temperature racing towards dangerous levels and the transition to a low-carbon economy stalling, leading climate experts say. The world is in even "more dire straits" than the worst predictions set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Johan Rockstrom, executive director of the Stockholm Environment Institute, told a climate change conference in Brussels yesterday... ... Mister Rockstrom could use a chill pill! ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Nov 7, 2008 from Agence France-Presse: The rate of warming is 'unprecedented' Washington - Research on Arctic and North Atlantic ecosystems shows the recent warming trend counts as the most dramatic climate change since the onset of human civilisation 5000 years ago, according to studies published on Thursday. Researchers from Cornell University studied the increased introduction of fresh water from glacial melt, oceanic circulation, and the change in geographic range migration of oceanic plant and animal species. The team, led by oceanographer Charles Greene, described "major ecosystem reorganisation" -- or "regime shift" -- in the North Atlantic, a consequence of global warming on the largest scale in five millennia... "The rate of warming we are seeing (now) is unprecedented in human history," said Greene... ... If only we could have changed some other regimes earlier. ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Oct 20, 2008 from The Independent (UK): Don't kill the planet in the name of saving the economy We are living through two great meltdowns -- the credit crunch, and the climate crunch. The heating of the planet is now happening so fast it's hard to pluck a single event to fix on, but here's one. By the summer of 2013, the Arctic will be free of ice. How big an event it this? The Wall Street Crash hadn't happened for 80 years. The Arctic Crash hasn't happened for three million years: that's the last time there was watery emptiness at the top of the world. The Arctic is often described as the canary in the coal mine. As one Arctic researcher put it to me this week: the canary is dead. It's time to clear the mine, and run. ... How can we clear the mine of so damn many canaries? ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Oct 13, 2008 from Toledo Blade: Climate change called certain and most predictions are bad Agriculture could become more difficult, with crop yields harder to maintain because of drier soils and more insects -- and too much rain at the wrong times.... The frequency of thunderstorms could be doubled, yet soil is expected to be drier and more prone to drought because of the increased rate of evaporation.... Expect more sneezing from pollen and ragweed, plus a variety of other health issues from more mushroom spores, mold, and poison ivy, he said. Portions of North America are now being affected by dust clouds emanating as far away as Africa's expanding deserts. ... More poison ivy? Now it's really getting serious. ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Oct 12, 2008 from Boston Globe: Driving Mr. Lynx ...A growing number of ecologists worry that conservation-as-usual won't be able to keep up with the predicted pace of climate change. To some of them, assisted migration is a more proactive tool for preserving nature's richness, and possibly the only hope for saving certain species. Others wonder whether it would amount to just the sort of meddling that infested the American South with kudzu and choked Northern wetlands with purple loosestrife. Scientific models are no match for the actual complexities of ecosystems, they argue, and humans have proven inartful at playing God. It is a debate that underlines a broader shift in ecology, as some say the field needs to move into a more activist role - away from simply protecting nature and toward reshaping it. ... Think of it as a thousand Noah's Arks saving one species at a time. ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Oct 6, 2008 from Associated Press: Fresh global warming fears as glaciers melt at alarming rate The latest report from the Icelandic government's Committee on Climate Change has warned that the country's glaciers will have all but disappeared by the next century, contributing to the threat of sea level rises, a British broadcaster has reported. Europe's largest glacier, Iceland's Vatnajokull, is melting because of rising temperatures and reduced snow fall, Sky News said... And for some, like farmer Olafur Eggertsson, the warmer temperatures in Iceland have lengthened his growing season, meaning higher profits for his produce. He has even been able to grow Iceland's first crop of wheat, Sky reported. ... Okay there, Olafur Eggertsson, aren't you Mr. SmartyPants! ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Oct 2, 2008 from CSIRO (Australia): Emissions rising faster this decade than last The latest figures on the global carbon budget to be released in Washington and Paris today indicate a four-fold increase in growth rate of human-generated carbon dioxide emissions since 2000. "This is a concerning trend in light of global efforts to curb emissions," says Global Carbon Project (GCP) Executive-Director, Dr Pep Canadell, a carbon specialist based at CSIRO in Canberra.... Dr Canadell said atmospheric carbon dioxide growth has been outstripping the growth of natural carbon dioxide sinks such as forests and oceans. ... Apparently 4X in seven years is "concerning." What would 10X be: "worrying"? What does it take before it's "panic-making"? ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Oct 1, 2008 from London Guardian: Met Office warns of need for drastic cuts in greenhouse gases from 2010 The world will have to take drastic action within two years to reduce greenhouse gas pollution if it is to avoid the worst effects of climate change, a new study warns... The study shows that cutting global emissions by 3 percent a year from 2010 offers the only possible hope of avoiding a global temperature rise of more than 2C - widely recognised as the threshold beyond which the worst impacts of sea level rise and drought become a significant risk. ... Whew! We still have a little over a year left to par-tay! ApocaDoc permalink Sat, Sep 27, 2008 from Associated Press: Global warming pollution increases 3 percent WASHINGTON - The world pumped up its pollution of the chief man-made global warming gas last year, setting a course that could push beyond leading scientists' projected worst-case scenario, international researchers said Thursday. The new numbers, called "scary" by some, were a surprise because scientists thought an economic downturn would slow energy use. Instead, carbon dioxide output jumped 3 percent from 2006 to 2007. ... There's some good news buried in this story: Denmark's emissions fell 8 percent. You go, Danes! ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Sep 19, 2008 from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: IMPACTS: On the Threshold of Abrupt Climate Changes "There are lots of names for abrupt climate change: nasty surprises, the jokers in the deck, the tipping point," Collins says. "When the national lab participants first met to decide on the most significant potential sources of abrupt climate change in future, the first thing we had to do was define what we meant: a large-scale change that happens more quickly than that brought on by forcing mechanisms -- on a scale of years to decades, not centuries -- and that persists for a very long time." ... Only half joking, Collins refers to these [four types of forcing mechanisms] as "the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse." ... Those wacky scientists -- what a bunch of cards! ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Sep 11, 2008 from The Economist: Adapt or die Two things have changed attitudes. One is evidence that global warming is happening faster than expected. Manish Bapna of the World Resources Institute, a think-tank in Washington, DC, believes "it is already too late to avert dangerous consequences, so we must learn to adapt." Second, evidence is growing that climate change hits two specific groups of people disproportionately and unfairly. They are the poorest of the poor and those living in island states: 1 billion people in 100 countries. Tony Nyong, a climate-change scientist in Nairobi, argues that people in poor countries used to see global warming as a Western matter: the rich had caused it and would with luck solve it. But the first impact of global warming has been on the very things the poorest depend on most: dry-land agriculture; tropical forests; subsistence fishing. ... Why don't they just get a job? ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Sep 2, 2008 from BBC: Climate 'hockey stick' is revived "A new study by climate scientists behind the controversial 1998 "hockey stick" graph suggests their earlier analysis was broadly correct. Michael Mann's team analysed data for the last 2,000 years, and concluded that Northern Hemisphere temperatures now are "anomalously warm". ... Guess that makes us the pucks. ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Sep 2, 2008 from Guardian (UK): Global warming: Sea level rises may accelerate due to melting ice sheet The vast Greenland ice sheet could begin to melt more rapidly than expected towards the end of the century, accelerating the rise in sea levels as a result of global warming, scientists warned yesterday. Water running off the ice sheet could triple the current rate of sea level rise to around 9mm a year, leading to a global rise of almost 1 metre per century, the researchers found.... There are signs that the Greenland ice sheet, which covers 1.7 million square kilometres of land, has already begun to melt faster than expected. The reason is thought to be surface water on the ice sheet trickling down through fissures to the underlying bedrock, making the ice sheet less stable, and the loss of buttressing ice shelves along the coastline. ... Uh-oh. "Faster than expected" has, thus far, preceded "holy shit" by only a year or two. ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Aug 31, 2008 from London Independent: For the first time in human history, the North Pole can be circumnavigated "Open water now stretches all the way round the Arctic, making it possible for the first time in human history to circumnavigate the North Pole, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. New satellite images, taken only two days ago, show that melting ice last week opened up both the fabled North-west and North-east passages, in the most important geographical landmark to date to signal the unexpectedly rapid progress of global warming." ... But really, this does not mean the polar bears are threatened, right? ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Aug 25, 2008 from AFP: Global warming time bomb trapped in Arctic soil: study Climate change could release unexpectedly huge stores of carbon dioxide from Arctic soils, which would in turn fuel a vicious circle of global warming, a new study warned Sunday. The study, published in the British journal Nature Geoscience, found that the stock of organic carbon "is considerably higher than previously thought" -- 60 percent more than the previously estimated. This is roughly equivalent to one sixth of the entire carbon content in the atmosphere. And that is just for North America. ... Feedback is only fun in rock concerts. ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Jul 6, 2008 from Guardian (UK): Wildlife extinction rates 'seriously underestimated' Endangered species may become extinct 100 times faster than previously thought, scientists warned today, in a bleak re-assessment of the threat to global biodiversity. Writing in the journal Nature, leading ecologists claim that methods used to predict when species will die out are seriously flawed, and dramatically underestimate the speed at which some plants and animals will be wiped out.... "Some species could have months instead of years left, while other species that haven't even been identified as under threat yet should be listed as endangered," said Melbourne. ... Why do we never see headlines that read human impact seriously overestimated? ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Jul 3, 2008 from Great Ape Trust: Orangutans 'declining more sharply' than previously estimated Endangered wild orangutan (Pongo spp.) populations are declining more sharply in Sumatra and Borneo than previously estimated, according to new findings published this month by Great Ape Trust of Iowa scientist Dr. Serge Wich and other orangutan conservation experts in Oryx – The International Journal of Conservation. Conservation action essential to survival of orangutans, found only on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, must be region-specific to address the different ecological threats to each species, said Wich and his co-authors, a pre-eminent group of scientists, conservationists, and representatives of governmental and non-governmental groups. The experts' revised estimates put the number of Sumatran orangutans (P. abelii) around 6,600 in 2004. This is lower than previous estimates of 7,501 as a result of new findings that indicate that a large area in Aceh that was previously thought to contain orangutans actually does not. ... In the Primate Death Match, humans are kicking ass -- though we may be sustaining mortal wounds in the process. ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Jun 12, 2008 from University of Alaska: Freshwater runoff from the Greenland Ice Sheet 'faster than previously calculated' "The Greenland Ice Sheet mass balance is changing as a response to the altered climatic state," said Mernild. "This is faster than expected. This affects freshwater runoff input to the North Atlantic Ocean, and plays an important role in determining the global sea level rise and global ocean thermohaline circulation." ... Unfortunately, the more we calculate, the faster it goes. ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Jun 12, 2008 from Seattle Times: Acidified ocean water rising up nearly 100 years earlier than scientists predicted In surveys from Vancouver Island to the tip of Baja California, the scientists found the first evidence that large amounts of corrosive water are reaching the continental shelf -- the shallow sea margin where most marine creatures live. In some places, including Northern California, the acidified water was as little as four miles from shore. "What we found ... was truly astonishing," said oceanographer Richard Feely, of [NOAA's] Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. "This means ocean acidification may be seriously impacting marine life on the continental shelf right now." ... We call this ocean reflux. ApocaDoc permalink Thu, Apr 24, 2008 from NOAA, via Science Daily: Greenhouse Gases, Carbon Dioxide And Methane, Rise Sharply In 2007 Last year alone global levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the primary driver of global climate change, increased by 0.6 percent, or 19 billion tons. Additionally methane rose by 27 million tons after nearly a decade with little or no increase. NOAA scientists released these and other preliminary findings today as part of an annual update to the agency's greenhouse gas index, which tracks data from 60 sites around the world.... Earth's oceans, vegetation, and soils soak up half of these emissions. The rest stays in the air for centuries or longer. Twenty percent of the 2007 fossil fuel emissions of carbon dioxide are expected to remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years, according to the latest scientific assessment by the International Panel on Climate Change. ... "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death." ApocaDoc permalink Sat, Apr 19, 2008 from Las Vegas Review-Journal: Scientist: Stop carbon emissions or face ruin "Droughts, more wildfires, hotter and longer summers and more violent storms will plague the desert Southwest if carbon-dioxide pollution continues, a leading climate-change scientist believes. Sea levels will rise several feet, covering the state of Florida, the country of Bangladesh and most beachfront property by the end of the century if people keep pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at the current rate, said James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies." ... Oh that James Hansen. Even if he found a silver lining in a cloud, it would be made of mercury. ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Apr 16, 2008 from New Scientist: World sea levels seen rising 1.5m by 2100 "Melting glaciers, disappearing ice sheets and warming water could lift sea levels by as much as 1.5 metres (4.9 feet) by the end of this century, displacing tens of millions of people, new research showed on Tuesday. Presented at a European Geosciences Union conference, the research forecasts a rise in sea levels three times higher than that predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) last year. The U.N. climate panel shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore." ... If you're not on a coast somewhere, start renovating that extra bedroom -- or turn your garage into housing -- you can make extra money housing refugees! ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Mar 30, 2008 from Fresno Bee: Moving to cooler ground "The 2,000-year-old giant sequoias east of Fresno have survived warm spells lasting centuries, but in just 100 years, global warming could snuff them out -- along with many Sierra Nevada species. Why? The current episode of climate change is moving faster than any warm-up detected in the past 500,000 years, many scientists say. Many say car exhaust and other global-warming emissions from human activities may be the reason." ... Possibly car exhaust from the Toyota Sequoia? ApocaDoc permalink Mon, Mar 24, 2008 from Guardian (UK): Climate change is accelerating The growth of developing economies in Africa, Asia and South America has accelerated global warming far beyond official predictions and it is developed nations that must act to halt the potentially catastrophic consequences, according to a new study from the world's leading temporary power supplier, Aggreko. The warning, which has shocked environment campaigners, comes from Aggreko's chief executive, Rupert Soames, who said: 'The threat of global warming is far greater than people have previously thought. The consensus figure on the world's power consumption going forward to 2015 is simply wrong.' ... That's so... unpredictable! Who could have imagined that "they" would want what "we" have? And use energy like "we" have? ApocaDoc permalink Wed, Mar 19, 2008 from Associated Press, via PhysOrg: Global warming rushes timing of spring "WASHINGTON - The capital's famous cherry trees are primed to burst out in a perfect pink peak about the end of this month. Thirty years ago, the trees usually waited to bloom till around April 5. In central California, the first of the field skipper sachem, a drab little butterfly, was fluttering about on March 12. Just 25 years ago, that creature predictably emerged there anywhere from mid-April to mid-May....Pollen is bursting. Critters are stirring. Buds are swelling. Biologists are worrying. "The alarm clock that all the plants and animals are listening to is running too fast," Stanford University biologist Terry Root said. Blame global warming. ... So in other words.... spring is having a premature ejaculation! ApocaDoc permalink Sat, Mar 1, 2008 from The Guardian: Gaia guru Lovelock: enjoy life while you can "[Climate scientist maverick James] Lovelock believes global warming is now irreversible, and that nothing can prevent large parts of the planet becoming too hot to inhabit, or sinking underwater, resulting in mass migration, famine and epidemics. Britain is going to become a lifeboat for refugees from mainland Europe, so instead of wasting our time on wind turbines we need to start planning how to survive. To Lovelock, the logic is clear. The sustainability brigade are insane to think we can save ourselves by going back to nature; our only chance of survival will come not from less technology, but more....He smiles and says: 'Enjoy life while you can. Because if you're lucky it's going to be 20 years before it hits the fan.'" ... We notice Lovelock left out the word "shit" -- perhaps that's why he seems so constipated in this article. Either that or he knows exactly what kind of shit we're in for. ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Feb 8, 2008 from Nature: Poor Projections "The extent to which sea level could rise by 2100 is greatly underestimated in current models, suggests a new study, highlighting the risk faced by coastal areas and island nations. Radley Horton at Columbia University, US, and colleagues estimated that sea level could rise by 54 to 89 centimetres by the end of the century, in contrast to the latest estimate by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of 18 to 59 centimetres." ... Seriously, by 2100 will anyone even care? ApocaDoc permalink Sun, Jan 13, 2008 from Globe and Mail (Canada): Antarctic ice sheet shrinking at faster rate But a new study released today, based on some of the most extensive measurements to date of the continent's ice mass, presents a worrisome development: Antarctica's ice sheet is shrinking, at a rate that increased dramatically from 1996 to 2006.... "Over the time period of our survey, the ice sheet as a whole was certainly losing mass, and the mass loss increased by 75 per cent in 10 years," the study said. ... Wait... ANTarctica too!? I was just getting my head around the Arctic cap melting down.... ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Dec 18, 2007 from NPR: Worries About Water as Chinese Glacier Retreats "China's lowest glacier, the Mingyong glacier -- an enormous, dirty, craggy mass of ice wedged in a mountain valley 8,900 feet above sea level -- is melting. And as it melts, the glacier on the edge of the Tibetan plateau is retreating up the mountain faster than experts can believe." ... One scientist said: "The change is actually really remarkable." Gee, out of context, it sounds like he's enjoying himself. ApocaDoc permalink Fri, Dec 14, 2007 from American Geophysical Union, by way of Reuters: Carbon cuts a must to halt warming -- US scientists "We're a lot closer to climate tipping points than we thought we were," said James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "If we are to have any chance in avoiding the points of no return, we're going to have to make some changes." .... "In the summer of 1980, the North Pole was covered by an ice sheet about the size of the continental United States, but this year the ice would not have covered the states west of the Mississippi River." ... Makes Bali and Kyoto sound like spitting at a fire to put it out. ApocaDoc permalink Tue, Dec 11, 2007 from AP News: Ominous Arctic melt worries experts "An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years. Greenland's ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer's end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by The Associated Press." ... One of the scientists quoted in the story says: "The Arctic is screaming." We can hear that scream all the way 'round the world. ApocaDoc permalink Copyright 2009 The Apocadocs.com