The ApocaDocs 2012 Year In Review
with punchlines.
The top 100 stories from the
729 news items recorded by the ApocaDocs in 2012.
Jumpin' January!
Tue, Jan 3, 2012 from The Daily Climate: Climate coverage down again in 2011 Media coverage of climate change continued to tumble in 2011, declining roughly 20 percent from 2010's levels and nearly 42 percent from 2009's peak, according to analysis of DailyClimate.org's archive of global media. ...
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?
Fri, Jan 6, 2012 from Popular Science: Monkey Embryo Mashup Results In First Primate Chimeras Scientists have produced the world's first chimeric monkeys, developed from stem cells harvested from separate embryos. They contain genetic material from as many as six genomes. The infant rhesus monkeys are totally healthy and could hold great promise for future stem cell research in primates, researchers say. They also carry an interesting and controversial message for future stem cell research: Those cultured stem cell lines in labs throughout this country, such a crucial scientific tool and such a cultural flashpoint, may not be as potent as the ones inside embryos....
Chimeras are nothing new to science -- chimeric mice are created all the time to form knockout models with deleted gene sequences. Nobody would ever create a chimeric human, but chimeric mice and other animal models can be used to study diseases and regenerative medicine. ...
Thu, Jan 12, 2012 from Agence France-Press: 'Doomsday' ticks closer on nuclear, climate fears Global uncertainty on how to deal with the threats of nuclear weapons and climate change have forced the "Doomsday clock" one minute closer to midnight, leading international scientists said Tuesday. "It is now five minutes to midnight," said Allison Macfarlan, chair of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which created the Doomsday clock in 1947 as a barometer of how close the world is to an apocalyptic end. ...
Tue, Jan 17, 2012 from Inter Press Service: Melting Ice Makes Arctic Access a Hot Commodity China, Brazil and India want seats on the Arctic Council as global warming creates new opportunities for shipping and resource extraction in the vast Arctic region.
There are concerns this is the beginning of a 21st century "scramble for the Arctic", but rather than staking territorial claims, non- Arctic countries want to exert economic and political influence in the region.
China already has a research station in Norway's high Arctic and is building an 8,000-tonne icebreaker. ...
Fri, Jan 20, 2012 from Associated Press: World not quite as hot in 2011; ranks 11th warmest The world last year wasn't quite as warm as it has been for most of the past decade, government scientists said Thursday, but it continues a general trend of rising temperatures.
The average global temperature was 57.9 degrees Fahrenheit, making 2011 the 11th hottest on record, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. That's 0.9 degrees warmer than the 20th century average, officials said. In fact, it was hotter than every year last century except 1998... This marks the 35th straight year that global temperatures were warmer than normal. NOAA's records for world average temperatures date back to 1880. ...
Tue, Jan 31, 2012 from ArsTechnica: Ocean acidification already well beyond natural variability Ocean acidification entails a decrease in the pH of ocean water as the carbonate that buffers it is consumed. That carbonate does more than just maintain pH, though. Lots of marine organisms, from plankton to mollusks to coral, use it to build shells and skeletons. As the buffer is depleted, the saturation state of carbonate minerals like calcite (and its polymorph aragonite) decreases, making it more difficult for organisms to incorporate them. In most areas of the surface ocean, calcite and aragonite are supersaturated, making it easy for organisms to build shells and skeletons. In undersaturated water, the equilibrium tilts the other way, and dissolution of these structures becomes possible....
In all areas where coral reefs are found (these are often described as the "rainforests of the sea" for their astonishing diversity and abundance of life), the researchers find that the current saturation state of aragonite is well below the pre-industrial average. To put it into concrete terms, they estimate that calcification rates of reef organisms have already dropped by about 15 percent. Under the A1B emissions scenario, calcification rates would decrease by a total of 40 percent (relative to pre-industrial) by 2100. ...
I'd have to accept this, were I to kowtow to the tyranny of facts.
Wed, Feb 8, 2012 from Bill McKibben, on TomDispatch: The Great Carbon Bubble Still, [the energy companies] could theoretically invest all that cash in new clean technology or research and development for the same. As it happens, though, they've got a deeper problem, one that's become clear only in the last few years. Put briefly: their value is largely based on fossil-fuel reserves that won't be burned if we ever take global warming seriously.
When I talked about a carbon bubble at the beginning of this essay, this is what I meant. Here are some of the relevant numbers, courtesy of the Capital Institute: we're already seeing widespread climate disruption, but if we want to avoid utter, civilization-shaking disaster, many scientists have pointed to a two-degree rise in global temperatures as the most we could possibly deal with.
If we spew 565 gigatons more carbon into the atmosphere, we'll quite possibly go right past that reddest of red lines. But the oil companies, private and state-owned, have current reserves on the books equivalent to 2,795 gigatons -- five times more than we can ever safely burn. It has to stay in the ground.
Put another way, in ecological terms it would be extremely prudent to write off $20 trillion worth of those reserves. In economic terms, of course, it would be a disaster, first and foremost for shareholders and executives of companies like ExxonMobil (and people in places like Venezuela).
If you run an oil company, this sort of write-off is the disastrous future staring you in the face as soon as climate change is taken as seriously as it should be, and that's far scarier than drought and flood. It's why you'll do anything -- including fund an endless campaigns of lies -- to avoid coming to terms with its reality. ...
That's twenty trillion dollars of economic development!
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. ...
Tue, Feb 14, 2012 from Wales News: Dramatic changes to sea algae could have harmful effects for human health: Welsh academics DRAMATIC changes to sea algae could have harmful knock-on effects for human health and the rest of the food chain, research from Welsh scientists has revealed.
Findings published by academics from Swansea University have uncovered huge changes in the make-up of North Sea and North Atlantic Ocean algae in the space of five years.
The changes seen in algal blooms -- shifting from dinoflagellate to diatom algaes -- could mean a build-up of toxins on feeder organisms....
Professor Graeme Hays, from Swansea's Department of Biosciences in the College of Science, and an author in the study, said: "Imagine looking at your garden one morning and finding that the grass had suddenly been replaced by bushes.
This may sound far-fetched, but we have found changes of this magnitude in the biology of the North Atlantic, with a dramatic switch in the prevalence of dinoflagellates to diatoms -- two groups which include many of the microscopic planktonic plants forming the base of the ocean's food chain."
...
Tue, Feb 14, 2012 from Tom Philpott, Mother Jones: Dow and Monsanto Team Up on the Mother of All Herbicide Marketing Plans Last summer, Roundup-resistant superweeds flourished in huge swathes of US farmland, forcing farmers to apply gushers of toxic herbicide cocktails and even resort to hand-weeding--not a fun thing to do on a huge farm. A recent article in the industrial-ag trade journal Delta Farm Press summed up the situation: "Days of Easy Weed Control Are Over."...
Dow's new herbicide-resistant product promises to bring those days back. In its petition to the USDA to approve 2,4-D-resistant corn, the company explicitly pitched it as the answer to farmers' Roundup trouble. The 2,4-D trait will be "stacked" with Monsanto's Roundup trait to "generate commercial hybrids with multiple herbicide tolerances," the petition states. Note that the new product marks a point of collusion, not competition, between industry titans Dow and Monsanto--they plan to license the 2,4-D and Roundup traits to each other to form "stacked" hybrids....
The authors note that even by Dow and Monsanto's reckoning, a new stacked 2,4-D/Roundup-resistant product would immediately lead to an increase in herbicide use, because the companies have been advocating an herbicide program that combines current rates of Roundup use with a roughly equal amounts of 2,4-D. That's good for sales, but not so good for the environment....
[T]he advocacy group Beyond Pesticides points to both epidemiological and lab-based evidence linking it non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and other cancers. It's also an endocrine disruptor, Beyond Pesticides reports, meaning it can "interfere with the body's hormone messaging system and can alter many essential processes."... ...
Corpetition between frenemies can't end well for the rest of us.
Wed, Feb 15, 2012 from Japan Times: Deep-sea temperature up 0.02 degree every decade Seawater to a depth of up to 700 meters is warming at a pace of 0.02 degree every 10 years worldwide, according to an analysis by the Meteorological Agency. In its first analysis into deep-water temperatures, the agency says that rises in seawater temperatures could lead to higher sea levels because heat expands, and to an accelerated pace of global warming because the warmer water may absorb less carbon dioxide. ...
Geoengineering idea: Drop Titanic-sized ice cubes into ocean.
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.
Tue, Feb 21, 2012 from London Guardian: Civilisation faces 'perfect storm of ecological and social problems' Celebrated scientists and development thinkers today warn that civilisation is faced with a perfect storm of ecological and social problems driven by overpopulation, overconsumption and environmentally malign technologies.
In the face of an "absolutely unprecedented emergency", say the 18 past winners of the Blue Planet prize -- the unofficial Nobel for the environment -- society has "no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilisation. Either we will change our ways and build an entirely new kind of global society, or they will be changed for us". ...
Wed, Feb 29, 2012 from Los Angeles Times: Global warming feeds bark beetles: Are they unstoppable? Hear the sound of chewing out in our vast forests of lodgepole pine, spruce and fir, the chewing that's already destroyed half the commercial timber in important regions like British Columbia? That's the sound of climate change, says biologist Reese Halter. Global warming in the form of a bark beetle... As winters grow warmer and summers drier, the West's evergreen forests are being eaten alive. And the infestation is not showing any signs of slowing.
The most disturbing part? Halter puts the blame squarely on climate change, of which the infestations are not only a symptom but a cause -- a feedback loop. ...
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. ...
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. ...
Tue, Mar 27, 2012 from USA Today: Study: Global temperatures could rise 5 degrees by 2050 As the USA simmers through its hottest March on record -- with more than 6,000 record high temperatures already set this month -- a new study released Sunday shows that average global temperatures could climb 2.5 to 5.4 degrees by 2050 if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated.
The study findings are based on the results of 10,000 computer model simulations of future weather overseen by researchers at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. ...
Wed, Mar 28, 2012 from Associated Press: Japan reactor has fatally high radiation, no water One of Japan's crippled nuclear reactors still has fatally high radiation levels and hardly any water to cool it, according to an internal examination Tuesday that renews doubts about the plant's stability.
A tool equipped with a tiny video camera, a thermometer, a dosimeter and a water gauge was used to assess damage inside the No. 2 reactor's containment chamber for the second time since the tsunami swept into the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant a year ago. The probe done in January failed to find the water surface and provided only images showing steam, unidentified parts and rusty metal surfaces scarred by exposure to radiation, heat and humidity.
The data collected from the probes showed the damage from the disaster was so severe, the plant operator will have to develop special equipment and technology to tolerate the harsh environment and decommission the plant, a process expected to last decades. ...
Wed, Mar 28, 2012 from Reuters: Global warming close to becoming irreversible-scientists The world is close to reaching tipping points that will make it irreversibly hotter, making this decade critical in efforts to contain global warming, scientists warned on Monday.... Despite this sense of urgency, a new global climate treaty forcing the world's biggest polluters, such as the United States and China, to curb emissions will only be agreed on by 2015 - to enter into force in 2020 ...
Thu, Mar 29, 2012 from New York Times: Scientists Look to Thinning Ice to Explain Weather Weirding Lurching from one weather extreme to another seems to have become routine across the Northern Hemisphere. Parts of the United States may be shivering now, but Scotland is setting heat records. Across Europe, people died by the hundreds during a severe cold wave in the first half of February, but a week later revelers in Paris were strolling down the Champs-Elysees in their shirt-sleeves....
"The question really is not whether the loss of the sea ice can be affecting the atmospheric circulation on a large scale," said Jennifer A. Francis, a Rutgers University climate researcher. "The question is, how can it not be, and what are the mechanisms?"...
"A changing climate leads to changes in the frequency, intensity, spatial extent, duration and timing of extreme weather and climate events, and can result in unprecedented extreme weather and climate events," the report found....
February was the 324th consecutive month in which global temperatures exceeded their long-term average for a given month; the last month with below-average temperatures was February 1985.
...
Sun, Apr 1, 2012 from AFP, via Yahoo: Scientists warn of 'emergency on global scale' In a "State of the Planet" declaration issued after a four-day conference, the scientists said Earth was now facing unprecedented challenges, from water stress, pollution and species loss to spiralling demands for food.
They called on the June 20-22 followup to the 1992 Earth Summit to overhaul governance of the environment and sweep away a fixation with GDP as the sole barometer of wellbeing.
"The continuing function of the Earth system as it has supported the wellbeing of human civilisation in recent centuries is at risk," said the statement issued at the "Planet Under Pressure" conference.
"These threats risk intensifying economic, ecological and social crises, creating the potential for a humanitarian emergency on a global scale." ...
Astonishingly, Lindsay Lohan still hasn't slept with Justin Bieber.
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.
Mon, Apr 2, 2012 from Bloomberg BusinessWeek: 'Mind Boggling' Warmth Set or Tied 7,577 Highs Chicago had its all-time warmest March, while New York's Central Park had its second-hottest as thousands of new weather records were set or tied across the U.S., according to the National Weather Service.
The average temperature for the month in Chicago was 53.5 degrees Fahrenheit (11.9 Celsius). That topped the previous mark of 48.6 degrees, set in 1910 and matched in 1945, the weather service said, citing data compiled since 1873.
In New York, the average temperature was 50.9 degrees, which was 8.9 degrees above normal, while below the record 51.1 degrees in 1945, according to the weather service.
"To put it in perspective, if it was April, it would still be in the top 10, as far as warmest. It is mind-boggling," said Tom Kines, a meteorologist for AccuWeather Inc. in State College, Pennsylvania. "There are many areas across the upper Midwest that have had their warmest March ever. That seems to be where the core of the warmth was." ...
Once again, reality is implying that warmists have a point.
Tue, Apr 3, 2012 from Neorenaissance: A Message from a Republican Meteorologist on Climate Change I'm going to tell you something that my Republican friends are loath to admit out loud: climate change is real. I am a moderate Republican, fiscally conservative; a fan of small government, accountability, self-empowerment, and sound science. I am not a climate scientist. I'm a meteorologist, and the weather maps I'm staring at are making me uncomfortable. No, you're not imagining it: we've clicked into a new and almost foreign weather pattern. To complicate matters, I'm in a small, frustrated and endangered minority: a Republican deeply concerned about the environmental sacrifices some are asking us to make to keep our economy powered-up, long-term. It's ironic. The root of the word conservative is "conserve." A staunch Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, set aside vast swaths of America for our National Parks System, the envy of the world. Another Republican, Richard Nixon, launched the EPA. Now some in my party believe the EPA and all those silly "global warming alarmists" are going to get in the way of drilling and mining our way to prosperity. Well, we have good reason to be alarmed. ...
You know you're in big trouble when the Republican meteorologist is uncomfortable!
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." ...
Thu, Apr 5, 2012 from RealClimate: Thirty-year-old global temperature predictions close to spot-on -- even a bit optimistic Sometimes it helps to take a step back from the everyday pressures of research (falling ill helps). It was in this way we stumbled across [James] Hansen et al (1981) (pdf)....
They got 10 pages in Science, which is a lot, but in it they cover radiation balance, 1D and 3D modelling, climate sensitivity, the main feedbacks (water vapour, lapse rate, clouds, ice- and vegetation albedo); solar and volcanic forcing; the uncertainties of aerosol forcings; and ocean heat uptake. Obviously climate science was a mature field even then: the concepts and conclusions have not changed all that much. Hansen et al clearly indicate what was well known (all of which still stands today) and what was uncertain....
To conclude, a projection from 1981 for rising temperatures in a major science journal, at a time that the temperature rise was not yet obvious in the observations, has been found to agree well with the observations since then, underestimating the observed trend by about 30 percent, and easily beating naive predictions of no-change or a linear continuation of trends.
...
It's hard to believe that the warmist conspiracy was underway that long ago!
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." ...
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.
Mon, Apr 16, 2012 from Associated Press: As ice cap melts, militaries vie for Arctic edge To the world's military leaders, the debate over climate change is long over. They are preparing for a new kind of Cold War in the Arctic, anticipating that rising temperatures there will open up a treasure trove of resources, long-dreamed-of sea lanes and a slew of potential conflicts.
By Arctic standards, the region is already buzzing with military activity, and experts believe that will increase significantly in the years ahead.
...
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?
Tue, Apr 24, 2012 from The Independent: New climate threat as methane rises from cracks in Arctic ice A new source of methane - a greenhouse gas many times more powerful than carbon dioxide - has been identified by scientists flying over areas in the Arctic where the sea ice has melted....
Eric Kort of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said that he and his colleagues were surprised to see methane levels rise so dramatically each time their research aircraft flew over cracks in the sea ice.
"When we flew over completely solid sea ice, we didn't see anything in terms of methane. But when we flew over areas were the sea ice had melted, or where there were cracks in the ice, we saw the methane levels increase," Dr Kort said. "We were surprised to see these enhanced methane levels at these high latitudes. Our observations really point to the ocean surface as the source, which was not what we had expected," he said.
"Other scientists had seen high concentrations of methane in the sea surface but nobody had expected to see it being released into the atmosphere in this way," he added. ...
That tipping point is tap-tap-tapping, tap-tap-tapping on our climate door....
Thu, Apr 26, 2012 from ScienceDaily: Wind Pushes Plastics Deeper Into Oceans, Driving Trash Estimates Up After taking samples of water at a depth of 16 feet (5 meters), Proskurowski, a researcher at the University of Washington, discovered that wind was pushing the lightweight plastic particles below the surface. That meant that decades of research into how much plastic litters the ocean, conducted by skimming only the surface, may in some cases vastly underestimate the true amount of plastic debris in the oceans, Proskurowski said....
[D]ata collected from just the surface of the water commonly underestimates the total amount of plastic in the water by an average factor of 2.5. In high winds the volume of plastic could be underestimated by a factor of 27....
Proskurowski gathered data on a 2010 North Atlantic expedition where he and his team collected samples at the surface, plus an additional three or four depths down as far as 100 feet.
"Almost every tow we did contained plastic regardless of the depth," he said. ...
That plastic could be the result of natural variation, couldn't it? Hunh?
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. ...
Wed, May 9, 2012 from Washington Post: U.S. completes warmest 12-month period in 117 years As far back as records go (1895), never has the U.S. strung together 12 straight months warmer than May 2011 to April 2012 according to new data released today by NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC).
The record-setting 12-month period edged out November 1999-October 2000, the 2nd warmest 12-month period, by 0.1 degrees F. The average temperature was 2.8 degrees F above the 20th century average. ...
Thu, May 10, 2012 from New York Times Op-ed: James Hansen: Game Over for the Climate If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.
Canada's tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now....
That is the long-term outlook. But near-term, things will be bad enough. Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California's Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels.
If this sounds apocalyptic, it is. This is why we need to reduce emissions dramatically....
The science of the situation is clear -- it's time for the politics to follow.
...
If we slam the brakes on, we'll have to cope with the SQID: the Status Quo Inertia Disorder.
Tue, May 15, 2012 from PhysOrg: Scientists sound acid alarm for plankton The microscopic organisms on which almost all life in the oceans depends could be even more vulnerable to increasingly acidic waters than scientists realised, according to a new study.
Previous experiments have given an unduly optimistic view of the impact of acidifying oceans on plankton; it turns out that the methods used may have biased their results.
"Plankton often grow in clumps or aggregates," says Professor Kevin Flynn of Swansea University, lead author of the study. "But the way they are handled tends to break these clumps up. When a scientists starts working on a plankton sample in the lab, the first thing they do is give it a good shake."...
They found that if predictions of general ocean acidification come true, many kinds of plankton will face much more acidic conditions, and more widely varying conditions over each day, than previously realized - conditions far beyond anything seen in recent history. The results are likely to be stunted growth, or even death....
In another twist, as seawater gets more acidic, its capacity to protect against even more acidity diminishes, so general ocean acidification will increase the impact of the local acidification that plankton trigger. ...
Mon, May 21, 2012 from BBC: Arctic melt releasing ancient methane Scientists have identified thousands of sites in the Arctic where methane that has been stored for many millennia is bubbling into the atmosphere.
The methane has been trapped by ice, but is able to escape as the ice melts.
Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this ancient gas could have a significant impact on climate change.
Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas after CO2 and levels are rising after a few years of stability... Using aerial and ground-based surveys, the team identified about 150,000 methane seeps in Alaska and Greenland in lakes along the margins of ice cover. ...
Mon, May 28, 2012 from InsideClimate News: Why Tar Sands Oil Is More Polluting and Why It Matters The debate over the Keystone XL oil pipeline heated up again last week after the Congressional Research Service issued a report saying the project could raise U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 21 million metric tons a year -- the equivalent of adding 4 million cars to the road.
The Congressional Research Service is a branch of the Library of Congress that conducts policy analysis for lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Released last Tuesday -- less than two weeks after TransCanada re-applied for a permit to build the Keystone XL -- the report found that crude oil produced from Canadian oil sands (also known as tar sands) emits 14 to 20 percent more planet-warming gases than the conventional oil that is typically found in U.S. refineries. ...
Whoever created this report should be tar sandsed and feathered.
Tue, May 29, 2012 from EnvironmentalResearchWeb: Latest Southern Ocean research shows continuing deep ocean change Comparing detailed measurements taken during the Australian Antarctic program's 2012 Southern Ocean marine science voyage to historical data dating back to 1970, scientists estimate there has been as much as a 60 per cent reduction in the volume of Antarctic Bottom Water, the cold dense water that drives global ocean currents....
"It's a clear signal to us that the oceans are responding rapidly to variations in climate in polar regions. The sinking of dense water around Antarctica is part of a global pattern of ocean currents that has a strong influence on climate, so evidence that these waters are changing is important," Dr Rintoul said....
"When we speak of global warming, we really mean ocean warming: more than 90 per cent of the extra heat energy stored by the earth over the last 50 years has gone into warming up the ocean...." ...
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. ...
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.
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. ...
Tue, Jun 12, 2012 from New York Times: Warming Will Unlock Carbon in Forests, Study Warns ...scientists have identified another feedback loop that may be accelerating the loss of carbon dioxide from the topsoil of forests in the United States, contributing to climate change. In a study published online on Monday, researchers at the University of California, Irvine, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that as temperatures rise, activity increases among the microbes that eat the topsoil and exhale carbon dioxide afterward.
While that finding is not surprising, said the lead author, Francesca Hopkins, a doctoral researcher in the Department of Earth System Science at Irvine, she and her collaborators also found that in warmer temperatures the microbes were better able to digest decades-old carbon stored in the soils. ...
Tue, Jul 3, 2012 from MediaMatters, via LivingGreen Magazine: Study Finds Kardashians Get 40 Times More News Coverage Than Ocean Acidification Carbon dioxide emissions are not just warming up our atmosphere, they're also changing the chemistry of our oceans. This phenomenon is known as ocean acidification, or sometimes as global warming's "evil twin" or the "osteoporosis of the sea."
Scientists have warned that it poses a serious threat to ocean life. Yet major American news outlets covered the Kardashians over 40 times more often than ocean acidification over the past year and a half....
According to the National Research Council, the chemical changes are taking place "at an unprecedented rate and magnitude" and are "practically irreversible on a time scale of centuries." ...
Well... yeah. The Kardashians require much more explanatory text.
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.
Hard to believe that we do this every day,
isn't it?
You can too! Make a New Year's Resolution to
pay attention and make some noise. We're doing this to
ourselves. We can mitigate it.
More, daily, at ApocaDocs.com
Mon, Jul 9, 2012 from Alternet: Climate Change: 'This Is Just the Beginning' Evidence supporting the existence of climate change is pummeling the United States this summer, from the mountain wildfires of Colorado to the recent "derecho" storm that left at least 23 dead and 1.4 million people without power from Illinois to Virginia. The phrase "extreme weather" flashes across television screens from coast to coast, but its connection to climate change is consistently ignored, if not outright mocked. If our news media, including -- or especially -- the meteorologists, continue to ignore the essential link between extreme weather and climate change, then we as a nation, the greatest per capita polluters on the planet, may not act in time to avert even greater catastrophe. More than 2,000 heat records were broken last week around the U.S. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the government agency that tracks the data, reported that the spring of 2012 :marked the largest temperature departure from average of any season on record for the contiguous United States." ...
Tue, Jul 10, 2012 from New York Times: A Gold Rush in the Abyss ... A new understanding of marine geology has led to the discovery of hundreds of these unexpected ore bodies, known as massive sulfides because of their sulfurous nature.
These finds are fueling a gold rush as nations, companies and entrepreneurs race to stake claims to the sulfide-rich areas, which dot the volcanic springs of the frigid seabed. The prospectors -- motivated by dwindling resources on land as well as record prices for gold and other metals -- are busy hauling up samples and assessing deposits valued at trillions of dollars. ...
Please, God: Let us never run out of places to ravage for our insatiable appetites. Amen
Mon, Jul 16, 2012 from NOAA via ScienceDaily: Back-To-Back La Ninas Cooled Globe and Influenced Extreme Weather in 2011 Worldwide, 2011 was the coolest year on record since 2008, yet temperatures remained above the 30 year average, according to the 2011 State of the Climate report released online today (July 10, 2012) by NOAA ... Two back-to-back La Ninas, each characterized by cooler-than-average water temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific, affected regional climates and influenced many of the world's significant weather events throughout the year. ...
Cormac McCarthy: You never know what worse luck your bad luck is saving you from.
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. ...
Sat, Jul 21, 2012 from Bill McKibben, in Rolling Stone: Global Warming's Terrifying New Math June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere - the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe....
The First Number: 2 Degrees Celsius... The Second Number: 565 Gigatons... Scientists estimate that humans can pour roughly 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by midcentury and still have some reasonable hope of staying below two degrees.... The Third Number: 2,795 Gigatons...
The number describes the amount of carbon already contained in the proven coal and oil and gas reserves of the fossil-fuel companies, and the countries (think Venezuela or Kuwait) that act like fossil-fuel companies. In short, it's the fossil fuel we're currently planning to burn. And the key point is that this new number - 2,795 - is higher than 565. Five times higher. ...
Is that scale algorithmic, exponential, or apocalyptic?
Tue, Jul 24, 2012 from NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center: Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt For several days this month, Greenland's surface ice cover melted over a larger area than at any time in more than 30 years of satellite observations. Nearly the entire ice cover of Greenland, from its thin, low-lying coastal edges to its two-mile-thick center, experienced some degree of melting at its surface, according to measurements from three independent satellites analyzed by NASA and university scientists. ...
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.
Mon, Aug 6, 2012 from The Daily Climate: Opinion: Ignore climate Cassandra at our peril The first scientist to alert Americans to the prospect that human-caused climate change and global warming was already upon us was NASA climatologist James Hansen. In a sweltering Senate hall during the hot, dry summer of 1988, Hansen announced that "it is time to stop waffling.... The evidence is pretty strong that the [human-amplified] greenhouse effect is here."... Hansen, it turns out, was right, and the critics were wrong. Rather than being reckless, as some of his critics charged, his announcement to the world proved to be prescient - and his critics were proven overly cautious.... the record-breaking heat this summer over so much of the United States, where records that have stood since the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s are now dropping like flies, isn't just a fluke of nature; it is the loading of the weather dice playing out in real time. ...
Remember, the singular form of the word dice is die.
Thu, Aug 9, 2012 from Nature: Demand for water outstrips supply Almost one-quarter of the world's population lives in regions where groundwater is being used up faster than it can be replenished, concludes a comprehensive global analysis of groundwater depletion, published this week in Nature.
Across the world, human civilizations depend largely on tapping vast reservoirs of water that have been stored for up to thousands of years in sand, clay and rock deep underground. These massive aquifers -- which in some cases stretch across multiple states and country borders -- provide water for drinking and crop irrigation, as well as to support ecosystems such as forests and fisheries.
Yet in most of the world's major agricultural regions, including the Central Valley in California, the Nile delta region of Egypt, and the Upper Ganges in India and Pakistan, demand exceeds these reservoirs' capacity for renewal. ...
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.
Mon, Aug 20, 2012 from ScienceAlert: Drastic tactics to save oceans? ... "A much broader approach to marine management and mitigation options, including manipulating the environment around corals and considering the translocation of reef-building corals, must be evaluated," he said....
Marine conservation options may include:
* Using shade to protect corals from the heat stress which leads to coral bleaching and death, albeit at small scales.
* Actively assisting biological resilience and adaptation through spatial planning, protective culturing and possibly selective breeding
* Maintain or manage ocean chemistry by adding globally abundant base minerals such as carbonates and silicates to the ocean to neutralize acidity, and improve conditions for shell formation in marine creatures
* Convert CO2 from land-based waste into dissolved bicarbonates that could be added to the ocean to provide carbon sequestration and enhance alkalinity.
...
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!
Tue, Aug 28, 2012 from Washington Post: Arctic sea ice hits record low, scientists say The extent of Arctic sea ice has reached a record low, a historic retreat that scientists said is a stark signal of how climate change is transforming the global landscape.
Scientists at the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center and NASA said that, as of Sunday, the Arctic sea ice cover had shrunk to 1.58 million square miles, the smallest area since satellite measurement began in 1979. With the melting season not yet over, the ice will almost certainly contract further in the coming weeks before it begins to re-form. ...
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.
Wed, Aug 29, 2012 from Live Science: Billions of Tons of Methane Lurk Beneath Antarctic Ice Microbes possibly feeding on the remains of an ancient forest may be generating billions of tons of methane deep beneath Antarctic ice, a new study suggests.
The amount of this greenhouse gas -- which would exist in the form of a frozen latticelike substance called methane hydrate -- lurking beneath the ice sheet rivals that stored in the world's oceans, the researchers said.
If the ice sheet collapses, the greenhouse gas could be released into the atmosphere and dramatically worsen global warming, researchers warn in a study published in the Aug. 30 issue of the journal Nature. ...
The Arctic's quiet little sister is about to start screaming!
Mon, Sep 3, 2012 from Chemical & Engineering News: Romney To Focus On Fossil Fuels Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney wants to significantly boost U.S. fossil-fuel production while ending federal subsidies and loan guarantees for most forms of alternative energy, such as solar and wind power.
Romney's energy plan, which the former Massachusetts governor outlined on Aug. 23, sets an ambitious goal for the U.S. of reaching energy independence by 2020 through increased production of oil, natural gas, and coal, accompanied by reduced regulation. The plan does not mention climate change.
"Three million jobs come back to this country by taking advantage of something we have right underneath our feet," Romney said at a campaign stop in New Mexico. "That's oil and gas and coal."
...
Tue, Sep 4, 2012 from LA Times: Three-man sailboat makes record voyage, traverses Northwest Passage In an account of their voyage posted Monday, the crew of the 31-foot Belzebub II -- a fiberglass sailboat with a living space the size of a bathroom -- described how they crossed through the McClure Strait in northern Canada, a decreasingly ice-packed route through the famed Northwest Passage.
The international three-man crew -- an American, Canadian and Swede -- claim to have piloted the first sailboat to do so....
"With sails up in a light breeze we sailed swiftly toward the Northwest point of Banks Island and to becoming the first sailboat in history to complete this route," the crew wrote in their post....
"Our approach to sail across a historical stretch of water that has traditionally been frozen is meant to be a clear visual example of the extent of declining polar ice," the group said in a statement.
...
Thu, Sep 6, 2012 from Deep Rogue Ram: Weathergirl goes rogue Arctic ice cover just reached its lowest point in recorded history. Pippa goes off script and drops some science....
The ApocaDocs approve this message. ...
Pippa must have actually read the statement from the American Meteorological Association!
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". ...
Mon, Sep 10, 2012 from Anchorage Daily News: Shell begins offshore drilling in Chukchi Sea After a day of slower-than-expected preparations in the Chukchi Sea, Shell Alaska officially began drilling into the seafloor above its Burger prospect at 4:30 a.m. Sunday, the company said. The action marks the first drilling offshore in the Alaska Arctic in two decades and is being closely watched by Alaskans and the oil industry -- and criticized by environmentalists... Shell has invested close to $5 billion in its quest to drill in the Alaska Arctic. A federal government assessment last year estimated the Alaska Arctic offshore region holds nearly 27 billion barrels of "undiscovered technically recoverable" oil. ...
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. ...
Mon, Sep 17, 2012 from London Guardian: Arctic expert predicts final collapse of sea ice within four years One of the world's leading ice experts has predicted the final collapse of Arctic sea ice in summer months within four years.
In what he calls a "global disaster" now unfolding in northern latitudes as the sea area that freezes and melts each year shrinks to its lowest extent ever recorded, Prof Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University calls for "urgent" consideration of new ideas to reduce global temperatures.
In an email to the Guardian he says: "Climate change is no longer something we can aim to do something about in a few decades' time, and that we must not only urgently reduce CO2 emissions but must urgently examine other ways of slowing global warming, such as the various geoengineering ideas that have been put forward." ...
Even if we have a paddle we're too far up Shit's Creek for it to matter.
Wed, Sep 19, 2012 from : Arctic ice shrinks to all-time low; half 1980 size Scientists say the amount of ice in the Arctic Ocean shrank to an all-time low this year, smashing old records for the critical climate indicator... in the 1980s, summer ice would cover an area slightly smaller than the Lower 48 states. Now it is about half that size. ...
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."
...
Mon, Sep 24, 2012 from Hartford Connecticut Mirror: Millstone shutdown is a sign of broader power problem caused by climate change Last month's unprecedented 12-day shutdown of part of the Millstone Nuclear Power Station sent a shudder through the nuclear energy world.
Caused when the seawater used to cool the plant's generating Unit 2 became too warm, it was the first time any U.S. nuclear plant was shut down because of intake water temperature problems.... The shutdown capped a season of power reductions and other difficulties at several of the nation's power plants -- including non-nuclear ones -- caused when summer heat and drought compromised the vast amounts of water needed to cool them. It has also set in motion a cascade of other potentially debilitating effects, all of which point to the likelihood that climate change has placed part of the U.S. power grid at risk. ...
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 five years! Every day!
Which might explain why we don't get invited to parties anymore.
Wed, Sep 26, 2012 from Live Science: Fox News Climate Coverage 93 percent Wrong, Report Finds Primetime coverage of global warming at Fox News is overwhelmingly misleading, according to a new report that finds the same is true of climate change information in the Wall Street Journal op-ed pages.
Both outlets are owned by Rupert Murdoch's media company News Corporation. The analysis by the science-policy nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) finds that 93 percent of primetime program discussions of global warming on Fox News are inaccurate, as are 81 percent of Wall Street Journal editorials on the subject.
"It's like they were writing and talking about some sort of bizarre world where climate change isn't happening," study author Aaron Huertas, a press secretary at UCS, told LiveScience. ...
Thu, Sep 27, 2012 from PhysOrg: Sea of the living dead The world's coral reefs have become a zombie ecosystem, neither dead nor truly alive, and are on a trajectory to collapse within a human generation according to an academic from The Australian National University.
Professor Roger Bradbury, an ecologist from the Crawford School of Public Policy in the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, said overfishing, ocean acidification and pollution are pushing coral reefs into oblivion. "The scientific evidence for this is compelling and unequivocal, but there seems to be a collective reluctance to accept the logical conclusion--that there is no hope of saving the global coral reef ecosystem," he said. "There is no real prospect of changing the trajectory of coral reef destruction in less than 20 to 50 years. In short, these forces are unstoppable and irreversible. "By persisting in the false belief that coral reefs have a future, we grossly misallocate the funds needed to cope with the fallout from their collapse. Money isn't spent to study what to do after the reefs are gone."
...
Mon, Oct 1, 2012 from The Earth Institute at Columbia University : High-Arctic Heat Tops 1,800-Year High, Says Study; Modern Spike Outmatches Naturally Driven 'Medieval Warm Period' Summers on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard are now warmer than at any other time in the last 1,800 years, including during medieval times when parts of the northern hemisphere were as hot as, or hotter, than today, according to a new study in the journal Geology... The naturally driven Medieval Warm Period, from about 950 to 1250, has been a favorite time for people who deny evidence that humans are heating the planet with industrial greenhouse gases. But the climate reconstruction from Svalbard casts new doubt on that era's reach, and undercuts skeptics who argue that current warming is also natural. ...
Mon, Oct 8, 2012 from Washington Post: U.S. runs out of funds to battle wildfires In the worst wildfire season on record, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service ran out of money to pay for firefighters, fire trucks and aircraft that dump retardant on monstrous flames.
So officials did about the only thing they could: take money from other forest management programs. But many of the programs were aimed at preventing giant fires in the first place, and raiding their budgets meant putting off the removal of dried brush and dead wood over vast stretches of land -- the things that fuel eye-popping blazes, threatening property and lives. ...
Tue, Oct 16, 2012 from Climate Central: Globe Ties the Record for Warmest September According to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the globe recorded its warmest September on record, tying with 2005 for the title. Global surface temperature records stretch all the way back to 1880. September marked the 331st straight month with above-average temperatures, and the 36th straight September with a global temperature above the 20th-century average. ...
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. ...
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. ...
Mon, Nov 5, 2012 from The Independent: Temperatures may rise 6c by 2100, says study The world is destined for dangerous climate change this century - with global temperatures possibly rising by as much as 6C - because of the failure of governments to find alternatives to fossil fuels, a report by a group of economists has concluded.
It will now be almost impossible to keep the increase in global average temperatures up to 2100 within the 2C target that scientists believe might avert dangerous and unpredictable climate change, according to a study by the accountancy giant PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)....
To keep within the 2C target, the global economy would have to reach a "decarbonisation" rate of at least 5.1 per cent a year for the next 39 years. This has not happened since records began at the end of the Second World War, according to Leo Johnson, a PwC partner in sustainability and climate change. ...
Who designs a car without brakes, Park, or Reverse?
Mon, Nov 5, 2012 from Reuters: Unprecedented world carbon emissions cuts needed by 2050: PwC The world will have to cut the rate of carbon emissions by an unprecedented rate to 2050 to stop global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees this century, a report released by PwC on Monday showed....
Global temperatures have already risen by about 0.8 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. Almost 200 nations agreed in 2010 at United Nations climate talks to limit the rise to below 2 degrees C (3.6 Fahrenheit) to avoid dangerous impacts from climate change.
Carbon intensity will have to be cut by over 5 percent a year to achieve that goal, the study said. That compares with an annual rate of 0.8 percent from 2000 to 2011. ...
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.
Tue, Nov 6, 2012 from Reuters: Insight: Great expectations fill Greenland as China eyes riches ...With global warming thawing its Arctic sea lanes, and global industry eyeing minerals under this barren island a quarter the size of the United States, the 57,000 Greenlanders are wrestling with opportunities that offer rich rewards but risk harming a pristine environment and a traditional society that is trying to make its own way in the world after centuries of European rule.
Great expectations could lead to greater disappointments, for locals and investors. Yet a scramble for Greenland already may be under way, in which some see China trying to exploit the icebound territory as a staging ground in a global battle for Arctic resources and strategic control of new shipping routes. ...
Mon, Nov 19, 2012 from The Hill: World Bank report warns of "devastating" global warming A major World Bank report warns that Earth is heading for a 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) temperature rise by 2100 that would bring unprecedented heatwaves, droughts and floods -- effects that put some of the poorest nations at highest risk.
"No nation will be immune to the impacts of climate change," states the new report titled "Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4 [degrees] C Warmer World Must be Avoided." ...
Tue, Nov 20, 2012 from PhysOrg: Scientists pioneer method to predict environmental collapse The researchers have applied a mathematical model to a real world situation, the environmental collapse of a lake in China, to help prove a theory which suggests an ecosystem 'flickers', or fluctuates dramatically between healthy and unhealthy states, shortly before its eventual collapse. Head of Geography at Southampton, Professor John Dearing explains: "We wanted to prove that this 'flickering' occurs just ahead of a dramatic change in a system - be it a social, ecological or climatic one - and that this method could potentially be used to predict future critical changes in other impacted systems in the world around us."
...
'What we can predict we can prevent', right? Right?
Tue, Nov 20, 2012 from Climate Central: CO2 Hits New High; World Could Warm 7 degrees F by 2060 The amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached a record 390.9 parts per million (ppm) in 2011, according to a report released Tuesday by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). That's a 40 percent increase over levels in 1750, before humans began burning fossil fuels in earnest.
Although CO2 is still the most significant long-lived greenhouse gas, levels of other heat-trapping gases have also climbed to record levels, according to the report. Methane, for example hit 1813 parts per billion (ppb) in 2011, and nitrous oxide rose to 324.2 ppb. All told, the amount of excess heat prevented from escaping into outer space was 30 percent higher in 2011 than it was as recently as 1990. ...
Humans: born to outdo ourselves even if it kills us!
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. ...
Tue, Nov 27, 2012 from Agence France-Press: Bitsy beetle warms Canada: study An army of rice-grain-sized beetles, attracted by warming weather, has moved into Canada's western forests, where its tree massacre is causing the mercury to rise yet further, a study said Sunday.
The voracious horde of mountain pine beetles has invaded about 170,000 square kilometres (65,000 square miles) -- a fifth of the forest area of British Columbia, Canada's western-most province, a research team wrote in the journal Nature Geoscience.
The beetles lay their eggs under the bark of pine trees, at the same time injecting a fungus that protects their offspring but kills the trees with the help of the larvae eating their insides.
As trees are felled, the cooling effect of their transpiration, similar to human sweating, is also lost. ...
A perfect, self-perpetuating loop of total annihilation!
Tue, Nov 27, 2012 from London Daily Mail: Melting permafrost 'will DOUBLE carbon and nitrogen levels in the atmosphere' As much as 44billion tons of nitrogen and 850billion tons of carbon could be released into the environment as permafrost thaws over the next century, U.S. government experts warn.
The release of carbon and nitrogen in permafrost could make global warming much worse and threaten delicate water systems on land and offshore, according to scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey.
It comes after the UN last week warned of record levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. ...
Just when you thought there was no hope there really is no hope!
Tue, Nov 27, 2012 from BusinessInsider: Jeremy Grantham: We're Headed For An Economic Disaster Of Biblical Proportions What Malthus did not foresee was the discovery of oil and other natural resources, which have (temporarily) supported this population explosion. Those resources are now getting used up...
The story for metals, by the way, is the same as for oil: The low-hanging fruit has been picked. Despite the use of new technologies, the yield per ton of metal ores continues to drop....
The fact is that no compound growth is sustainable. If we maintain our desperate focus on growth, we will run out of everything and crash. We must substitute qualitative growth for quantitative growth.
...
Perhaps cataclysmic, or globally catastrophic. But not Biblical. Let's not exaggerate!
Thu, Nov 29, 2012 from Associated Press: Arctic sea ice larger than US melted this year An area of Arctic sea ice bigger than the United States melted this year, according the U.N. weather agency, which said the dramatic decline illustrates that climate change is happening "before our eyes." In a report released at U.N. climate talks in the Qatari capital of Doha, the World Meteorological Organization said the Arctic ice melt was one of a myriad of extreme and record-breaking weather events to hit the planet in 2012. Droughts devastated nearly two-thirds of the United States as well western Russia and southern Europe. Floods swamped west Africa and heat waves left much of the Northern Hemisphere sweltering. ...
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.
Thu, Nov 29, 2012 from Sydney Morning Herald: At the edge of disaster THE world is on the cusp of a "tipping point" into dangerous climate change, according to new data gathered by scientists measuring methane leaking from the Arctic permafrost and a report presented to the United Nations on Tuesday.
"The permafrost carbon feedback is irreversible on human time scales," says the report, Policy Implications of Warming Permafrost. "Overall, these observations indicate that large-scale thawing of permafrost may already have started."
...
Mon, Dec 3, 2012 from New York Times: With Carbon Dioxide Emissions at Record High, Worries on How to Slow Warming Global emissions of carbon dioxide were at a record high in 2011 and are likely to take a similar jump in 2012, scientists reported Sunday -- the latest indication that efforts to limit such emissions are failing. Emissions continue to grow so rapidly that an international goal of limiting the ultimate warming of the planet to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, established three years ago, is on the verge of becoming unattainable, said researchers affiliated with the Global Carbon Project. ...
Mon, Dec 10, 2012 from New York Times: Mighty Old Trees Are Perishing Fast, Study Warns The death rate of many of the biggest and oldest trees around the world is increasing rapidly, scientists report in a new study in Friday's issue of the journal Science. They warned that research to understand and stem the loss of the trees is urgently needed... The research team found that big, old trees are dying at an alarmingly fast clip around the world at all latitudes -- Yosemite National Park in California, the African savanna, the Brazilian rain forest, Europe and the boreal forests around the world. ...
I think I shall never see an old poem as lovely as an old tree.
Thu, Dec 20, 2012 from The Hill: Obama: Climate change among top three priorities for second term President Obama has identified climate change as one of his top three priorities in his second term after coming under fire from environmentalists for giving the issue short shrift during the campaign.
The president, in an interview for TIME's Person of the Year award, said the economy, immigration, climate change and energy would be at the top of his agenda for the next four years.
The interview took place before the fatal shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, an incident that had pushed gun control to a top spot on Obama's agenda.
Obama said his daughters have influenced his thinking about the need to tackle climate change. ...
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!
Wed, Dec 26, 2012 from Live Science: 2012: A Memorable Year for Weather ...Record-breaking warmth: The data for the last of the year isn't in yet, but this year looks "virtually certain" to take the title of warmest year on record for the lower 48 states, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)... Until this year, July 1936, during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, held the record for hottest month on record in the lower 48 states going back to 1895, but this July's heat surpassed even that record... ...
It's as if the weather is in competition with itself!
Wed, Dec 26, 2012 from Los Angeles Times: Wireless companies look to church towers for cell sites To expand service, cellular phone companies are turning to a higher power.
They're not increasing the wattage of their transmitters. They're looking for churches near residential areas willing to let them hide cell sites in steeples, belfries and crosses. ...
Okay, so now can the Apocalypse hurry up and come?
Wed, Dec 26, 2012 from The ApocaDocs: The ApocaDocs 2012 Year in Review No better way to wrap up 2012, than looking to our top 100 stories of horror. 2012 will end up one of the warmest years on record, and so our extreme weather events are no coincidence. ...
No need to thank us. This is our sweat equity in Mother Earth.
