Biology
Breach
September 1, 2013, from Washington Post
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.
September 1, 2009, from Louisville Courier-Journal
Indiana and Kentucky are the nation's top two states for coal ash ponds -- and many of the holding basins for the toxic mess were built without the guidance of trained engineers, according to new information from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The accounting, which found nearly 600 ash ponds across the U.S. -- 53 in Indiana and 44 in Kentucky -- is based on a survey of the nation's electric utilities that the EPA conducted after a massive December coal ash spill in Tennessee.... The EPA reported numerous ponds that had not been designed by an engineer, including three at Duke Energy's Gibson County, Ind., plant, seven Kentucky Utilities ponds scattered around Kentucky, and LG&E's 10 ponds at its Cane Run and Mill Creek plants in Louisville. Some also weren't overseen by a professional engineer during construction.
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Climate
Chaos
September 1, 2011, from BusinessGreen
It sounds barmy, audacious or sci-fi: a tethered balloon the size of Wembley Stadium suspended 20km above earth, linked to the ground by a giant garden hose pumping hundreds of tonnes of minute chemical particles a day into the thin stratospheric air to reflect sunlight and cool the planet.
A team of British academics will next month formally announce the first step towards creating an artificial volcano by going ahead with the world's first major geo-engineering field test in the next few months. The ultimate aim is to mimic the cooling effect that volcanoes have when they inject particles into the stratosphere that bounce some of the sun's energy back into space, so preventing it from warming the earth and mitigating the effects of man-made climate change....
If the technical problems posed by controlling a massive balloon at more than twice the cruising height of a commercial airliner are resolved, then the team from Cambridge, Oxford, Reading and Bristol universities expects to move to full-scale solar radiation tests....
"This hose would be just like a garden hose - 20km long - and we can pump stuff up the pipe. The nice thing about it is we can have a knob, if you like, which we can control to adjust the rate at which we inject these particles."
September 1, 2011, from MSNBC
New photographs taken of a vast glacier in northern Greenland have revealed the astonishing rate of its breakup, with one scientist saying he was rendered "speechless."
In August 2010, part of the Petermann Glacier about four times the size of Manhattan island broke off , prompting a hearing in Congress.
Researcher Alun Hubbard, of the Centre for Glaciology at Aberystwyth University, U.K., told msnbc.com by phone that another section, about twice the size of Manhattan, appeared close to breaking off....
In 2009, scientists installed GPS masts on the glacier to track its movement. But when they returned in July this year, they found the ice had been melting so quickly -- at an unexpected 16-and-a-half feet in two years -- that some of the masts stuck into the glacier were no longer in position....
"I'm very familiar with the glacier. It's very hard to sort of envisage something so big not being there ... to come back and basically see an ice shelf has disappeared, which is 20 kilometers across (about 12 miles) ... I was speechless and started laughing because I couldn't sort of believe it," Hubbard added, speaking to msnbc.com.
September 1, 2009, from London Guardian
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.
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Resource
Depletion
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Recovery
September 1, 2011, from PAFOA
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.
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