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Making the Mainstream? Even
CNN is asking the question
Although
most of us worry about other things, climate scientists have become
increasingly worried about the survival of civilization. For example,
Lonnie Thompson, who received the U.S. National Medal of Science in
2010, said that virtually all climatologists "are now convinced
that global warming poses a clear and present danger to
civilization."
Near
California’s Success Lake, more than 1,000 water wells have failed.
Farmers are spending $750,000 to drill 1,800 feet down to keep fields
from going fallow. Makeshift showers have sprouted near the church
parking lot.
“The
conditions are like a third-world country,” said Andrew Lockman, a
manager at the Office of Emergency Services in Tulare County, in the
heart of the state’s agricultural Central Valley about 175 miles
(282 kilometers) north of Los Angeles.
As
California enters the fourth year of a record drought, its residents
and $43 billion agriculture industry have drawn groundwater so low
that it’s beyond the reach of existing wells. That’s left
thousands with dry taps and pushed farmers to dig deeper as Governor
Jerry Brown, a 77-year-old Democrat, orders the first mandatory water
rationing in state history.
Fukushima's
Harsh Warning by Chris Busy 2015
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The
Chevron Tapes - Covering Up Amazon Contamination
Ordered to pay $9.5 billion to clean up their contamination, Chevron instead fled the country and sued the communities in the U.S. for extortion.
In 2011, Amazon Watch received a mysterious package from a Chevron whistleblower. No return address, just dozens of DVDs and a note: “I hope this is useful for you in the trial against Texaco/Chevron! Signed, a friend from Chevron.”
The tapes are internal company videos documenting Chevron’s efforts to hide contamination during the trial.
After legal efforts by Chevron to keep these from seeing the light of day, here they are for the first time.
read more - http://revolution-news.com/the-chevron-tapes-covering-up-amazon-contamination/
Ordered to pay $9.5 billion to clean up their contamination, Chevron instead fled the country and sued the communities in the U.S. for extortion.
In 2011, Amazon Watch received a mysterious package from a Chevron whistleblower. No return address, just dozens of DVDs and a note: “I hope this is useful for you in the trial against Texaco/Chevron! Signed, a friend from Chevron.”
The tapes are internal company videos documenting Chevron’s efforts to hide contamination during the trial.
After legal efforts by Chevron to keep these from seeing the light of day, here they are for the first time.
read more - http://revolution-news.com/the-chevron-tapes-covering-up-amazon-contamination/
A
team of experts from four leading scientific organizations are
preparing to study the skies over New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and
Utah this month to find out more about a mysterious methane bloom
that appeared in the area.
Researchers
from the National Oceanographic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), University of
Colorado, and University of Michigan presented their plans to survey
the recently discovered methane spot, considered the largest of its
kind in U.S. history, and its effects on local climate. The
presentation was held at the San Juan College in Farmington, New
Mexico.
The
methane bloom centers on
the Colorado-New Mexico border between the La Plata and San Juan
counties. The area affected by the methane spot is collectively known
as the Four Corners.
The
City Without Water
Holy shit! Just when I think I've completed this. I find yet more stories to include in this compilation.
Well
out of the Mainstream
Millions
of fish are suddenly dying all over the planet. In fact, there
have been dozens of mass fish death eventsreported
in the past month alone. So why is this happening? Why
are fish dying in unprecedented numbers all
over the world?
When more than six tons of fish died in
Marina Del Rayover
the weekend, it made headlines all over the United States. But
the truth is that what just happened off the southern California
coast is just the tip of the iceberg. In 2014, mass fish
die-offs have pretty much become a daily event globally.
Individually, each event could perhaps be dismissed as an
anomaly, but as you will see below when they are all put together
into one list it truly is rather stunning. So is there a reason
why so many fish are dying? Is there something that connects
these mass fish death events? Has something about our
environment changed? The following are just a few examples of
the mass fish death reports that have been coming in day after day
from all over the globe…
Humans
are ‘eating away at our own life support systems’ at a rate
unseen in the past 10,000 years, two new research papers say
The
parks agency is caught in the middle and is attempting to devise a
plan that will balance public resources with the needs of 24 dairy
and beef commercial operations, numbering close to 6,000 animals,
that occupy nearly a quarter of the seashore lands...... “We’re
committed to the wildlife, but we’re also committed to
agriculture,” said Press. “These aren’t show farms. They’re
functioning businesses. Every blade of grass counts, especially for
the six organic dairies, which have to purchase expensive feed when
the grazing runs short.”
Tiny
marine plants could amplify Arctic warming by 20%, new study finds
20
April, 2015
Temperatures
in the Arctic are rising faster than the rest of the world. Now, new
research suggests microscopic algae could speed up warming even
further.
These
miniscule floating plants, which do everything from storing carbon to
supporting the ocean food web, could drive faster sea ice melt as the
Earth heats up, the lead author tells Carbon Brie.
Microalgae
are already showing signs of adapting to warmer oceans, says a second
study. But this is no guarantee they'll be able to cope with future
temperature increases, the researchers say.
Foundation
for life
Microalgae,
or phytoplankton,
are tiny plants that float in the upper part of the ocean. Just like
plants on land, they photosynthesise - using sunlight and carbon
dioxide to generate energy for growth. In this way they take carbon
dioxide out of atmosphere and help to buffer the impact of emissions
from human activities.
The by-product of photosynthesis is oxygen, and microalgae are responsible for producing around half of the oxygen in the atmosphere. Microalgae are also the foundation of the food web, meaning they're ultimately the reason there's any life in the oceans at all.
As
algae serve such an important purpose, scientists are trying to work
out how their abundance and distribution could change in the future
as the Earth warms.
Positive
feedback
Temperatures
in the Arctic are increasing around twice
as fast as
the global average. The intense warming, known as Arctic
amplification,
is largely caused by diminishing sea ice. Energy from the sun that
would have been reflected away by sea ice is instead absorbed by the
ocean.
Previous
research has
shown that shrinking sea ice has given a boost to algae abundance.
But there's a downside to this accelerated growth. A new study,
published in Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences,
suggests the increase in algae could intensify Arctic warming, and
sea ice melt, in the future.
So how could algal blooms intensify sea ice decline? As the Arctic warms up and the sea ice melts, more sunlight can penetrate into the ocean surface, triggering more growth in the algae.
With
more microalgae floating around in the surface waters of the ocean,
they absorb an increasing amount of the sun's energy, which causes
the water to warm up. A warmer ocean means more sea ice melts,
boosting algal growth even further, and creating a positive feedback
loop.
Ecosystem
model
The
researchers looked at how this feedback loop could play out in a
changing climate. They linked their marine ecosystem model to a
climate model and ran simulations where carbon dioxide levels
increase by 1% per year until the total amount in the atmosphere is
twice what it was in 1990.
You
can see the results in the maps below. These show the difference in
Arctic temperature and sea ice between model runs with and without
the added impacts of microalgae.
Projections
of Arctic changes under a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide: A)
annual average temperature, B) sea ice concentration, C) number of
ice-free days, and D) concentration of chlorophyll. Source: Park et
al. (2015).
The
top-left map shows the Arctic could be an average of about 0.7C
warmer at the point of carbon dioxide doubling because of the
additional microalgae - that's about 20% more than without it. The
biggest warming changes are projected for the Kara Sea and Chukchi
Seas in the Arctic, which is consistent with what scientists have
seen happening recently, the paper says.
The
models don't project the amount of microalgae directly, but instead
estimate changes in chlorophyll, the pigment that gives algae its
green colour. The biggest boost to algal growth is in spring (shown
in the bottom-right map), when sea ice begins its seasonal melting
cycle.
The
extra warming has implications for Arctic sea ice extent, with
further reductions of up to 10% (top-right map), and as many as 50
extra days ice-free each year for parts of the Arctic (bottom-left
map).
Dr
Jong-Yeon Park,
lead author and researcher at the Max Planck Institute for
Meteorology, tells Carbon Brie:
"Based
on our model experiments, the geophysical impact of Arctic
phytoplankton may accelerate decline of future Arctic sea ice."
Evolution
While
microalgae could amplify warming in the Arctic, a separate study,
published in the same journal, suggests they may already be adapting
to climate change elsewhere.
Researchers
used 15-years of microalgae data from the Carbon Retention In A
Colored Ocean (CARIACO )
project, which has been collecting samples of algae off the coast of
Venezuela since 1995.
Prof
Andrew Irwin,
lead author and associate professor at Mount Allison University in
Canada, explains to Carbon Brief why algae can evolve this quickly:
"Phytoplankton
are likely to adapt because of two factors: their short generation
times - a few days - and their large population sizes which sustain a
large amount of genetic diversity."
Ecosystem
models tend to assume that algae won't change or adapt to warming
conditions, says Irwin. But their research suggests scientists need
to re-think how they make projections of how algae will respond to
climate change over the next 50 to 100 years, he says.
But
that's not to say microalgae will definitely be fine as the oceans
continue to warm, the paper concludes. Scientists still don't how
much algae will be able to adapt, so it's not possible to say just
yet how microalgae will be able to cope with the changes projected
for the rest of this century.
Park,
J-Y et al. (2015) Amplified Arctic warming by phytoplankton under
greenhouse warming, Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, doi:10.1073/pnas.1414752112
Irwin,
A.J. et al (2015) Phytoplankton adapt to changing ocean environments,
Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, doi:10.1073/pnas.1421475112
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