#BBC #Mongolia Sludges Into Ecological Nightmare

The Dystopian Lake Filled By The World's Tech Lust

From where I'm standing, the city-sized Baogang Steel and Rare Earth complex dominates the horizon, its endless cooling towers and chimneys reaching up into grey, washed-out sky. Between it and me, stretching into the distance, lies an artificial lake filled with a black, barely-liquid, toxic sludge.

Dozens of pipes line the shore, churning out a torrent of thick, black, chemical waste from the refineries that surround the lake. The smell of sulphur and the roar of the pipes invades my senses. It feels like hell on Earth. Read More

"Rare Earth" 

Such An Ironic Twist of Words

Ocean Acidification Destroys #California Ecosystem

Limacina helicina shell dissolution as an indicator of declining habitat suitability owing to ocean acidification in the California Current Ecosystem

By Jeremy Hance

(mongabay.com) – It could be the plot of a horror movie: humans wake up one day to discover that chemical changes in the atmosphere are dissolving away parts of their bodies. But for small marine life known as sea butterflies, or pteropods, this is what's happening off the West Cost of the U.S. Increased carbon in the ocean is melting away shells of sea butterflies, which are tiny marine snails that underpin much of the ocean's food chain, including prey for pink salmon, mackerel, and herring.

"We did not expect to see pteropods being affected to this extent in our coastal region for several decades," said William Peterson, Ph.D., an oceanographer at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s Northwest Fisheries Science Center who co-authored the findings in a paper for the journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 



Sampling sea butterflies in the species Limacina helicina off California, Washington, and Oregon in the summer of 2011, researchers found that over 50 percent of onshore sea butterflies suffered from "severe dissolution damage," according to the paper. Offshore, 24 percent of individuals showed such damage.

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Climate Chaos Causes Crop Failures

 

Climate change will reduce crop yields sooner than we thought

16 March 2014 (PhysOrg)

 – A study led by the University of Leeds has shown that global warming of only 2°C will be detrimental to crops in temperate and tropical regions, with reduced yields from the 2030s onwards.

Professor Andy Challinor, from the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds and lead author of the study, said: "Our research shows that crop yields will be negatively affected by climate change much earlier than expected."

"Furthermore, the impact of climate change on crops will vary both from year-to-year and from place-to-place – with the variability becoming greater as the weather becomes increasingly erratic." 

The study, published today by the journal Nature Climate Change, feeds directly into the Working Group II report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, which is due to be published at the end of March 2014. (Read More)

When Climate Changes... 

 

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