Forty percent of the summer Arctic sea ice melts, and here we’re literally watching the death throes of the planet, and these corporations, like Shell, look at it as a business opportunity. (Hedges, C. (2013) Rise Up or Die. Truthdig)
"The skeptics and denyers were hanged by their feet - heads submerged beneath the rising tide".
In 1979, a military team arrived to gather up contaminated soil and debris, mixing it with cement and piling the sludge into a 350-foot-wide blast crater on Runit Island in the atoll's east. When the mound reached 25 feet high, army engineers covered it with a saucer-shaped concrete cap. A 2008 field survey of the Cactus Dome noted that 219 of its 357 concrete panels contained defects such as cracks, chips, and vegetation taking root in joints. (Atlas Obscura (2013). Cactus Dome: A Concrete Cap for a Nuclear Crater. Slate)
Other contributors to the jellyfish boom are the “dead zones” created by what scientists call “eutrophication.” That’s when farming pesticides and sewage pumped into rivers meet the ocean. Japan’s now-annual bloom of Nomura jellyfish, which each grow to be the size of large refrigerator, capsized and sank a 10-ton trawler when the fishermen tried to haul up a net full of them. (Guilford, G.(2013). Jellyfish are taking over the seas, and it might be too late to stop them. QZ)
Our first observations of elevated methane levels, about ten times higher than in background seawater, were documented . . . we discovered over 100 new methane seep sites… If even a small fraction of Arctic sea floor carbon is released to the atmosphere, we're f'd. a feedback loop where warming seas release methane that causes warming that releases more methane that causes more warming, on and on until the planet is incompatible with human life. (Jason Box)
Richardson, J. H. (2015) When the End of Human Civilization Is Your Day Job. Esquire.
Richardson, J. H. (2015) When the End of Human Civilization Is Your Day Job. Esquire.
Captain Moore had wandered into a sump where nearly everything that blows into the water from half the Pacific Rim eventually ends up, spiraling slowly toward a widening horror of industrial excretion. For a week, Moore and his crew found themselves crossing a sea the size of a small continent, covered with floating refuse. It was not unlike an Arctic vessel pushing through chunks of brash ice, except what was bobbing around them was a fright of cups, bottle caps, tangles of fish netting and monofilament line, bits of polystyrene packaging, six-pack rings, spent balloons, filmy scraps of sandwich wrap, and limp plastic bags that defied counting. p. 121
There is more plastic by weight than plankton on the ocean's surface. p. 124
By 2005, Moore was referring to the gyrating Pacific dump as 10 mil lion square miles—nearly the size of Africa. p. 125
"Except for a small amount that's been incinerated," says Tony Andrady the oracle, "every bit of plastic manufactured in the world for the last 50 years or so still remains. p. 126 ( Weisman, A. (2007). The Earth Without Us. Thomas Dunn: New York)
There is more plastic by weight than plankton on the ocean's surface. p. 124
By 2005, Moore was referring to the gyrating Pacific dump as 10 mil lion square miles—nearly the size of Africa. p. 125
"Except for a small amount that's been incinerated," says Tony Andrady the oracle, "every bit of plastic manufactured in the world for the last 50 years or so still remains. p. 126 ( Weisman, A. (2007). The Earth Without Us. Thomas Dunn: New York)
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