20 most popular doom stories of 2012
Once again, it’s time for the yearly doom retrospectives, and as usual we’re kicking them off with 2012’s most-viewed stories on Desdemona.
There were no appalling technogenic disasters in 2012, like Fukushima or the Deepwater Horizon – but Chevron’s K.S. Endeavor rig fire came close – and no story clearly dominated the year’s coverage. Over half of the most popular stories centered on climate change and water, either too much or too little of it. The record-shattering heat wave, drought, and wildfires in North America and Asia were matched by disastrous flooding in Africa, Australia, South America, the Philippines (again), and Pakistan (yet again).
The perplexingly popular 2009 story on trash in the Maldives, which was #2 in 2010 and #5 in 2011, comes in at #7 this year. The majority of traffic for this story comes from the U.K., so it’s reasonable to assume that people are planning their vacations and hitting this along the way. Amusingly, this year’s story on a massive fish kill in the Maldives got only a few page views.
Of the numerous extinction stories in 2012, only three stories resonated: the end of brown bears in Austria, the loss of fish species in Texas, and the plight of tuna. Similarly, of the many Fukushima nuclear disaster stories, only one made it into the top 20. This may be a fatigue effect; it’s also possible that people were distracted by the sudden increase in extreme weather events and the consequent stresses on civilization.
Even without these additional stresses, our #4 story confirms the doom projections published in 1972’s Limits to Growth: civilization is still on track to fall apart by 2030, due to global resource depletion.
20. Brown bears poached to extinction in Austria, European wildlife under pressure
VIENNA, Austria, 7 March 2012 (ENS) – There are no more brown bears to be found in Austria, say European wildlife conservationists, despite the fact that neighboring Slovenia has a stable population of about 400 bears. “Unfortunately there is no bear left in the Northern Limestone Alps,” said Christian Pichler with WWF Austria. “The last bear, Moritz, which was born in Austria could not be found in 2011. The sub-population is deemed to be extinct.” “WWF Austria was working more than 20 years on this project to bring back bears to Austria and to the Alps. One reason why we failed was poaching, more than 20 bears are missing.”
19. Human-made earthquakes reported in central U.S
17 April 2012 (Reuters) – The number of earthquakes in the central United States rose “spectacularly” near where oil and gas drillers disposed of wastewater underground, a process that may have caused geologic faults to slip, U.S. government geologists report. The average number of earthquakes of magnitude 3 or greater in the U.S. midcontinent – an area that includes Arkansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas – increased to six times the 20th century average last year, scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey said in an abstract of their research.
27 June 2012 (MSNBC) – Fire crews outside Colorado Springs, Colo., expected more weather trouble on Wednesday in what the local fire chief called a “monster event” that doubled in size overnight and has forced 32,000 people to flee. Heavy smoke made for unhealthy air in and around the city. After jumping fire lines Tuesday, the towering blaze has now burned 24 square miles and an undetermined number of homes.
17. Texas drought: 20 percent of freshwater fish threatened with extinction
13 February 2012 (Houston Chronicle) – Texas Parks and Wildlife Department is tasked to manage the state’s fish and wildlife, and fish and wildlife need water. Texas has over 150 species of native freshwater fishes and ranks second in amount of angling ($6.6B annually). But 5 species are now extinct, and 20% are threatened with extinction or absence from Texas.
Environmental Flows are flows that remain in the stream and provide for aquatic and riparian habitat; water quality protection; recreation; navigation; and freshwater inflows to bays and estuaries. A statewide effort is underway to determine what environmental flows are necessary for each river. [Texas rivers and ecosystems are adapted to drought, but not drought on top of human water withdrawals. – John N-G] Various issues dealt with during the 2011 drought: rescue of endangered fish, low lake levels, invasive species (zebra mussels in Lake Texoma, removing the lake as a water supply resource), and high salinity in estuaries and resulting red tide (commercial oyster season closed).
16. Record floods create ‘inland sea’ in Australia
3 February 2012 (AFP) – Major flooding hit parts of Australia’s east Friday, stranding thousands of residents, prompting a military airlift and leaving some communities only accessible by helicopter. The deluge, which has sparked dozens of rescues and left about 7,275 people isolated in various parts of New South Wales state has also impacted Queensland to the north where some regions have been declared a natural disaster zone. “From the air it looks like an inland sea,” New South Wales Premier Barry O’Farrell said after visiting the region.
LOKOJA, Nigeria, 11 October 2012 (Reuters) – Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan on Thursday visited some of the hundreds of thousands of people made homeless by the country’s worst flooding in at least five decades, calling it a ‘national disaster’. Vast stretches of Africa’s most populous nation have been submerged by floods in the past few weeks, as major rivers like the Niger, the continent’s third longest, burst their banks. At least 140 people have been killed, hundreds of thousands uprooted and tens of thousands of hectares of farmland have been submerged since the start of July, raising concerns about food security, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said.
14. Sea Shepherd declares Canada harp seal slaughter is commercially dead
29 January 2012 (SSCS) – The Canadian seal slaughter is commercially dead and it will have no place in the 21st Century. This anachronistic barbaric enterprise is being tossed into the dustbin of history where it belongs, and finally after a lifetime of struggle to end it, this obscene embarrassment is, for all intents and purposes, dead. It was a half a century ago when I was ten years old when I saw a seal clubbed to death on the shores of my native New Brunswick in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It was my dream then to put an end to it and that dream has all but come true.
13. Record pollen counts across the U.S. Southeast caused by unusually warm weather
21 March 2012 (CNN) – Whether you’re walking along city streets or in a park or the country anywhere across the southeast the past couple of weeks, pollen counts have been off the charts. Pollen count is measured in a cubic-meter of air, and those are the parts per that cubic-meter. In Atlanta, the pollen count was over 9,000 Monday. Over 1,500 is considered extreme. 6,000 was the old record. The pollen is not just off the charts in Atlanta. As far north as Cape Girardeau is going to be one of the worst cities Tuesday, as far as pollen counts are concerned. All the way up to Chicago, they have high pollen counts with the hardwoods budding there. The record-breaking heat for the past couple of weeks and an incredibly warm winter and early spring is the cause of the explosion of pollen. Until rain moves into affected areas, pollen counts are expected to remain high.
12. Threat of pole-and-line tuna shortage tackled
4 April 2012 (Fish2Fork) – An organisation has been set up to ensure the growing demand for tuna caught by pole and line can be met without damaging fish numbers. Pole and line caught tuna is increasingly in demand by consumers – chiefly in the UK, Northern Europe Australasia, Japan and North America – because of rising awareness of overfishing and damaging fishing techniques. Unless such fisheries are identified and given the assistance they need the demand for pole and line caught tuna will outstrip supply and encourage overfishing.
11. Historic heat wave topples Dust Bowl-era extreme heat records
30 June 2012 (Weather Underground) – A historic heat wave on a scale and intensity not seen in the U.S. since the great heat waves of the 1930s Dust Bowl era set new all-time heat records for at least ten major cities Friday.
All-time records for any date tied or broken on Friday:
- 109° Nashville, TN (old record 107° 7/28/1952)
- 109° Columbia, SC (old record 107° on two previous occasions)
- 109° Cairo, IL (old record 106° on 8/9/1930)
- 108° Paducah, KY (ties same on 7/17/1942)
- 106° Chattanooga, TN (ties same on 7/28/1952)
- 105° Raleigh, NC (ties same on 8/21/2007 and 8/18/1988)
- 105° Greenville, SC (old record 104° 8/10/2007 although 106° was recorded by the Signal Service in July 1887)
- 104° Charlotte, NC (ties same on 8/9 and 10/2007 and 9/6/1954)
- 102° Bristol, TN (ties same on 7/28/1952-this site now known as “Tri-State Airport”)
- 109° Athens, GA. This is just 1° shy of the Georgia state record for June of 110° set at Warrenton in 1959. […]
10 May 2012 (Maplecroft) – The viability of water supplies throughout key regions of China, India, Pakistan, South Africa and the US are under threat from unsustainable domestic, agricultural, and industrial demands, according to a new study that maps water use down to 10km² worldwide. The growth economies of China and India, and the world’s largest economy USA are identified by risk analysis company Maplecroft, in its newly released Water Stress Index, as having vast geographical regions and sector areas where unsustainable water use is outstripping supply. Maplecroft states that the situation so serious, it has the potential to limit economic growth by constraining business activities, as well as hampering agricultural outputs. Resulting reductions in crop harvests in these countries will also negatively impact local food supplies and global food prices, while the socio-economic impacts of water shortages, especially in India and China, have the potential to create unrest and affect stability, as populations and business compete for dwindling supplies.
9. China exports ghost cities to Africa – ‘The place is eerily quiet’
3 July 2012 (Business Insider) – Just outside Angola’s capital city of Luanda is Nova Cidade de Kilamba a residential development of 750 eight-story apartment buildings, a dozen schools, and more than 100 retail units, reports the BBC’s Louise Redvers. The $3.5 billion development covers 12,355 acres and was built to house about 500,000 people, and this is one of “several satellite cities being constructed by Chinese firms around Angola,” writes Redvers. But the apartments in the complex cost somewhere between $120,000 and $200,000 according to online advertisements cited by BBC. Other anecdotal reports put the price of 3-bedroom apartment at about $250,000. None of which helps the average Angolan given the country’s per capita GDP of $5,144 per year, according to the World Bank.
8. China’s largest freshwater lake dries up
31 January 2012 (Guardian Weekly) – For visitors expecting to see China’s largest freshwater lake, Poyang is a desolate spectacle. Under normal circumstances it covers 3,500 sq km, but last month only 200 sq km were underwater. A dried-out plain stretches as far as the eye can see, leaving a pagoda perched on top of a hillock that is usually a little island. Wrapped in the mist characteristic of the lower reaches of the Yangtze river, the barges are moored close to the quayside beside a pitiful trickle of water. There is no work for the fisheries. According to the state news agency Xinhua, the drought – the worst for 60 years – is due to the lack of rainfall in the area round Poyang and its tributaries. Poor weather conditions this year are partly responsible. But putting the blame on them overlooks the role played by the colossal Three Gorges reservoir, 500km upstream. The cause and effect is still not officially recognised, even if the government did admit last May that the planet’s biggest dam had given rise to “problems that need to be solved very urgently”.
6 February 2012 (Conducive Chronicle) – Jeff Masters: The natural weather rhythms I’ve grown used to during my 30 years as a meteorologist have become disrupted over the past few years. Many of Earth’s major atmospheric circulation patterns have seen significant shifts and unprecedented behavior; new patterns that were unknown have emerged; extreme weather events were incredibly intense and numerous during 2010 – 2011. The laws of physics demand that the huge amount of heat-trapping gases humans are pumping into the atmosphere must be significantly altering the fundamental large-scale circulation pattern of the atmosphere. Unprecedented behavior like we’ve witnessed in the configuration of the winter jet stream over North America–with the four most extreme years since 1865 occurring since 2006–could very well be due to human-caused climate change. Something is definitely up with the weather, and it is clear to me that over the past two years, the climate has shifted to a new state capable of delivering rare and unprecedented weather events. Human emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide are the most likely cause of such a shift in the climate. Christine Shearer: Having really looked closely at the weather for a while now, is there something that stands out to you most? Jeff Masters: The atmosphere I grew up with no longer exists. My new motto with regards to the weather is, “expect the unprecedented.”
6. Various radioactive products from Japan
Scraped from Ex-SKF, 14 Feb 2012 to 30 May 2011. Note: “Bq/Kg” means Becquerels/kilogram.
- 14 February 2012: 91,600 Bq/Kg of Radioactive Cesium from Sunflowers in Iitate-mura, Fukushima
- 58,000 Bq/Kg of Cesium in Recycled Farm Soil in Chiba: Unthinking, Mind-Numbing Urge to Recycle Even After Nuclear Disaster
- 3,000 Bq/kg of Radioactive Cesium in Dried Daikon in Fukushima
- Radioactive Firewood, This Time from Miyagi Prefecture: 730 Bq/kg Cesium in Wood Would Become 130K Bq/kg in Ashes
- 2077 Bq/Kg of Radioactive Cesium from Dried Shiitake “Made in Japan”
- Radioactive Okinawa Noodles and Pizzas from Radioactive Ashes from Radioactive Firewood from Fukushima
- 1.37 Million Bq/kg Radioactive Cesium in Earthworm Castings in Fukushima
- Radioactive Ashes: IAEA Says Japanese Government’s Approach to Bury 8,000 Bq/Kg Ashes in Conventional Landfills In Line With International Practices
- Radioactive Firewood Resulted in 43,780 Bq/Kg Radioactive Ashes in Nihonmatsu City
- Radioactive Construction Sites: 1,000 Sites May Have Used “Contaminated” Crushed Stones in Fukushima
- Cesium Level in Raw Milk in Southern Miyagi Is Rising […]
5. Heartland Institute billboards compare belief in global warming to mass murder
4 May 2012 (Guardian) – It really is hard to know where to begin with this one. But let’s start with: “What on earth were they thinking?” The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based rightwing thinktank notorious for promoting climate scepticism, has launched quite possibly one of the most ill-judged poster campaigns in the history of ill-judged poster campaigns.
4 April 2012 (The Sideshow) – A new study from researchers at Jay W. Forrester’s institute at MIT says that the world could suffer from “global economic collapse” and “precipitous population decline” if people continue to consume the world’s resources at the current pace. [Here’s a pdf of Dr. Turner’s 2008 paper: “A comparison of the Limits to Growth with thirty years of reality”.] Smithsonian Magazine writes that Australian physicist Graham Turner says “the world is on track for disaster” and that current evidence coincides with a famous, and in some quarters, infamous, academic report from 1972 entitled, The Limits to Growth.
3. Flooding ravages Peru and Colombia – Amazon River reaches record breadth, width, and height
19 April 2012 (National Geographic) – The Amazon has reached record breadth, width, and height this rainy season. According to Peru’s Health Ministry, the river has grown at least 6.5 feet during the floods, with the Marañón River, which feeds the Amazon, increasing some 13 feet. Neither river has swelled this much since the 1970s, when a similar flood affected the area. Peruvian newspaper El Comercio reported Health Minister Alberto Tejada’s alarm at the situation: “In 1971 [the flood] did not have an urban impact because today’s human settlements did not exist.” A state of emergency has been declared in the regional capital of Iquitos, and narrow wooden bridges have been constructed to help residents get around. Some 80,000 people have been forced to inhabit only the upper levels of their homes while others have been left homeless by the flooding. The San Juan de Yanayacu Indian community has also been hard-hit; the small group — more than half of whom are children — has been living on rooftops, in canoes, or on makeshift tree platforms. Along the Tahuayo River the small farms of the approximately 7,000 people living in small agrarian villages there have been washed away and most people’s homes have been flooded.
2. Climate science: Which theory is more likely?
1. Super Typhoon Bolaven bears down on Okinawa, Typhoon Tembin to follow
25 August 2012 (CNN) – Super Typhoon Bolaven now has sustained winds of 146 mph and gusts to 188 mph. It is expected to hammer down on the small island of Okinawa, Japan where 7 U.S. military installations have almost 50,000 military, family members, civilians and contractors await the impending storm. The center of the storm is projected to pass within 5 nautical miles of Kadena Airbase, the largest of the installations. The storm which has grown to over 700 miles across in size will rival all previous storms in the last 13 years.
Prediction for 2013 top doom story (if we last another year):
forests dying across the globe.
Checkout online; Biospere Collapse Peak Oil. John Berbatis