Eco Logic Lee

Over at E magazine,  Scott Dworkin talks about Obama’s recent decision to deny the Keystone XL project.   Environmentalists win this round, but as Dworkin points out, the win could be temporary and there is a real messaging problem.

 supporters of Keystone XL and other polluting resource extraction initiatives have effectively framed the debate for voters and politicians alike around jobs and short-term economic gains instead of long-term damage to the planet and profiting off of technological stagnation or rampant consumerism. When Americans see a blueprint for an oil pipeline, they see energy and infrastructure progress. And when they see the president denying a permit for such a plan, no matter what the context, they often fall for the right-wing squawking (this time from GOP presidential hopefuls) about liberals being destructive to the economy and catering to extremist environmental groups.

So what can we environmentalists do to change the way this debate is unfolding within the chaotic presidential race? I propose that we would do well to stick to our guns on the most potent weapon in our arsenal: scientific and demonstrable truth. Not only are the details surrounding Obama’s decision important—he was legally bound to ensure the appropriate impact assessments were undergone and was pressured by Canadian officials to ignore environmental impacts they de facto acknowledged—but the details about the pipeline itself must be cleared up.

Keystone, if built, would indeed create several thousand construction jobs. But these jobs would only be temporary, and estimates by the State Department place the number of permanent American jobs created by this gargantuan project at about 20. That’s right. Twenty. With regards to energy production, most of the oil extracted at a high environmental cost from Canadian tar sands would be exported to China. And, further exposing the Keystone scam, the pipeline would not necessarily increase the amount of oil we import from Canada at all or solidify our so-called energy security; Canada’s crude export pipelines currently only run at about half capacity.

Keystone is a bad idea, but fighting the “jobs” argument will be tough.   Clean energy is the way forward, and we need to stay focused

The Environmental Working Group isn’t thrilled with the emphasis Obama put on Natural Gas production in his state of the union address.  The problem is that almost all current Natural Gas production requires the hydraulic fracturing of gas wells (fracking). Some background on on fracking from Earth Friendly Shopping

In a hydraulic fracture operation,  water and a mix of chemicals are pumped at high pressure into the formation where the gas is stored  At some point, the formation is no longer able to absorb the liquid and fractures.  The gas will flow more easily through the fracture and into the well.

Among the problems with this procedure is that chemical companies do not release the list of chemicals that they use, considering them proprietary.  While we don’t know exactly what chemicals are in the mix, we do know that some of them are highly toxic, and some have shown up in underground drinking water supplies near fracking sites.

Meanwhile, evidence is growing that water supplies have been compromised in at least six states from hydraulic fracturing operations.   In Alabama, Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming, incidents have been recorded in which residents have reported changes in water quality or quantity following fracturing operations of gas wells near their homes

EWG did acknowledge that the President wants to require companies to disclose the chemicals that they use, and they welcome his leadership in that regard.  but

 that isn’t going to be enough to satisfy grassroots outrage about the David versus Goliath battles in which local communities find themselves pitted against giant drilling companies. People are worried about their water, their health and the value of their property after drilling. They are beset by frenzied leasing requests from natural gas “land men” and in some cases, experiencing drilling-related earthquakes. These communities have deep, long-term concerns about the environmental and financial impacts of natural gas drilling in key battleground states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado and North Carolina. Yet it seems to us the White House has missed this political reality in its fervor over natural gas drilling.

…This natural gas policy may undermine what the President says is the most important mission of our time – ‘the basic American promise that if you worked hard, you could do well enough to raise a family, own a home, send your kids to college, and put a little away for retirement.’ Ask the folks with whom EWG has spoken – and they’ll tell you what happened to them — unregulated fracking destroyed that promise.

Natural gas does certainly burn cleaner than most other fossil fuels, but it crucial that we not overlook the problems, and that we use natural gas as no more than a bridge to get us to truly clean and renewable sources of power.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2067716,00.html?xid=rss-fullworld-yahoo

At the moment, the project that will transform the future of El Hierro doesn’t look like much more than a hole in the ground. Or two, to be exact: one on top of a mountain, another smaller one down below, and in between, a long stretch of pipeline tinted the same color as the scrub that grows so abundantly on this volcanic island. But when this innovative wind-power system goes online at the end of 2011, it will turn El Hierro, the easternmost of Spain’s Canary Islands, into the first inhabited landmass in the world to become completely energy self-sufficient. And that’s just the first step in a plan that may make the island the most sustainable place on Earth.

Sound ambitious? Consider the source. El Hierro is located over 750 miles (1,200 km) from the Spanish mainland, and its stark, volcanic landscape harbors no coal or fossil fuels. Fresh water is scarce, and for electricity, its population of 10,000 has long depended on the diesel brought in weekly by tanker. Which is why, some 25 years ago, the islanders began thinking about ways to convert to renewable energy, using the two resources that they actually have a lot of: wind and water. Now, with oil supplies dwindling worldwide and the Fukushima disaster offering an all-too-present reminder of the perils of nuclear energy, El Hierro’s hydro-eolic plant looks positively prescient.

“At first, it was simply an issue of becoming more self-sufficient,” says Tomas PadrÓn, president of the Island Council, whose role is similar to that of a mayor’s. “We were completely dependent on outside deliveries and could be cut off at a moment’s notice. But then with the global-energy crisis, and climate change, and everything else that’s happened, we’ve realized it has a lot more value.”

The future power station is at once a marvel of engineering and remarkably simple in its design. Five windmills on the northeastern end of the island will power a pumping station that, when the wind is blowing, will drive water 2,300 feet uphill, from a small, 5 million-cubic-foot (150,000-cu-m) reservoir down by the shore to a larger, 19 million-cubic-foot (550,000-cu-m) reservoir snuggled into one of the island’s volcanic craters. When the wind abates, water from the top depository will be released, along 1.8 miles (3 km) of mostly camouflaged pipes, into the bottom one, and the pressure of that falling water will drive six hydraulic turbines. In other words, El Hierro will combine the two resources in which it abounds to deliver a continuous supply of electricity, no matter the weather. “If we don’t want to depend on fossil fuel, we have to have steady input and output,” says Gonzalo Piernavieja, director of research and development for the Technological Institute of the Canaries, which designed the plant. “And the only way to do that is through massive storage. In this case, we’re using nature’s gifts, wind and sea water, for storage.”

The plant is expected to produce 48 GW/h (gigawatt hours), enabling El Hierro to conserve some 6,000 tons of diesel per year, and to meet 100% of its energy needs by 2015. And by that time, the island will be well into its next sustainability projects. One of them, already underway, is a plan convert all 4,500 of El Hierro’s cars to electric; the same municipal company, Gorona del Viento, that is building the new hydroeolic station will supply car batteries powered by excess energy from the plant. “The whole system will be integrated,” says Javier Morales, El Hierro’s councilman for sustainability. “It’s beyond green. When the power plant and the car system interact, it will be like galaxies colliding.”

And that’s not all that will be integrated. Unlike most of the other islands in the Canaries archipelago, which have staked their economies on mass tourism, El Hierro remains largely agricultural (pineapples and mangos are its primary exports). Its farmers too are looking ahead: all of the island’s agricultural cooperatives have signed on to a plan that will convert their fields to organic production in the next eight years. And those farms, in turn, will be connected to a “biodigester” that converts sewage into both methane (which can then be used as fuel) and fertilizer.

How did a place so small that it lacks a movie theater and so culturally conservative that it still frowns upon unaccompanied women in bars come up with such a revolutionary plan for the future? Thank geography, says Island Council president PadrÓn. “We’ve always been doubly isolated, first from mainland Spain, and then from the rest of the Canaries,” he says. “And we’ve always had problems with drought and with supplying ourselves. It makes us look harder for solutions.”

But if El Hierro’s problems are particular, its solutions don’t have to be, say officials. “Absolutely this technology can be applied elsewhere,” says Morales about the power station, whose upper reservoir is currently being lined with massive sheets of PVC in preparation for the first water pumping. “Hawaii, for example. We’re already advising them.” That’s something that another volcanic archipelago, notably larger but perhaps newly aware of the limits of conventional energy, might want to look into.

A few weeks ago, there were a number of articles about the precipitous decline of phytoplankton in the oceans.   A team in the journal Nature reported phytoplankton has declined on an average 1% per year over the past 100 years, declining about 40% since 1950.

The researchers, and most of the reporting of the study, focused on increased warming of the ocean surface, leading to more stratification, and less nutrient for the plankton.

Phytoplankton need sunlight to grow, so they’re constrained to the upper layers of the ocean and depend on nutrients welling up from below. But warmer waters are less likely to mix in this way, which starves the phytoplankton and limits their growth.

At the time, I suspected the story might be more significant, and more complicated than originally reported.  The more I look, the more I am convinced that my suspicions were correct.   But before we get into that, here is a little background for any of you that may have missed it.

What is plankton?

On Spongebob, Plankton might be evil, but in our oceans plankton plays a crucial role.  There are two main types of plankton.  Phytoplankton (the plants of the sea) and zooplankton,  which are typically microscopic animals living near the surface of aquatic environments.  While both are important, it is the phytoplankton where the decline has been documented.  Since phytoplankton form the base of the entire aquatic food chain,  we’ll focus our discussion here.  According to NASA

Derived from the Greek words phyto (plant) and plankton (made to wander or drift), phytoplankton are microscopic organisms that live in watery environments, both salty and fresh.

Some phytoplankton are bacteria, some are protists, and most are single-celled plants. Among the common kinds are cyanobacteria, silica-encased diatoms, dinoflagellates, green algae, and chalk-coated coccolithophores.

Like land plants, phytoplankton have chlorophyll to capture sunlight, and they use photosynthesis to turn it into chemical energy. They consume carbon dioxide, and release oxygen. All phytoplankton photosynthesize…

The scale of phytoplankton is staggering.  (phytoplankton) account for approximately half the production of organic matter on Earth. Phytoplankton act as the first step in a huge carbon pump that takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and either holds it in the marine biosphere or traps it in the deep ocean.

Worldwide, this “biological carbon pump” transfers about 10 gigatonnes of carbon from the atmosphere to the deep ocean each year.

And this is why the decline in phytoplankton is so troubling.   From Real Climate

Over the last 150 years, carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations have risen from 280 to nearly 380 parts per million (ppm)….The roughly 500 billion metric tons of carbon we have produced is enough to have raised the atmospheric concentration of CO₂to nearly 500 ppm. The concentrations have not reached that level because the ocean and the terrestrial biosphere have the capacity to absorb some of the CO₂ we produce.* However, it is the fact that we produce CO₂ faster than the ocean and biosphere can absorb it that explains the observed increase.

OK  - so the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere has increased over 35%, and one of the mechanisms of keeping it from rising faster is disappearing.  As we add more CO2 into the atmosphere, the biosphere (particularly the marine portion of it) will be less and less able to process it.

Another factor for us to consider  is the “carbon sink” properties of higher marine life forms.  After all, plankton do more than live and die, they are also eaten forming the base of the food chain that supports schools of deepwater fish and mammals including cod, bass, sharks, and all the way up to whales.  A pod of whales, for example, is a significant carbon sink.

In addition to being a carbon sink, these larger animals also serve as a holding area for the other nutrients needed by any eco system.  While there are a lot of nutrients involved, for this discussion, we will focus on nitrogen, one of the most basic building blocks.

In many ways, the nitrogen cycle is similar to the carbon cycle.   Nitrogen (along with carbon, oxygen, and other nutrients)  is used by plants to create more complex molecules such as sugars, which are then eaten by animals.  The animals excretion contains nitrogen, and nitrogen is released when the plants and animals die and decompose.

But there is an important difference.  Atmospheric carbon (CO2) is readily used by plants.  In fact, it is a crucial element in photosynthesis.  But atmospheric nitrogen (N2) is not readily used by plants.

This is because the strong triple bond between the N atoms in N₂ molecules makes it relativelyinert. In fact, in order for plants and animals to be able to use nitrogen, N₂gas must first be converted to more a chemically available form such as ammonium (NH₄⁺), nitrate (NO₃^-), or organic nitrogen (e.g. urea – (NH₂)₂CO). The inert nature of N₂ means that biologically available nitrogen is often in short supply in natural ecosystems, limiting plant growth and biomass accumulation.

And that leads me to why I suspected the story is more complex than originally reported.   We are actively removing organic nitrogen, in the form of fish, from our oceans.  This section draws heavily on the work and research of Debbie MacKenzie.  For the past 10 years MacKenzie has been writing that overfishing has been causing the oceans to starve.  At first, her work was dismissed, but recently more and more researchers are acknowledging that overfishing is a contributing factor in decline of the overall health of the ocean bioshpheres.

Sea creatures are now underfed and algae growth slowed, showing declining ocean carbon uptake. This seems to be an unanticipated, indirect impact of fishing, which is an important new insight. Fish lift nutrients to the surface water, fertilizing algae and powering a natural carbon sink. But our massive removal of fish, sea birds and marine mammals over centuries has damaged this carbon sink, like deforesting the land. If sea animals made a comeback, the fish-powered carbon sink would mitigate atmospheric carbon dioxide. But this idea – that fish boost ocean carbon uptake, and that science has overlooked it – challenges accepted ideas and threatens the fishing industry.

2010 – UPDATE – Scientists are starting to report the carbon sink ‘value’ of living, moving whales, plus the carbon ‘cost’ of whaling, and suggest financial ‘carbon credits’ could now be earned by stopping fishing and whaling, supporting the theme of this website:

MacKenzie provides multiple examples of declining marine ecosystems. Bleached seaweed, tidal pools bereft of barnacles, but most dramatic, the disappearance of large predators in the oceans

Centuries ago, before fishermen began removing fish and their predators, seas were unimaginably full of large healthy animals. The first explorers of the Northwest Atlantic ocean reported that the noise of the great numbers of whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence prevented sleeping at night, that large cod could be caught in baskets lowered into the sea, that fish were so numerous they slowed the progress of ships, that oysters and other invertebrates grew to huge sizes and were extremely abundant, that there were massive colonies of big fat seabirds, and that rivers were so full of giant sturgeon it was dangerous to get in a canoe.

Fish and their predators are subdued today. The living biomass of sharks and other large fish is estimated to have fallen below 10% of original levels. Some have been driven to extinction. Really big specimens of any fish species have become very rare, and there are fewer small fish. Numbers of whales and seabirds are far below former levels, while seals have made only a partial recent recovery after near eradication by humans.

This great loss of animal life has been accompanied by a lowering of food production in the ocean. This can be seen in the increasingly poor condition of fish as they grow to larger sizes. Mature fish become spent today much more quickly than they were in the past.

Consider cod in Atlantic Canada, a fish that once grew to be a formidable predator itself at 6 feet long, 200 pounds, and living 40 or 50 years. Today, virtually all cod die before age 7. This is occurring with no human cod fishery. The size trap for cod has been set much lower than before, now at less than two feet long. Cod that approach this size become weak and emaciated and are killed by natural predators. The surviving natural predators are mostly seals, that now try to eat bigger spent cod in addition to thinning the numbers of small cod as was their traditional role. Less effective than sharks in eating bigger fish, seals often manage only to bite out the bellies from spent cod.

All this tells us that we have been pulling nutrients from the oceans, and not replacing them. As we deplete the oceans of organic nitrogen the entire ecosystem is in rapid decline.  Up until recently, many thought that the nitrogen taken from the ocean was being replaced by human waste and agricultural runnoff in rivers.  It was a fairly common assumption that the fixed nitrogen entering the oceans this way equaled or was greater than the fixed nitrogen taken from the oceans by fishing.  Mackenzie has this response:

First, what becomes of the huge quantities of nitrogen that are now entering the sea via rivers? (The contributors are human sewage, agricultural runoff of fertilizers and manure, increased input due to erosion, and nitrates arriving there via aerial deposition/fuel burning.) One effect is very well known, called “eutrophication” it’s a syndrome wherein the oversupply of nutrients stimulates overgrowth of algae, which then die and sink to the bottom where they undergo decomposition by bacteria which depletes the water of oxygen, killing fish and being generally unhelpful. But the nutrients in this scenario don’t get very far, they become part of the nearshore bottom sediment rather than effectively stimulating production in the food web as a whole or moving offshore to become “food” for fish on the offshore banks. Another thing that happens in the polluted rivers is that they become much more effective as functioning septic systems – i.e. conditions of high nitrates and low oxygen stimulate higher rates of denitrification by the bacteria that normally carry out that function. (It has recently been discovered that some “nitrifiers” will actually switch over and function as “denitrifiers” in these conditions, amplifying the nitrogen-removing effect.) This bacterial activity has the effect of changing much of the organic nitrogen into the inorganic form, which then no longer qualifies as a “nutrient.” Actually denitrification is a well-known process that occurs in the seabed, both nearshore and offshore, so it represents one of the normal “sinks” but it is greatly accelerated by the practice of dumping large quantities of concentrated, liquid nutrients into estuaries and coastal waters

This process has resulted in dead zones in many coastal waters.  A large area of the Gulf of Mexico is a dead zone resulting from agricultural runoff from the midwest through the Mississippi River.  The Baltic Sea currently has 7 of the 10 largest dead zones in the world.

Conclusion

OK – It has taken a while to get here, but let’s look at how this picture plays out

1. Overfishing has caused a decline in the overall level of fixed nitrogen in the oceans,

2. The warming of the oceans has led to a stratification, meaning that the nutrients still in the sea (particularly fixed or organic nitrogen) are not rising to the top where they are needed by phytoplankton.

3 The result is a precipitous decline in phytoplankton, the base of the entire oceanic food chain

4.  As to volume of phytoplankton decrease, the ocean biosphere is less able to take up and use atmospheric carbon (CO2.) accelerating the increased level of CO2 in the atmosphere, leading to further warming.

So, where does this leave us?

For numerous reasons listed above, we need to improve the health of the oceans.  If for no other reason than to have another carbon sink, but also because the oceans represent a huge source of food for us.

Unfortunately, “fertilizing” the deep ocean is probably an expensive thing to do, and one where the benefits don’t necessarily go to the people making the investment.  If a farmer fertilizes his land (hopefully with natural, organic fertilizer) the increased yields benefit the farmer.  But, if someone adds nutrients to the deep ocean, anyone fishing will benefit.

This is probably a case where we need to think and act globally, but is anyone paying enough attention?

While our attention is certainly focused toward the ongoing disaster in the Gulf,  CO2 continues to build in our atmosphere, and the planet continues to warm.  According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration May 2010 was the warmest May on record,  and the periods January through May and March through May, 2010 were the warmest comparable periods on record.

Worldwide average land surface temperature for May and March-May was the warmest on record while the global ocean surface temperatures for both May and March-May were second warmest on record, behind 1998.

The above graph shows areas that were warmer than average (red) and cooler than average (blue).   We can see that some areas, like the Western U.S. and areas of South America,  were cooler than average, most of the globe was warmer.  In some places lots warmer.  Greenland,  and a good part of Norther Europe and Russia were 4-5 degrees Celsius above average.

And this points out one of the big problems in talking about global warming or climate change.  We experience the weather every day, and when our personal experience doesn’t align with the big picture, it becomes harder for us to believe.  I live in Northern California, where it has been an unusually cold May and June.  Last night I was at my nieces high school graduation (outdoors) and we were COLD.

Over the winter, friends of mine argued that the big snow falls on the East Coast proved that global warming wasn’t real.

But there is a difference between the weather, which is local and short term, and climate changes which are long term and global in scope.   And what is happening globlally?

Each of the 10 warmest average global temperatures recorded since 1880 have occurred in the last fifteen years. The warmest year-to-date on record, through May, was 1998, and 2010 is warmer so far (note: although 1998 was the warmest year through May, a late-year warm surge in 2005 made that year the warmest total year). Analysis by the National Climatic Data Center reveals that May of 2010 was the warmest global average for that month on record, and is also the warmest year-to-date from January to May

A cold May in California, or big snows in Virginia doesn’t change any of this

Some additional facts from the study:

• The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for May was the warmest on record, at 1.24°F (0.69°C) above the 20th century average of 58.6°F (14.8°C).
• The global land surface temperature for May was 1.87°F (1.04°C) above the 20th century average of 52.0°F (11.1°C) — the warmest on record.
• The May worldwide ocean temperature was the second warmest on record, behind 1998. The temperature anomaly was 0.99°F (0.55°C) above the 20th century average of 61.3°F (16.3°C).
• Warm temperatures were present over most of the globe’s land areas. The warmest temperature anomalies occurred in eastern North America, eastern Brazil, Eastern Europe, southern Asia, eastern Russia, and equatorial Africa. The Chinese province of Yunnan had its warmest May since 1951. Numerous locations in Ontario, Canada had their warmest May on record.
• Anomalously cool conditions were present across western North America, northern Argentina, interior Asia, and Western Europe. Germany had its coolest May since 1991 and its 12th coolest May on record.