TheMillerCircle.org

If you haven’t read Roger Bradbury’s op-ed piece in the New York Times, published yesterday, this a good time to familiarize yourself with it. Roger is an adjunct professor, specialized in coral reefs and ecological issues at the Crawford School, a public policy branch of the Australian National University. In his article, he raises the issue that to me is suitably alarmist. Our coral reefs, with their rich biodiversity will be gone and it seems unlikely that unless we put an emergency effort into halting the processes that are destroying these gems, including a rapid reduction in atmospheric carbon dioxide, they will vanish, reducing the ocean in those regions to something like it was in the Precambrian era of 500 million years ago when it was rich in algae, jelly fish and very few  fish. The culprits are the ones we already know about—overfishing—acidification of the oceans through the absorption of atmospheric carbon dioxide—and pollution, the latter influence being the hardest to know about  because we don’t have models to predict a large-scale experiment that has never been done. He begins his article by stating that “IT’S past time to tell the truth about the state of the world’s coral reefs, the nurseries of tropical coastal fish stocks. They have become zombie ecosystems, neither dead nor truly alive in any functional sense, and on a trajectory to collapse within a human generation. There will be remnants here and there, but the global coral reef ecosystem — with its storehouse of biodiversity and fisheries supporting millions of the world’s poor — will cease to be. ”
Bradbury refers to a recent statement that came out of a The International Coral Reef Symposium, in which scientists signed a statement supporting immediate action to prevent an imminent coral reef disaster:
“Consensus Statement on Climate Change and Coral Reefs

The international Coral Reef Science Community calls on all governments to ensure the future of coral reefs, through global action to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and via improved local protection of coral reefs. Coral reefs are important ecosystems of ecological, economic and cultural value yet they are in decline worldwide due to human activities. Land-based sources of pollution, sedimentation, overfishing and climate change are the major threats, and all of them are expected to increase in severity.

Changes already observed over the last century:

• Approximately 25-30% of the world’s coral reefs are already severely degraded by local impacts from land and by over-harvesting.

• The surface of the world’s oceans has warmed by 0.7°C, resulting in unprecedented coral bleaching and mortality events.

• The acidity of the ocean’s surface has increased due to increased atmospheric CO2.

• Sea-level has risen on average by 18cm.

By the end of this century:

• CO2 emissions at the current rate will warm sea surface temperatures by at least 2-3°C, raise sea-level by as much as 1.7 meters, reduce ocean pH from 8.1 to less than 7.9, and increase storm frequency and/or intensity. This combined change in temperature and ocean chemistry has not occurred since the last reef crisis 55 million years ago.

Other stresses faced by corals and reefs:

• Coral reef death also occurs because of a set of local problems including excess sedimentation, pollution, habitat destruction, and overfishing.

• These problems reduce coral growth and vitality, making it more difficult for corals to survive climate changes.

Future impacts on coral reefs:

• Most corals will face water temperatures above their current tolerance.

• Most reefs will experience higher acidification, impairing calcification of corals and reef growth.

• Rising sea levels will be accompanied by disruption of human communities, increased sedimentation impacts and increased levels of wave damage.

Together, this combination of climate-related stressors represents an unprecedented challenge for the future of coral reefs and to the services they provide to people.

Across the globe, these problems cause a loss of reef resources of enormous economic and cultural value. A concerted effort to preserve reefs for the future demands action at global levels, but also will benefit hugely from continued local protection.”

The scientific warnings about imminent threats to our environment have gone unheeded, due in large part to the influence of capitalist forces that control the global political agenda. With the threatened destruction of most of our coral reefs within a few generations if not sooner, we are faced with a catastrophe that we may see during our lifetime, one that may usher in a whole new series of rapid changes to livelihoods from the sea and starving populations who now depend on the coral reef system for sustenance.  We tend to study the effects of these global forces degrading coral reefs, but not the rate at which their powers of destruction operate to diminish our future. Rate is everything, but very hard to predict. We are still early in the sixth species extinction, but we are gaining momentum and there is no doubt that this one is appropriately referred to as the anthropogenic species destruction because the offending party is us. Once these processes start, they can’t be stopped and this logic applies as well to the melting of the Greenland Ice and the Polar icecaps, but especially that of Antarctica. If we reduced atmospheric carbon dioxide tomorrow, we would have at least fifty years of reef destruction and global climate change conditions. These changes will be with us no matter what we do, but beyond that period, by reducing emissions and poisoning of the coral reefs, we might stand a chance of eventually seeing them restored. It is of course an issue about whether we have the political will to create a national movement that insists on habitat preservation, though this concept has become far more complex today that it was twenty years ago. The destruction of the global economy fits neatly into creating a national pause in the pursuit of overdue fixes to stabilize our environmental future.

RFM

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Carbon Sequestration in Permafrost (right) by "Cryoturbination" from Charles Tarnocai

Permafrost (permanently frozen ground) has not been on the radar screen very often in the national conversation about global climate change (GCC). When I started reading about the science underlying GCC a few years ago, I came across brief, scattered descriptions about permafrost; my tendency then was to skip over the pages describing the problem, which wasn’t difficult, as there were few in number and fewer still were the number of scientists who considered the issue to be an emergency situation or a major component of GCC. Indeed, until recently, it was widely assumed that the warming of the permafrost would stimulate new plant growth, such that the net impact would be a sink for carbon, not a source and hence, a protective mechanism for absorbing the carbon hiccups of GCC.  The 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; Fourth Report: working group I: The Physical Science Basis, p 340) stated “The maximum extent of seasonally frozen ground has decreased by about 7% in the NH from 1901 to 2002, with a decrease in spring of up to 15%. Its maximum depth has decreased about 0.3 m in Eurasia since the mid-20th century. In addition, maximum seasonal thaw depth over permafrost has increased about 0.2 m in the Russian Arctic from 1956 to 1990. Onset dates of thaw in spring and freeze in autumn advanced five to seven days in Eurasia from 1988 to 2002, leading to an earlier growing season but no change in duration:” there was little hint from the report that permafrost was a serious, hidden threat anymore than that attributed to greenhouse gas emissions in general. Thus, until very recently, any special reference to permafrost as a problem seemed to be traveling under the radar screen.  Observers and scientists alike have all been rightly focused on the more significant issue of coal-burning power plants, the number one polluter and green house gas emitter and the single biggest danger to our planetary future.  But in the last few years, reports started to appear which suggested that permafrost could no longer be ignored in calculations and models about climate change, because more extensive measurements suggested that it is potentially a major source of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane and that permafrost may be a storage source for huge quantities of carbon, in the form of plant material that got buried long ago in the layers of permafrost–a source that is now in the process of being “liberated” through exposure to planetary warming. One of the revelations that changed our views on this topic came from recent studies that measured permafrost carbon content at soil depths deeper than 100 cm, revealing that for some permafrost regions, up to 2/3 of the carbon deposits in the soil were deeper than the 100 cm limit used in many previous studies. More measurements and additional studies of this problem are acutely needed to evaluate the significance of this newly revealed, potentially dangerous source of carbon. It could form another positive feedback mechanism for GCC, at a time when we have a hard time dealing with coal-burning power plants.

Recently, Justin Gillis wrote an article in the New York timeswhich provided  an excellent, fairly detailed front page story on permafrost, together with information about ongoing studies in Alaska, Canada and other parts of the Northern Hemisphere. These studies are alarming because they indicate that the Northern Hemisphere could become a source of carbon rather than a sink (indeed, it may be there already, though we don’t know this with certainty), created by warming conditions which stimulate bacterial breakdown of dormant sources of carbon.

Permafrost of Circumpolar Region (from Charles Tarnocai)

When oxygen is plentiful, as in the bacterial breakdown of plant material in air,  the stored permafrost vegetation is generally broken down into carbon dioxide, but when the region is oxygen-poor, usually when it is submerged in water, bacteria can generate methane gas from this carbon source, which forms bubbles in lakes and ponds as it rises to the surface and ultimately into the atmosphere. Methane gas has been reported in locations in Alaska: once in the atmosphere, it is 33 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas when measured over a 100 year period. It is far better to burn it off into carbon dioxide than let it reach the atmosphere as methane, even though its half life in the atmosphere is less than that of carbon dioxide.  Recent estimates of the amount of carbon that currently exists in the permafrost is about twice the amount that’s in the atmosphere already and could eventually constitute up to 35 percent of today’s annual human emissions. The danger of this source, is that once the process of degradation begins, though it may take 100 years or more to biodegrade its way through the available sources of carbon, it will be impossible to stop. Now is the time to alertly invest in research to evaluate with more certainty the true impact of this new addition to the GCC orchestra. Is it a single instrument or a new section of the band!

The first question of interest of course is what is permafrost? A dictionary definition is that of a subsurface material that remains below zero degrees Centigrade (32 degrees Fahrenheit) for a least two consecutive years. More practically, it’s the area in the Northern Hemisphere that is largely frozen, but some regions of the permafrost have a surface layer which has seasonal plant growth. The permafrost areas, like the rest of the planet, are beginning to warm and there is new cause for concern about the consequences. The earth is heating up more rapidly in the Northern Hemisphere than any other region of the planet. As the reflective glaciers (albedo effect) retreat, the area exposes itself as a less reflective environment, in the form of water and land, and more of the sun ‘s energy is absorbed and accelerates the warming trend; this constitutes a positive feedback system which further accelerates the loss of snow and ice in the region–>more heat–>less ice–>more heat absorbed–>more melting of ice–>where will it all end?  Thus, GCC is already generating one positive feedback system in the form of the albedo effect, especially evident in the Northern Hemisphere. Though permafrost also exists within the Antarctic region, it has been less well studied. As glaciers and ice pack formation retreat, more  permafrost gets exposed, but the warming of the exposed permafrost appears to be adding another source of carbon that we should seriously worry about. This issue has become of interest lately because studies have shown that permafrost is a rich source of sequestered carbon that has been trapped in the soil for hundreds to thousands of years.

It is counter-intuitive to imagine that permafrost might be a type of soil that holds rich deposits of carbon. One’s first impression is that soils exposed to frozen conditions will  be poor in nutritional value and contain less vegetation than that of more temperate soils. But extensive measurements from many different regions of the permafrost indicate that overall, the permafrost can contain higher levels of carbon than more temperate soils and that deep down in the soil, rich carbon deposits can exist.  The first figure illustrates how the permafrost becomes increasingly carbonized by a process referred to as  “crytoturbination,” (right figure) as if a giant Hobart machine circulated plant deposits  (and a few dead animals) from near the surface deeper into the soil, such that very deep layers contain high levels of carbon when compared to soils from more temperate regions (left figure). This process of permafrost carbonation has been going on for thousands of years but it is still surprising that they contain such high levels and deep layers of carbon deposits.  The second figure shows, in a color-coded map, the areas of permafrost that presently exist in the Northern Circumpolar regions, based on carbon soil content derived from borehole analysis.  If the permafrost source of carbon dioxide/methane gains momentum, it will become another positive feedback mechanism with sufficient potential power to make a big contribution to global warming. Whereas climatologists and plant biologists once considered the exposure of the permafrost to have a positive influence through carbon sequestration, with the new higher estimates of the permafrost carbon content, the process may well have started and whatever benefit we might have derived may be turning into an additional problem for the future of the planet. When you look at it in the following way, you can appreciate the problem: for hundreds of millions of years, the earth accumulated carbon in the form of coal, oil and natural gas. Through man’s ingenious nature, a portion of this carbon  has been put into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but on a time scale of a few centuries. Since we now understand that the planet is in a delicate balance of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, with the Earth’s ice and snow content, shouldn’t it alarm all of us when we imagine that our actions cannot do anything other than change our planetary weather? What new philosophical form of inquiry is required for man to properly gaze into the future that he has created for himself? Scientific inquiry so far doesn’t seem to work.

RFM

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Mountaintop removal eliminates the mountain and fills the valley below

I have been waiting for the documentary “The Last Mountain” to be released to my  Netflix streaming queue for sometime and then it suddenly showed up, so I watched it a few nights ago. Directed by Bill Haney, it tells the gripping story of the fight to keep Coal River Mountain West Virginia from being destroyed by the Massey Energy  Company.  The residents of Coal River Valley have been threatened for years by mountain top removal in a region of the state that has breath-taking, tree-covered hills and valleys; this region however has been progressively destroyed by coal mining through the technique of  mountaintop removal, based on massive, mechanized  machinery and explosives. Although Robert Kennedy played a major role as an activist and adviser in the documentary, and clearly adds a sense of national urgency to the issues addressed, the story is also about how local residents of Coal River Valley got together and formed an activist resistance to the Massey Coal Company’s plan to remove Coal River Mountain, a mountain that serves as a watershed for residents of the valleys below.  Many other mountains in the region have already been destroyed by coal mining, such that Coal River Mountain was and is the “last mountain standing”  of significance for the region. The removal of this mountain will destroy the water system of people living downstream and increase the severity of flooding, two well-known, obligatory features of mountaintop removal.  Many residents believe that Massey Coal wants to depopulate the Coal River Valley and eliminate downstream community occupancy, to give them more space for strip-mining. It is a very ugly process.

While the Obama administration has been more sensitive to the destruction of the water supply by mountaintop coal mining and violations of environmental laws, the original permits to remove Coal River Mountain were given during the Bush administration and Massey Coal has proceeded to execute its march towards mountain destruction. However, in a somewhat duplicitous manner, the Obama administration continues to issue permits for more mountaintop removal in the region. An interesting feature of this controversy was revealed in the documentary based on studies  that raise the feasibility of putting windmill generators across the top of Coal River Mountain. Those who have studied this suggest that wind power generation would produce more jobs and give the neighboring communities more long-term income through power generation and improvements in the tax base, when compared to the resources generated by the Massey mountaintop removal project,  which  of course will end at some time in the future. The demonstrations, sit-ins and tree sitting by environmentalists and residents are greeted with hostility by the miners who still have jobs working for Massey Coal. Oddly enough, I didn’t see many of the mountain top removal defenders (50 percent of our electricity comes from coal) argue that the future of the industry depends on the development of new clean coal technologies, none of which were on display or even discussed. Many coal-based power plants claim that they are ready for “carbon-capture” technology when it becomes available. But that possibility is very remote because once in service, the public will not tolerate retrofitting for carbon-capture, even if the technique becomes feasible, as it would add enormous costs to existing energy production. If carbon-capture or some similar clean coal technology ever comes along, it is likely to increase the cost of coal-based power plants to a prohibitively high level. Coal is currently the worst source of air pollution and the long list of its pollution offenses  goes beyond carbon dioxide and includes such things as mercury contamination, which accounts for warnings we get about eating fish too often because of their high mercury content. Mercury is toxic to the brain and impacts on brain development. It might be that Republicans have been eating too much fish.

Robert Kennedy is articulate in pointing out that the impact of Massey Coal has been to increase the poverty of the region, first by destroying the unions in the 1980s (companies close mines, send unionized workers home and then reopened the mines with non-union miners, complete with reduced salary and benefits) and second, by reducing the labor force through automation and modernization of equipment and techniques: strip mining is replacing deep hole mining, with a reduction in the labor force needed.  But if the true cost of coal mining was reflected in the price of coal, including the serious health care costs and safety issues, the cost of this form of energy would be prohibitively expensive. We are not just trapped by the history of the region as a long-standing coal-mining center, but also by the powerful lobbying interests of coal mining and transportation (trains) that thrive on their operations in West Virginia and other coal-intensive states.  One can add that Wall Street has billions invested in these companies because they are profitable and seem to be free from serious regulatory control. Add to that formula the corrupt organization of the state’s environmental protection agency, which allows coal companies to violate water and air quality standards without fines, and you have an updated version of “Love Canal.”

The environmental damage does not stop with a disappearing mountain top. The heavy coal mining leads to toxic waste sites in the mountain regions above the valleys, created from the water used to wash the coal before it is shipped and these sites leak and pollute the water supply downstream, carrying highly toxic material.  Several websites have been put up to monitor the mining operation, but the state and Federal Government seem to collude as obstacles for better environmental regulation. The trouble is that while wind energy might be successful for the future of local inhabitants, how will the energy needs of others be met who receive the coal over long distance railroad shipments? You have to decommission these coal plants one at a time, when you have a suitable alternative and until that can be achieved, the forces promoting mountaintop removal will keep going with few obstacles in sight that can stop them. If you had only two solutions to our energy needs, nuclear power and coal mining, the preferred choice would be obvious.  The solution at hand is to build a new, modern transcontinental power grid that collects electricity from all forms of power generated in different ways and distribute that power efficiently to homes and businesses. This is an infrastructure issue. Yes, it would be better to replace coal-fired power plants with natural gas in the short-run, and it seems obvious that the wind turbine option for the people of Coal River Valley makes far more economic and environmental sense, but how to resolve the challenges of implementing this new technology in place of coal is something we can only achieve through the force of a national government, not a state government, which, in the case of West Virginia seems hopelessly corrupt and entirely devoted to the private, rather than the public interest.

RFM

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