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From National Geographic

Week before last, temperatures in International Falls Minnesota reached 46 degrees below zero and that was the air temperature, without the windchill.  An Arctic blast of cold air broke free from its northern moorings and spread rapidly into Minnesota and nearby states. At those temperatures, breathing through your nose is a challenge, as ice crystals form within the nasal cavity and you quickly find it best to breathe through a scarf or some other device, like a face mask that quickly gets warmed by your breath. But in time, even these filters develop ice crystals and breathing through them can become more labored. Most Minnesotans know what to do under these conditions–they go outside only when they have to and spend more time indoors. Air hockey anyone?

All humans share a short nasal cavity; sufficient time has not elapsed to see if evolutionary adaptations might arise in Minnesotans, such as a longer nasal cavity that would serve to mitigate nasal ice crystal formation.  In response to this dry arctic air that crept into Minnesota week before last, I found myself shuttered inside, thinking about polar bears and the special adaptive features they have developed to make it through winters that actually don’t get a lot colder than what we observed recently in Minnesota (January temperatures in the Arctic get to about 58 degrees below zero, so we truly got a blast of real Arctic air), though they stay that way much longer. Polar bears are insulated by about 4 inches of blubber, lying immediately underneath their skin. They also have a larger head and a longer nasal cavity when compared to Brown bears. The longer nasal cavity is probably better at warming the cold air when breathing through the nostrils and polar bears have an olfactory apparatus that can detect minute odor levels miles away.  You have heard of the infrared cameras that one uses to gauge heat loss and identify areas in your home that are losing heat through poor insulation. Well, the polar bear is so well insulated that they are virtually invisible to an infrared camera. They are one of the most efficient animals for heat retention we know of.

Polar bears are the largest land-dwelling carnivores, with males reaching up to 1500 pounds; the largest polar bear on record weighed 2210 pounds. Yet, while they are the dominant predator of the Arctic circle, they are slated for extinction perhaps within the next 50 years. A guaranteed disappearance of a predator at the top of the food chain should bother the Hell of out of all of us, because we are predators at the top the biggest and widest food chain in the world. So if polar bears can disappear with the speed of essentially dimming a switch, why can’t this happen to us just as easily? Well of course, for one thing there are more of us–humans number more than 6 billion and by the middle of this century we are scheduled to reach 9 billion, while polar bears, restricted to the Arctic circle region, number about 20,000 to 25,000; their numbers are already declining while human numbers continue to grow. Then too, we occupy a different niche than polar bears and occupy more temperate zones and insure ourselves an adequate supply of food through agriculture and animal cultivation; most of us don’t have to hunt to eat. In contrast, the polar bears have an established a food chain niche that is critically dependent on the retention of sea ice for foraging. This projected elimination of the species is not because of threats from hunting or factors other than the expected conditions that will be brought about by global climate change and the early seasonal loss of sea ice that polar bears depend on for hunting their primary prey–seals. Persistent sea ice is essential for polar bears to hunt. Normally, the sea ice doesn’t break up until September, at which time polar bears are forced by circumstances to move off the sea ice onto land. In the fall, a pregnant female creates a hibernation den within the snow and enters into a state of semi-hibernation during which time, her cubs are born (2-4) and they feed exclusively on mother’s milk for three to four and a half months.

When a mother polar bear comes out of her winter hibernation, with cubs in tow, she will have lost several hundred of pounds of weight, as she had fattened up before hibernation in order to nurse her cubs that are born during the hibernation period. After the birth of the cubs, but still during the hibernation period, mother’s milk is the exclusive source of nourishment used to feed the cubs. So when she emerges with her cubs in the spring, they are old enough to have some mobility and her first need is to get food to nourish herself and keep producing mile to feed her cubs. It’s as if the termination of the hibernation period brings on a food crisis. Normally, when polar bears emerge from hibernation,  the arctic sea ice is still intact, which is far more conducive for catching seals, the main diet of polar bears.  Even when the sea ice begins to break up in the summer, large chunks of ice allow polar bears to hunt on the ice when seals break through their holes to breathe. But if the sea ice becomes too thin and breaks up into smaller chunks or disappears altogether, seals are no longer constrained to breathe through the ice and polar bears can no longer hunt efficiently.  There are reports of polar bears mating with grizzlies, the result of which is to produce hybrids that are less efficient as swimmers and at greater risk when marginal sea ice conditions appear.  So, the earlier that the sea ice melts or breaks up, the greater is the risk for polar bears. Reports of polar bear drownings have already appeared, presumably as a result of too much ice melting and making swimming distances between ice flows too great.

The story behind the threat of polar bear extinction began  in 2007 and was provided by a report from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), indicating that within 50 years, the shrinking sea ice will leave only a small remnant of polar bear populations on the islands of the Canadian Arctic; those along the Alaskan and Russian coasts, which are the populations most often studied, will all be gone. These reports were provided to Congress; a year later, the polar bear was listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act by the United States Department of the Interior.

The report of 2007 made the news in the Anchorage Daily News (article written by  Tom Kizzia, September 8, 2007) and, until recently, nothing had changed to alter these grim projections, based on scientific expectations derived from climate change modeling studies, using what is known as a general circulation model (GCM). Those studies indicated that sufficient carbon dioxide had already accumulated such that a “tipping point” had been reached and nothing could be done to reverse the fate of sea ice in the Arctic as it was shrinking at a much faster rate than earlier models had predicted. In a relatively short time, it was predicted that sea ice would disappear and get broken up earlier and earlier in the year, putting more pressure on polar bears. In these studies, the tipping point concept was based on the idea that ice normally provides a reflection of sunlight and thus returns energy from the surface of the earth, preventing some solar radiation from warming the oceans and land surfaces. But as ice surfaces diminish in area, earth and water surfaces get more sunlight exposure. This phenomenon is referred to as the “albedo” effect; it constitutes a positive feedback from melting ice–the more ice that melts, the more sunlight hits the earth and water surfaces and in turn melts more ice. The ice melt of 2007 was especially worrisome. Thus, USGA report of 2007 suggested that this positive feedback system, had already reached a point that future sea ice would melt, perhaps very rapidly, and eliminate most of the polar bear population within 50 years. According to that report a tipping point had already been reached so that no matter what future reductions in carbon emissions might be achieved, the polar bears were doomed.

The 2007 USGA report was not seriously challenged until a recent article appeared in Nature in December 2010 (volume 468, p. 955-958). This report re-examined the idea of a tipping point for sea ice and the future of polar bears. However, in these new modeling studies, the issue was examined based on the assumption that some reduction in greenhouse gases would take place in the future. Using a similar model to that used to project a poor outcome for polar bears, the paper by Amstrup et al accepted different levels of reductions in green house gases as a basis for generating different models that simulated whether or not a normal  sea ice pattern could be retained under these conditions of reduced carbon dioxide emissions. Five different models of reduced carbon emissions were used, including one proposal to keep the carbon dioxide levels the same as those of the year 2000 (Y2K model); other models used different scenarios for reducing the level of carbon emissions. First, this study confirmed the 2007 USGA results, strongly supporting the idea that if nothing is done, most polar bears are either doomed or will have to dramatically change their hunting habits (and are probably poorly equipped to do so).  However, with reductions in atmospheric carbon dioxide, the Amstrup modeling studies showed that the sea ice could be retained sufficiently to give safe harbor for polar bears. They did not find a “tipping point” that doomed the polar bears and for that reason alone, the study was very encouraging and carried an obviously reduced doomsday prediction. The December 2010 study is exemplary for several reasons. In addition to giving new hope to the polar bears if humans begin to reduce carbon emissions, the Amstrup paper also demonstrates the power of the internet. In a high impact journal such as Nature, papers are given a relatively small amount of space for a single paper–typically three pages or less for an article. But, because information can be stored on the internet, referred to and linked/downloaded while reading the on-line paper, the so called supplemental material can increase the length of the paper by several fold. The polar bear paper referred to was less than three double-sided printed pages in the magazine, but the supplemental material, which contained additional information on the models used, including more color figures and references, was 26 double-sided pages. A second mode of expansion can be seen in the reference section, where if you click on the section, it expands so that each reference has a “show content” link that takes you to an expanded explanation of the reference that has been quoted, what the reference says and why it may or may not be a source of valid observations and conclusions. In short, the Nature paper just described shows why there are no short papers anymore, particularly on a complex subject and within a high impact journal. Now we have three different levels of readership. First, there’s the casual reader, trying to get the general concept of the article, then there’s the serious reader who evaluates the main figures and can talk somewhat intelligently about the article and then there are the global climate change people and serious polar bear biologists who scour through the main article, all the figures, the material in the supplemental section and the expansion of the references, a sort of “why did I use this reference” section. The take home message of all this complexity is that first and foremost, the best and worst case for the future of our polar bears are both based on models–that is all we have to go on. But, increasingly, the models are fed by better and better data and such models are trying to reach down and resolve time limits not achieved in previous work. Instead of centuries long outcomes, models are getting down to half-century and even decades of time. We will see some of these changes within a single human lifetime. But, a single year of weather means nothing–the variables making up our annual weather patterns are too great to project our future from the weather that unfolds in a single season, tempting though it may be to project them forward in time. I seriously doubt that humans have the capacity to remember and log the long-term weather patterns, such that we can become reliable reporters of weather patterns that change over decades: most of us can’t really remember with certainty the weather events of last year. We remember really tough winters and hot summers and there is a sense that we are moving towards warmer conditions, but these transitions are not smooth hyperbolic curves we ride on and that’s why, as much as we like to talk about the weather, we rely on measurements to reveal the true weather trends. Those measurements show, that as the carbon dioxide emissions have increased, the air temperatures are rising, our oceans are warming and expanding, the ice masses are receding and species are threatened. Globally, 25% of mammalian species are threatened with extinction. Habitat loss is the main reason and for the polar bears, the threat of loss of sea ice is also a case of habitat loss, even though it is first and foremost attributed to global climate change and humanoid activity.

RFM

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California said "NO"

During most of the GW Bush years, the response of our government to the threat of global climate change was largely one of denial. To aid in this posture of deception, the Republican-controlled Congress used author Michael Crighton and more recently George Will as their poster children to promote false, delusional stories against the overwhelming evidence that man is heating up the planet, with potentially dire consequences for our long-term and perhaps even our short-term future. I have commented many times on the anti-science policies of the Bush administration and the Republican Party’s undeclared, but very real war on science.  While the GW Bush years are now behind us, we are faced with Deja vu as the Republican Party is about to take power once again in the House of Representatives; as a result, we will see more anti-science propaganda and obfuscation in the place of clarity on an issue that should by now be part of our American reflexes and known by the youngest members of our culture. Knowledge of the science of global climate change and its implications for our future should be taught in every school at every level and be among the most common elements of discussion in our society–not just when we are about to lose the Polar bears. We live on a small planet in which everything is in a dynamic state of change, impacted by multiple factors, not all of which are currently understood. But with atmospheric carbon dioxide reaching 380 ppm, we are approaching the levels at which the ice trapped in the Arctic, Antarctic and Greenland ice masses could melt, giving rise to an elevation of sea levels of more than 200 feet. But Republicans will once again try to make sure that discussion of global climate change does not become part of our national dialog.  We can rest assured that the Republican Party, while out of House control for four years, has not repented from its past sins of denying science and the objectivity required for its successful implementation.  Because of this, we can expect to see more anti-science behavior coming out of the House and more anti-science propaganda coming through the air waves, courtesy of Faux News.  The House is planning hearings and investigations which are intended to cloud the issue and the science of global climate change  rather than add some desperately needed clarity to this very complex, but unavoidable problem lying in our present trajectory.

In the desert years of the Bush administration, environmentalists concerned with anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions, took up the issue with state governments and largely abandoned efforts directed at the Federal level. Four years ago, through the state Assembly Bill 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, Californians decided to cultivate an environment that would benefit all human and other biological organisms. This California law was one of the most important state laws ever passed to protect the environment and it set a bold new trajectory for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 25% of the 1990 levels by the year 2020. But in the last election, this law was directly challenged by the oil and gas industries who poured huge sums of money into California to force rejection of the emissions law by voting for proposition 23.  So, despite the distractions provided by the Tea Party, the 2010 election in California included the boldest attempt by any American entity to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and corporate America tried to make sure the environmental mechanisms established by the law would never see the light of day.  But, in the election of November 2010, 61% of Californians voted against proposition 23 and preserved the state’s strong greenhouse-gas emissions standards that will soon begin to take hold.  The California Air Resources Board is in the process of implementing the law and introducing a cap-and-trade system that will allow industries to decide where to make reductions in emissions. To me, cap-and-trade is not really a solution to greenhouse-gas emissions, but we have to start somewhere. Since California, with about 12% of the U.S. population, generally leads the nation in environmental laws, we can expect that other state governments will follow suit and that eventually the Federal Government, regardless of its political composition, will also have to bend to the growing public recognition of the problem. In fact, at the present time, seven other western states and four Canadian provinces have joined in the Western Climate Initiative and six other states and one Canadian province have formed the Midwestern Greenhouse-Gas Reduction Accord. These two programs promise to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 15% and 20% respectively. In addition, ten northeastern states have joined in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and committed themselves to a reduction of current emission levels by 10% in 2018. Thus, a total of 23 states and five Canadian provinces have recognized the problem of greenhouse-gas emissions and are doing something about it. Estimates are that the region covered by these states includes about half the US population and three quarters of the Canadian population.

The Obama administration is planning to introduce Federal greenhouse-gas emission regulations next year that will result in a 28% reduction from the 2008 levels by 2020. Unfortunately, with the House in control of the Republicans and the Senate unlikely to overcome a filibuster on greenhouse-gas legislation, Obama will have to use the power of the Federal purse in order to achieve such reductions. But we shouldn’t dismiss these efforts, particularly since the EPA is now in charge of CO2 regulation and the President’s control of the military budget can also be used to bring greenhouse-gas technologies on line. The success of this strategy will rely on being mostly clever but strong-willed action.

We must salute the state of California that sometimes does things in a crazy way, like electing Arnold Schwarzenegger, but with respect to proposition 23, they got it right.  We now face the intriguing  possibility that beating back proposition 23, may begin a small avalanche leading to an improved intellectual climate for more action on global climate change. The rejection of proposition 23 was not merely a victory for environmentalists; it showed that giant multinational corporations can sometimes be beaten back and lose on important issues that will affect our future existence and health. We have a President who appears primed for action on this topic and may, if carried out with sufficient cleverness, actually achieve major results on reductions of greenhouse-gas emissions. At least we have new hope that something might get done. Indeed we can further speculate that if done properly, it could be the beginning of the new economy that we desperately need to pull us out of the most serious recession since the Great Depression. Although not anticipated, the single bright spot produced by California’s action on proposition 23, could be the beginning of a fascinating year in politics. We should all perk up and stay tuned. Perhaps the environment will have a good year.

[Data for this posting was taken from a Nature editorial "States or the Union," , 468, p. 133, 2010]

RFM

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The BP Macondo oil well that ruptured in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010, was capped on August 5, 2010, after five million barrels of crude were added to the waters of the gulf, fouling 632 miles of Gulf beach, including parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. This oil spill, the largest oil leak in our history, will have an incalculable impact on the indigenous animal life, including the humans that populate the region or attempted to take a vacation in the area during the malevolent, visible violence of the oil surge. But, what our mainstream press want us to believe is “out of sight, out of mind,”  which doesn’t actually work when you live in the region and try to make a living from the traditional mode of fishing and shrimping. According to the reports we hear, the oil  is gone now thanks to the cleanup crews and the dispersant Corexit, which was liberally applied both deep, at the site of the oil leak, and on the surface. Writer Terry Tempest Williams spent time, beginning July 28, 2010 visiting the region, particularly Louisiana, which was hardest hit by the continuous movement of oil from the site of its release. Williams has written a searing piece in Orion Magazine describing her own experiences in the region and how she and her small crew got contaminated and had to go through detox process. Her article is entitled “The Gulf Between Us.” It is a passionate and well written account of her experiences and views as an environmentalist and activist. The reason we don’t hear more stories about the downside of the Gulf is that BP demands a confidentiality agreement from everyone they compensate, and since just about everyone in the region was affected in one way or another, there is a wide, effective gag order imposed on the very people that have to continue trying to make a living in a region damaged in ways that we may never understand. Yet these are the people that know most about the impact of the spill and Williams gives them voice in her article.

So, if we wanted to conduct an experiment on the environmental impact of a major oil spill–now is our chance. But BP is attempting to silence the scientists who are examining the impact of the spill, as I wrote earlier. Whatever we have done to the ecology of the region will not be known for decades and many issues will probably never be fully understood. Right now, thanks to the use of Corexit, there is a layer of oil on the bottom of the Gulf, the magnitude and distribution of which is presently unknown: I seriously doubt there is any method that can measure it.  But that is the area where many fish breed (including some species of blue fin tuna), so the future of fish that spawn in the gulf is unknown and since the number of fish caught is rapidly diminishing world wide (virtually all Atlantic salmon that we buy in the store is farmed fish), it will be hard to pin any change in fish numbers on the Gulf oil spill of 2010.  Not entirely unrelated is how we destroyed the cod fishing in the North Atlantic: once fishing trawlers came along that could reach with their nets down to the bottom of the ocean, the cod started to disappear because that’s where the big cod go down to breed and where the newly hatched cod stay to grow. So, while cod was once considered to be an inexhaustible source of seafood, and built the early economy of New England, the major cod fisheries have been closed since the early 1990s. Will oil on the bottom of the gulf achieve what the trawlers did to the cod fishing industry in the Atlantic?   Williams’ article also reveals that many residents of the Gulf region have been tested for contamination and show up with elevated levels of benzene and cadmium. So, we haven’t just intoxicated the wild life of the region, we must also think about the long-term impact on humans. Williams adds another point that should spark instantaneous sobriety: the five million barrels of oil spilled into the gulf would have provided the United States with about four hours of our daily oil diet. It is government collusion with the oil industry that produces this kind of outcome, though many feel that BP is an outlier when it comes to safety issues. The PBS program FRONTLINE did a major documentary on the safety record of BP and its convoluted history. You can watch it here. I have also commented on BP and the Gulf oil spill in articles here and here.

Who can lead us out of this toxic quagmire of excessive, American-style capitalism that puts humans below profits and stock values over human safety and protection of the environment? It is as if our frontal lobes, the region of our brain where we stand the best chance of evoking some longitudinal thinking and perhaps realizing that we are on an unsustainable path–that region of the brain has died of the atrophy of disuse, especially by our government and its collusion with international corporate objectives. But, as the saying goes, “we have met the enemy and it is us.” If we demanded a change and forced refocus of our culture on a sustainable path, compatible with the environment and the other animals that live within it, we could change things beginning now. We are too late to avoid impact from global climate change and we are too late to avoid a rise in sea levels, but we are not too late to save the planet from an insurmountable catastrophe that lies in our path if we do nothing. If we should lose the Greenland, Antarctic and Arctic ice, the ocean levels will rise by about 70 meters, Florida will be completely underwater and the Mississippi River will drain into the Gulf at Tennessee. While the earlier projections did not foresee this kind of catastrophe during the 21st century, the ice is melting faster than we thought, by mechanisms we cannot yet model, nor do we understand. So, while it is still true that we control our own destiny, that is probably only true today for a subset of the global population. It doesn’t mean we can’t improve, but we are already late.

RFM

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