Topic: Capitalism vs. the Climate: Naomi Klein

[RojoLeón]

http://www.sehn.org/wing.html

Is another long post but is some brain food for those who might not have heard of the Precautionary Principle.

Putting Precaution into Practice: Implementing the Precautionary Principle
By The Massachusetts Precautionary Principle Project


This briefing paper presents an overview of the Precautionary Principle and some components of a structure to implement the Principle in environmental health policy. The Precautionary Principle comes into play when there may be environmental or health damage and there is uncertainty as to whether the effect has or will occur and its potential magnitude. Precaution is about anticipating (the Precautionary Principle comes form the German Vorsorge, or foresight, principle) and preventing environmental health damage. It is about the best possible science for the best possible decisions that prevent harm to human health or the environment. The precautionary principle requires more, not less science than traditional decision-making methods. Decisions to invoke the precautionary principle involve different types of scientific knowledge from different fields. They require honesty about uncertainty, what is known, not known, and can be scientifically determined.

The Precautionary Principle requires a fundamental change in three critical aspects of current environmental health decision-making: (1) it switches the questions asked when making decisions under scientific uncertainty; (2) it switches the presumptions about the harm of a particular activity, action or substance (3) it switches how decisions are made about risk and who is involved in the decision-making process. First, the Precautionary Principle forces scientists and policy decision makers to begin to ask a different set of questions about activities and potential hazards. Current risk-based decision-making approaches ask questions such as: "How safe is safe"; "What level of risk is acceptable"; and "How much contamination can a human (usually a healthy adult male) or ecosystem assimilate without showing any obvious adverse effects?" The Precautionary Principle asks a different set of questions such as: "How much contamination can be avoided while still maintaining necessary values?"; "What are the alternatives to this activity that achieve a desired goal (a service, product, etc.)?"; and "Do we need this activity in the first place?"

Changing the questions we ask about a problem (the problem definition) leads to a totally different set of public policies. Policies based on the Principle are preventive, whereas those based on current decision-making approaches tend to focus on pollution control and remediation. Precautionary approaches are goal and alternatives oriented, lending themselves to technology innovation, pollution prevention, and impact assessment. Policy responses based on current decision-making approaches generally lead to add-on, end-of-pipe technologies, personal protective equipment, and medical treatment for those negatively impacted. In essence, the Precautionary Principle moves the focus of decision-making (and the questions asked by decision-makers) from one of risks, which are highly uncertain and difficult to measure, to one about solutions to problems, for which we can often have a greater level of certainty.

In addition to switching the questions decision-makers ask about issues, the Precautionary Principle shifts the presumptions used in decision-making. Rather than presume that a specific substance or activity is safe until proven dangerous, a process which takes substantial time and resources, the Principle places a presumption in favor of protecting the environment and public health. This switch of presumption places the responsibility for demonstrating safety and preventing harm on those undertaking potentially harmful activities. Accordingly, humans and the environment receive the benefit of the doubt under scientific uncertainty and ignorance, rather than a particular substance or action.

Finally, the precautionary principle demands that those potentially affected by substances and activities have a say in the decision-making process. This requires democratic decision-making processes that are transparent, and structures for involving citizens in the decisions regarding science and technology. Given the large uncertainties in science and policy, these tend to be primarily policy decisions.

The Precautionary Principle establishes a type of "speed bump," which creates bottlenecks in the development process but does not stop flows. It establishes a process of seeking the least hazardous alternative to achieve a specific purpose, continuously updating knowledge to avoid harm. The goal of instituting a speed bump is to create options in any given situation that are the most "error-friendly," those that would be least prone to environmental or health damage or for which harm would be most reversible. Implementing the Precautionary Principle does not mean that current decision-making tools, such as risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis, are discarded. It does mean, however, that these tools are used to inform decision-making in order to protect health and the environment, rather than to make decisions themselves. In this respect, these tools are relegated to a second tier in the decision-making process. Instead of using these techniques to quantify an "acceptable" risk, they are used to compare alternatives to an activity (or to establish priorities) which is a much less complex and often more clear cut approach, requiring less rigorous quantitative analysis and less uncertainty.

Decision-making under the Precautionary Principle can have two separate applications: decision-making regarding new activities and decision-making based on potential hazards which already exist. Being precautionary about new activities may be easier (politically, economically, and scientifically) than acting precautiously on an existing hazard, where economic and political interests are already vested.

A decision-making structure for implementing the Precautionary Principle would be much different from current decision-making structures based primarily on risk assessment.

Precautionary Principle Decision Making Model Under traditional risk-based decision-making structures (bolded) evidence of harm is collected, the probability of adverse effects is examined through a risk assessment process (looking at both hazard and exposure), and then a risk management decision is made to take or not take action, considering the costs and benefits of regulation as well as other factors. Causality and level of risk are the central elements of this structure. This structure relies on singular types of information, single exposures, and single effects and tends to hide uncertainty in what is known or not known about a hazard.

Under a precautionary decision-making structure, evidence of harm is considered, as well as evidence of alternatives and the magnitude of possible harm from an activity. The latter two are considered just as important in the decision-making process as the determination of causality. In this regard, if there is information about safer alternatives or if the magnitude of potential harm from an activity is great, it may be possible to partially or entirely bypass the costly and often contentious determination of causality that is central to current decision-making structures. For example, if an activity could cause wide-spread, irreversible harm or it could harm sensitive members of a population (for example children), it might be prudent to take action, even before reasonable evidence of harm has been accumulated. At any rate, harm to a small number of people or a limited geographic area should be prevented before causal links are established, especially if alternatives are available. It is also necessary under a precautionary decision-making structure to consider uncertainty, indeterminacy (large scale uncertainty) and ignorance (what we might not know), which are rarely thoroughly evaluated under current structures. Large uncertainty about cause-effect relationships would favor action to prevent harm while further studying the problem. That is action taken in advance of certainty.

Decisions about the likelihood of harm are made under this structure based on a "weight of evidence" approach, taking into consideration all of the available information from various kinds of sources, the magnitude of impacts and availability of alternatives. This differs from the current quantitative approach to decision-making that quantifies risk based on a reduced amount of information. A central aspect of this structure is the shifting of the burden of proof on the proponent of a potentially harmful activity to provide information on its safety, need for an activity, and availability of alternatives. If reasonable evidence (in contrast to certainty) of harm is present, then the activity would be presumed harmful until proven otherwise.

Some critical elements of a structure to implement the Precautionary Principle in environmental health decision-making are:

   1. A general duty to take precautionary action in the face of uncertainty. This would be a government and business responsibility to act in a precautionary way if there is evidence that an activity or substance may pose a risk to human health or the environment. This duty forms part of a Massachusetts constitutional right to a clean and healthy environment. It is also central to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act.

   2. Goal-setting for environmental and public health protection. Instead of just forecasting problems that might occur in the future, we need to be establishing easily understood, far-reaching goals for environmental health (for example children born without persistent pollutants in their bodies). Scandinavian countries already set aggressive environmental health goals and then engage society in determining ways to achieve those goals through a process called "backcasting."

   3. Shifting burdens of proof to initiators of potentially harmful activities. Typically government agencies and the public must prove harm before preventive or remedial actions are taken. Since companies and those initiating potentially harmful activities have the most information on potential hazards and control the technology, they should have to demonstrate that their activity will not pose any undue risks to the public.

   4. Democratic decision-making structures. Because decisions regarding health and the environment are "public" decisions, those who might be affected must have a say in the
decision-making process. Precaution demands structures, such as layperson juries and citizen panels to ensure that those who might suffer the harm from an activity have an opportunity to form part of the process that determines its "acceptability".

   5. Tools to aid decision-making under uncertainty (decision-making criteria). Decision-makers need criteria to guide weight of evidence decisions as to when precautionary action should be taken. These criteria include considerations of the reversibility of the potential hazard; its seriousness; whether it will affect future generations; availability of alternatives; need for the activity; how strong the evidence is of potential harm; and the level of uncertainty about the problem.

   6. Prevention-oriented methods to carry out precaution-based decisions. The Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Act provides an excellent example of a method to carry out precaution-based decisions. Under the Act, companies must examine how they use toxic chemicals and develop a plan for how they will reduce their use. They do not engage in discussions about the acceptable risk from a pollutant. Other methods for carrying out precautionary action include: Clean Production (a more holistic version of Toxics Use Reduction that looks at water use, energy, and product lifecycles); pre-market testing; limitations on activities pending further study; chemical bans and phase-outs; alternatives assessment; and health based exposure limits.

   7. Economic incentives to promote precaution. Polluters should be responsible for paying the full costs associated with the health and environmental damage they create. A "polluter pays" principle provides an economic incentive to companies to prevent harm in the face of uncertainty.

   8. Means to continuously measure potential adverse effects of both current and alternative activities. Under the Precautionary Principle, environmental health decisions should not be a once and for all activity. There must be flexibility to update decisions as new information is received. Even decisions based on the Precautionary Principle should be regularly re-examined to ensure that the safest course of action has been taken. Those undertaking activities that might damage health or the environment need to be continuously examine their activities to identify potential harm, to inform decision makers and the public when a risk might exist; and to act to prevent potential harm. Structures to independently and publicly monitor these analyses must exist to ensure that they are both honest and thorough. In addition, we need to be continuously vigilant of alternatives to harmful activities to ensure that they themselves do not lead to some unexpected damage



PP FAQs

Q. What is the precautionary principle?

A. The 1998 Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle summarizes the principle this way:

    “When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.”

All statements of the Precautionary Principle contain a version of this formula: When the health of humans and the environment is at stake, it may not be necessary to wait for scientific certainty to take protective action.

Q. Is there some special meaning for "precaution"?

A. It's the common sense idea behind many adages: "Be careful." "Better safe than sorry." "Look before you leap." "First do no harm."

“Precautionary principle” is a translation of the German Vorsorgeprinzip. Vorsorge means, literally, “forecaring.” It carries the sense of foresight and preparation—not merely “caution.”

The principle applies to human health and the environment. The ethical assumption behind the precautionary principle is that humans are responsible to protect, preserve, and restore the global ecosystems on which all life, including our own, depends.

Q. Why should we take action before science tells us what is harmful or what is causing harm?

A. Sometimes if we wait for certainty it is too late. Scientific standards for demonstrating cause and effect are very high. For example, smoking was strongly suspected of causing lung cancer long before the link was demonstrated conclusively. By then, many smokers had died of lung cancer. But many other people had already quit smoking because of the growing evidence that smoking was linked to lung cancer. These people were wisely exercising precaution despite some scientific uncertainty.

When evidence gives us good reason to believe that an activity, technology, or substance may be harmful, we should act to prevent harm. If we always wait for scientific certainty, people may suffer and die and the natural world may suffer irreversible damage. 

Q. How do we implement the precautionary principle?

A.  The precautionary principle is most powerful when it serves as a guide to making wiser decisions in the face of uncertainty. Any action that contributes to preventing harm to humans and the environment, learning more about the consequences of actions, and acting appropriately is precautionary.

Precaution does not work if it is only a last resort and results only in bans or moratoriums. It is best linked to these implementation methods:

    * exploring alternatives to possibly harmful actions, especially “clean” technologies that eliminate waste and toxic substances;
    * placing the burden of proof on proponents of an activity rather than on victims or potential victims of the activity;
    * setting and working toward goals that protect health and the environment; and
    * bringing democracy and transparency to decisions affecting health and the environment.

Q. Why do we need the precautionary principle now?

A.  The effects of careless and harmful activities have accumulated over the years. Humans and the rest of the natural world have a limited capacity to absorb and overcome this harm. There are plenty of warning signs:

    * Chronic diseases and conditions affect more than 100 million men, women, and children in the United States—more than a third of the population. Cancer, asthma, Alzheimer's disease, autism, birth defects, developmental disabilities, diabetes, endometriosis, infertility, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson's disease are becoming increasingly common.
    * In laboratory animals, wildlife, and humans, considerable evidence documents a link between levels of environmental contamination and malignancies, birth defects, reproductive problems, impaired behavior, and impaired immune system function. Scientists' growing understanding of how biological systems develop and function leads to similar conclusions.
    * Other warning signs are the dying off of plant and animal species, the destruction of ecosystems, the depletion of stratospheric ozone, and the likelihood of global warming.

Serious, evident effects such as endocrine disruption, climate change, cancer, and the disappearance of species can seldom be linked decisively to a single cause. Scientific standards of certainty may be impossible to attain when causes and outcomes are multiple; latent periods are long; timing of exposure is crucial; unexposed, “control” populations do not exist; or confounding factors are unidentified.

Q. We have lots of environmental regulations. Aren't we already exercising precaution?

A.  Precaution is at the basis of some U.S. environmental and food and drug legislation, although the principle is not mentioned by name. These laws incorporate foresight, prevention, and care, and many give regulators authority to take action to prevent possible but unproven harm. For example:

    * As a precautionary measure, the Food and Drug Administration requires all new drugs to be tested before they are put on the market.
    * The Food Quality and Protection Act of 1996 requires pesticides to be proven safe for children or removed. Several are being phased out.
    * The National Environmental Policy Act is precautionary in two ways: 1) It emphasizes foresight and attention to consequences by requiring an environmental impact assessment for any federally funded project, and 2) it mandates consideration of alternative plans. NEPA is one of the best national examples of precautionary action.

Other laws are precautionary in intent. The Wilderness Act sets aside certain areas as nonviolable. The Occupational Safety and Health Act imposes a general duty on employers to provide safe working conditions and workplaces. The Endangered Species Act sets the goal of protecting biodiversity. The Clean Water Act establishes strict goals to “restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation's waters.”

Unfortunately, precautionary action has been the exception rather than the rule in U.S. environmental policy. Instead, even laws with precautionary intent and substance have been undermined, overridden, and poorly enforced.


Q. Why have these laws failed to protect people and the environment?

A.  Many regulations are aimed at cleaning up pollution and controlling the amount of it released into the environment rather than preventing the use and production of toxic substances. These laws are based on the assumption that humans and ecosystems can absorb a certain amount of contamination without being harmed. We are now learning how difficult it is to know what levels of contamination, if any, are safe.

But the greatest weakness in most conservation and toxics policies is that they are based on the expectation that science can and must provide definitive proof of harm before protective action is taken. This assumption creates a loophole in regulations, giving the benefit of the doubt to products, technologies, and development projects, even those that are likely to have harmful side effects.

Q. How does the precautionary principle change all that without bringing the economy to a halt?

A.  Preventive policies encourage the exploration of better, safer, and often ultimately cheaper alternatives--and the development of cleaner products and technologies. As public awareness grows of hazards and of safer alternatives, these practices represent not only good ethics but also smart business. The markets of the Twenty-First Century will increasingly demand safe products and sustainable technologies.

Countries that implement the precautionary principle, such as Germany and Sweden, are now exporting environmentally sound technologies. Other countries risk being left behind, with outdated, polluting facilities and technologies.

When the public has a say in the deployment of technologies, society and future generations receive more benefits and pay fewer costs in money, suffering, and diminished resources.

Q. How is the precautionary principle being used?

A.  The precautionary principle should become the basis for reforming environmental laws and regulations. It can also be applied in industrial practices, science, consumer choices, education, city planning, and legal practice. Here are some examples of policies specifically based on the precautionary principle:

    * San Francisco has adopted an environment code with the precautionary principle as article one. For a start, the city is applying the principle to its purchasing decisions.
    * The European Union is forming a comprehensive policy, based on the precautionary principle, which would require all chemicals to be tested for their effects on health and the environment. It would put the burden on chemical manufacturers to demonstrate their products are safe. And it would give government immediate authority to regulate substances that show problems.
    * Two recent treaties, the Cartagena Biosafety Protocol and the Stockholm Treaty on Persistent Organic Pollutants, invoke the precautionary principle to govern genetically modified organisms and some toxic chemicals.
    * The Los Angeles Unified School District adopted the precautionary principle to limit pesticide use in schools. A number of North American cities have similar ordinances.
    * Legislation has been presented in New York State applying the principle to state-funded new technologies. Massachusetts is considering precautionary principle legislation governing the phase-out of certain chemicals.
    * Verizon Wireless sent a brochure in July 2001 to its US cell-phone customers describing the potential harm to children from radio frequencies emitted by cell phones. Verizon suggested that parents adopt the precautionary principle and limit children's use of cell phones.

[RojoLeón]

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/why-the-haiti-earthquake-may-not-have-been-a-natural-disaster-6275044.html

Why the Haiti earthquake may not have been a natural disaster

Deforestation and extreme weather may later cause earthquakes, scientists believe.

Their findings suggest that cutting down trees on steep slopes may increase the risk of not only landslides but earthquakes in heavily deforested places such as Haiti, which suffered a devastating magnitude 7 quake in 2010.

Geologists have previously discounted the idea that low atmospheric pressure associated with tropical cyclones can influence the timing of earthquakes. But the new study suggests a different mechanism based on changes to the weight of soil and other ground material bearing down on a geological fault under seismic stress.

"Very wet rain events are the trigger. The heavy rain induces thousands of landslides and severe erosion, which removes ground material from the Earth's surface, releasing the stress and encouraging movement along faults," said Shimon Wdowinski of the University of Miami in Florida.

"The 2010 earthquake in Haiti occurred... 18 months after the same area was hit by two tropical storms and two hurricanes," he said. "It can happen in other mountainous areas affected by cyclones, such as Japan, the Philippines, and maybe Central America," he told the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

The idea the weather can play a role in triggering earthquakes is controversial. But Dr Wdowinski said an analysis of the timing of earthquakes and cyclones in Taiwan over the past 60 years has demonstrated a statistical correlation, with a significant number of quakes bigger than 6 occurring within four years of major cyclones – known as typhoons in the Far East.

Taiwan was hit in 1969 by Typhoon Flossie, then a 6.2 quake hit Taiwan in 1972. In 2009, Typhoon Morakot was followed by a 6.2 quake in the same year, and a 6.4 quake in 2010. Typhoon Herb, in 1996, was followed by a 6.2 quake in 1998 and a 7.6 quake in 1999.

Dr Wdowinski said rapid soil erosion on steep slopes caused by tropical cyclones changed the stress on the geological fault over a period of months or years, which can trigger an earthquake.

"Statistical analysis showed that the timing of the earthquake is above the expected. It is way above background. If it was a random process and there was no relation between earthquakes and cyclones... there was less than 1 per cent probability of this occurring," he said.

"It is not that it happens during a cyclone but that there is a delay, and the delay of between three months and three years is due to the ground erosion. The delays can be due to the time it takes for the erosion to wash the material to the ocean," he said.

An independent analysis of ground movements caused by summer monsoons in the Himalayas also suggested a link between extreme weather and earthquakes.

A study by Thomas Ader of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena found that earthquakes were more likely to occur in dry winter months after the monsoon period.

[RojoLeón]

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/shock-as-retreat-of-arctic-sea-ice-releases-deadly-greenhouse-gas-6276134.html

Shock as retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas

Russian research team astonished after finding 'fountains' of methane bubbling to surface
Shock as retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas
Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.

The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.

In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed.

"Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It's amazing," Dr Semiletov said. "I was most impressed by the sheer scale and high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them."

Scientists estimate that there are hundreds of millions of tonnes of methane gas locked away beneath the Arctic permafrost, which extends from the mainland into the seabed of the relatively shallow sea of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. One of the greatest fears is that with the disappearance of the Arctic sea-ice in summer, and rapidly rising temperatures across the entire region, which are already melting the Siberian permafrost, the trapped methane could be suddenly released into the atmosphere leading to rapid and severe climate change.

Dr Semiletov's team published a study in 2010 estimating that the methane emissions from this region were about eight million tonnes a year, but the latest expedition suggests this is a significant underestimate of the phenomenon.

In late summer, the Russian research vessel Academician Lavrentiev conducted an extensive survey of about 10,000 square miles of sea off the East Siberian coast. Scientists deployed four highly sensitive instruments, both seismic and acoustic, to monitor the "fountains" or plumes of methane bubbles rising to the sea surface from beneath the seabed.

"In a very small area, less than 10,000 square miles, we have counted more than 100 fountains, or torch-like structures, bubbling through the water column and injected directly into the atmosphere from the seabed," Dr Semiletov said. "We carried out checks at about 115 stationary points and discovered methane fields of a fantastic scale – I think on a scale not seen before. Some plumes were a kilometre or more wide and the emissions went directly into the atmosphere – the concentration was a hundred times higher than normal."

Dr Semiletov released his findings for the first time last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

 

[RojoLeón]

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-no-growth-boom-will-follow-2012-global-crash-2011-08-23?pagenumber=1

Related indirectly - in the sphere of economic growth and how this will effect climate and emissions. I mean, post crash? What? This is from a business commentary section of the WSJ

A ‘no-growth’ boom will follow 2012 global crash
Commentary: 20 promising sectors for post-crash investors
By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — There is a global economic boom coming, but unfortunately, that boom comes only after a systemic collapse of the global economy, markets and capitalism — a collapse that may well eliminate billions of people from the planet. Shocking? Cruel? Brutal? Yes.

But folks, that is the coded message in many recent warnings from environmental economists who finally realize that nothing will wake up the public. Nothing but a catastrophic system failure. Only then, a path to reform, recovery, a new boom.
Click to Play
Newmark: Why I'm bullish on the markets

WSJ Columnist Evan Newmark argues for his stance on bullish markets. It's a good time to buy and to focus on the long-term, he says. (Photo: Reuters.)

But wait, you ask: If the consequences are worse than an asteroid slamming into Earth, why don’t we just plan ahead? Avoid the Black Swan? Why wait for some “creative destruction” to wipe out capitalism, reduce the global population to 5 billion? Why? Because our human genes are not good at planning ahead for catastrophes. Our brains are designed for fight-or-flight. Otherwise we procrastinate. We respond best when our backs are against the wall. Then we rally the troops, go to war, so to speak.

Until we reach that point, we focus on everyday stuff, like jobs, the kids, short-term buy-sells and ideological stuff like today’s anti-science, anti-intellectual political rhetoric. Free-market capitalism. Don’t tread on me. Stuff like that keeps us in denial about the future. No, we don’t plan, don’t act until a crisis. Not till the asteroid is about to hit. Even then, we pray for divine intervention to rescue us. Or a Churchill to emerge, take charge of the impossible challenge, get people energized and focused on a common cause. Then we’ll charge ahead, solve the problem. Until then, our brains can only think short-term.
Massive denial of global catastrophe dead ahead

And yet, the facts about the coming catastrophe are so obvious. Just apply a little grade-school math and economic common sense: Our planet’s natural resources can reasonably support about 5 billion people. That’s a fact. Another: Today we have 7 billion. That’s a problem, 2 billion too many. We’re consuming commodities and natural resources at a rate of 1.5 Earths, according to estimates by the Global Footprint Network of scientists and economists.
Click to Play
China leads on renewable energy

Armed with cheap steel, China is gaining ground in the renewable energy industry, while American companies are lagging in the sector. (Photo: Reuters.)

Flash forward: This scenario gets scarier than a horror film, very fast. United Nations demographers warn the Earth’s population will reach 10 billion in just one generation, around 2050. That’s two times the 5 billion the Earth can reasonably support. But the equation gets even scarier: Those 10 billion people will demand lifestyle improvements. That increases their consumption of scarce resources by 300% per person. Bottom line: 10 billion people will be consuming the equivalent of six Earths. Very bad news.

“You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century,” writes Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist and author of “Hot, Flat, Crowded,” “when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural-resource/population redlines all at once?”

Friedman quotes Paul Gilding, the veteran Australian environmentalist-entrepreneur, who described this moment in a new book called “The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.”

“The only answer can be denial,” says Gilding. “When you are surrounded by something so big that requires you to change everything about the way you think and see the world, then denial is the natural response. But the longer we wait, the bigger the response required.”
Forget global warming — it’s too late

Gilding’s “Great Disruption” is an eye-opener. But have no illusions that his or any book will be the wake-up call that will force us to plan ahead for a catastrophe. A former chief executive of Greenpeace, he admits screaming for 30 years to get the public’s attention. He now confesses that his efforts had little impact. Why? The world is too deep in denial.

So, finally, he gave up. Nothing was working: “We tried. We failed.” Today his message is simple and blunt: “It’s time to stop worrying about climate change. Instead we need to brace for impact.” Yes, an economic asteroid is closing fast.

What will trigger “The Crash” he sees coming? “If you grow an economy or any system up against its limits, it then stops growing and either changes form or breaks down … As our system hits its limits, the following pressures will combine, in varied and unpredictable ways, to trigger a system breakdown and a major economic crisis (or series of smaller crises) that will see us slide into a sustained economic downturn and a global emergency lasting decades.”

As Gilding sees it, the coming crash is “not a doom and gloom prediction, but an inevitable physical reality.” And yet, paradoxically, while the faint-hearted panic, this “perfect storm” also signals sell and buy opportunities for savvy investors.

   1.

      Shocks. “A series of ecological, social and economic shocks driven by climate change, particularly melting polar regions, extreme weather events…changes to agricultural output…severe economic stresses…deep concern [among] the public and the global elites…government intervention… a sense of global crisis.”
   2.

      Food. “Increasing demand and lower agricultural output driven by climate change ...sustained increases in food prices…economic and geopolitical instability and tension…developing countries blaming the West for causing climate change.”
   3.

      Water. “A deeply degraded global ecosystem will further reduce the capacity of key ecosystem services, water, fisheries and agricultural land … impact food and water supply … political stability … global security.”

   4.

      Energy. “Rapid increases in oil prices as peak oil is breached. …The trend will be clear… enormous, system-wide economic and political pressure…great conflict.”
   5.

      Surprises. “For example, a serious global terrorist attack wiping out a major city...or a pandemic shutting down global travel...shocks upon shocks upon shocks.”
   6.

      Fear. “As this unfolds, our deeply intertwined and complex global financial market, prone to panic, driven by fear and uncertainty, will suddenly wake up to the long-term implications of all of this…Perhaps driven by a series of major corporate collapses or national economic crises, they will then simply re-price risk in global share markets…This will lead to a dramatic drop in global share markets and a tightening of capital supply.” Markets and economies will crash.

Oddly, in all this, Gilding is an eternal optimist. He believes that mankind will follow this “Great Disruption” with a period of great cooperation where all nations of the world will come together to save the planet. What’s unspoken, however, is how this great disruption will stop population from growing to 10 billion. And even more significantly: How the crash will scale Earth’s existing population of 7 billion back to a sustainable 5 billion. Yet, that must happen to make the “new equation” work. Unfortunately, what’s unspoken will probably include new global wars, pandemics, famines, starvation and other cataclysmic events, all before the boom.
20 investment opportunities before and after the collapse

A couple of years ago Gilding and Jorgen Randers of Norway detailed 14 market-oriented ways to “get serious about combating climate gas emissions by 50% over a 5-year long focused plan.”

Their “One Degree War Plan” would “keep global warming below plus-one degree Centigrade over pre-industrial levels.” These policies may not fit with today’s traditional free-market capitalists and conservative politicians. But after the coming crash, after a great realignment of the economic, political and environmental systems of the world, Gilding and Randers see these as essential policies for a new sustained global economy.

You can also see these as investment opportunities for entrepreneurs and financiers even today, certainly all forward-thinkers who are planning ahead. Yes, while the rest of the world is trapped in denial and fear of a coming crash, some adventurous few will plan ahead for the boom coming after the world community downsizes to create a new, sustainable lifestyle.

Here’s how Gilding and Randers describe these key sectors:

   1.

      Forests: Cut deforestation and other logging by 50%.
   2.

      Coal: Close 1,000 dirty coal power plants within 5 years.
   3.

      Electricity: Ration electricity, and rapidly drive new efficiency.
   4.

      Carbon Capture Storage: Retrofit 1,000 coal power plants with Carbon Capture Storage.
   5.

      Wind/solar: Erect a wind turbine or solar plant in every town.
   6.

      Deserts. Create huge wind and solar farms in suitable deserts.
   7.

      Waste: Let no waste go to waste; recycle and reuse by-products.
   8.

      Autos: Ration use of dirty cars to cut transport emissions by 50%.
   9.

      Biofulels: Prepare for biofuels power stations using CCS technology.
  10.

      Travel: Strand half of the world’s aircraft.
  11.

      Methane: Capture or burn methane from agriculture and landfills.
  12.

      Food: Move society away from diets of climate-unfriendly protein.
  13.

      Farming: New methods reduce gas emissions, maximize soil carbon.

Add these 13 key sectors to the six listed earlier, you get 19. Then, No. 20, their final policy idea for the coming mega-boom era is cultural as well as economic: “Launch a government- and community-led shop-less-live-more campaign.” A new world focusing less on unlimited consumption, more on personal happiness. These policies may not be fashionable in today’s world. But in the post-crash New World, economic theory will change, because growth economics no longer works and the survival of civilization demands a fundamental rethinking of economic theory. So these 20 tips will be gold mines for savvy investors, entrepreneurs and financiers.

All investors searching for long-term opportunities in today’s world of uncertainty and extreme volatility should read Gilding’s “The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.” Whether liberal or conservative, right- or left-brainer, agree or not, this book will engage you, get you thinking very differently about how to protect the future for you and your family. And fortunately, Gilding’s such an upbeat optimist about global challenges you’ll enjoy being drawn into his new mindset.

[RojoLeón]

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/New-concerns-about-Hanford-nuclear-waste-plant-2396040.php

New concerns about Hanford nuclear waste plant

RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) — The federal government says a one-of-a-kind plant that will convert radioactive waste into a stable and storable substance that resembles glass will cost hundreds of millions of dollars more and may take longer to build, adding to a string of delays and skyrocketing price tag for the project.


In addition, several workers at southeast Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation have raised concerns about the safety of the plant's design — and complained they've been retaliated against for voicing their issues.

The turmoil has some in the Pacific Northwest uneasy about the plant's long-term viability and fearful that a frustrated Congress could balk at paying more money for a project long considered the cornerstone of cleanup at the highly contaminated site.


"The risk from the materials we are dealing with over there is simply too great (not to complete the plant)," Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. "Here, we thought we were making such progress, and now to learn that, for reasons I don't know, we're at serious risk of missing more milestones is disappointing."


Issues raised by the whistleblowers about the plant's safety would be equally disconcerting, Gregoire said.


Roughly one-third of the federal government's entire budget for nuclear cleanup — about $2 billion each year — goes to Hanford, and nearly a third of that goes to construction of the plant. Last month, U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., demanded that the Energy Department provide an accurate statement of costs and schedule for the facility, and answer questions pertaining to safety complaints.


Markey is a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.


Dave Huizenga, the DOE's acting assistant secretary for environmental management, said the agency remains committed to building a safe, efficient plant. But he also said technical problems and differences of opinion are not unusual on a project so large and complex.


"We know we have to be really transparent with these issues, and they have to be addressed," he said. "We know the confidence that residents of the Pacific Northwest put in us. That rests with us every day."


The federal government created Hanford from a dusty stretch of land at the height of World War II, when thousands moved to the remote area for a top-secret project to build the atomic bomb. A city of thousands was born, and the site went on to produce plutonium for the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, and for the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal throughout the Cold War.


Plutonium production also left behind a slew of waste and debris in trenches, buildings and underground tanks, making Hanford one of the most challenging cleanup projects in the world.
There have been successes in recent years. Spent nuclear fuel was removed from two water-filled pools near the Columbia River, dozens of buried waste sites have been dug up and workers continue to monitor and treat contaminated groundwater.


But the worst of the waste is still decades away from being completely removed. Millions of gallons of a highly radioactive stew — enough to fill dozens of Olympic-size swimming pools — are stored in aging underground tanks. Some of those tanks have leaked, threatening the groundwater and the river.


The plant is being built to convert much of that waste into glasslike logs — a process called vitrification — for permanent disposal underground. A massive undertaking, the plant will stand 12 stories tall and be the size of four football fields once completed, but technical problems have resulted in multiple delays and cost increases.


The price tag already has grown from $4.3 billion to $12.3 billion. The U.S. Department of Energy, which manages Hanford cleanup, recently announced additional costs of at least $800 million, as well as the possibility of additional delays.


The plant is currently scheduled to begin testing in 2019.

The revelations about higher costs and potential delays came as two Hanford workers filed suit as whistleblowers, claiming they were targeted for reprisals after raising safety concerns. The largest of the safety complaints deal with specifications for the process by which the waste would be mixed. The whistleblowers say, as specified, it could result in dangerous gas concentrations as well as a settling of waste within the mixing vessels.


Those issues largely center on a pretreatment building where the worst waste will be funneled before moving on to other parts of the plant. Any problems there would be significant because workers will not be able to enter certain areas once operations commence because of high levels of radioactivity.


Walt Tamosaitis, one of those whistleblowers, estimates the plant will end up costing taxpayers $20 billion because too many questions remain unanswered about the plant's overall design. He said his fear is that the plant, even after all that money, will not operate as it should.
"Congress should grab the Energy Department by the ears," he said. "Change has got to be made so that the plant operates safely and efficiently, which means it completes its mission in 40 years, and the safety culture has to change."


Tamosaitis called for work to stop on the pretreatment portion of the plant until all of the questions can be resolved.


The Energy Department maintains that any questions about gas buildup have been addressed, and a large-scale testing program has been launched to try to resolve the problems with the mixing vessels. Adequate mixing of the waste has been a technical concern for years.


Huizenga said the plant could easily begin operating without an immediate solution to the most troublesome waste, though he conceded that it's possible some waste may have to be mixed elsewhere, before it comes to the plant, which would be an added cost.


He also didn't rule out pausing construction on the plant's pretreatment facility if necessary.
"We're still concerned that we have these issues, and we're continuing to work them every day. We will not operate a facility that cannot be operated safely," he said.


Design of the plant is 85 percent complete, and construction is more than 50 percent complete.
A Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board review earlier this year raised concerns about the treatment of employees who raise safety concerns and recommended changes. The Energy Department's response is due next month.


A more recent report by an independent team of nuclear experts hired by Bechtel found no evidence that the contractor or the Energy Department had suppressed technical dissent by employees.


The number of technical issues that have been raised — and resolved — on the massive project far outnumber those that still remain, said Rick Kacich, Bechtel's assistant project director for integration. And the effort to find the best nuclear experts to review its design, which was created by hundreds of experienced engineers, speaks to the importance Bechtel has placed in the project, he said.


"There's really only one type of issue we can't solve, and that's the issue we don't know about," he said. "We not only encourage people, we expect them to raise questions about a first-of-a-kind facility."


Tom Carpenter of the worker advocacy group Hanford Challenge immediately criticized the latter report, calling it a "soft-pedaling" of the safety concerns.


He said the Energy Department and its contractors are too focused on meeting deadlines and ensuring that the contractors get paid their fees, over the objection of some of their best technical minds.


"It's unfortunate, because this is a plant that needs to work," he said. "We want the plant to work, they want the plant to work, but they're willing to take unacceptable shortcuts and punt to the future while they're building the plant. That's just not acceptable."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/business/energy-environment/a-new-urgency-to-the-problem-of-storing-nuclear-waste.html?_r=2

A New Urgency to the Problem of Storing Nuclear Waste

AUSTIN, Tex. — The nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, earlier this year caused many countries to rethink their appetite for nuclear power. It is also, in subtler ways, altering the fraught discussion of what to do with nuclear plants’ wastes.

 A prime example is Germany, which decided to shut down all its nuclear power plants by 2022 after the partial reactor meltdowns at Fukushima. That decision is making it easier for Germans to have a calm and focused discussion about a permanent disposal site for the plants’ wastes, analysts say.

Previously, opponents of nuclear power worried that backing a permanent solution for the wastes would make it easier for nuclear power plants to continue to exist, according to Michael Sailer, the chief executive at the Öko-Institut in Berlin, a research and consulting group focused on sustainability.

Anti-nuclear politicians, he said, felt that if they came out in favor of a permanent disposal site, “they support pro-nuclear people because they solve the waste problem.”.

Protests over waste storage are a long tradition for Germany, and they continue. In recent days, anti-nuclear activists in both France and Germany clashed with the police as a train carrying waste made its way toward a facility in Germany. The waste had originated in Germany and been reprocessed in France and was returning to Germany for storage.

Even so, Germany is now moving forward on the waste issue. Earlier this month, leaders from around Germany met to discuss a permanent disposal solution. They agreed to study a number of potential sites around the country, according to Mr. Sailer, and eventually to make a scientifically based decision about which sites to proceed with.

This development, Mr. Sailer said, represents a “huge” advance over earlier efforts.

Other countries are also looking at waste in new ways in the post-Fukushima world. Right now, worldwide, most spent fuel waste is stored on the site of the facility that produced it, in spent-fuel pools and, after it eventually cools, dry casks. Experts say dispersed storage is expensive and that central storage would be more secure.

Few countries , apart from Sweden and Finland, have moved forward on centralized disposal sites, deep in the earth, designed to hold the waste permanently.

France is evaluating a permanent disposal site for spent fuel , near the remote northeastern village of Bure. The country gets roughly three-quarters of its power from nuclear plants and reprocesses its fuel, a technique that reduces the quantity of waste but is expensive and also creates plutonium, which can be used in nuclear weapons.

Japan also hopes to choose a site and build a geological disposal facility in the coming decades.

Meanwhile, every aspect of nuclear power in Japan — including waste storage — has been turned upside down by the Fukushima disaster in March, which followed a giant earthquake and tsunami. As a result of the accident, Japan has “doubled or tripled” the amount of non-spent fuel and high-level waste, according to Murray Jennex, a nuclear expert at San Diego State University. Even things like the building that houses the turbine are contaminated, he noted.

“So that’s really increased their demand for storage, and I’m not sure what they’re going to do with it,” Dr. Jennex said.

Japan is also considering what to do with the contaminated soil in the area affected by the plant.

Experts say the post-Fukushima spotlight on all aspects of nuclear safety will affect discussions of how, as well as where, to store waste.

“I think people will re-examine whether or not there’s a better way to safely store the spent fuel,” said Dale Klein, an associate director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas who is a former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The United States has long contemplated a permanent disposal site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but that plan has been stymied, perhaps permanently, by the politics of local opposition. Nevada has an early presidential primary, and this autumn several Republican presidential candidates, appearing at a debate in Las Vegas, denounced proposals to use the site. The Senate majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, also opposes using Yucca Mountain.

Mr. Klein, who expressed disappointment that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission “did not have an opportunity” to assess whether Yucca Mountain was safe, also said that Fukushima was causing “a lot of utilities and their regulators” to weigh the pros and cons of moving sooner to dry-cask storage, because of the perception that an emergency could cause spent-fuel pools to leak.

Some countries are starting to address the waste disposal issue simply because they cannot put it off much longer. This is true of Britain, where “it’s just gone on for so long, and there’s so much of it,” said Ian Hore-Lacy, the head of communications for the World Nuclear Association, which is based in London.

Dr. Jennex of San Diego State said that in the United States, and to some extent around the world, “our reactors are getting pretty full, in terms of what they can store on site.”

In Germany, the new dialogue could ease pressures on the village of Gorleben, beside the Elbe River in northern Germany. Some waste has been stored there on an interim basis for years, leading to protests. (The train that nuclear opponents tried to block last week was headed to Gorleben.)

The area around Gorleben contains a salt dome formation that Germany has long eyed as a potential permanent waste repository. Now, however, German officials will consider more sites.

The planned closing of all German nuclear plants has opened up some “political space” needed to consider a waste-disposal solution, said R. Andreas Kraemer, the director of the nonprofit Ecologic Institute in Berlin.

“For the time being, however, much radioactive waste remains on the sites of nuclear power plants, which have not been designed for the purpose,” Mr. Kraemer said in an e-mail.

“The risks of storing nuclear waste on power plant sites have become clearer from the sequence of events in Fukushima, and the safety and security concerns associated with current storage are adding pressure to find a permanent solution in the form of a national nuclear waste depository.”

 

[Gene]

http://www.nature.com/news/three-quarters-of-climate-change-is-man-made-1.9538

Three-quarters of climate change is man-made
Independent study quantifies human influence on global warming.

Quirin Schiermeier 04 December 2011

Natural climate variability is extremely unlikely to have contributed more than about one-quarter of the temperature rise observed in the past 60 years, reports a pair of Swiss climate modellers in a paper published online today. Most of the observed warming — at least 74 % — is almost certainly due to human activity, they write in Nature Geoscience1.

Since 1950, the average global surface air temperature has increased by more than 0.5 °C. To separate human and natural causes of warming, the researchers analysed changes in the balance of heat energy entering and leaving Earth — a new ‘attribution' method for understanding the physical causes of climate change.

Their findings, which are strikingly similar to results produced by other attribution methods, provide an alternative line of evidence that greenhouse gases, and in particular carbon dioxide, are by far the main culprit of recent global warming. The massive increase of atmospheric CO2 concentrations since pre-industrial times would, in fact, have caused substantially more surface warming were it not for the cooling effects of atmospheric aerosols such as black carbon, they report.

Previous attempts to disentangle anthropogenic and natural warming used a statistically complex technique called optimal fingerprinting to compare observed patterns of surface air temperature over time with the modelled climate response to greenhouse gases, solar radiation and aerosols from volcanoes and other sources.

“Optimal fingerprinting is a powerful technique, but to most people it’s a black box,” says Reto Knutti, a climate scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, one of the authors of the report.

A balanced view
Knutti and his co-author Markus Huber, also at ETH Zurich, took a different approach. They utilized a much simpler model of Earth’s total energy budget and ran the model many thousands of times, using different combinations of a few crucial parameters that contribute to the energy budget. These included global values for incoming shortwave radiation from the Sun, solar energy leaving Earth, heat absorbed by the oceans and climate-feedback effects (such as reduced snow cover, which amplifies warming by exposing darker surfaces that absorb more heat).

By using the combinations that best matched the observed surface warming and ocean heat uptake, the authors then ran the so-constrained model with each energy parameter individually. This enabled them to estimate the contribution of CO2 and other climate-change agents to the observed temperature change. Their study was greatly assisted by a 2009 analysis2 of observed changes since 1950 in Earth’s energy balance, says Knutti.

Knutti and Huber found that greenhouse gases contributed 0.6–1.1 °C to the warming observed since the mid-twentieth century, with the most statistically likely value being a contribution of about 0.85 °C. Around half of that contribution from greenhouse gases — 0.45 °C — was offset by the cooling effects of aerosols. These directly influence Earth's climate by scattering light; they also have indirect climate effects through their interactions with clouds.

The authors calculated a net warming value of around 0.5 °C since the 1950s, which is very close to the actual temperature rise of 0.55 °C observed over that period. Changes in solar radiation — a hypothesis for global warming proffered by many climate sceptics — contributed no more than around 0.07 °C to the recent warming, the study finds.

To test whether recent warming might just be down to a random swing in Earth’s unstable climate — another theory favoured by sceptics — Knutti and Huber conducted a series of control runs of different climate models without including the effects of the energy-budget parameters. But even if climate variability were three times greater than that estimated by state-of-the-art models, it is extremely unlikely to have produced a warming trend as pronounced as that observed in the real world, they found.

“This tightens estimates of past responses,” says Gabriele Hegerl, a climate scientist at the University of Edinburgh, UK, “And it should also lead to predictions of future climate change that are grounded in the kind of changes already being observed.”

For more breaking news about climate change, read the latest research showing ‘How the financial crisis barely dented carbon emissions’.
 
 Journal name:
Nature
DOI:
doi:10.1038/nature.2011.9538

I'm still not sure why people are having such a hard time believing the science. We continue to discover that we either underforecasted the temperature rise, or that we were right in forecasting an uptick in global temperatures. Climate science over the past 40 years has been one of the most scrutinized sciences around.

[Bioluminescence]

I'm still not sure why people are having such a hard time believing the science. We continue to discover that we either underforecasted the temperature rise, or that we were right in forecasting an uptick in global temperatures. Climate science over the past 40 years has been one of the most scrutinized sciences around.

It's something I struggle with. I write the occasional article for Skeptical Science so I have to try and keep up with it all. There simply appears to be a mindset that can't accept the findings of climate science. I think the lack of understanding between what constitutes science and what doesn't is a huge part of the problem. Double standards also seem to be a prerequisite - contrarians are quite happy to accept anything coming from the likes of Watts, Lindzen and Plimer, who have been wrong on a number of occasions, but they will jump on any perceived mistake by climate scientists to discredit not only the scientists in question, but also climate science in general. The mind gymnastics they have to perform to keep their position consistent is impressive - it often means holding two contradicting positions at the same time.

Time to focus on adaptation measures.

[Bioluminescence]

More interesting articles, Rojo - muchas gracias. The idea of a perfect storm brewing is something I've though of recently - climate change, loss of biodiversity, population growth, the financial crisis, ocean acidification, peak oil... I'm not saying it's all doom and gloom but we are very stupid to be ignoring all the signs.

[Andy @ Allerton]

More interesting articles, Rojo - muchas gracias. The idea of a perfect storm brewing is something I've though of recently - climate change, loss of biodiversity, population growth, the financial crisis, ocean acidification, peak oil... I'm not saying it's all doom and gloom but we are very stupid to be ignoring all the signs.

More interesting articles, Rojo - muchas gracias. The idea of a perfect storm brewing is something I've though of recently - climate change, loss of biodiversity, population growth, the financial crisis, ocean acidification, peak oil... I'm not saying it's all doom and gloom but we are very stupid to be ignoring all the signs.

Climate change always happens though. The only constant thing about climate is that it changes. Is there any data on record - at all - to suggest that there has ever been a time in 4,000,000,000 years that the climate has totally stopped and remained constant (Apart from the Ice Ages, obviously)?

Not sure about the loss of biodiversity either. Species are dying out. But then again - has there ever been a record where species weren't dying out and being replaced by new stock which took advantage of the prevailing conditions of the moment?

Acid in the oceans again means that certain species will die out and falter, but there are plenty of possibilities for new species to take over the reins. Has there been any evidence where life hasn't found a way? Even in places like Chernoybyl and other sites of nuclear accidents and testing, life always seems to come back stronger than you might first suspect.

I find the discussions interesting (And you know from pervious chats that I respect a lot of what you say and agree with a lot of what you say) because 'we' always seem to be discussing "Right now" as if "Right now" has any specific 'special' position in history or the life of the planet. What makes people think this current temperate climate (For instance) is 'normal' - it clearly isn't "Normal" - how much of the climate has been exactly like it is now over 4,000,000,000 years? Not much I would guess. There are millions of years where it's been much hotter and millions of years when it's been much cooler. But we're biased because this is (pretty much) all we know. We look at the world now and the species now and the situation with the planet now and say "This - this is normal! This is what it's supposed to be like." but science records and studies have shown that 'now' is no more special than 50,000 years ago 50,000,000 years ago or even beyond. I find this side of it interesting.

[Gene]

Climate change always happens though. The only constant thing about climate is that it changes. Is there any data on record - at all - to suggest that there has ever been a time in 4,000,000,000 years that the climate has totally stopped and remained constant (Apart from the Ice Ages, obviously)?

The simple answer is yes, climate does change over time. The issue we're seeing is that our climate is changing at rate faster than anything the Earth has seen. The speed at which it's changing loudly suggests that something is driving it, something that hasn't driven climate change in the past. You also have to realize that things like land mass orientation drive climate as well. Our landmass distribution is is such that an ice age should be the current state of the climate, and it is. As shown by the polar ice caps we currently have in place. The issue now is that we're seeing those ice caps melting when they shouldn't be. We're seeing temperatures rising at a rate and to levels they shouldn't be. You can say that this is merely us coming out of an ice age, but it goes back to what I said earlier. The speed at which this is happening suggests otherwise. Our land mass distribution should keep us in an ice age. If you want more info on landmass distribution and how it impacts climate change read this....
http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_climate_of_the_earth.html?id=bBjIuXHEgZ4C&redir_esc=y

It's a book I had to study at uni. I don't really want to go too in depth on message board.

Not sure about the loss of biodiversity either. Species are dying out. But then again - has there ever been a record where species weren't dying out and being replaced by new stock which took advantage of the prevailing conditions of the moment?

Acid in the oceans again means that certain species will die out and falter, but there are plenty of possibilities for new species to take over the reins. Has there been any evidence where life hasn't found a way? Even in places like Chernoybyl and other sites of nuclear accidents and testing, life always seems to come back stronger than you might first suspect.

Yes species have always died out and new ones have taken their place. However, we're seeing something different. We're seeing animals shifting their population centers northward. Some are dying out, but most just shift their population. As new populations overtake lands previously considered home by others, you'll start seeing species dying off and not replaced by new, better evolved species, but rather the species who are already in place to take advantage of warmer temperatures. Mainly tropical species. With no new species rising, biodiversity is reduced.

I find the discussions interesting (And you know from pervious chats that I respect a lot of what you say and agree with a lot of what you say) because 'we' always seem to be discussing "Right now" as if "Right now" has any specific 'special' position in history or the life of the planet. What makes people think this current temperate climate (For instance) is 'normal' - it clearly isn't "Normal" - how much of the climate has been exactly like it is now over 4,000,000,000 years? Not much I would guess. There are millions of years where it's been much hotter and millions of years when it's been much cooler. But we're biased because this is (pretty much) all we know. We look at the world now and the species now and the situation with the planet now and say "This - this is normal! This is what it's supposed to be like." but science records and studies have shown that 'now' is no more special than 50,000 years ago 50,000,000 years ago or even beyond. I find this side of it interesting.

Yes normal is relative. You're right. But for us, and our species, we need to keep things 'normal'. We need to keep it normal to avoid things like massive droughts, extreme severe weather, dying crops, etc. We need it to be normal. It's probably pretty selfish to view it that way, and I think that's part of your point.

[Bioluminescence]

Climate change always happens though. The only constant thing about climate is that it changes. Is there any data on record - at all - to suggest that there has ever been a time in 4,000,000,000 years that the climate has totally stopped and remained constant (Apart from the Ice Ages, obviously)?

Not sure about the loss of biodiversity either. Species are dying out. But then again - has there ever been a record where species weren't dying out and being replaced by new stock which took advantage of the prevailing conditions of the moment?

Acid in the oceans again means that certain species will die out and falter, but there are plenty of possibilities for new species to take over the reins. Has there been any evidence where life hasn't found a way? Even in places like Chernoybyl and other sites of nuclear accidents and testing, life always seems to come back stronger than you might first suspect.

I find the discussions interesting (And you know from pervious chats that I respect a lot of what you say and agree with a lot of what you say) because 'we' always seem to be discussing "Right now" as if "Right now" has any specific 'special' position in history or the life of the planet. What makes people think this current temperate climate (For instance) is 'normal' - it clearly isn't "Normal" - how much of the climate has been exactly like it is now over 4,000,000,000 years? Not much I would guess. There are millions of years where it's been much hotter and millions of years when it's been much cooler. But we're biased because this is (pretty much) all we know. We look at the world now and the species now and the situation with the planet now and say "This - this is normal! This is what it's supposed to be like." but science records and studies have shown that 'now' is no more special than 50,000 years ago 50,000,000 years ago or even beyond. I find this side of it interesting.

Ah, but it's not about thinking we live in special times. It's about knowing that we, mainly in the West, are altering our environment in a way that will affect many people, mainly poor vulnerable people in developing countries, and many species in a negative way. Then it's about deciding that we can and must act to limit the amount of damage we cause so that those who don't have the resources or adaptations to face these changes don't disproportionately bear the brunt of our unsustainable lifestyles. It's basically about taking responsibility.

As I think I've already mentioned, it doesn't matter that we only at best get transient equilibrium on Earth (on geological timescales) and that changes have occurred without our involvement. What matters is what we're doing now - changing the composition of the atmosphere, acidifying the oceans, destroying habitats, polluting our waters, air, soil...  There are other ways of doing things, ways that are not as effectively destructive. Why not try and prevent or minimise the damage we're causing? The end of our species or civilisations will come, it doesn't mean we've got accelerate the process.

[Andy @ Allerton]

Ah, but it's not about thinking we live in special times. It's about knowing that we, mainly in the West, are altering our environment in a way that will affect many people, mainly poor vulnerable people in developing countries, and many species in a negative way. Then it's about deciding that we can and must act to limit the amount of damage we cause so that those who don't have the resources or adaptations to face these changes don't disproportionately bear the brunt of our unsustainable lifestyles. It's basically about taking responsibility.

As I think I've already mentioned, it doesn't matter that we only at best get transient equilibrium on Earth (on geological timescales) and that changes have occurred without our involvement. What matters is what we're doing now - changing the composition of the atmosphere, acidifying the oceans, destroying habitats, polluting our waters, air, soil...  There are other ways of doing things, ways that are not as effectively destructive. Why not try and prevent or minimise the damage we're causing? The end of our species or civilisations will come, it doesn't mean we've got accelerate the process.

Yeah I get that. But that's you talking.

Everywhere else you hear about Climate 'Change' how things are 'changing' 'now'

Everyone is obsessed with NOW and everyone I've heard seems to be convinced that how it is 'now' is how 'it's always been'

Nothing could be further from the truth as you (And Gene) know.

Not sure if I'm making my point well enough, but it fascinates me that we see this tiny sliver of time and space and you can include the galaxy, the solar system and the planets in that and in our towering arrogance just because it's all we know and have seen - we KNOW that this is all there is. It's never been different. Except that's it's so, so obvious that it is.

Gene - from above you said that the change has never happened this fast. How about when the Earth was a pile of rocks collecting under gravity and the heat melted it together, the core sank the the centre and a billion years of atmospherics happened - most poisonous and toxic and still life found a way.

I find this incredible. Makes no sense, but it obviously happened. Obviously we all have our own ideas why

[Bioluminescence]

You can only talk about man-made climate change by talking about 'now' because it is happening now and it's already having impacts now. So you can say that in the grand scheme of things, it's nothing, but in the here and now, it's a big deal with many negative consequences. It's got nothing to do with claiming it's always been this way and all to do with the rate of change caused by human activities and the potential there is to take a different course. It's about minimising suffering and destruction in the short- to mid-term, simply because we can. There are many ways in which we 'stop' nature from running its course, why not with a problem we're actually causing in the first place?

I don't know, maybe I don't understand your point and it doesn't look like we're talking to the same people about climate change, though I'd say that I agree with quite a few RAWK contributors on this topic. I don't really recognise anyone in the way you frame the issue.

[RojoLeón]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111215141617.htm

Discovery of a 'Dark State' Could Mean a Brighter Future for Solar Energy

ScienceDaily (Dec. 15, 2011) — The efficiency of conventional solar cells could be significantly increased, according to new research on the mechanisms of solar energy conversion led by chemist Xiaoyang Zhu at The University of Texas at Austin.

Zhu and his team have discovered that it's possible to double the number of electrons harvested from one photon of sunlight using an organic plastic semiconductor material.

"Plastic semiconductor solar cell production has great advantages, one of which is low cost," said Zhu, a professor of chemistry. "Combined with the vast capabilities for molecular design and synthesis, our discovery opens the door to an exciting new approach for solar energy conversion, leading to much higher efficiencies."

Zhu and his team published their groundbreaking discovery Dec. 16 in Science.

The maximum theoretical efficiency of the silicon solar cell in use today is approximately 31 percent, because much of the sun's energy hitting the cell is too high to be turned into usable electricity. That energy, in the form of "hot electrons," is instead lost as heat. Capturing hot electrons could potentially increase the efficiency of solar-to-electric power conversion to as high as 66 percent.

Zhu and his team previously demonstrated that those hot electrons could be captured using semiconductor nanocrystals. They published that research in Science in 2010, but Zhu says the actual implementation of a viable technology based on that research is very challenging.

"For one thing," said Zhu, "that 66 percent efficiency can only be achieved when highly focused sunlight is used, not just the raw sunlight that typically hits a solar panel. This creates problems when considering engineering a new material or device."

To circumvent that problem, Zhu and his team have found an alternative. They discovered that a photon produces a dark quantum "shadow state" from which two electrons can then be efficiently captured to generate more energy in the semiconductor pentacene.

Zhu said that exploiting that mechanism could increase solar cell efficiency to 44 percent without the need for focusing a solar beam, which would encourage more widespread use of solar technology.

The research team was spearheaded by Wai-lun Chan, a postdoctoral fellow in Zhu's group, with the help of postdoctoral fellows Manuel Ligges, Askat Jailaubekov, Loren Kaake and Luis Miaja-Avila. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.

Science Behind the Discovery:

    * Absorption of a photon in a pentacene semiconductor creates an excited electron-hole pair called an exciton.
    * The exciton is coupled quantum mechanically to a dark "shadow state" called a multiexciton.
    * This dark shadow state can be the most efficient source of two electrons via transfer to an electron acceptor material, such as fullerene, which was used in the study.
    * Exploiting the dark shadow state to produce double the electrons could increase solar cell efficiency to 44 percent.

[RojoLeón]

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/12/2011127125429770306.html

The 'Age of Thirst' in the American West
Coming to a theatre near you: the greatest water crisis in the history of civilisation.

Water levels in Lake Mead, Nevada have fluctuated wildly in the last couple of decades [AP]

Santa Fe, New Mexico - Consider it a taste of the future: the fire, smoke, drought, dust and heat that have made life unpleasant and dangerous from Louisiana to Los Angeles. New records tell the tale: the biggest wildfire ever recorded in Arizona (538,049 acres), the biggest fire ever in New Mexico (156,600 acres), and the all-time worst fire year in Texas history (3,697,000 acres).

The fires were a function of drought. By the end of the summer, 2011 was the driest year of the 117 years on record for New Mexico, Texas and Louisiana, and the second driest for Oklahoma. Those fires also resulted from record heat. It was also the hottest summer ever recorded for New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, as well as the hottest August ever for those states.

Virtually every city in the region experienced unprecedented temperatures, with Phoenix, Arizona, as usual, leading the march towards unliveable conditions. This past summer, the so-called Valley of the Sun set a new record of 33 days when the mercury reached a shoe-melting 110 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. (The previous record of 32 days was set in 2007.)

And here's the bad news in a nutshell: If you live in the Southwest or just about anywhere in the American West, you or your children and grandchildren could soon enough be facing the "Age of Thirst", which may also prove to be the greatest water crisis in the history of civilisation. No kidding.

If that gets you down, here's a little cheer-up note: The end is not yet nigh.

In fact, this year the weather elsewhere rode to the rescue, and the news for the Southwest was good where it really mattered. Since January, the biggest reservoir in the United States, Lake Mead, backed up by the Hoover Dam and just 30 miles southwest of Las Vegas, has risen almost 40 feet. That lake is crucial when it comes to watering lawns or taking showers from Arizona to California. And the near 40-foot surge of extra water offered a significant upward nudge to the Southwest's water reserves.

The Colorado River, which the reservoir impounds, supplies all or part of the water on which nearly 30 million people depend, most of them living downstream of Lake Mead in Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson, Tijuana, and scores of smaller communities in the US and Mexico.

Back in 1999, the lake was full. Patricia Mulroy, who heads the water utility serving Las Vegas, rues the optimism of those bygone days. "We had a fifty-year, reliable water supply", she says. "By 2002, we had no water supply. We were out. We were done. I swore to myself we'd never do that again."

In 2000, the lake began to fall - like a boulder off a cliff, bouncing a couple of times on the way down. Its water level dropped a staggering 130 feet, stopping less than seven feet above the stage that would have triggered reductions in downstream deliveries. Then - and here's the good news - last winter, it snowed prodigiously up north in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

The spring and summer run-off from those snowpacks brought enormous relief. It renewed what we in the Southwest like to call the "Hydro-Illogic" cycle: when drought comes, everybody wrings their hands and promises to institute needed reform, if only it would rain a little. Then the drought breaks or eases and we all return to business as usual, until the cycle comes around to drought again.

So don't be fooled. One day, perhaps soon, Lake Mead will renew its downward plunge. That's a given, the experts tell us. And here's the thing: the next time, a sudden rescue by heavy snows in the northern Rockies might not come. If the snowpacks of the future are merely ordinary, let alone puny, then you'll know that we really are entering a new age.

And climate change will be a major reason, but we'll have done a good job of aiding and abetting it. The states of the so-called Lower Basin of the Colorado River - California, Arizona and Nevada - have been living beyond their water means for years. Any departure from recent decades of hydrological abundance, even a return to long-term average flows in the Colorado River, would produce a painful reckoning for the Lower Basin states.  And even worse is surely on the way.

Just think of the coming Age of Thirst in the American Southwest and West as a three-act tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions.

The Age of Thirst: Act I

The curtain in this play would surely rise on the Colorado River Compact of 1922, which divided the river's water equally between the Upper and Lower Basins, allocating an annual 7.5 million acre-feet to each, also known by its acronym "maf". (An acre-foot suffices to support three or four families for a year.) Unfortunately, the architects of the compact, drawing on data from an anomalously wet historical period, assumed the river's average annual flow to be about 17 maf per year. Based on reconstructions that now stretch back more than 1,000 years, the river's long-term average is closer to 14.7 maf. Factor in evaporation from reservoirs (1.5 maf per year) and our treaty obligation to Mexico (another 1.5 maf), and the math doesn't favour a water-guzzling society.

Nonetheless, the states of the Lower Basin have been taking their allotment as if nothing were wrong and consequently overdrafting their account by up to 1.3 maf annually. At this rate, even under unrealistically favourable scenarios, the Lower Basin will eventually drain Lake Mead and cutbacks will begin, possibly as soon as in the next few years. And then things will get dicier because California, the water behemoth of the West, won't have to absorb any of those cutbacks.

Here's one of the screwiest quirks in western water law: To win Congressional approval for the building of a monumental aqueduct, the Central Arizona Project (CAP), which would bring Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona agreed to subordinate its Colorado River water rights to California's. In that way, the $4bn, 336-mile-long CAP was born, and forced Arizona to pay a heavy price. The state obliged itself to absorb not just its own losses in a cutback situation, but California's as well.

Worst case scenario: The CAP aqueduct, now a lifeline for millions, could become as dry as the desert it runs through, while California continues to bathe. Imagine Phoenix curling and cracking around the edges, while lawn sprinklers hiss in Malibu. The contrast will upset a lot of Arizonans.

Worse yet, the prospective schedule of cutbacks now in place for the coming bad times is too puny to save Lake Mead.

The Age of Thirst: Act II

While that Arizona-California relationship guarantees full employment for battalions of water lawyers, a far bigger problem looms: climate change. Models for the Southwest have been predicting a 7.2 degree Fahrenheit increase in mean temperature by the century's end, and events seem to be outpacing the predictions.

We have already experienced close to 1 degree Celsius of that increase, which accounts, at least in part, for last summer's colossal fires and record-setting temperatures - and it's now clear that we're just getting started.

The simple rule of thumb for climate change is that wet places will get wetter and dry places drier. One reason the dry places will dry is that higher temperatures mean more evaporation. In other words, there will be ever less water in the

The Colorado River Aqueduct and the California Aqueduct make the urban conglomerations of southern California possible. If both fail at once, the result will be, as promised, the greatest water crisis in the history of civilisation

rivers that keep the region's cities (and much else) alive. Modelling already suggests that by mid-century surface stream-flow will decline by 10 to 30 per cent.

Independent studies at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute in California and the University of Colorado evaluated the viability of Lake Mead and eventually arrived at similar conclusions: After about 2026, the risk of "failure" at Lake Mead, according to a member of the Colorado group, "just skyrockets". Failure in this context would mean water levels lower than the dam's lowest intake with no water heading downstream and the lake becoming a "dead pool".

If - perhaps "when" is the more appropriate word - that happens, California's Colorado River Aqueduct, which supplies water to Los Angeles, San Diego, and the All-American Canal, which sustains the Imperial and Coachella Valleys, will go just as dry as the Central Arizona Project aqueduct. Meanwhile, if climate change is affecting the Colorado River's watershed that harshly, it will undoubtedly also be hitting the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

The aptly named Lester Snow, a recent director of California's Department of Water Resources, understood this. His future water planning assumed a 40 per cent decline in runoff from the Sierras, which feeds the California Aqueduct. None of his contemplated scenarios were happy ones. The Colorado River Aqueduct and the California Aqueduct make the urban conglomerations of southern California possible. If both fail at once, the result will be, as promised, the greatest water crisis in the history of civilisation.

Only Patricia Mulroy has an endgame strategy for the demise of Lake Mead. The Southern Nevada Water Authority is, even now, tunnelling under the lake to install the equivalent of a bathtub drain at close to its lowest point. At a cost of more than $800m, it will drain the dregs of Lake Mead for Las Vegas.

Admittedly, water quality will be a problem, as the dead pool will concentrate pollutants. The good news, according to the standard joke among those who chronicle Sin City's improbable history, is that the hard-partying residents and over-stimulated tourists who sip from Lake Mead's last waters will no longer need to purchase anti-depressants. They'll get all the Zoloft and Xanax they need from their tap water.

The Age of Thirst: Act III

"You can probably bet your house that, unless we do something about these greenhouse gas emissions, the megadroughts of the future are going to be a lot hotter than the ones of the past."

- Jonathan Overpeck

Those who believe in American exceptionalism hold that the historical patterns shaping the fate of other empires and nations don't apply to the United States. Be that as it may, we are certainly on track to test whether the US is similarly inoculated against the patterns of environmental history.

Because tree rings record growing conditions year by year, the people who study them have been able to reconstruct climate over very long spans of time. One of their biggest discoveries is that droughts more severe and far longer than anything known in recent centuries have occurred repeatedly in the American Southwest. The droughts of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, of the 1950s, and of the period from 1998 to 2004 are remembered in the region, yet none lasted a full decade.

By contrast, the drought that brought the civilisation of the ancestral Puebloans, or Anasazi, centred at Chaco Canyon, to its knees in the twelfth century, by contrast, lasted more than 30 years. The one that finished off Mesa Verdean culture in the thirteenth century was similarly a "megadrought".

Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona who played a major role in the Nobel-Prize-winning work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, tells me that the prospect of 130 degree Fahrenheit days in Phoenix worries him far less than the prospect of decades of acute dryness. "If anything is scary, the scariest is that we could trip across a transition into a megadrought." He adds, "You can probably bet your house that, unless we do something about these greenhouse gas emissions, the megadroughts of the future are going to be a lot hotter than the ones of the past."

Other scientists believe that the Southwest is already making the transition to a "new climatology", a new normal that will at least bring to mind the aridity of the Dust Bowl years. Richard Seager of Columbia University, for instance, suggests that "the cycle of natural dry periods and wet periods will continue, but… around a mean that gets drier. So the depths - the dry parts of the naturally occurring droughts - will be drier than we're used to, and the wet parts won't be as wet."

Drought affects people differently from other disasters. After something terrible happens - tornados, earthquakes, hurricanes - people regularly come together in memorable ways, rising above the things that divide them. In a drought, however, what is terrible is that nothing happens. By the time you know you're in one, you've already had an extended opportunity to meditate on the shortcomings of your neighbours. You wait for what does not arrive. You thirst. You never experience the rush of compassion that helps you behave well. Drought brings out the worst in us.

After the Chacoan drought, corn-farming ancestral Puebloans still remained in the Four Corners area of the Southwest. They hung on, even if at lower population densities. After the Mesa Verdean drought, everybody left.

By the number of smashed crania and other broken bones in the ruins of the region's beautiful stone villages, archaeologists judge that the aridifying world of the Mesa Verdeans was fatally afflicted by violence. Warfare and societal breakdown, evidently driven by the changing climate, helped end that culture.

So it matters what we do. Within the limits imposed by the environment, the history we make is contingent, not fated. But we are not exactly off to a good start in dealing with the challenges ahead. The problem of water consumption in the Southwest is remarkably similar to the problem of greenhouse gas pollution. First, people haggle to exhaustion over the need to take action; then, they haggle over inadequate and largely symbolic reductions. For a host of well-considered, eminently understandable, and ultimately erroneous reasons, inaction becomes the main achievement. For this drama, think Hamlet. Or if the lobbyists who argue for business as usual out West and in Congress spring to mind first, think Iago.

We know at least one big thing about how this particular tragedy will turn out: The so-called civilisation of the Southwest will not survive the present century, not at its present scale anyway. The question yet to be answered is how much it will have to shrink, and at what cost.

Stay tuned. It will be one of the greatest, if grimmest, shows on Earth.

[RojoLeón]

http://www.onearth.org/blog/ocean-acidification-exceeds-natural-variability

It's No Accident: Study Says Oceans Acidifying at Unprecedented Rate

Ocean acidification, that other big CO2 problem, is likely going to be even harder to stave off than global warming. The oceans respond more slowly to climatic changes than the atmosphere, meaning that the massive amounts of carbon dioxide the seas continue to absorb are going to make themselves known over the coming years, whether we like it or not.

As Oregon State oceanographer Burke Hales told Eric Scigliano for his recent OnEarth story about oysters and acidification: "We’ve mailed a package to ourselves, and it’s hard to call off delivery."

Indeed, a study published yesterday in the journal Nature Climate Change suggests we have already had a huge impact on ocean acidity. The study, led by Tobias Friedrich of the International Pacific Research Center in Hawaii, found that the rates of acidification currently exceed the expected natural variation by 30 times.

"In some regions, the man-made rate of change in ocean acidity since the Industrial Revolution is hundred times greater than the natural rate of change between the Last Glacial Maximum and pre-industrial times," Friedrich said in a press release. The glacial maximum occurred more than 20,000 years ago, and the oceans acidified naturally in the millennia following. Even then, though, the rates of acidification were two orders of magnitude smaller than what we see today.

Acidification, or a decrease in pH of ocean water, is already starting to affect marine life. Oysters and other shellfish are particularly at risk, as are coral reefs and all the species that rely on them for habitat. According to the new study, the conditions that allow coral reefs to grow will be available in only five percent of the oceans by 2100. Today that number is 50 percent.

[gordonchas]

Oceans aren't "acidifying". They're just becoming less alkali.  There's a huge difference.

[Bioluminescence]

Oceans aren't "acidifying". They're just becoming less alkali.  There's a huge difference.

The pH of oceans is dropping, therefore the oceans are acidifying even if the overall pH is still above 7 - it's kind of counter-intuitive though. On the other hand, I'm not sure using acidity, as in the article above, is correct in this situation.

Skeptical Science did a series on ocean acidification - a good read if anyone's interested.

Edit - fixed broken link, thanks RojoLeón 

[RojoLeón]

Oceans aren't "acidifying". They're just becoming less alkali.  There's a huge difference.

So the pH is measurably and predictably (according to simple carbon cycle models) decreasing, exactly in line with the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle



As the proportion of CO2/H2CO3* increases, the pH decreases depending on the buffering capacity of the water - there is enough CO2 to create an imbalance and push the pH below levels that are conducive to healthy phytoplankton population. They are the chief motor in our planets CO2-O2 exchange mechanism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoplankton

Other marine life will be affected due to lowering pH (btw. 'acidification' and lowering pH are effectively the same thing: there are more H+ ions in the water - the chief measure of pH)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification

The ANC (acid neutralizing capacity) of the water is decreased by the CO2 imbalance. If you wanted to be picky, you might say that the basicity is decreasing but not necessarily the alkalinity - Total Alkalinity can still be measured at low pH as there will be some concentration of conjugate base ions present in the water. One factor that might dramatically decrease alkalinity is dilution of the seawater by freshwater, such as from melted polar ice caps.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkalinity

The big dangers are reduced air quality due to less O2 in atmosphere and that the system is slow moving and hard to stop - big changes to correct the CO2 imbalance may be too late for a lot of people who have illness due to reduced air quality, exacerbated by other pollution factors. O2 concentrations above most industrial cities are much lower than they should be for healthy respiratory function - this will make things much worse.

Another danger is that the oceans create a feedback loop with solar radiation as the ocean region albedo decreases, increasing the amount of 'warming' IR radiation getting to the planet surface. Warmer oceans mean more favorable conditions for things that are not good for current ocean ecology. Warmer planet means higher sea levels, changing weather patterns and less favorable conditions for us.

The big baddie of these scenarios is mass algae kill off - a runaway increase in seawater algae populations, driven by the CO2, which would 'smother' the sea, killing off most life in the water due to catastrophic anaerobic conditions. This would be pretty detrimental to land based life also - mitigating any fears from this scenario, things would have to get pretty challenging to mammalian life on the land surface before the algal bloom delivered the final  blow. 

Seemingly, it is not currently economically feasible for the global power brokers to reign in the industrial society which is the major and minor contributor to this. We will keep burning shit and in increasing quantities. 

[RojoLeón]

Edit - fixed broken link, thanks RojoLeón 

No worries and cheers for the link - fascinating and informative stuff 

[Bioluminescence]

No worries and cheers for the link - fascinating and informative stuff 

It's all a bit of a mess, eh? More for me to ponder - I hadn't stopped to think about decreasing oxygen levels. Thanks again for putting all this up.

[-Q-]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/science-behind-the-big-freeze-is-climate-change-bringing-the-arctic-to-europe-6358928.html

Apparently global warming climate change is to blame for cold winter in the UK.

[Gene]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/science-behind-the-big-freeze-is-climate-change-bringing-the-arctic-to-europe-6358928.html

Apparently global warming climate change is to blame for cold winter in the UK.

A few things...

1- The scenario that developed this past week or so is not uncommon. A strong high over Siberia providing easterly flow to Europe has historically (climatologically) been responsible for the coldest recorded European weather for... well... forever.
2- That's not to say that the melting Arctic ice isn't helping to INCREASE the frequency of this pattern setting up. The normal pattern is the Azores high extending up into the UK being forced to retreat every few days as a frontal system spins off the Icelandic low which pushes through the UK. However, a strong high over Serbia/Central Europe extending into the UK (as this past week) shears apart those approaching frontal systems and/or pushes them north of the UK and instead gives us dry and bitterly cold air.
3- The Earth's atmosphere is a closed system. This is why adding more greenhouse gases is a very bad thing. Being that it's a closed system, it will always try and balance itself out until it fully reaches a tipping point. Extreme warm weather will bring extreme cold weather in other parts of the world. Extreme droughts will bring extreme rain to other parts. For proof of this in action, look at a hurricane. A hurricane is nothing more than the Earth trying to dissipate extra energy found in the atmosphere. Which is why as we warm, we'll continue to see more and stronger storms.

[RojoLeón]

http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-ocean-acidification-unprecedented.html

Present ocean acidification rates are unprecedented: research

The world's oceans may be turning acidic faster today from human carbon emissions than they did during four major extinctions in the last 300 million years, when natural pulses of carbon sent global temperatures soaring, says a new study in Science. The study is the first of its kind to survey the geologic record for evidence of ocean acidification over this vast time period.

(more at link)

[RojoLeón]

This is because of inadequate water management practices, failure to upgrade infrastructure and lack of water conservation measures.

UK water use per person is 3 times the rate during the 1950s. 150 liters per person per day (to be fair, the average water usage per person, in the US is almost 4 times that!).


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/half-of-britain-now-officially-in-drought-7646613.html

Half of Britain now officially in drought

Water shortages set to continue until next year following a predicted third dry winter
Half of Britain is now officially in drought, in the worst
national water shortage since 1976 – a situation that may last
until Christmas or beyond.


Seventeen more counties have been given drought status, meaning the Midlands and South-west have been added to the already-drought-stricken South-east and East Anglia. England is water-stressed south-east of a line from Yorkshire to Herefordshire.

The map of Britain is now divided sharply in two by water problems, with Wales and the North-west remaining drought-free, but the rest of the country facing increasing difficulty with river flows and very low levels of groundwater. Seven water companies, led by Thames Water with 8.8 million customers in London and the Thames Valley, have had hosepipe bans in place since the Easter weekend.

The Environment Agency said public water supplies in the newly affected areas are unlikely to be restricted this summer, but the lack of rain is beginning to take its toll on the environment and farmers – causing problems for wildlife, wetlands and crop production.

In the Midlands, agency staff have been rescuing fish from the river Lathkill in the Derbyshire Peak District after it partly ran dry, and the rivers Tern, Sow, Soar and Leadon reached their lowest recorded levels in history in March.

In the South-west, rivers are also suffering, and nationally important chalk streams, such as the Hampshire Avon, which supports valuable trout and salmon species, are exceptionally low. About 20 million litres a day are being pumped into local river catchments to top up the low flows by Wessex Water.

It says it currently has no plans to impose restrictions on use, such as hosepipe bans, but it is urging its customers to save water as much as possible. The Wessex region has had below-average rainfall during the winter, but reservoir storage is "satisfactory" and on average reservoirs are around 85 per cent full, the company says. However, groundwater levels in the aquifers Wessex abstracts water from are below average for the time of year.

The Agency is warning that the drought could last beyond Christmas. While rain over the spring and summer will help to water crops and gardens, it is unlikely to improve the underlying situation.

"A longer-term drought, lasting until Christmas and perhaps beyond, now looks more likely, and we are working with businesses, farmers and water companies to plan ahead to meet the challenges of a continued drought," said Trevor Bishop, the Environment Agency's head of water resources.

It was hoped that a prolonged period of rainfall between last October and March would prevent widespread drought, but parts of England received less than 60 per cent of the average winter rainfall.

There are hopes that a steady rainy winter in 2012-13 will restore rivers and groundwaters, but the Agency is taking no chances and is working with the water industry to put plans in place to deal with the prospect of a third dry winter.

Water companies are looking at options including sharing water across company boundaries.

Fish rescued as celebrated trout river runs dry

Fisheries staff from the Environment Agency have been rescuing trout from one of England's most celebrated trout streams after its levels fell dangerously low. They have been saving the fish in the river Lathkill in the Peak District, a river which is small and less than seven miles long (it flows into the Derbyshire Wye) but celebrated because of its water quality. As it flows through a limestone landscape, the Lathkill's waters are so unusually clear that its trout can be seen from one bank to the other, but the drought has exposed sections of the river bed.

[RojoLeón]

I mean this to just compare a few ideas around sustainability and how in effective terms it is meaningless. The global system has limits and we seem to be testing rigorously to find these with the downside of such exploration being that the some processes are irreversible.

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/

Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist
Posted on 2012-04-10

Some while back, I found myself sitting next to an accomplished economics professor at a dinner event. Shortly after pleasantries, I said to him, “economic growth cannot continue indefinitely,” just to see where things would go. It was a lively and informative conversation. I was somewhat alarmed by the disconnect between economic theory and physical constraints—not for the first time, but here it was up-close and personal. Though my memory is not keen enough to recount our conversation verbatim, I thought I would at least try to capture the key points and convey the essence of the tennis match—with some entertainment value thrown in.

...

Physicist: Right, if you plot the U.S. energy consumption in all forms from 1650 until now, you see a phenomenally faithful exponential at about 3% per year over that whole span. The situation for the whole world is similar. So how long do you think we might be able to continue this trend?

Economist: Well, let’s see. A 3% growth rate means a doubling time of something like 23 years. So each century might see something like a 15–20× increase. I see where you’re going. A few more centuries like that would perhaps be absurd. But don’t forget that population was increasing during centuries past—the period on which you base your growth rate. Population will stop growing before more centuries roll by.

Physicist: True enough. So we would likely agree that energy growth will not continue indefinitely. But two points before we continue: First, I’ll just mention that energy growth has far outstripped population growth, so that per-capita energy use has surged dramatically over time—our energy lives today are far richer than those of our great-great-grandparents a century ago [economist nods]. So even if population stabilizes, we are accustomed to per-capita energy growth: total energy would have to continue growing to maintain such a trend [another nod].

Second, thermodynamic limits impose a cap to energy growth lest we cook ourselves. I’m not talking about global warming, CO2 build-up, etc. I’m talking about radiating the spent energy into space. I assume you’re happy to confine our conversation to Earth, foregoing the spectre of an exodus to space, colonizing planets, living the Star Trek life, etc.

Economist: More than happy to keep our discussion grounded to Earth.

Physicist: [sigh of relief: not a space cadet] Alright, the Earth has only one mechanism for releasing heat to space, and that’s via (infrared) radiation. We understand the phenomenon perfectly well, and can predict the surface temperature of the planet as a function of how much energy the human race produces. The upshot is that at a 2.3% growth rate (conveniently chosen to represent a 10× increase every century), we would reach boiling temperature in about 400 years. [Pained expression from economist.] And this statement is independent of technology. Even if we don’t have a name for the energy source yet, as long as it obeys thermodynamics, we cook ourselves with perpetual energy increase.

Economist: That’s a striking result. Could not technology pipe or beam the heat elsewhere, rather than relying on thermal radiation?

Physicist: Well, we could (and do, somewhat) beam non-thermal radiation into space, like light, lasers, radio waves, etc. But the problem is that these “sources” are forms of high-grade, low-entropy energy. Instead, we’re talking about getting rid of the waste heat from all the processes by which we use energy. This energy is thermal in nature. We might be able to scoop up some of this to do useful “work,” but at very low thermodynamic efficiency. If you want to use high-grade energy in the first place, having high-entropy waste heat is pretty inescapable.

Economist: [furrowed brow] Okay, but I still think our path can easily accommodate at least a steady energy profile. We’ll use it more efficiently and for new pursuits that continue to support growth.

Physicist: Before we tackle that, we’re too close to an astounding point for me to leave it unspoken. At that 2.3% growth rate, we would be using energy at a rate corresponding to the total solar input striking Earth in a little over 400 years. We would consume something comparable to the entire sun in 1400 years from now. By 2500 years, we would use energy at the rate of the entire Milky Way galaxy—100 billion stars! I think you can see the absurdity of continued energy growth. 2500 years is not that long, from a historical perspective. We know what we were doing 2500 years ago. I think I know what we’re not going to be doing 2500 years hence.

Economist: That’s really remarkable—I appreciate the detour. You said about 1400 years to reach parity with solar output?

Physicist: Right. And you can see the thermodynamic point in this scenario as well. If we tried to generate energy at a rate commensurate with that of the Sun in 1400 years, and did this on Earth, physics demands that the surface of the Earth must be hotter than the (much larger) surface of the Sun. Just like 100 W from a light bulb results in a much hotter surface than the same 100 W you and I generate via metabolism, spread out across a much larger surface area.

Economist: I see. That does make sense.

...

Economist: Yes, I think energy plays a diminishing role in the economy and becomes too cheap to worry about.

Physicist: Wow. Do you really believe that? A physically limited resource (read scarcity) that is fundamental to every economic activity becomes arbitrarily cheap? [turns attention to food on the plate, somewhat stunned]

Economist: [after pause to consider] Yes, I do believe that.

Physicist: Okay, so let’s be clear that we’re talking about the same thing. Energy today is roughly 10% of GDP. Let’s say we cap the physical amount available each year at some level, but allow GDP to keep growing. We need to ignore inflation as a nuisance in this case: if my 10 units of energy this year costs $10,000 out of my $100,000 income; then next year that same amount of energy costs $11,000 and I make $110,000—I want to ignore such an effect as “meaningless” inflation: the GDP “growth” in this sense is not real growth, but just a re-scaling of the value of money.

Economist: Agreed.

Physicist: Then in order to have real GDP growth on top of flat energy, the fractional cost of energy goes down relative to the GDP as a whole.

Economist: Correct.

Physicist: How far do you imagine this can go? Will energy get to 1% of GDP? 0.1%? Is there a limit?

Economist: There does not need to be. Energy may become of secondary importance in the economy of the future—like in the virtual world I illustrated.

Physicist: But if energy became arbitrarily cheap, someone could buy all of it, and suddenly the activities that comprise the economy would grind to a halt. Food would stop arriving at the plate without energy for purchase, so people would pay attention to this. Someone would be willing to pay more for it. Everyone would. There will be a floor to how low energy prices can go as a fraction of GDP.

Economist: That floor may be very low: much lower than the 5–10% we pay today.

Physicist: But is there a floor? How low are you willing to take it? 5%? 2%? 1%?

Economist: Let’s say 1%.

Physicist: So once our fixed annual energy costs 1% of GDP, the 99% remaining will find itself stuck. If it tries to grow, energy prices must grow in proportion and we have monetary inflation, but no real growth.

Economist: Well, I wouldn’t go that far. You can still have growth without increasing GDP.

Physicist: But it seems that you are now sold on the notion that the cost of energy would not naturally sink to arbitrarily low levels.

Economist: Yes, I have to retract that statement. If energy is indeed capped at a steady annual amount, then it is important enough to other economic activities that it would not be allowed to slip into economic obscurity.

Physicist: Even early economists like Adam Smith foresaw economic growth as a temporary phase lasting maybe a few hundred years, ultimately limited by land (which is where energy was obtained in that day). If humans are successful in the long term, it is clear that a steady-state economic theory will far outlive the transient growth-based economic frameworks of today. Forget Smith, Keynes, Friedman, and that lot. The economists who devise a functioning steady-state economic system stand to be remembered for a longer eternity than the growth dudes. [Economist stares into the distance as he contemplates this alluring thought.]

Talking of steady state systems - this example was put forth of a crude model - SimCity3000

Strangely fascinating and disturbing

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/NTJQTc-TqpU?version=3&amp;amp;hl=en_US&amp;amp;rel=0" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/NTJQTc-TqpU?version=3&amp;amp;hl=en_US&amp;amp;rel=0</a>

Those who have tried their hand at Sim City 3000 will be interested in this video of what is claimed to be the maximum size city possible. “Magnasanti” has 6 million residents, and required three years to construct. Vincent Ocasia, the creator, notes that while it is a maximal size city, it is not a utopian paradise:

Technically, no one is leaving or coming into the city. Population growth is stagnant. Sims don’t need to travel long distances, because their workplace is just within walking distance. In fact they do not even need to leave their own block… Suffocating air pollution, high unemployment, no fire stations, schools, or hospitals, a regimented lifestyle – this is the price that these sims pay for living in the city with the highest population. It’s a sick and twisted goal to strive towards. The ironic thing about it is the sims in Magnasanti tolerate it. They don’t rebel, or cause revolutions and social chaos. No one considers challenging the system by physical means since a hyper-efficient police state keeps them in line. They have all been successfully dumbed down, sickened with poor health, enslaved and mind-controlled just enough to keep this system going for thousands of years…

In the video at 6:39, you can see that the population precipitously dies off after age 60. And, in case you were wondering, the creator says “I am not autistic, or a savant, nor suffer from OCD, or suffer from any other form of clinical mental disease or illness for that matter.” 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/mar/14/human-engineering-climate-change-philosophy

Bioengineer humans to tackle climate change, say philosophers

Authors defend controversial academic paper saying their online critics have misunderstood nature of philosophical inquiry (scary green eugenicists  )

Earlier this week, The Atlantic ran an eye-catching, disturbing interview with a professor of philosophy and bioethics at New York University called S. Matthew Liao. He was invited to discuss a forthcoming paper he has co-authored which will soon be published in the journal Ethics, Policy & Environment.

But within just a few hours of the interview going live a torrent of outrage and abuse was being directed towards him online. As I tweeted at the time, the interview was indeed "unsettling". Liao explained how his paper – entitled, "Human Engineering and Climate Change" – explored the so-far-ignored subject of how "biomedical modifications of humans" could be used to "mitigate and/or adapt to climate change". The modifications discussed included: giving people drugs to make them have an adverse reaction to eating meat; making humans smaller via gene imprinting and "preimplantation genetic diagnosis"; lowering birth-rates through "cognitive enhancement"; genetically engineering eyesight to work better in the dark to help reduce the need for lighting; and the "pharmacological enhancement of altruism and empathy" to engender a better "correlation" with environmental problems.

Both the interview and the paper itself include a prominent disclaimer. As the paper says:

    To be clear, we shall not argue that human engineering ought to be adopted; such a claim would require far more exposition and argument than we have space for here. Our central aim here is to show that human engineering deserves consideration alongside other solutions in the debate about how to solve the problem of climate change. Also, as we envisage it, human engineering would be a voluntary activity – possibly supported by incentives such as tax breaks or sponsored health care – rather than a coerced, mandatory activity.

However, that wasn't enough to prevent an extremely hostile reception to such ideas. Climate sceptics were the first to vent their anger. Somewhat inevitability, terms such as "eugenics", "Nazis" and "eco fascists" were quickly being bandied around. One sceptic blogger said that the "sick" Liao and his co-authors should be "kept in Guantanamo". Another said the paper "presages the death of science, and indeed the death of reason, in the West".

But prominent environmentalists were also keen to denounce the paper. Bill McKibben tweeted that the paper contained the "worst climate change solutions of all time". Mark Lynas tweeted that he thought it was an "early April Fool". It was hard to disagree.

So, were the philosophers who co-wrote the paper surprised by the reaction? Or had all their critics misunderstood what they were trying to achieve? I contacted each of the authors in turn, and a co-editor of the journal, and asked them.

Liao was the first to respond:

    First, I think that our paper/position is being grossly misrepresented by some people online. As we specifically say in our paper, a) we are not necessarily endorsing any of the solutions we have canvassed; and b) if these solutions were available, it should be up to individuals to adopt them voluntarily. Ross Anderson, the writer of the Atlantic interview, also makes this clear.
    Secondly, the term "eugenics" often gets brought up whenever people mention human enhancements. This is unfortunate because my co-authors and I are positively against any form of coercion of the sort the Nazis had done in the past (segregation, sterilization, and genocide). The way the term 'eugenics' is used by some of the people who are against our proposal, it seems that voluntary use of contraception would be a form of eugenics.
    Finally, many people who are against our proposal explicitly deny that climate change is really a problem. Given this, it is not surprising that they would find our solution to what they perceive as a "non-problem" incredible. Indeed, some of these people have also said that encouraging people to drive less is an overreaction to climate change. Our paper is intended for those who believe that i) climate change is a real problem; and ii) who, owing to i), are willing to take seriously geoengineering. All bets are off if someone doesn't accept i).

I then sent the following questions to Liao's co-authors, Dr Anders Sandberg and Dr Rebecca Roache, both based at Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute. (Roache was at the institute when the paper was first being drafted 18 months ago, but has since left to be a "full-time mum".)

Has your paper been misrepresented online? If so, how and why?

    Sandberg: Most reactions are not based on what we actually wrote. People who comment on anything online have usually not read it, and then people comment on them, and so on. You are lucky if people remember the original topic, let alone any argument.
    People seem to assume we are some kind of totalitarian climate doomsters who advocate biotechnological control over people. What we are actually saying is that changing our biology might be part of solving environmental problems, and that some changes might not just be permissible but work well with a liberal ethics.
    Climate change and many other problems have upstream and downstream solutions. For example, 1) human consumption leads to 2) a demand for production and energy, which leads to 3) industry, which leads to 4) greenhouse gas emissions, which lead to 5) planetary heating, which leads to 6) bad consequences. One solution might be to try to consume less (fix 2). We can also make less emissive industry (fix the 3-4 link), remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere (reduce 4), geoengineering that cools the planet (reduce 5) or adapt to a changed world (handle 6). Typically people complain about the downstream solutions like geoengineering that they are risky or don't actually solve the cause of the problem, and say we should go for upstream solutions (where a small shift affects the rest of the chain). So, what would be the most upstream solution? Change human desires or consumption. While this can be done partially by persuasion and culture, there are many strong evolved drivers in human nature that act against it. But we can also affect the drivers.
    For example, making people smarter is likely to make them better at solving environmental problems, caring about the environment, adopting a more long-term stance, cooperate better and have fewer children. It is of course desirable for a long list of other reasons too, and many people would freely choose to use enhancements to achieve this even if they cared little about the world. If there was a modification that removed the desire for meat, it would likely have not just green effects but also benefit health and animal welfare - again many might decide to go for it, with no external compulsion.

    Roache: Yes. We argue that it might be worth considering making available some seemingly bizarre solutions to climate change, for people to use or not as they wish. We have been represented as arguing - among other things - that people should be forced to adopt these bizarre measures for the good of the environment. I imagine that this is partly because people assume that nobody would dream up such bizarre solutions to climate change unless they believed that they should be implemented. Philosophers, however, spend a lot of time discussing views that they do not necessarily endorse - it's part of the learning process.

What do you say to those who are claiming you and your fellow authors are "eco Nazis", "eugenicists" etc, for publishing this paper?

    Sandberg: Well, none of us are deep greens or totalitarian. We are fairly typical liberal academics thinking about the world. In fact, in my normal work with global catastrophic risks at the Future of Humanity Institute, climate change is at the lower end of concern. Certainly a problem, but unlikely to wipe out humanity. That probably disqualifies me from being an eco Nazi.
    Certainly one can imagine nasty governments imposing various green policies on the population, forcing them to act in ways that benefit the environment. But our paper doesn't give them any particular ethical support: if you are willing to infringe on people's reproductory liberty, why not just prevent them from consuming as much as they want? Green totalitarianism might be possible, but it is hardly moral - because it is totalitarian and doesn't respect individual rights.
    Of course, to many people even a hint that our biology might be subject to political considerations is horrific. Yet they do not seem to worry much about the political decisions that are constantly being made about our reproduction (laws against reproductive cloning are political decisons about the desired form of human reproduction), nutrition or health. We are living in an era of biopolitics. It is better to make the issues explicit and discuss them than assume they will go away if we ignore them.
    I think parents should be allowed to select genes for their children ("liberal eugenics" in the term of Nicholas Agar) - the reason eugenics in the past has been such a bad thing was because it was 1) coercive, 2) imposed centrally by the state, and 3) often based on bad science. If one can avoid these problems I do think it could be useful: in that sense I am an eugenicist. However, I suspect other technologies are going to change our species faster than genetics.

    Roache: I say that they haven't read the paper! We explicitly state that we do not endorse coercion, and that we envisage human engineering to be a voluntary activity. The solutions we discuss may seem bizarre and unrealistic, but that does not entail they are not worth exploring.

Did you predict this level/type of response?

    Sandberg: A bit. When I wrote the paper I felt I was to some extent trolling - I admit I was delighted when some of my normally rather bio-radical colleagues protested against the idea after a presentation we gave here in Oxford. I was a bit more surprised that the blogosphere and popular press took notice of the paper.
    The problem with arousing emotions is that most people then become very stimulus-response driven. They don't think very deeply about the issue, they react instead. We hoped the paper would be exciting enough to stimulate discussion but not to preclude thinking.
    You could claim this paper is a reductio ad absurdum of the idea that we should aim for upstream solutions to environmental problems rather than downstream solutions. I'm not convinced about that: there might indeed be win-win enhancements that are both good for us individually, for society and for the environment, and they should be supported. What the paper does is to take environmental goals and collide them with some common bioethical intuitions (the sacredness of the natural, that human biology must not be touched, etc.) - that hopefully produces an uncomfortable itch that will stimulate some real thinking about what we want to give prioritiy. Could there be ethical reasons not to do things that would help the environment? Could there be environmental needs so pressing we would be forced to budge our biological policies?

    Roache: It was always a possibility. Our normally unflappable bioethicist colleagues were shocked by the idea of human engineering, so the wider public was bound to find it ghastly. The fact that we presented it as a response to the widely-discussed problem of climate change is also relevant here: it's not unusual for philosophers to write about wacky and horrifying ideas, but non-philosophers are rarely interested in them because they often have no obvious bearing on real life. For example, I was working on this paper at around the same time as I was working on a paper about whether it is conceptually possible for more than one person to inhabit a single body; but the publication of the latter passed without comment from the Daily Mail.

Ultimately, what were you trying to achieve with the paper? Are
people interpreting it too literally, namely, believing you personally
would advocate for these ideas?

    Sandberg: People are unused to ethical analysis. In philosophy we take ideas and test them to destruction. This means that we often bring up concepts or lines of thought we do not personally believe in and then argue them as strongly as possible to see where they go and what we can learn. This is very different from everyday life where most people who state an idea or belief also believe in it - and it makes people misunderstand this kind of thinking. To make matters worse most people debating it will not read the paper and see how we discuss the ethical problems or why even we think it is a preposterous idea... they will just think some eggheads blithely promote eugenics.
    The core idea is that we should not imagine that our biological nature is exempt from being part of a potential solution to environmental problems. In our opinion methods of changing people, habits, technology or the environment are all possible approaches, and what matters is whether they work, have good effects, are acceptable and practical, not what kind of method they are.
    My personal view is that human engineering on its own is unlikely to fix climate change. The methods we mention are all too weak, indirect and slow. But thinking about out-of-the-box approaches is useful: too much of the climate debate has been forced into doctrinaire camps where any consideration of alternatives is heresy. Big complex problems are unlikely to have simple and neat solutions: we need to investigate (and perhaps use) a lot of approaches.
    I do think that in the long run humanity has to become posthuman it wants to be truly sustainable. I have a little essay about it here:
    http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2009/03/a_really_green_and_sustainable_humanity.html
    But this is not feasible for the next few decades, at the very least.

    Roache: We wanted to encourage people to think about a group of solutions to climate change that have so far been ignored, despite the fact that in many cases it would be scientifically possible to implement them. Human engineering may seem bizarre and unrealistic, but this does not mean it could not turn out to be feasible and promising: telephones, "test tube babies", and personal computers are all important aspects of modern life that were once regarded as bizarre and unrealistic. Of course, human engineering may ultimately be unworkable; but this should be because it is impossible to implement, or because its costs outweigh its benefits. It should not be rejected merely because, at first glance, it seems unappealing. And discussing it is itself valuable: it is by exploring and assessing potential responses to a problem that we make progress towards solving it.

I also asked Benjamin Hale, assistant professor of philosophy and environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and co-editor of Ethics, Policy & Environment, why the paper is being published and whether the journal anticipated this sort of response. He said:

    We accept submissions from scholars across the academic community. The article went through the same double blind peer reviewed process that all of our articles go through. We haven't received any questions on it yet. You're our first. By publishing this article, we are not endorsing it at all. We have circulated the paper widely and are publishing between seven to nine critical responses from ethicists across the field.
    The things I've seen written on it so far appear to miss the point. The article was clearly not a positive policy proposal. Instead, it was a series of Swiftian philosophical thought experiments more designed to contextualize actively discussed schemes like geoengineering, written by a professor who is not otherwise engaged with the climate community. In the same issue, we will be publishing several other articles critical of geoengineering.

In total, the responses indicate that both the authors and journal stand squarely behind the controversial paper and believe its critics have woefully misinterpreted its contents and the reasons for publishing it. One thing is sure: they have certainly been successful in courting attention (not to be sniffed at in the world of academic publishing, or any form of publishing, for that matter).

But if their aim was to generate a pensive, wide-ranging philosophical debate on the subject of human engineering and climate change I'm not convinced they have been successful. Well, not yet at least, if the online reaction is anything to go by. There remains a danger, too, that the paper will be used in the future as a stick to attack any suggestion of environmental action: "Let them do this, and this will be next on their agenda." However, I agree with the authors that we should not fear debating such ideas - even if the end result is that we still roundly reject them.

[RojoLeón]

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/04/2012420725163795.html

BP blamed for ongoing health problems
Gulf Coast residents and clean up workers have found chemicals present in BP's oil in their own bloodstreams.
Dahr Jamail Last Modified: 20 Apr 2012 14:01


Ocean Springs, Mississippi - Not long after BP's oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, 2010, Lorrie Williams knew something was very wrong with her health.

She began getting frequent headaches, was experiencing shortness of breath, her eyes were burning, and she was having nightmares.

Williams, her husband Bud Waltman, and their ten-year-old son, Noah, have all tested positive for having chemicals in their blood that are also present in BP's oil. Her 25-year-old son has been to the emergency room twice for haemorrhaging blood from his nose, and several of their neighbours also have experienced ongoing respiratory problems.


Lorrie Williams and Bud Waltman have both tested positive for having chemicals present in BP's oil in their bloodstreams
[Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

Her two-year-old granddaughter has been sick constantly.

Williams and Waltman, both crab fishers, live less than a kilometre from the Mississippi coast, and blame the illnesses in their family on exposure to chemicals from BP's oil and the dispersants used to sink it.

"I'm really sick, and I fear that I'm not gonna be here in a year," Williams told Al Jazeera. "There are days that I can't get up, and I can't eat. And I can't do the things that I used to do, with Bubba, and my grandbaby. And Noah. And then I worry about my mom. And I have nothing to leave them but a crab boat and some crab pots."

Williams stated that she and her family are not alone.

"There are now dozens, if not hundreds, of other Gulf Coast residents and former oil clean up workers that have also tested positive for having BP's chemicals in their blood," she added. "And for many of us, the problem seems to be getting worse with time."

Volatile organic chemicals

The 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf last year was the largest accidental marine oil spill in history, affecting people living near the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

Seemingly compounding the problem, BP has admitted to using at least 1.9 million gallons of toxic dispersants, which are banned by many countries, including the UK. According to many scientists, these dispersants create an even more toxic substance when mixed with crude oil.

Dr Wilma Subra, a chemist in New Iberia, Louisiana, has tested the blood of BP cleanup workers and residents.

"Ethylbenzene, m,p-Xylene and hexane are volatile organic chemicals that are present in the BP crude oil," Dr Subra explained to Al Jazeera. "The acute impacts of these chemicals include nose and throat irritation, coughing, wheezing, lung irritation, dizziness, light-headedness, nausea and vomiting."


The NIH has launched a ten-year study of 55,000 oil clean-up workers, many of whom did not use protective equipment
[Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

Dr Subra explained that exposure has been prolonged enough to create long-term effects, such as "liver damage, kidney damage, and damage to the nervous system. So the presence of these chemicals in the blood indicates exposure".

Testing by Dr Subra has also revealed BP's chemicals are present "in coastal soil sediment, wetlands, and in crab, oyster and mussel tissues".

Pathways of exposure to the dispersants are inhalation, ingestion, and skin and eye contact. According to Dr Riki Ott, symptoms of exposure include headaches, vomiting, diarrhoea, abdominal pains, chest pains, respiratory system damage, skin sensitisation, hypertension, central nervous system depression, neurotoxic effects, genetic mutations, cardiac arrhythmia, and cardiovascular damage. The chemicals can also cause birth defects, mutations and cancer.

Dr Ott, a toxicologist, marine biologist, and Exxon Valdez survivor, told Al Jazeera that these chemicals "evaporate in air and are easily inhaled, they penetrate skin easily, and they cross the placenta into fetuses. For example, 2-butoxyethanol [a chemical used in oil dispersant Corexit] is a human health hazard substance; it is a fetal toxin and it breaks down blood cells, causing blood and kidney disorders".

"Solvents dissolve oil, grease, and rubber," Ott continued. "Spill responders have told me that the hard rubber impellors in their engines and the soft rubber bushings on their outboard motor pumps are falling apart and need frequent replacement. Given this evidence, it should be no surprise that solvents are also notoriously toxic to people, something the medical community has long known."

In March 2011, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched a long-term health study of workers who helped clean up after BP's oil disaster.


Some scientists and toxicologists believe oil clean-up workers should have worn respirators and full protective clothing
[Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

According to the NIH, 55,000 clean-up workers and volunteers in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida will be checked for health problems, and participants will be followed for up to ten years.

The study is largely funded by the NIH, which received a "gift" from BP to help run the study. BP says it is not involved in the study, which will cost $34m over the next five years.

But the study focuses mainly on people who participated in the clean-up, and does not include coastal residents such as Lorrie Williams and her family.

Official response

Al Jazeera asked Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal what his state was doing to safeguard people against chemical poisoning.

In a statement to Al Jazeera, Jindal's office said:

    "Coastal residents and response workers will be compensated through the deal reached between the Plaintiff Steering Committee and BP. BP must follow through on making whole [properly compensating]impacted residents and workers who experienced or are still experiencing health impacts as a result of the spill."

Stuart Smith, a New Orleans lawyer representing more than 1,000 cases against BP, most of them health related, has stronger words about the situation.


Attorney Stuart Smith blames both BP and the US government for the health problems of Gulf Coast residents and clean-up workers [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

"These people have almost identical symptoms to chemical plant and refinery workers that were exposed," Smith told Al Jazeera. "It's really sad to me that, in a place like America, that the government itself and BP simply ignored all of these people who are violently ill. They know that a lot of these areas in Louisiana that were impacted are poor areas and a lot of the people don't have health insurance and they just basically let them blow in the wind and it's really a disgrace. I think that the decision was made at the highest level of our government to save BP at any cost. And they did not want these people in respiratory gas masks on national television."

BP, who has only paid out 140 claims for death or injury related to the spill, does not appear to want to acknowledge the scope of the problem, he said.

"I would describe BP's reaction to the allegations of significant health impacts as like an ostrich. Ostrich syndrome. They are sticking their heads in the sand, they don't want to hear it. And they don't want to pay for it, for sure."

For more than one year, Al Jazeera has interviewed dozens of Gulf Coast residents and clean-up workers who all tested positive for having BP's chemicals in their blood. So far, they say, finding either proper health treatment or financial compensation from BP has been nearly impossible for most of them.


http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/04/201241682318260912.html

Gulf seafood deformities alarm scientists

Eyeless shrimp and fish with lesions are becoming common, with BP oil pollution believed to be the likely cause.

New Orleans, LA - "The fishermen have never seen anything like this," Dr Jim Cowan told Al Jazeera. "And in my 20 years working on red snapper, looking at somewhere between 20 and 30,000 fish, I've never seen anything like this either."

Dr Cowan, with Louisiana State University's Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences started hearing about fish with sores and lesions from fishermen in November 2010.

Cowan's findings replicate those of others living along vast areas of the Gulf Coast that have been impacted by BP's oil and dispersants.

Gulf of Mexico fishermen, scientists and seafood processors have told Al Jazeera they are finding disturbing numbers of mutated shrimp, crab and fish that they believe are deformed by chemicals released during BP's 2010 oil disaster.

Along with collapsing fisheries, signs of malignant impact on the regional ecosystem are ominous: horribly mutated shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, eyeless crabs and shrimp - and interviewees' fingers point towards BP's oil pollution disaster as being the cause.

Eyeless shrimp

Tracy Kuhns and her husband Mike Roberts, commercial fishers from Barataria, Louisiana, are finding eyeless shrimp.

"At the height of the last white shrimp season, in September, one of our friends caught 400 pounds of these," Kuhns told Al Jazeera while showing a sample of the eyeless shrimp.

According to Kuhns, at least 50 per cent of the shrimp caught in that period in Barataria Bay, a popular shrimping area that was heavily impacted by BP's oil and dispersants, were eyeless. Kuhns added: "Disturbingly, not only do the shrimp lack eyes, they even lack eye sockets."
Eyeless shrimp, from a catch of 400 pounds of eyeless shrimp, said to be caught September 22, 2011, in Barataria Bay, Louisiana [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

"Some shrimpers are catching these out in the open Gulf [of Mexico]," she added, "They are also catching them in Alabama and Mississippi. We are also finding eyeless crabs, crabs with their shells soft instead of hard, full grown crabs that are one-fifth their normal size, clawless crabs, and crabs with shells that don't have their usual spikes … they look like they've been burned off by chemicals."

On April 20, 2010, BP's Deepwater Horizon oilrig exploded, and began the release of at least 4.9 million barrels of oil. BP then used at least 1.9 million gallons of toxic Corexit dispersants to sink the oil.

Keath Ladner, a third generation seafood processor in Hancock County, Mississippi, is also disturbed by what he is seeing.

"I've seen the brown shrimp catch drop by two-thirds, and so far the white shrimp have been wiped out," Ladner told Al Jazeera. "The shrimp are immune compromised. We are finding shrimp with tumors on their heads, and are seeing this everyday."

While on a shrimp boat in Mobile Bay with Sidney Schwartz, the fourth-generation fisherman said that he had seen shrimp with defects on their gills, and "their shells missing around their gills and head".

"We've fished here all our lives and have never seen anything like this," he added.

Ladner has also seen crates of blue crabs, all of which were lacking at least one of their claws.

Darla Rooks, a lifelong fisherperson from Port Sulfur, Louisiana, told Al Jazeera she is finding crabs "with holes in their shells, shells with all the points burned off so all the spikes on their shells and claws are gone, misshapen shells, and crabs that are dying from within … they are still alive, but you open them up and they smell like they've been dead for a week".

Rooks is also finding eyeless shrimp, shrimp with abnormal growths, female shrimp with their babies still attached to them, and shrimp with oiled gills.

"We also seeing eyeless fish, and fish lacking even eye-sockets, and fish with lesions, fish without covers over their gills, and others with large pink masses hanging off their eyes and gills."

Rooks, who grew up fishing with her parents, said she had never seen such things in these waters, and her seafood catch last year was "ten per cent what it normally is".

"I've never seen this," he said, a statement Al Jazeera heard from every scientist, fisherman, and seafood processor we spoke with about the seafood deformities.

Given that the Gulf of Mexico provides more than 40 per cent of all the seafood caught in the continental US, this phenomenon does not bode well for the region, or the country.
Returning to the Gulf two years after the BP oil spill

BP's chemicals?

"The dispersants used in BP's draconian experiment contain solvents, such as petroleum distillates and 2-butoxyethanol. Solvents dissolve oil, grease, and rubber," Dr Riki Ott, a toxicologist, marine biologist and Exxon Valdez survivor told Al Jazeera. "It should be no surprise that solvents are also notoriously toxic to people, something the medical community has long known".

The dispersants are known to be mutagenic, a disturbing fact that could be evidenced in the seafood deformities. Shrimp, for example, have a life-cycle short enough that two to three generations have existed since BP's disaster began, giving the chemicals time to enter the genome.

Pathways of exposure to the dispersants are inhalation, ingestion, skin, and eye contact. Health impacts can include headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pains, chest pains, respiratory system damage, skin sensitisation, hypertension, central nervous system depression, neurotoxic effects, cardiac arrhythmia and cardiovascular damage. They are also teratogenic - able to disturb the growth and development of an embryo or fetus - and carcinogenic.

Cowan believes chemicals named polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), released from BP's submerged oil, are likely to blame for what he is finding, due to the fact that the fish with lesions he is finding are from "a wide spatial distribution that is spatially coordinated with oil from the Deepwater Horizon, both surface oil and subsurface oil. A lot of the oil that impacted Louisiana was also in subsurface plumes, and we think there is a lot of it remaining on the seafloor".

Dr Wilma Subra, a chemist and Macarthur Fellow, has conducted tests on seafood and sediment samples along the Gulf for chemicals present in BP's crude oil and toxic dispersants.

"Tests have shown significant levels of oil pollution in oysters and crabs along the Louisiana coastline," Subra told Al Jazeera. "We have also found high levels of hydrocarbons in the soil and vegetation."

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, PAHs "are a group of semi-volatile organic compounds that are present in crude oil that has spent time in the ocean and eventually reaches shore, and can be formed when oil is burned".

"The fish are being exposed to PAHs, and I was able to find several references that list the same symptoms in fish after the Exxon Valdez spill, as well as other lab experiments," explained Cowan. "There was also a paper published by some LSU scientists that PAH exposure has effects on the genome."

The University of South Florida released the results of a survey whose findings corresponded with Cowan's: a two to five per cent infection rate in the same oil impact areas, and not just with red snapper, but with more than 20 species of fish with lesions. In many locations, 20 per cent of the fish had lesions, and later sampling expeditions found areas where, alarmingly, 50 per cent of the fish had them.

"I asked a NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] sampler what percentage of fish they find with sores prior to 2010, and it's one tenth of one percent," Cowan said. "Which is what we found prior to 2010 as well. But nothing like we've seen with these secondary infections and at this high of rate since the spill."

"What we think is that it's attributable to chronic exposure to PAHs released in the process of weathering of oil on the seafloor," Cowan said. "There's no other thing we can use to explain this phenomenon. We've never seen anything like this before."

Official response

Questions raised by Al Jazeera's investigation remain largely unanswered.

Al Jazeera contacted the office of Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, who provided a statement that said the state continues to test its waters for oil and dispersants, and that it is testing for PAHs.

"Gulf seafood has consistently tested lower than the safety thresholds established by the FDA for the levels of oil and dispersant contamination that would pose a risk to human health," the statement reads. "Louisiana seafood continues to go through extensive testing to ensure that seafood is safe for human consumption. More than 3,000 composite samples of seafood, sediment and water have been tested in Louisiana since the start of the spill."
Signs of the impact on the regional ecosystem are ominous - and scientists and fishermen point fingers towards BP's oil as being the cause [Keath Ladner]

At the federal government level, the Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency - both federal agencies which have powers in the this area - insisted Al Jazeera talk with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

NOAA won't comment to the media because its involvement in collecting information for an ongoing lawsuit against BP.

BP refused Al Jazeera's request to comment on this issue for a television interview, but provided a statement that read:

"Seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is among the most tested in the world, and, according to the FDA and NOAA, it is as safe now as it was before the accident."

BP claims that fish lesions are common, and that prior to the Deepwater Horizon accident there was documented evidence of lesions in the Gulf of Mexico caused by parasites and other agents.

The oil giant added: 

"As part of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment, which is led by state and federal trustees, we are investigating the extent of injury to natural resources due to the accident.

"BP is funding multiple lines of scientific investigation to evaluate potential damage to fish, and these include: extensive seafood testing programs by the Gulf states; fish population monitoring conducted by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, Auburn University and others; habitat and water quality monitoring by NOAA; and toxicity tests on regional species. The state and federal Trustees will complete an injury assessment and the need for environmental restoration will be determined."

Before and after

But evidence of ongoing contamination continues to mount.

Crustacean biologist Darryl Felder, in the Department of Biology with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette is in a unique position.

Felder has been monitoring the vicinity of BP's blowout Macondo well both before and after the oil disaster began, because, as he told Al Jazeera, "the National Science Foundation was interested in these areas that are vulnerable due to all the drilling".

"So we have before and after samples to compare to," he added. "We have found seafood with lesions, missing appendages, and other abnormalities."

Felder also has samples of inshore crabs with lesions. "Right here in Grand Isle we see lesions that are eroding down through their shell. We just got these samples last Thursday and are studying them now, because we have no idea what else to link this to as far as a natural event."

According to Felder, there is an even higher incidence of shell disease with crabs in deeper waters.

"My fear is that these prior incidents of lesions might be traceable to microbes, and my questions are, did we alter microbial populations in the vicinity of the well by introducing this massive amount of petroleum and in so doing cause microbes to attack things other than oil?"

One hypothesis he has is that the waxy coatings around crab shells are being impaired by anthropogenic chemicals or microbes resulting from such chemicals.

"You create a site where a lesion can occur, and microbes attack. We see them with big black lesions, around where their appendages fall off, and all that is left is a big black ring."

Felder added that his team is continuing to document the incidents: "And from what we can tell, there is a far higher incidence we're finding after the spill."

"We are also seeing much lower diversity of crustaceans," he said. "We don't have the same number of species as we did before [the spill]."

Felder has tested his samples for oil, but not found many cases where hydrocarbon traces tested positive. Instead, he believes what he is seeing in the deepwater around BP's well is caused from the "huge amount" of drilling mud used during the effort to stop the gushing well.

"I was collecting deepwater shrimp with lesions on the side of their carapace. Under the lesions, the gills were black. The organ that propels the water through the gills, it too was jet-black. That impairs respiratory ability, and has a negative effect on them. It wasn't hydrocarbons, but is largely manganese precipitates, which is really odd. There was a tremendous amount of drilling mud pumped out with Macondo, so this could be a link."

Some drilling mud and oil well cement slurries used on oil extraction rigs contains up to 90 per cent by weight of manganomanganic (manganese) oxide particles.

Felder is also finding "odd staining" of animals that burrow into the mud that cause stain rings, and said: "It is consistently mineral deposits, possibly from microbial populations in [overly] high concentrations."

A direct link

Dr Andrew Whitehead, an associate professor of biology at Louisiana State University, co-authored the report Genomic and physiological footprint of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on resident marsh fishes that was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in October 2011.

Whitehead's work is of critical importance, as it shows a direct link between BP's oil and the negative impacts on the Gulf's food web evidenced by studies on killifish before, during and after the oil disaster.

"What we found is a very clear, genome-wide signal, a very clear signal of exposure to the toxic components of oil that coincided with the timing and the locations of the oil," Whitehead told Al Jazeera during an interview in his lab.

According to Whitehead, the killifish is an important indicator species because they are the most abundant fish in the marshes, and are known to be the most important forage animal in their communities.

"That means that most of the large fish that we like to eat and that these are important fisheries for, actually feed on the killifish," he explained. "So if there were to be a big impact on those animals, then there would probably be a cascading effect throughout the food web. I can't think of a worse animal to knock out of the food chain than the killifish."

But we may well be witnessing the beginnings of this worst-case scenario.

Whitehead is predicting that there could be reproductive impacts on the fish, and since the killifish is a "keystone" species in the food web of the marsh, "Impacts on those species are more than likely going to propagate out and effect other species. What this shows is a very direct link from exposure to DWH oil and a clear biological effect. And a clear biological effect that could translate to population level long-term consequences."

Back on shore, troubled by what he had been seeing, Keath Ladner met with officials from the US Food and Drug Administration and asked them to promise that the government would protect him from litigation if someone was made sick from eating his seafood.

"They wouldn't do it," he said.

"I'm worried about the entire seafood industry of the Gulf being on the way out," he added grimly.

'Tar balls in their crab traps'

Ed Cake, a biological oceanographer, as well as a marine and oyster biologist, has "great concern" about the hundreds of dolphin deaths he has seen in the region since BP's disaster began, which he feels are likely directly related to the BP oil disaster.

"Adult dolphins' systems are picking up whatever is in the system out there, and we know the oil is out there and working its way up the food chain through the food web - and dolphins are at the top of that food chain."

Cake explained: "The chemicals then move into their lipids, fat, and then when they are pregnant, their young rely on this fat, and so it's no wonder dolphins are having developmental issues and still births."

Cake, who lives in Mississippi, added: "It has been more than 33 years since the 1979 Ixtoc-1 oil disaster in Mexico's Bay of Campeche, and the oysters, clams, and mangrove forests have still not recovered in their oiled habitats in seaside estuaries of the Yucatan Peninsula. It has been 23 years since the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil disaster in Alaska, and the herring fishery that failed in the wake of that disaster has still not returned."

Cake believes we are still in the short-term impact stage of BP's oil disaster.

"I will not be alive to see the Gulf of Mexico recover," said Cake, who is 72 years old. "Without funding and serious commitment, these things will not come back to pre-April 2010 levels for decades."

The physical signs of the disaster continue.

"We're continuing to pull up oil in our nets," Rooks said. "Think about losing everything that makes you happy, because that is exactly what happens when someone spills oil and sprays dispersants on it. People who live here know better than to swim in or eat what comes out of our waters."

Khuns and her husband told Al Jazeera that fishermen continue to regularly find tar balls in their crab traps, and hundreds of pounds of tar balls continue to be found on beaches across the region on a daily basis.

Meanwhile Cowan continues his work, and remains concerned about what he is finding.

"We've also seen a decrease in biodiversity in fisheries in certain areas. We believe we are now seeing another outbreak of incidence increasing, and this makes sense, since waters are starting to warm again, so bacterial infections are really starting to take off again. We think this is a problem that will persist for as long as the oil is stored on the seafloor."

Felder wants to continue his studies, but now is up against insufficient funding.

Regarding his funding, Cowan told Al Jazeera: "We are up against social and economic challenges that hamper our ability to get our information out, so the politics have been as daunting as the problem [we are studying] itself. But my funding is not coming from a source that requires me to be quiet."


Dr Darryl Felder, Department of Biology, University of Louisiana, Lafayette. Runs a research lab that studies the biology of marine crustaceans. Dr Felder has been monitoring the seafloor in the vicinity of BP's blow-out Macondo oil-well both before and after the oil disaster began. He was studying samples from the seafloor in the Macondo area pre-spill via funding from the National Science Foundation, which provided him a grant to log the effects of all the drilling in the area. His funding now comes from the Gulf Research Initiative (GRI), which is funded by BP. Read his full biography here.

Dr Jim Cowan with Louisiana State University's Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences has been studying Gulf seafood, specifically red snapper, for more than 20 years. Funding is through the State of Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. Read his full biography here.

Dr Andrew Whitehead, LSU, his lab conducts experiments and studies on Evolutionary and Ecological Genomics. He recently published "Genomic and physiological footprint of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on resident marsh fishes" in the National Academy of Sciences. Much of his funding also comes from the Gulf Research Initiative. Read his full biography here.

Brief summary of scientists' findings/studies:

Felder: Studies carried out from January 2010 to present in BP's Macondo well area. Found abnormalities in shrimp post-spill, whereas pre-spill found none.

Cowan: Studies carried out from Nov 2010-present, from west Louisiana to west Florida, from coast to 250km out. Found lesions/sores/infections in 20 species of fish, as many as 50 per cent fish in some samples impacted. Pre spill levels were 1/10 of one per cent of fish.

Whitehead: Species such as the Gulf Killifish, in and around the Gulf of Mexico, will continue to be subject to negative effects of the BP oil spill disaster of 2010. The Killifish, which researchers consider a good indicator of water quality in the Gulf of Mexico, is showing signs that the oil spill is having a negative impact on its health. Tracked killifish for the first four months after spill across oil-impacted areas of Louisiana and Mississippi.

[RojoLeón]

The recharge time for many of these aquifers must be very long. The big productive 'dark blue' part of the map, under much of Libya and Egypt is called the Nubian sandstone aquifer and is the source for this feat of engineering

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Manmade_River

The Great Man-Made River (GMR, النهر الصناعي العظيم) is a network of pipes that supplies water from the Sahara Desert in Libya, from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System fossil aquifer. It is the world's largest irrigation project.[1]

According to its website, it is the largest underground network of pipes (2820 km) [2] and aqueducts in the world. It consists of more than 1,300 wells, most more than 500 m deep, and supplies 6,500,000 m3 of fresh water per day to the cities of Tripoli, Benghazi, Sirte and elsewhere. The late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi described it as the "Eighth Wonder of the World."[3]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17775211

'Huge' water resource exists under Africa

Scientists say the notoriously dry continent of Africa is sitting on a vast reservoir of groundwater.

They argue that the total volume of water in aquifers underground is 100 times the amount found on the surface.

The team have produced the most detailed map yet of the scale and potential of this hidden resource.

Writing in the journal Environmental Research Letters, they stress that large scale drilling might not be the best way of increasing water supplies.

Across Africa more than 300 million people are said not to have access to safe drinking water.

Demand for water is set to grow markedly in coming decades due to population growth and the need for irrigation to grow crops.

Freshwater rivers and lakes are subject to seasonal floods and droughts that can limit their availability for people and for agriculture. At present only 5% of arable land is irrigated.

When water falls as rain or snow, much of it either flows into rivers or is used to provide moisture to plants and crops. What is left over trickles down to the layers of rock that sit beneath the soil.

And just like a giant sponge, this ground water is held in the spaces between the rocks and in the tiny inter-connected spaces between individual grains in a rock like sandstone.

These bodies of wet rock are referred to as aquifers. Ground water does not sit still in the aquifer but is pushed and pulled by gravity and the weight of water above it.

The movement of the water through the aquifer removes many impurities and it is often cleaner than water on the surface.

Now scientists have for the first time been able to carry out a continent-wide analysis of the water that is hidden under the surface in aquifers. Researchers from the British Geological Survey and University College London (UCL) have mapped in detail the amount and potential yield of this groundwater resource across the continent.

Helen Bonsor from the BGS is one of the authors of the paper. She says that up until now groundwater was out of sight and out of mind. She hopes the new maps will open people's eyes to the potential.

"Where there's greatest ground water storage is in northern Africa, in the large sedimentary basins, in Libya, Algeria and Chad," she said.

"The amount of storage in those basins is equivalent to 75m thickness of water across that area - it's a huge amount."
Ancient events

Due to changes in climate that have turned the Sahara into a desert over centuries many of the aquifers underneath were last filled with water over 5,000 years ago.

The scientists collated their information from existing hydro-geological maps from national governments as well as 283 aquifer studies.

The researchers say their new maps indicate that many countries currently designated as "water scarce" have substantial groundwater reserves.

However, the scientists are cautious about the best way of accessing these hidden resources. They suggest that widespread drilling of large boreholes might not work.

Dr Alan MacDonald of the BGS, lead author of the study, told the BBC: "High-yielding boreholes should not be developed without a thorough understanding of the local groundwater conditions.

"Appropriately sited and developed boreholes for low yielding rural water supply and hand pumps are likely to be successful."

With many aquifers not being filled due to a lack of rain, the scientists are worried that large-scale borehole developments could rapidly deplete the resource.
Man filling jerry can African water supplies may be more resilient to climate change than was thought

According to Helen Bonsor, sometimes the slower means of extraction can be more efficient.

"Much lower storage aquifers are present across much of sub-Saharan Africa," she explained.

"However, our work shows that with careful exploring and construction, there is sufficient groundwater under Africa to support low yielding water supplies for drinking and community irrigation."

The scientists say that there are sufficient reserves to be able to cope with the vagaries of climate change.

"Even in the lowest storage aquifers in semi arid areas with currently very little rainfall, ground water is indicated to have a residence time in the ground of 20 to 70 years." Dr Bonsor said.

"So at present extraction rates for drinking and small scale irrigation for agriculture groundwater will provide and will continue to provide a buffer to climate variability."

The publication of the new map was welcomed by the UK's secretary of state for international development, Andrew Mitchell.

"This is an important discovery," he said. "This research, which the British Government has funded, could have a profound effect on some of the world's poorest people, helping them become less vulnerable to drought and to adapt to the impact of climate change."


Just for a bit of historical context - water supply/rights are seen by many analysts to be the resource conflict generator of the near future.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_over_Water

The 1949 Armistice Agreements which followed the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, created three Demilitarized zones on the Israel-Syria border. The southernmost, and also the largest of stretched from the south-eastern part of the Sea of Galilee eastwards to the Yarmuk River where the borders of Israel, Jordan and Syria converged.[1] The issue of sharing the waters of the Jordan–Yarmuk system between Israel, Syria and Jordan turned out to be a major problem.[2]

Although small scale water-related skirmishes had occurred following the 1949 agreements, the major escalation took place in 1964, following Israel's completion of its National Water Carrier Project, which siphoned water from the Sea of Galilee. Arab states regarded the Israeli project as a unilateral usage of water resources outside the river basin; in response they attempted to finance and build the joint Syrian-Lebanese Headwater Diversion Plan, which would have diverted some water from flowing into Israel, particularly into the Sea of Galilee, where the National Water Carrier starts. The headwaters diversion would have directed the waters of the Banias stream into a dam at Mukhaiba for Syrian and Jordanian use, and divert the waters of the Hasbani into the Litani River for Lebanese use. The diversion works would have reduced the installed capacity of the National Water Carrier by 35%, and Israel's overall water supply by about 11%.[3][citation needed] Israel declared it would regard such a project as an infringement of its sovereign rights.

In November, when activities for the Arab diversion project started, the Israel Defense Forces launched repeated military strikes against the diversion works, which led to a prolonged chain of border clashes[4][citation needed]. The Arab countries eventually abandoned their project. Control of water resources and Israeli military attacks regarding the diversion effort are considered among the major factors which led to the Six-Day War in June 1967.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2011/09/03/water-as-a-weapon-qaddafis-last-desperate-gamble/

There is a long history of conflicts over water. A chronology with hundreds of examples of violence over access to freshwater resources is available (for readers interested in history) here. The first known water war was nearly 5,000 years ago: a conflict over irrigation ditches between the cities of Umma and Lagash in ancient Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq.

In more modern times, most disputes and conflicts over water are resolved peacefully and diplomatically. There are many examples of negotiations over water disputes and hundreds of important treaties between nations, which allocate scarce water, ensure pollution is reduced, and share information and data. The United States has treaties that cover water sharing on the Colorado and Rio Grande rivers with Mexico and the Great Lakes with Canada. Even the Israelis, Palestinians, and Jordanians have signed agreements over the intensely conflicted water resources of the region. And while these agreements are rarely perfect, they greatly reduce the risks of violence over water.

...


Early in the war, Libyan government officials expressed concerns about NATO attacks disrupting the water supply and Qaddafi even claimed that NATO was interested in stealing Libya’s water. The water pipelines that bring water to Benghazi and Tripoli and other cities often run parallel to many of the oil and gas pipelines and fighting around Ajdabiya, Sirte, and Benghazi threatened the water system.

But just this week, with the regime crumbling, it was Qaddafi’s failing government that apparently used water as a last, desperate weapon. According to UN reports and officials of the National Transitional Council, Qaddafi forces vandalized water pumps, cutting off water from the Great Man Made River to western Libya including Tripoli. If these reports are true, they are a violation of international law, which clearly states that water shall not be used as a weapon to deprive people of their basic needs, and a violation of the newly declared and legally binding human right to water by the UN.

http://news.yahoo.com/water-wars-why-india-pakistan-squaring-off-over-024016236.html

India's Wular Lake, a popular picnic and tourist spot nestled in the Kashmir Valley, is an unlikely site for conflict. But India's plan to build a structure on the Jhelum River at the mouth of the lake that will allow it to release water during the river's lean winter months has outraged neighboring Pakistan, which believes the project will give India the power to control how much water flows downstream to its farmers. After two and a half decades of deadlock and 15 marathon rounds of bilateral talks -- the most recent occurring in late March -- the countries appear a long way from finding common ground.

The dispute isn't the first of its kind, nor will it be the last. The waters of the Indus River and tributaries like the Jhelum -- and the dams built on them by India -- have long been one of the main points of contention between the rival neighbors, along with the disputed region of Kashmir itself and cross-border terrorism. Pakistan, whose agriculture-dominated economy is heavily reliant on the Indus and its tributaries, fears upstream dams allow India to manipulate the flows of water as it sees fit. Many in Pakistan accuse New Delhi of wantonly exacerbating the country's dire water shortages, choking its agricultural production and ruining livelihoods.

Vananda Shiva 'Water Wars'

There are nine principles underpinning water democracy:
1. Water is nature's gift
We receive water freely from nature. We owe it to nature to use this gift in accordance with our sustenance needs, to keep it clean and in adequate quantity. Diversions that create arid or waterlogged regions violate the principles of ecological democracy.

2. Water is essential to life
Water is the source of life for all species. All species and ecosystems have a right to their share of water on the planet.

3. Life is interconnected through water
Water connects all beings and all parts of the planet through the water cycle. We all have a duty to ensure that our actions do not cause harm to other species and other people.

4. Water must be free for sustenance needs
Since nature gives water to us free of cost, buying and selling it for profit violates our inherent right to nature's gift and denies the poor of their human rights.

5. Water is limited and exhaustible if used nonsustainably. Nonsustainable use includes extracting more water from ecosystems than nature can recharge (ecological nonsustainability) and consuming more than one's legitimate share, given the rights of others to a fair share (social nonsustainability).

6. Water must be conserved
Everyone has a duty to conserve water and use water sustainably, within ecological and just limits.

7. Water is a commons
Water is not a human invention. It cannot be bound and has no boundaries. It is by nature a commons. It cannot be owned as private property and sold as a commodity.

8. No one holds a right to destroy
No one has a right to overuse, abuse, waste, or pollute water systems. Tradable-pollution permits violate the principle of sustainable and just use.

9. Water cannot be substituted
Water is intrinsically different from other resources and products. It cannot be treated as a commodity.

The war between Israelis and Palestinians is to a some extent a war over water. The river under contention is the Jordan River, used by Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and the West Bank. Israel's extensive industrial agriculture requires the river's water as well as the groundwater of the West Bank. While only 3 percent of the Jordan basin lies in Israel, the river provides for 60 percent of its water needs.
Israel's very formation was based on ensuring access to water. "It is necessary that the water sources, upon which the future of the Land depends, should not be outside the borders of the future Jewish homeland," wrote Israel's former prime minister David Ben-Gurion in 1973. "For this reason we have always demanded that the Land of Israel include the southern banks of the Litani River, the headwaters of the Jordan, and the Hauran Region from the El Auja spring south of Damascus."
Water conflicts began in 1948, when Israel undertook the National Water Carrier Project, which involved a gigantic water pipeline extending from the Jordan River to the Negev Desert to irrigate crops. This project led to a dispute with Syria. In 1953, United States envoy Eric Johnston initiated the Unified Development of Water Resources plan to resolve conflicts between Israel, Syria, and Jordan. Syria rejected the plan, and since then, Israel-Syria border conflicts have been closely connected to river diversions by Israel. Former Israeli prime minister Levy Eshkol declared in 1962 that "water is the blood in our veins" and that being prevented from accessing it would be cause for war.
Between 1987 and 1988, Israel used 67 percent of its water for agriculture and allocated the rest for domestic and industrial purposes. Although Israel's agricultural water consumption had been reduced to 62 percent by 1992, it remained the leading sector for water use. In 2000, 50 percent of the total cultivated area in Israel was irrigated; in contrast, Palestinian villages consumed only two percent of Israel's water. The water apartheid, demarcated along ethnic and religious lines, is fueling the already heated Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The 1967 war, which led to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Golan Heights, was in effect an occupation of the freshwater resources from the Golan Heights, the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River, and the West Bank. As Middle-Eastern scholar Ewan Anderson, notes, "The West Bank has become a critical source of water for Israel, and it could be argued that this consideration outweighs other political and strategic factors."
Between 1967 and 1982, West Bank waters were controlled by the military. Now they are controlled by Israel's water company, Mekorot, and integrated into Israel's overall water network. West Bank waters supply 25 to 40 percent of Israel's water; Israel consumes 82 percent of the West Bank's water, while Palestinians use 18 to 20 percent. Palestinian water use is controlled and restricted by the Israeli government. A 1967 military order decreed:
No person is allowed to establish or own or administer a water institution (any construction that is used to extract either surface or subterranean water resources or a processing plant) without a new official permit. It is permissible to deny an applicant a permit, revoke or amend a license, without giving any explanation. The appropriate authorities may search and confiscate any water resources for which no permit exists, even if the owner has not been convicted.
In 1999, Palestinians were allowed to dig only seven wells. In addition, Palestinian wells could not exceed 140 meters in depth, while Jewish wells could be as deep as 800 meters.
As drought and overuse aggravate the water scarcity, water conflicts are bound to intensify. The water level of the Sea of Galilee is at a 100-year low; since 1993, it has fallen 13 feet. Because of drought, Israel had to reduce its water use in agriculture by 10 percent in 1999. It is predicted that Israel will have to cut water use further, cease its cultivation of cotton and oranges, and shift drought-resistant crops.

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jan2008/gb2008013_752395.htm

Last summer Uzbek President Islam Karimov, speaking to his fellow regional leaders, assailed "some countries" in Central Asia that are keen on constructing hydropower stations on cross-border rivers for their "various and ambiguous approaches."

Although Karimov did not state explicitly which countries he was referring to during the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, it was clear he meant Tajikistan, which has proposed or is already building a number of power stations on the Vakhsh and Pyandzh rivers.

The confluence of the two rivers is the source of the Amu Darya, Central Asia's longest river, which forms portions of borders for both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and finally empties into the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan.

"Today this issue [of water] represents the interests of more than 50 million people living in the countries of the region," Karimov said.

He added that a failure to manage the situation appropriately could affect the "provision of water in the lower course of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya," another river that runs mostly through Kazakhstan: "That is why all kinds of decisions on the use of these rivers' sources, including the construction of hydropower stations, must take these interests into consideration." Karimov also said hydropower development could "speed up the ecological catastrophe of the desiccation of the Aral Sea and … make it practically impossible to live for tens of millions of residents of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan."

Karimov's warnings highlight the complexities of Central Asia's water issues. In particular, Uzbekistan is in conflict with Dushanbe over hydropower development in Tajikistan, because the water that could generate additional electricity and smelt more aluminum upstream is also needed to water Uzbekistan's valuable cotton crop.

For its part, Tajikistan sees new dams and hydropower plants as necessary for its economic health. Consequently, the countries are locked in disagreement.

Tajikistan's greatest natural resource is the water stored in its glaciers, lakes and rivers

[RojoLeón]

Just a few techie articles with energy/water uses

http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/prototype-wind-turbine-condenses-1000-liters-of-water-a-day-from-desert-air-20120418/

Prototype wind turbine condenses 1,000 liters of water a day from desert air
Apr. 18, 2012 (8:29 am) By: Matthew Humphries

If you live in or travel through a desert region, having access to clean water is always going to be an issue. If you can’t carry enough for your journey, you have to ensure your route allows for a few water bottle refills. But the lack of water in deserts and other arid locations may soon be a thing of the past if a new wind turbine system is implemented on a large scale.

Marc Parent, founder of Eole Water, realized that he could extract water from the air after noticing how much water an air conditioner unit collected. He decided to combine a green energy source with the necessary components for condensing water directly from the air. The end result after 10 years of R&D is the WMS1000 wind turbine, capable of condensing and storing up to 1,000 liters of water every day.

The 34 meter tall turbine requires 15mph winds for its 13 meter diameter rotor to turn and generate sufficient energy. It then produces 30kW of power for the system to function. Air is drawn in through vents in the nose of the turbine and a generator heats it producing steam. That steam is then fed through a cooling compressor to form moisture that gets condensed into water. The resulting liquid is piped into a storage tank at the base of the turbine after being purified.

As long as an area meets the wind speed requirements this is a completely self contained system. It effectively allows mass water storage in some of the most arid places on earth.

The Eole Water wind turbine isn’t just an idea. A prototype unit was constructed and erected in Abu Dhabi 6 months ago and has consistently produced up to 800 liters of water a day. With that test proving the system works, Eole is now working with a number of manufacturers to produce the turbines

Although the desert example shows off the potential of the system, the turbines can be deployed anywhere. Eole believes they can be erected anywhere that is isolated, does not have a reliable water source, in disaster areas, and as a source of wtare for organic farming where a low impact on the environment is highly desirable.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/126745-ibm-creates-breathing-high-density-light-weight-lithium-air-battery

As part of its Battery 500 project — an initiative started by IBM in 2009 to produce a battery capable of powering a car for 500 miles — Big Blue has successfully demonstrated a light-weight, ultra-high-density, lithium-air battery.

In IBM’s lithium-air battery, oxygen is reacted with lithium to create lithium peroxide and electrical energy (pictured above). When the battery is recharged, the process is reversed and oxygen is released — in the words of IBM, this is an “air-breathing” battery. While conventional batteries are completely self-contained, the oxygen used in an lithium-air battery obviously comes from the atmosphere, so the battery itself can be much lighter.

The main thing, though, is that lithium-air energy density is a lot higher than conventional lithium-ion batteries: The max energy density of lithium-air batteries is theorized to be around 12 kWh/kg, some 15 times greater than li-ion — and more importantly, comparable to gasoline.

Therein lies the crux of IBM’s Battery 500 project: Current battery tech simply cannot come close to gasoline, which is why we’re surrounded by electric cars that are lumbered down by massive batteries that can only go 100 miles — and why gas still rules supreme. Eventually (in another 10 years or so), li-ion batteries could be replaced with li-air batteries that are a tenth of the size and weight, and yet last just as long — or, of course, li-air could replace gasoline.

IBM Battery 500 research lab at IBM Research Almaden

Lithium-air batteries aren’t a new idea: They’ve been mooted since the 1970s, but the necessary tech was well beyond the capabilities of then-contemporary material science. Today, with graphene and carbon nanotubes and fancy membranes coming out of our ears, it seems IBM — with assistance from partners Asahi Kasei and Central Glass — now has the materials required to build a lithium-air battery. There is a video embedded below that details the electrochemical process of an li-air battery.

Supercomputers also played a big part in this breakthrough; IBM isn’t a battery-making company, after all. IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputers at IBM Research in Zurich and Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago were used to model and optimize the li-air chemistry. The battery prototypes themselves are being built at IBM Research Almaden, California.

http://alum.mit.edu/pages/sliceofmit/2012/04/10/liquid-metal-battery/

Liquid Metal Battery: TED Talk Offers the Missing Energy Link

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on April 10, 2012

in Energy

MIT Professor Don Sadoway, an expert in materials chemistry, brought his astonishing battery idea to the recent talks at TED 2012: Full Spectrum. While most new battery inventions target spaces inside smartphones or electric cars, Sadoway’s idea is big. Gigantic, in fact. He and his team have invented a Liquid Metal Battery that could be a warehouse-size repository of energy generated by renewable and other power resources. Watch his TED talk for an accessible explanation of the battery and its potential uses.

Here are some ideas from his talk:
Professor Sadoway's battery could spur the use of renewable energy sources.

Professor Sadoway's battery could spur the use of renewable energy sources on conventional energy grids.

“The electricity powering the lights in this theater was generated just moments ago,” Sadoway told his audience. “The way things stand today, the electricity demand must be constantly in perfect balance with electricity supplied.” And if power is interrupted, electricity from other sources must be available right away. That means redundant power supplies must operate constantly in case of need and that’s not cheap.

“With a giant battery, we could address the problem of intermittency that prevents wind and solar from contributing to the grid in the same way that coal and gas and nuclear do today. The battery is the key enabling device. With it, we could draw electricity from the sun, even when the sun does not shine, and that could change everything because the renewables such as wind and solar could come out from the wings and here to center stage. ”

The Liquid Metal Battery, a new form of energy storage invented by Sadoway and his lab, could solve that problem, he says.

“If we are going to get our country out of the current energy situation, we can’t just conserve our way out, we can’t just drill our way out, we can’t bomb our way out,” he says.” We are going to do it the old-fashioned American way—we are going to invent our way out working together.”

[RojoLeón]

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/january/jacobson-world-energy-012611.html

The world can be powered by alternative energy, using today's technology, in 20-40 years, says Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/e_VjibuRLyA?version=3&amp;amp;hl=en_US&amp;amp;rel=0" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/e_VjibuRLyA?version=3&amp;amp;hl=en_US&amp;amp;rel=0</a>

A new study – co-authored by Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson and UC-Davis researcher Mark A. Delucchi – analyzing what is needed to convert the world's energy supplies to clean and sustainable sources says that it can be done with today's technology at costs roughly comparable to conventional energy. But converting will be a massive undertaking on the scale of the moon landings. What is needed most is the societal and political will to make it happen.

If someone told you there was a way you could save 2.5 million to 3 million lives a year and simultaneously halt global warming, reduce air and water pollution and develop secure, reliable energy sources – nearly all with existing technology and at costs comparable with what we spend on energy today – why wouldn't you do it?

According to a new study coauthored by Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson, we could accomplish all that by converting the world to clean, renewable energy sources and forgoing fossil fuels.

"Based on our findings, there are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources," said Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering. "It is a question of whether we have the societal and political will."

He and Mark Delucchi, of the University of California-Davis, have written a two-part paper in Energy Policy in which they assess the costs, technology and material requirements of converting the planet, using a plan they developed.

The world they envision would run largely on electricity. Their plan calls for using wind, water and solar energy to generate power, with wind and solar power contributing 90 percent of the needed energy.

Geothermal and hydroelectric sources would each contribute about 4 percent in their plan (70 percent of the hydroelectric is already in place), with the remaining 2 percent from wave and tidal power.

Vehicles, ships and trains would be powered by electricity and hydrogen fuel cells. Aircraft would run on liquid hydrogen. Homes would be cooled and warmed with electric heaters – no more natural gas or coal – and water would be preheated by the sun.

Commercial processes would be powered by electricity and hydrogen. In all cases, the hydrogen would be produced from electricity. Thus, wind, water and sun would power the world.

The researchers approached the conversion with the goal that by 2030, all new energy generation would come from wind, water and solar, and by 2050, all pre-existing energy production would be converted as well.
L.A. Cicero Mark Z. Jacobson

"There are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources," said Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering.

"We wanted to quantify what is necessary in order to replace all the current energy infrastructure – for all purposes – with a really clean and sustainable energy infrastructure within 20 to 40 years," said Jacobson.

One of the benefits of the plan is that it results in a 30 percent reduction in world energy demand since it involves converting combustion processes to electrical or hydrogen fuel cell processes. Electricity is much more efficient than combustion.

That reduction in the amount of power needed, along with the millions of lives saved by the reduction in air pollution from elimination of fossil fuels, would help keep the costs of the conversion down.

"When you actually account for all the costs to society – including medical costs – of the current fuel structure, the costs of our plan are relatively similar to what we have today," Jacobson said.

One of the biggest hurdles with wind and solar energy is that both can be highly variable, which has raised doubts about whether either source is reliable enough to provide "base load" energy, the minimum amount of energy that must be available to customers at any given hour of the day.

Jacobson said that the variability can be overcome.

"The most important thing is to combine renewable energy sources into a bundle," he said. "If you combine them as one commodity and use hydroelectric to fill in gaps, it is a lot easier to match demand."

Wind and solar are complementary, Jacobson said, as wind often peaks at night and sunlight peaks during the day. Using hydroelectric power to fill in the gaps, as it does in our current infrastructure, allows demand to be precisely met by supply in most cases. Other renewable sources such as geothermal and tidal power can also be used to supplement the power from wind and solar sources.

"One of the most promising methods of insuring that supply matches demand is using long-distance transmission to connect widely dispersed sites," said Delucchi. Even if conditions are poor for wind or solar energy generation in one area on a given day, a few hundred miles away the winds could be blowing steadily and the sun shining.

"With a system that is 100 percent wind, water and solar, you can't use normal methods for matching supply and demand.  You have to have what people call a supergrid, with long-distance transmission and really good management," he said.

Another method of meeting demand could entail building a bigger renewable-energy infrastructure to match peak hourly demand and use the off-hours excess electricity to produce hydrogen for the industrial and transportation sectors.

Using pricing to control peak demands, a tool that is used today, would also help.

Jacobson and Delucchi assessed whether their plan might run into problems with the amounts of material needed to build all the turbines, solar collectors and other devices.

They found that even materials such as platinum and the rare earth metals, the most obvious potential supply bottlenecks, are available in sufficient amounts. And recycling could effectively extend the supply.

"For solar cells there are different materials, but there are so many choices that if one becomes short, you can switch," Jacobson said. "Major materials for wind energy are concrete and steel and there is no shortage of those."

Jacobson and Delucchi calculated the number of wind turbines needed to implement their plan, as well as the number of solar plants, rooftop photovoltaic cells, geothermal, hydroelectric, tidal and wave-energy installations.

They found that to power 100 percent of the world for all purposes from wind, water and solar resources, the footprint needed is about 0.4 percent of the world's land (mostly solar footprint) and the spacing between installations is another 0.6 percent of the world's land (mostly wind-turbine spacing), Jacobson said.

One of the criticisms of wind power is that wind farms require large amounts of land, due to the spacing required between the windmills to prevent interference of turbulence from one turbine on another.

"Most of the land between wind turbines is available for other uses, such as pasture or farming," Jacobson said.  "The actual footprint required by wind turbines to power half the world's energy is less than the area of Manhattan." If half the wind farms were located offshore, a single Manhattan would suffice.

Jacobson said that about 1 percent of the wind turbines required are already in place, and a lesser percentage for solar power.

"This really involves a large scale transformation," he said. "It would require an effort comparable to the Apollo moon project or constructing the interstate highway system."

"But it is possible, without even having to go to new technologies," Jacobson said.  "We really need to just decide collectively that this is the direction we want to head as a society."

[RojoLeón]

This is a fascinating talk by both women at Columbia University School of Architecture, Urban design and Planning - the first half from Kate Orff talks about the landscape of the Louisiana Mississippi and 'Cancer Alley', home to a cluster of petrochemical industry. She discusses the industry, carcinogens and toxins through the lens of the history of the area and the statistically significant incidence of chronic illness along the river.

The second half by Helen Caldicott isn't as easy to watch - she is an angry lady and says some strong stuff regarding the Nuclear industry, radiological contamination (she says not to eat Hersheys  due to Three Mile Island) and coins this interesting though potentially contentious phrase:

(radioactive contamination) will produce random compulsory genetic engineering for the rest of time

Cheery stuff. They also discuss how heavily subsidized both industries are - effectively that the costs are socialized, however, the profits are very much privatized.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/i4hfEhiTL70?version=3&amp;amp;hl=en_US&amp;amp;rel=0" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/i4hfEhiTL70?version=3&amp;amp;hl=en_US&amp;amp;rel=0</a>

[RojoLeón]

http://www.vice.com/en_se/read/karlos-zurutuza-on-iraq-unfolding-medical-nightmare

Kids of "the Iraqi Hiroshima"

We don't usually start articles with warnings, but some of the pictures in the gallery are incredibly distressing. We omitted some on the grounds that they were just too upsetting, but the ones that we do run, we do so with full permission, and because we feel that this is an important story. (at link - not reposting them here)

You might remember Karlos Zurutuza from his photos of Baloch insurgents, his guide to warzone hotels or maybe, if you like reading news and knowing what’s going on in the world, you will have seen his work elsewhere. During recent trips to Iraq, Karlos waded into a story that even in the quagmire of depressing awfulness that is Iraqi news, stands out as brutally distressing. We had a chat with him about the medical fallout of the Iraq War and specifically its effects on children in Fallujah. You can read his original report on this here.

VICE: Hi Karlos. Thanks for sending me these photos, I guess. Where were you when you first came across this story?
Karlos Zurutuza: I covered it for the first time in Basra – Basra is the place that has been most affected by war in the last 30 years, because it's between the borders of Iran and Kuwait. We’re talking about the Iran-Iraq war too, here. It’s a fucking mess. I had been to Fallujah before, but I didn’t have any access to the hospital then. The last time I went, I did. Fallujah is particularly interesting because it is being called "the Iraqi Hiroshima" – the town was obliterated in 2004, in the Battle of Fallujah. There were two battles. The second one was the biggest. It all started when they found those four bodies.

Were those the bodies of the security contractors?
Yeah, the security men hanging from the bridge. After that happened somebody decided that Fallujah was an al-Qaeda stronghold and so they used all kinds of weapons. At first the coalition denied that they had used white phosphorus in Fallujah. Or at least they claimed it was only used to "illuminate targets". White phosphorus is meant to melt metal, so you can imagine what kind of effect it has on the human body. There’s also the issue of depleted uranium, but the US has denied using it. There is a well-known relationship between the increase in cancer cases and the use of depleted uranium.

How was it in terms of getting access? Did the doctors want people to know about what has been happening?
Well, you get all sorts of reactions. All of them want to show you what is going on, what is happening, but several of them are afraid that they may lose their jobs. So you have to go through a bureaucratic process, ask for permission, that kind of thing. Fallujah is mostly a Sunni town, in a Sunni neighbourhood, in a Sunni district and a Sunni region: Anbar. The Sunnis are actually somewhat neglected today by the Shias in power in Iraq and a part of their plight is the effect of the war in Fallujah among the kids.

This is the first generation of Iraqis to be born since the most recent allied invasion, right? What sorts of health issues are they seeing there?
Cancer, leukaemia and congenital birth defects and deformities. It seems that the number of cases have grown dramatically, and are on the rise.

And presumably even for those that were taken to hospital, the level of care is quite limited due to the situation?
Yes, for example in Basra, George Bush’s wife, Laura Bush, built a brand new hospital. So, they build this hospital, and it looks wonderful from the inside, I mean I haven’t even seen any hospitals that nice back home. But, it turns out that there is no radiotherapy equipment and they end up waiting for the equipment for over a year, as they couldn’t agree who would pay the storage fee.

So the essential equipment was sitting in storage?
Yeah, for a year, while people were dying. So this year they told me that they had to wait 16 months before they got the equipment. Once it was in the hospital they didn’t have the tools to set it up, so it’s still not working. It’s now been two years.

I guess without that equipment, the doctors don’t have a lot they can do for the children.
There's this NGO called the Children’s Cancer Organization, set up by a man who was trying to finance trips for the children to Iran and Jordan and Syria. Iran is the cheapest option for treatment, the only other place you can get therapy in Iraq is Baghdad, but the waiting list is enormous and people can't wait. He's got children who were born with cancer.

Is that what made him start the NGO?
Yeah, that spurred him on. The problem here is that many parents take their children to the hospital, but a lot of them are from rural areas and they can’t commute back and forth. The women often stay at the hospital, but the men have to keep on working. The women spend months in the hospital, and so a lot of the time it leads the families to break up because of the pressure. Many of these people can’t afford even a half hour bus journey, it is a tragedy. It is not only about health, it's the whole society that is breaking up because of this, because they have no resources. Not only that, many of these parents are ashamed of their children's conditions, too.
   
And does the US government deny that they used the weapons, the health effects of those weapons or both?
They deny both. They won't admit that they are using depleted uranium. Even Nato has been requested an investigation into the use of these weapons, but there has been no response. When I was in Libya and went to places obliterated by bombs I was very aware of this. I wouldn’t touch anything there, and there were people jumping on tanks to get a picture and so on, but I was thinking, "that might be poisoned".

[RojoLeón]

http://www.nature.com/news/artificial-leaf-hits-development-hurdle-1.10703

'Artificial leaf' hits development hurdle

Company founded to commercialize solar hydrogen device goes back to drawing board.

Not all prototypes make it out of the laboratory, but the 'artificial leaf' is so elegant that its design seems to beg for commercial production. Described in Science last year1 by a team led by Dan Nocera at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the catalyst-coated wafer is a silicon version of a photosynthesizing leaf: it turns sunlight into storable fuel by splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen.

But Sun Catalytix, the company founded in Cambridge off the back of Nocera's work, says that it won’t be scaling up the prototype for field tests. The device offers few savings over other ways to make hydrogen from sunlight, the company says. More at link

[RojoLeón]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/05/26/us-climate-germany-solar-idUKBRE84P0FI20120526

Germany sets new solar power record, institute says

BERLIN | Sat May 26, 2012 7:02pm BST

(Reuters) - German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour - equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity - through the midday hours on Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank said.

The German government decided to abandon nuclear power after the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, closing eight plants immediately and shutting down the remaining nine by 2022.

They will be replaced by renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and bio-mass.

Norbert Allnoch, director of the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry (IWR) in Muenster, said the 22 gigawatts of solar power per hour fed into the national grid on Saturday met nearly 50 percent of the nation's midday electricity needs.

"Never before anywhere has a country produced as much photovoltaic electricity," Allnoch told Reuters. "Germany came close to the 20 gigawatt (GW) mark a few times in recent weeks. But this was the first time we made it over."

The record-breaking amount of solar power shows one of the world's leading industrial nations was able to meet a third of its electricity needs on a work day, Friday, and nearly half on Saturday when factories and offices were closed.

Government-mandated support for renewables has helped Germany became a world leader in renewable energy and the country gets about 20 percent of its overall annual electricity from those sources.

Germany has nearly as much installed solar power generation capacity as the rest of the world combined and gets about four percent of its overall annual electricity needs from the sun alone. It aims to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.

SUNSHINE

Some critics say renewable energy is not reliable enough nor is there enough capacity to power major industrial nations. But Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Germany is eager to demonstrate that is indeed possible.

The jump above the 20 GW level was due to increased capacity this year and bright sunshine nationwide.

The 22 GW per hour figure is up from about 14 GW per hour a year ago. Germany added 7.5 GW of installed power generation capacity in 2012 and 1.8 GW more in the first quarter for a total of 26 GW capacity.

"This shows Germany is capable of meeting a large share of its electricity needs with solar power," Allnoch said. "It also shows Germany can do with fewer coal-burning power plants, gas-burning plants and nuclear plants."

Allnoch said the data is based on information from the European Energy Exchange (EEX), a bourse based in Leipzig.

The incentives through the state-mandated "feed-in-tariff" (FIT) are not without controversy, however. The FIT is the lifeblood for the industry until photovoltaic prices fall further to levels similar for conventional power production.

Utilities and consumer groups have complained the FIT for solar power adds about 2 cents per kilowatt/hour on top of electricity prices in Germany that are already among the highest in the world with consumers paying about 23 cents per kw/h.

German consumers pay about 4 billion euros ($5 billion) per year on top of their electricity bills for solar power, according to a 2012 report by the Environment Ministry.

Critics also complain growing levels of solar power make the national grid more less stable due to fluctuations in output.

Merkel's centre-right government has tried to accelerate cuts in the FIT, which has fallen by between 15 and 30 percent per year, to nearly 40 percent this year to levels below 20 cents per kw/h. But the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, has blocked it.

[RojoLeón]

http://www.alternet.org/fracking/155514/the_enviro_disaster_you_know_nothing_about%3A_the__eco-devastating_quest_for_%22frac_sand%22_in_rural_america?page=entire

The Enviro Disaster You Know Nothing About: The Eco-Devastating Quest for "Frac Sand" in Rural America
Midwestern rural communities are being devastated by energy companies searching for a form of sand to use in their destructive fracking operations elsewhere in rural America.
May 20, 2012  | 


If the world can be seen in a grain of sand, watch out.  As Wisconsinites are learning, there’s money (and misery) in sand -- and if you’ve got the right kind, an oil company may soon be at your doorstep.

March in Wisconsin used to mean snow on the ground, temperatures so cold that farmers worried about their cows freezing to death. But as I traveled around rural townships and villages in early March to interview people about frac-sand mining, a little-known cousin of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” daytime temperatures soared to nearly 80 degrees -- bizarre weather that seemed to be sending a meteorological message.

In this troubling spring, Wisconsin’s prairies and farmland fanned out to undulating hills that cradled the land and its people. Within their embrace, the rackety calls of geese echoed from ice-free ponds, bald eagles wheeled in the sky, and deer leaped in the brush. And for the first time in my life, I heard the thrilling warble of sandhill cranes.

Yet this peaceful rural landscape is swiftly becoming part of a vast assembly line in the corporate race for the last fossil fuels on the planet. The target: the sand in the land of the cranes.

Five hundred million years ago, an ocean surged here, shaping a unique wealth of hills and bluffs that, under mantles of greenery and trees, are sandstone. That sandstone contains a particularly pure form of crystalline silica.  Its grains, perfectly rounded, are strong enough to resist the extreme pressures of the technology called hydraulic fracturing, which pumps vast quantities of that sand, as well as water and chemicals, into ancient shale formations to force out methane and other forms of “natural gas.”

That sand, which props open fractures in the shale, has to come from somewhere.  Without it, the fracking industry would grind to a halt. So big multinational corporations are descending on this bucolic region to cart off its prehistoric sand, which will later be forcefully injected into the earth elsewhere across the country to produce more natural gas.  Geology that has taken millions of years to form is now being transformed into part of a system, a machine, helping to drive global climate change.

“The valleys will be filled… the mountains and hills made level"

Boom times for hydraulic fracturing began in 2008 when new horizontal-drilling methods transformed an industry formerly dependent on strictly vertical boring. Frac-sand mining took off in tandem with this development.

“It's huge,” said a U.S. Geological Survey mineral commodity specialist in 2009. “I've never seen anything like it, the growth. It makes my head spin." That year, from all U.S. sources, frac-sand producers used or sold over 6.5 million metric tons of sand -- about what the Great Pyramid of Giza weighs.  Last month, Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Senior Manager and Special Projects Coordinator Tom Woletz said corporations were hauling at least 15 million metric tons a year from the state’s hills.

By July 2011, between 22 and 36 frac-sand facilities in Wisconsin were either operating or approved. Seven months later, said Woletz, there were over 60 mines and 45 processing (refinement) plants in operation. “By the time your article appears, these figures will be obsolete,” claims Pat Popple, who in 2008 founded the first group to oppose frac-sand mining, Concerned Chippewa Citizens (now part of The Save the Hills Alliance).

Jerry Lausted, a retired teacher and also a farmer, showed me the tawny ridges of sand that delineated a strip mine near the town of Menomonie where he lives. “If we were looking from the air,” he added, “you’d see ponds in the bottom of the mine where they dump the industrial waste water. If you scan to the left, you’ll see the hills that are going to disappear.”

Those hills are gigantic sponges, absorbing water, filtering it, and providing the region’s aquifer with the purest water imaginable. According to Lausted, sand mining takes its toll on “air quality, water quality and quantity. Recreational aspects of the community are damaged. Property values [are lowered.] But the big thing is, you’re removing the hills that you can’t replace.  They’re a huge water manufacturing factory that Mother Nature gave us, and they’re gone.”

It’s impossible to grasp the scope of the devastation from the road, but aerial videos and photographs reveal vast, bleak sandy wastelands punctuated with waste ponds and industrial installations where Wisconsin hills once stood.

When corporations apply to counties for mining permits, they must file “reclamation” plans. But Larry Schneider, a retired metallurgist and industrial consultant with a specialized knowledge of mining, calls the reclamation process “an absolute farce.”

Reclamation projects by mining corporations since the 1970s may have made mined areas “look a little less than an absolute wasteland,” he observes. “But did they reintroduce the biodiversity? Did they reintroduce the beauty and the ecology? No.”

Studies bear out his verdict. “Every year,” wrote Mrinal Ghose in the Journal of Scientific and Industrial Research, “large areas are continually becoming unfertile in spite of efforts to grow vegetation on the degraded mined land.”

Awash in promises of corporate jobs and easy money, those who lease and sell their land just shrug. “The landscape is gonna change when it’s all said and done,” says dairy farmer Bobby Schindler, who in 2008 leased his land in Chippewa County to a frac-sand company called Canadian Sand and Proppant. (EOG, the former Enron, has since taken over the lease.) “Instead of being a hill it’s gonna be a valley, but all seeded down, and you’d never know there’s a mine there unless you were familiar with the area.”

Of the mining he adds, “It’s really put a boost to the area. It’s impressive the amount of money that’s exchanging hands.” Eighty-four-year-old Letha Webster, who sold her land 100 miles south of Schindler’s to another mining corporation, Unimin, says that leaving her home of 56 years is “just the price of progress.”

Jamie and Kevin Gregar -- both 30-something native Wisconsinites and military veterans -- lived in a trailer and saved their money so that they could settle down in a pastoral paradise once Kevin returned from Iraq. In January 2011, they found a dream home near tiny Tunnel City. (The village takes its name from a nearby rail tunnel). “It’s just gorgeous -- the hills, the trees, the woodland, the animals,” says Jamie. “It’s perfect.”

Five months after they moved in, she learned that neighbors had leased their land to “a sand mine” company. “What’s a sand mine?” she asked.

Less than a year later, they know all too well.  The Gregars’ land is now surrounded on three sides by an unsightly panorama of mining preparations. Unimin is uprooting trees, gouging out topsoil, and tearing down the nearby hills. “It looks like a disaster zone, like a bomb went off,” Jamie tells me.

When I mention her service to her country, her voice breaks. “I am devastated. We’ve done everything right. We’ve done everything we were supposed to. We just wanted to raise our family in a good location and have good neighbors and to have it taken away from us for something we don’t support…” Her voice trails off in tears.

For Unimin, the village of Tunnel City in Greenfield township was a perfect target. Not only did the land contain the coveted crystalline silica; it was close to a rail spur. No need for the hundreds of diesel trucks that other corporations use to haul sand from mine sites to processing plants. No need, either, for transport from processing plants to rail junctions where hundreds of trains haul frac-sand by the millions of tons each year to fracture other once-rural landscapes. Here, instead, the entire assembly line operates in one industrial zone.

There was also no need for jumping the hurdles zoning laws sometimes erect. Like many Wisconsin towns where a culture of diehard individualism sees zoning as an assault on personal freedom, Greenfield and all its municipalities, including Tunnel City, are unzoned. This allowed the corporation to make deals with individual landowners. For the 8.5 acres where Letha Webster and her husband Gene lived for 56 years, assessed in 2010 at $147,500, Unimin paid $330,000. Overall, between late May and July 2011, it paid $5.3 million for 436 acres with a market value of about $1.1 million.

There was no time for public education about the potential negative possibilities of frac-sand mining: the destruction of the hills, the decline in property values, the danger of silicosis (once considered a strictly occupational lung disease) from blowing silica dust, contamination of ground water from the chemicals used in the processing plants, the blaze of lights all night long, noise from hundreds of train cars, houses shaken by blasting. Ron Koshoshek, a leading environmentalist who works with Wisconsin’s powerful Towns Association to educate townships about the industry, says that “frac-sand mining will virtually end all residential development in rural townships.” The result will be “a large-scale net loss of tax dollars to towns, increasing taxes for those who remain.”

Town-Busting Tactics

Frac-sand corporations count on a combination of naïveté, trust, and incomprehension in rural hamlets that previously dealt with companies no larger than Wisconsin’s local sand and gravel industries. Before 2008, town boards had never handled anything beyond road maintenance and other basic municipal issues.  Today, multinational corporations use their considerable resources to steamroll local councils and win sweetheart deals.  That’s how the residents of Tunnel City got taken to the cleaners.

On July 6, 2011, a Unimin representative ran the first public forum about frac-sand mining in the village.  Other heavily attended and often heated community meetings followed, but given the cascades of cash, the town board chairman’s failure to take a stand against the mining corporation, and Unimin’s aggressiveness, tiny Tunnel City was a David without a slingshot.

Local citizens did manage to get the corporation to agree to give the town $250,000 for the first two million tons mined annually, $50,000 more than its original offer. In exchange, the township agreed that any ordinance it might pass in the future to restrict mining wouldn’t apply to Unimin. Multiply the two million tons of frac-sand tonnage Unimin expects to mine annually starting in 2013 by the $300 a ton the industry makes and you’ll find that the township only gets .0004% of what the company will gross.

For the Gregars, it’s been a nightmare.  Unimin has refused five times to buy their land and no one else wants to live near a sand mine. What weighs most heavily on the couple is the possibility that their children will get silicosis from long-term exposure to dust from the mine sites. “We don’t want our kids to be lab rats for frac-sand mining companies,” says Jamie.

Drew Bradley, Unimin’s senior vice president of operations, waves such fears aside. “I think [citizens] are blowing it out of proportion,” he told a local publication. “There are plenty of silica mines sited close to communities. There have been no concerns exposed there.”

That’s cold comfort to the Gregars. Crystalline silica is a known carcinogen and the cause of silicosis, an irreversible, incurable disease. None of the very few rules applied to sand mining by the state’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) limit how much silica gets into the air outside of mines. That’s the main concern of those living near the facilities.

So in November 2011, Jamie Gregar and ten other citizens sent a 35-page petition to the DNR. The petitioners asked the agency to declare respirable crystalline silica a hazardous substance and to monitor it, using a public health protection level set by California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. The petition relies on studies, including one by the DNR itself, which acknowledge the risk of airborne silica from frac-sand mines for those who live nearby.

The DNR denied the petition, claiming among other things that -- contrary to its own study’s findings -- current standards are adequate. One of the petition’s signatories, Ron Koshoshek, wasn’t surprised. For 16 years he was a member of, and for nine years chaired, Wisconsin’s Public Intervenor Citizens Advisory Committee.  Created in 1967, its role was to intercede on behalf of the environment, should tensions grow between the DNR’s two roles: environmental protector and corporate licensor. “The DNR,” he says, “is now a permitting agency for development and exploitation of resources.”

In 2010, Cathy Stepp, a confirmed anti-environmentalist who had previously railed against the DNR, belittling it as "anti-development, anti-transportation, and pro-garter snakes," was appointed to head the agency by now-embattled Governor Scott Walker who explained: “I wanted someone with a chamber-of-commerce mentality.”

As for Jamie Gregar, her dreams have been dashed and she’s determined to leave her home. “At this point,” she says, “I don’t think there’s a price we wouldn’t accept.”

Frac-Sand vs. Food

Brian Norberg and his family in Prairie Farm, 137 miles northwest of Tunnel City, paid the ultimate price: he died while trying to mobilize the community against Procore, a subsidiary of the multinational oil and gas corporation Sanjel. The American flag that flies in front of the Norbergs’ house flanks a placard with a large, golden NORBERG, over which pheasants fly against a blue sky.  It’s meant to represent the 1,500 acres the family has farmed for a century.

“When you start talking about industrial mining, to us, you’re violating the land,” Brian’s widow, Lisa, told me one March afternoon over lunch.  She and other members of the family, as well as a friend, had gathered to describe Prairie Farm’s battle with the frac-sanders. “The family has had a really hard time accepting the fact that what we consider a beautiful way to live could be destroyed by big industry.”

Their fight against Procore started in April 2011: Sandy, a lifelong friend and neighbor, arrived with sand samples drillers had excavated from her land, and began enthusiastically describing the benefits of frac-sand mining. “Brian listened for a few minutes,” Lisa recalls. “Then he told her [that]… she and her sand vials could get the heck -- that’s a much nicer word than what he used  -- off the farm.  Sandy was hoping we would also be excited about jumping on the bandwagon. Brian informed her that our land would be used for the purpose God intended, farming.”

Brian quickly enlisted family and neighbors in an organizing effort against the company. In June 2011, Procore filed a reclamation plan -- the first step in the permitting process -- with the county’s land and water conservation department. Brian rushed to the county office to request a public hearing, but returned dejected and depressed. “He felt completely defeated that he could not protect the community from them moving in and destroying our lives,” recalls Lisa.

He died of a heart attack less than a day later at the age of 52. The family is convinced his death was a result of the stress caused by the conflict. That stress is certainly all too real.  The frac-sand companies, says family friend Donna Goodlaxson, echoing many others I interviewed for this story, “go from community to community. And one of the things they try to do is pit people in the community against each other.”

Instead of backing off, the Norbergs and other Prairie Farm residents continued Brian’s efforts. At an August 2011 public hearing, the town’s residents directly addressed Procore’s representatives. “What people had to say there was so powerful,” Goodlaxson remembers. “Those guys were blown out of their chairs. They weren’t prepared for us.”

“I think people insinuate that we’re little farmers in a little community and everyone’s an ignorant buffoon,” added Sue Glaser, domestic partner of Brian’s brother Wayne. “They found out in a real short time there was a lot of education behind this.”

“About 80% of the neighborhood was not happy about the potential change to our area,” Lisa adds. “But very few of us knew anything about this industry at [that] time.” To that end, Wisconsin’s Farmers’ Union and its Towns Association organized a day-long conference in December 2011 to help people “deal with this new industry.”

Meanwhile, other towns, alarmed by the explosion of frac-sand mining, were beginning to pass licensing ordinances to regulate the industry. In Wisconsin, counties can challenge zoning but not licensing ordinances, which fall under town police powers.  These, according to Wisconsin law, cannot be overruled by counties or the state. Becky Glass, a Prairie Farm resident and an organizer with Labor Network for Sustainability, calls Wisconsin’s town police powers “the strongest tools towns have to fight or regulate frac-sand mining.” Consider them so many slingshots employed against the corporate Goliaths.

In April 2012, Prairie Farm’s three-man board voted 2 to 1 to pass such an ordinance to regulate any future mining effort in the town. No, such moves won’t stop frac-sand mining in Wisconsin, but they may at least mitigate its harm. Procore finally pulled out because of the resistance, says Glass, adding that the company has since returned with different personnel to try opening a mine near where she lives.

“It takes 1.2 acres per person per year to feed every person in this country,” says Lisa Norberg. “And the little township that I live in, we have 9,000 acres that are for farm use. So if we just close our eyes and bend over and let the mining companies come in, we’ll have thousands of people we can’t feed.”

Food or frac-sand: it’s a decision of vital importance across the country, but one most Americans don’t even realize is being made -- largely by multinational corporations and dwindling numbers of yeoman farmers in what some in this country would call “the real America.”  Most of us know nothing about these choices, but if the mining corporations have their way, we will soon enough -- when we check out prices at the supermarket or grocery store. We’ll know it too, as global climate change continues to turn Wisconsin winters balmy and supercharge wild weather across the country.

While bucolic landscapes disappear, aquifers are fouled, and countless farms across rural Wisconsin morph into industrial wastelands, Lisa’s sons continue to work the Norberg’s land, just as their father once did. So does Brian’s nephew, 32-year-old Matthew, who took me on a jolting ride across his fields. The next time I’m in town, he assured me, we’ll visit places in the hills where water feeds into springs. Yes, you can drink the water there. It’s still the purest imaginable. Under the circumstances, though, no one knows for how long.

[RojoLeón]

Meanwhile, in Oceania,..

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/2012/05/30/nc-makes-sea-level-rise-illegal/

NC Considers Making Sea Level Rise Illegal


According to North Carolina law, I am a billionaire. I have a full-time nanny for my children, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and I get to spend the entire year taking guitar lessons from Mark Knopfler. Oh, my avatar? I haven’t got around to changing it, but by law, I now look like George Clooney. There’s also a supermodel clause, but discussing the details would be boasting.

You think I’m kidding, but listen to me: I’m from North Carolina, and that’s how we roll. We take what we want to be reality, and we just make it law. So I’m having my state senator introduce legislation writing into law all the stuff I mentioned above. This is North Carolina, state motto: “Because that’s how I WANT it to be.”

You know, of course, about our passing May 8 of Amendment One, which has now written into our constitution anti-marriage discrimination against anyone who doesn’t fit one group’s image of marriage. It’s just as ugly as it sounds – just as ugly as the last time we wrote such marriage discrimination into our constitution, in 1875, when instead of protecting us against the idea of same-sex couples marrying, it was protecting us against racial miscegenation – down to the third generation, mind you. Good times!

Okay, though. These are hard days, people are crazyish, and you just have to soldier on, right? But then it turns out that North Carolina legislators are now tossing around bills that not only protect themselves from concepts that make them uncomfortable, they’re DETERMINING HOW WE MEASURE REALITY.

In a story first discussed by the NC Coastal Federation and given more play May 29 by the News & Observer of Raleigh and its sister paper the Charlotte Observer, a group of legislators from 20 coastal NC counties whose economies will be most affected by rising seas have legislated the words “Nuh-unh!” into the NC Constitution.

Okay, cheap shot alert. Actually all they did was say science is crazy. There is virtually universal agreement among scientists that the sea will probably rise a good meter or more before the end of the century, wreaking havoc in low-lying coastal counties. So the members of the developers’  lobbying group NC-20 say the sea will rise only 8 inches, because … because … well, SHUT UP, that’s because why.

That is, the meter or so of sea level rise predicted for the NC Coastal Resources Commission by a state-appointed board of scientists is extremely inconvenient for counties along the coast. So the NC-20 types have decided that we can escape sea level rise – in North Carolina, anyhow – by making it against the law. Or making MEASURING it against the law, anyhow.

Here’s a link to the circulated Replacement House Bill 819. The key language is in section 2, paragraph e, talking about rates of sea level rise: “These rates shall only be determined using historical data, and these data shall be limited to the time period following the year 1900. Rates of seas-level rise may be extrapolated linearly. …” It goes on, but there’s the core: North Carolina legislators have decided that the way to make exponential increases in sea level rise – caused by those inconvenient feedback loops we keep hearing about from scientists – go away is to make it against the law to extrapolate exponential; we can only extrapolate along a line predicted by previous sea level rises.

Which, yes, is exactly like saying, do not predict tomorrow’s weather based on radar images of a hurricane swirling offshore, moving west towards us with 60-mph winds and ten inches of rain. Predict the weather based on the last two weeks of fair weather with gentle breezes towards the east. Don’t use radar and barometers; use the Farmer’s Almanac and what grandpa remembers.

Things like marriage rules involve changing social mores and those who feel that certain types of marriage are wrong can be understood and even forgiven. They’re certainly on the wrong side of history, but it’s a social issue where emotion understandably holds sway over things like evidence.

But while the rising sea may engender emotion, it exists in a world of fact, of measurable evidence and predictable results, where scientists using their best methods have agreed on a reasonable – and conservative – estimate of a meter or more of rising seas in the coming century. In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gave a hesitant estimate of up to 59 centimeters of rise —but even two years later that estimate already appeared low and scientists began to expect a rise of a meter or more.

No matter in North Carolina. We’ve got resorts to build and we don’t care what the rest of the ocean does – our sea isn’t going to rise by more than 15.6 inches. Because otherwise it’s against the law.

No information on whether the scientists on the panel, like Galileo, have stamped their feet and muttered “And yet it rises!” But there’s no doubt that NC’s legislative inquisitors will be classified along with Galileo’s papal persecutors and their own forebears who outlawed interracial marriage, as on the wrong side of history.

But these folks will also be wet.

I’d love to write more, but I have chores to do and kids to manage. Man — all this housework after a full day of work at my desk just doesn’t seem right. There oughtta be a law. Hey, wait a minute ….

[kopitecrash]

Most depressing topic ever. And I've read the world socialist website.

[RojoLeón]

Most depressing topic ever. And I've read the world socialist website.

  I've never read WSW and am not inclined to now  . Wasn't there a 'wendy' and a 'danny boy' on here that linked to there loads?
I think that there is no cause to give up hope yet - things can be fixed and the first step is to inform yourself about what is broke, and how it is so.

Here's another cheery link from our slightly mad planet.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=geoengineering-could-turn-skies-white

Geoengineering Could Turn Skies White

Efforts to reflect away the sun's rays might also make the sky whiter, one of many reasons some distrust such geoengineering schemes

By Lauren Morello and ClimateWire  | June 1, 2012 | 37

geoengineering, artificial volcano, climate change, global warming COLOR CHANGE: Blue skies could turn white if geoengineering schemes are every employed to reflect away the sun's rays using sulfate particles, mimicking a volcanic eruption. Image: Wikimedia Commons/Merikanto

The white haze that hangs over many major cities could become a familiar sight everywhere if the world decides to try geoengineering to create a cooler planet.

Scientists have long suspected that one oft-discussed geoengineering technique -- shooting tiny sulfate particles into the upper atmosphere to deflect sunlight -- could turn the blue sky white. Nature has already provided a basic proof of concept. When Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, spewing tons of sulfate particles in the atmosphere, it temporarily whitened the sky.

Now a new study by researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science attempts to determine just how big the effect from man-made geoengineering would be.

Adding enough sulfate to the stratosphere to block 2 percent of the sun's light would make the sky three to five times brighter, they report in a paper that will be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

That is roughly the level of sulfate geoengineering needed to counteract the warming that would result if the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere climbed to 560 parts per million, up from roughly 390 ppm today.

The world might be cooler, but blue skies would become a little less blue, the scientists report. Even remote, sparsely inhabited areas would lie under a whitish sky resembling the haze that now blankets cities like Paris.

And the injection of a continuous stream of sulfate particles would lend sunsets a man-made afterglow.

"People who are used to living in New York might not notice a difference, but people in the mountains might notice a difference," said lead author Ben Kravitz, a postdoctoral researcher at the Carnegie Institution.

"What happens when you put a layer of sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere, they scatter light. But they don't scatter light equally. Depending on the size of the particle, they might scatter blue light differently than red light."

It is that scattering effect that would change the sky's appearance, he said.

Some people might not notice. Others might not care. But even folks who can't tell a picture-postcard blue sky from its milky, geoengineered cousin might be able to detect other side effects of using sulfate to cool the planet.

Blocking just 2 percent of sunlight that would normally reach the Earth -- the scenario depicted in the study -- would probably be enough to create measurable drops in energy created by concentrated solar thermal power systems, which rely on direct sunlight.

But it could be a boon to plants, which showed a small but measurable uptick in growth in the months after Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991.

That's because injecting sulfate particles into the atmosphere -- by volcano or man-made methods -- scatters enough of the sun's rays to increase the diffuse sunlight many plants thrive on. The resulting uptick in photosynthesis would likely increase the amount of carbon pulled from the atmosphere by plants, researchers said.

Majority frowns on geoengineering -- poll
Meanwhile, a poll released this week by the Brookings Institution suggests that Americans are concerned about the safety and effectiveness of geoengineering.

Sixty-five percent of participants said they somewhat or strongly disagree that if global warming takes place, "scientists would be able to find ways to alter the climate in a way that limits problems."

A slimmer majority, 45 percent, disagreed with the notion that scientists could develop "atmospheric engineering" methods to cool the planet.

But most of the 887 participants in the survey -- 69 percent -- said they "strongly" or "somewhat" believed the harm from adding material to the atmosphere would outweigh the benefits. The poll carries a margin of error of 3.5 percent.

"If you look across the survey, one big challenge for anyone who's proposing geoengineering methods is how to even begin to explain this to the general public, and then begin to make this credible," said Barry Rabe, a professor at the University of Michigan's Gerald Ford School of Public Policy.

Rabe, who conducted the survey with Christopher Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion, said public opinion research on geoengineering is limited.

That makes it hard to compare concerns about geoengineering to attitudes about other controversial technologies, like nanotechnology or genetically modified organisms.

But what is interesting about the new results, Rabe said, is that few respondents indicated they were neutral about geoengineering.

"One thing that surprised us a bit is the percentage of people who responded with an opinion," he said. "In every case, we gave them the option to say 'not sure.' I frankly expected more people to punt on this one."

[RojoLeón]

Energy need Versus Food needs. More of that low carbon, clean natural shale gas required.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/water-grab-kansas-oil-boom-092500501.html

Water grab in Kansas oil boom - America's Boomtown

In the farm country of southern Kansas, water is a precious commodity. And not just for farming -- for fracking.

In hydraulic fracturing, water is injected into the ground at a high pressure to help crack shale rock and bring oil to the surface. The industry says it takes as much as 2 million gallons of water to drill a single horizontal well in Kansas.

Most drillers use groundwater or surface water from ponds and rivers. But first they must receive permission from whoever has rights to it and get a permit. Water permits have soared to the highest level in 30 years.

At the same time, many of the Kansas oil boomtown counties are already under "drought watch," and last month was the second driest May on record.

"Water is a real concern in this county," said Carla Pence, a commissioner of Harper County, which is at the center of the action. "We don't have a lot of easily accessible water, so there is a concern of where that water is going to come from, how it's going to be used and what's going to happen to it."

Mining for water: To cash in on the demand, one company is turning the biggest lake in Harper County into a water source for oil companies.

Select Energy is excavating Anthony Lake so that it can hold more rainfall. It plans to then sell water from the lake to oil companies that need it for drilling. Select is investing $1.5 million in the project and will pay the city of Anthony 10 cents of every barrel of water it sells once its initial investment is recouped.

Full coverage of America's Biggest Boomtowns

Meanwhile, water drilling companies are springing up to help meet the demand. Mitch Hall, who launched H2O Drilling this year, is about to start drilling his first well this month and already has a list of 35 customers waiting.

"We just went through the worst drought in a long, long time, so that definitely has everyone thinking about how critical water is," Hall said. "Guys who would not have spent the money to have a water well drilled in the past are willing to do it today."

Local farmers and landowners are also making money on the water grab. Farmers are digging their ponds deeper, praying for the next rainfall and then selling whatever water they have to oil companies, said Mike Lanie, Harper County's economic development director.

The oil companies keep their water rates confidential. But Lanie, who talks with local farmers and oil companies, said they typically pay about 20 cents per 42 gallons of water. That money can add up quickly when each drilling well requires millions of gallons of water to frack.

Related: Farmers hit the jackpot in oil boom

For now, oil companies are finding the water they need. But if a drought returns, they could run into trouble.

Matt Grubb, president of SandRidge Energy, said his firm gets water from wherever it can -- including ponds and creeks.

"If we run into a bad drought coupling with a really quick ramp-up in activity, yeah there's going to be a lot of competition for water, so that could slow down activity," said Grubb.

The water used for fracking amounts to less than 1% of the state's overall use. But water supplies are already so tight, it's difficult for farmers to ensure they have enough for irrigation.

The other problem: While water used for irrigation can be reused, water used in fracking cannot be recycled for other uses because it is mixed with chemicals, said Joe Spease, chairman of the hydraulic fracturing committee at the Sierra Club.

And after farmers suffered around $2 billion in crop damage from a drought last year, this is a very dangerous time to be taking any water out of the supply, he said.

In fact, water levels in the High Plains aquifer system, which supplies water for about 86% of the state's irrigation permits, have been declining for 14 straight years -- dropping more than two feet in the last year alone, according to the Kansas Geological Survey.

Water contamination concerns: Along with concerns of quantity, there are also worries about the quality of this increasingly valuable resource.

"People in Kansas need to understand that their local water supplies -- the wells and water sources they depend on for survival and for their farming operations -- are at risk," said Spease of the Sierra Club.

Ed Cross, president of the Kansas Independent Oil & Gas Association, said that more than 57,000 wells have been fracked in Kansas since 1947, and more than 1.2 million across the entire country, without a single "verified or documented case of harm to groundwater."

Related: Wind is Kansas' other energy boom

Spease said there have been several studies linking fracking in other states to water contamination, along with many anecdotal reports. But he said that it's difficult to track how widespread problems might be without stricter reporting requirements.

And in a place like Kansas, where water is already in such high demand, anything that could further reduce the supply is a huge concern.

"We can't afford to lose any water in this part of the country," said Spease.

[RojoLeón]

Sorry Canadians, but your Prime Minister Harper, is a sociopathic asshat.

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/06/15/canada_the_world_s_newest_petrostate_isn_t_playing_nice_anymore

Canada: The world’s newest petrostate isn’t playing nice anymore.

Nearly 24 hours of voting, 425 pages of legislation, over 800 proposed amendments: This is the marathon from which Canadian members of parliament (MPs) emerged on June 15.

The session, characterized by the Globe and Mail as "22-plus hours of consecutive spanking" of the dissenting opposition parties by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative majority government, will allow the government to push through omnibus bill C-38.

Canadians are up in arms about the bill because it includes legislation that will weaken and threaten the legal status of leading environmental groups.

Because Harper is determined to build a new pipeline out of the Alberta tar sands, the center of Canada's oil industry with known reserves that rival Saudi Arabia's.  And he is not about to wait for November to get it done.

The proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would have funneled Canadian oil down to refineries on the Gulf Coast, remains in political deadlock after the Obama administration blocked the deal in January.

Incensed by Obama's decision, Harper claimed the pipeline process was being "held hostage" because "certain people in the United States would like to see Canada be one giant national park for the northern half of North America."

In the meantime, Harper's government, as well as impatient oil exporters and Asian markets hungry for Canadian crude, are determined to find new ways out of land-locked Alberta in order to increase oil export volumes.

The New York Times reported on June 14 that the Canadian government has three pipeline route proposals on the table:

    "Enbridge, a transporter of Canadian oil exports, announced a $3 billion plan called Eastern Access. It is seeking permission to build a new "Northern Gateway Pipelines" network, to bring 525,000 barrels a day to Canada's Pacific Coast. Kinder Morgan, a Texas-based energy company, said it will nearly double the capacity of an existing pipeline network along a different route."

All of these options will have to overcome staunch opposition by indigenous groups and well-entrenched environmental interests on both coasts.   Which brings us back to the reasoning behind the Conservative government's push to pass the omnibus bill with the intent of weakening these groups' legal footing.

In order to further quell dissent, Harper's government has also been going after anti-pipeline charity and advocacy groups. A variety of groups, including Tides Canada and ForestEthics, have been threatened with having their charity status revoked. Canadian regulations have long maintained that charities cannot devote more thant 10 percent of their budgets to advocacy. Additional laws pushed through as part of the C-38 package "will bring more scrutiny to foreign funding for charities and also how they use money for political purposes. Charities will also have to take more responsibility for the political activities of groups to which they give money."

The government has also insinuated that shadowy foreign entities are responsible for funding charities in their efforts to derail Canada's well-oiled ascendance to the status of petrostate. The Conservatives' new efforts to regulate "transparency" in Canadian charities has gone so far as to alarm large foundations with names like Bronfman, Asper and Bombardier on their letterheads.

Turns out even Canada is not immune to the lure of "black gold."