environment: Arctic ice melt pollution
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 10: Revenge of the Poles
Oh, this is totally gross. The New York Times for July 25 reports that:
Warming in the Arctic is causing the release of toxic chemicals long trapped in the region’s snow, ice, ocean and soil, according to a new study.
Researchers from Canada, China and Norway say their work provides the first evidence that some persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are being “remobilized” into the Arctic atmosphere.
“Our results indicate that a wide range of POPs have been remobilized into the Arctic atmosphere over the past two decades as a result of climate change, confirming that Arctic warming could undermine global efforts to reduce environmental and human exposure to these toxic chemicals,” write the scientists, whose analysis was published yesterday in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Yecccch. Sent July 25:
For centuries, humans have seen the Polar zones as places of mystery. Explorers, novelists, storytellers and scientists have all sought the secrets to be found beneath the accumulated ice and snow. It turns out that might not be such a good idea. In an appalling side-effect of global warming, the melting ice is releasing significant doses of toxic chemicals back into circulation. This unintended consequence of our greenhouse gas emissions is sadly ironic — the Earth almost seems to be “striking back.” As we face a future on a drastically altered planet, we will discover that no aspect of our species’ history of waste and pollution can ever be truly buried; eventually we will no longer be able to avoid a cleanup task of monumental proportions. It behooves us to ensure that the toxic effluvium of our time not blight the lives of future generations.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes idiots Republicans
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 10: (facepalm)
Ha ha ha ha ha. In the middle of a heat wave, this is the best the July 23 Richmond Times-Dispatch can come up with:
Climate is not static but always in flux. The Earth has seen periods of warming and periods of cooling. The Ice Age was not a myth. Global warming is not a myth, either — which does not mean that the climate of the entire globe eventually will resemble the climate of equatorial Africa. Significant consequences can flow from seemingly modest changes in temperature and precipitation, however.
The trend may have gone beyond the point that it can be reversed. It also may be possible that relatively modest endeavors can help humanity adjust to changes and even forestall the worst-case scenarios.
This can be done without jettisoning the economic system. Indeed, market economies may be more able to cope than the alternatives. The Pentagon takes climate change seriously. Sensible responses likely will have to come from the right. Richard Nixon went to China. Will conservatives be credited with climate breakthroughs?
Give me a fucking break.
Sent July 24:
So conservatives are going to come up with usable solutions for climate change? Really? They’ll have to solve a few problems of their own — like admitting that it’s real, and caused by a greenhouse effect thrown badly out of balance by human emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Yes, Nixon went to China — but everyone acknowledged that the nation was real, and that diplomatic recognition could no longer be delayed. Present-day Republicans, however, would be shrieking that “China” was a liberal fabrication, and threatening primary challenges against any legislator who acknowledged its existence and importance. Finally, they must recognize that the long-term consequences of failure to act are far worse than a below-average quarterly profit report from one of their sponsors in the fossil fuel industry. Conservatives must get their own house in order before they can plausibly offer solutions to the looming threat of climate chaos.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: United Nations
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 9: Insecurity.
Sigh:
NYT, 07/23/11:
UNITED NATIONS — The persistent inability of the United Nations to forge international consensus on climate change issues was on display Wednesday, as Security Council members disagreed over whether they should address possible instability provoked by problems like rising sea levels or competition over water resources.Western powers like the United States argued that the potential effects of climate change, including the mass migrations of populations, made it a crucial issue in terms of global peace and security. Russia and China, backed by much of the developing world, rejected the notion that the issue even belonged on the Security Council agenda.
Ditherers. Sent July 23:
It is absolutely indisputable that climate change is an international security issue. Every one of the factors currently considered security threats by the world’s nations will be hugely exacerbated by the rapidly warming climate. The planet’s weather patterns are becoming wilder, weirder and more damaging in response to the mounting greenhouse effect. Can there be any doubt that a similar transformation is going to unfold in the geopolitical arena? When nations are threatened with extinction as a consequence of rising sea levels, when vast regions may be depopulated by drought, when increasingly scarce resources will make everyday life all over the world a struggle for survival, the question is not whether global heating belongs on the agenda of the UN Security Council, but whether anything else poses an equal threat to global stability. What is crucial is action, for the Earth’s window of opportunity is closing faster by the day.
Warren Senders
environment: Jacques Cousteau oceanic acidification oceans pollution
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 8: Here’s Hoping My Kid Likes To Eat Jellyfish
The Boston Globe has a good editorial on a terrifying subject. The threatened oceans:
THE WORLD’S oceans provide a crucial environmental safety valve: The blue territory that covers 70 percent of the globe absorbs 80 percent of the heat we are adding to our climate, and about a third of carbon dioxide we are emitting into the atmosphere. A recent report by the International Program on the State of the Ocean, however, has found that the oceans may not be able to sustain these burdens much longer.
The report highlights a combination of factors that put us at high risk for, as the report puts it, “entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history.’’ The combined effects of overfishing, marine pollution, and carbon emissions are responsible for this basic fact: Our oceans are degenerating far more quickly than previously predicted. This has consequences not just for marine ecosystems and species, but also for humans.
Sent July 22, gloomily:
Considering that we lived in close interaction with the natural world for countless thousands of years, modern homo sapiens shows a disturbing level of ignorance of the environmental systems of which it is a part. The possibility that the planet’s oceans are entering a death spiral barely seems to be registering on most people’s radar; instead, we are preoccupied with gossip, trivialities, and short-term threats to our comfort. Attention, everyone! A collapse of oceanic ecosystems would not just be a temporary inconvenience, but a world-changing event of a magnitude far beyond our ken! Between oceanic acidification, overfishing, and pollution, we humans have inflicted enormous damage on the seas; if we don’t change our ways voluntarily, we will be forced to change them whether we like it or not. With a civilization struggling in the aftermath of catastrophic ecological implosions, we will have no alternative but to adapt or die.
Warren Senders
environment: Arctic ice melt endangered species
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 7: Water Wings. That’ll Help.
The Long Island Press for July 19 runs an article on polar bears and their increasingly difficult lives:
A new study reports that polar bear cubs have a higher mortality rate as their icy habitat melts. As their habitat melts away at faster rates than before polar bear cubs alongside their mothers are forced to make longer trips swimming across the icy waters, leading to an increase in death rates.
According to Reuters, the new study shows that these long distance swimming trips pose great risks to the survival of polar bear cubs. Polar bears are not aquatic animals. In fact, the majority of their lives are spent on ice or land–where they hunt, feed, and give birth.
I sure am glad I’m not a polar bear, facing eventual extinction. Oh, wait…
Sent July 21:
As the poster children for Arctic ice loss, the world’s polar bears get quite a bit of media attention. No wonder: they’re photogenic, their plight is arresting, and they are sufficiently distant from our day-to-day lives that news about them constitutes a distraction of sorts. But in our sympathy over bear cubs losing their habitats, we should not forget that these charismatic predators are only one of millions of species existing under the very real threat of runaway climate change. All forms of earthly life are vulnerable — environmental shifts can trigger rapid extinctions within a very short time — but some are more vulnerable than others. Our complex and intricate human civilization is no protection against a collapsed food supply. Looking down the road a bit, it’s frighteningly clear that polar bears aren’t the only ones who’ll be facing an uphill struggle to survive. Are humans an endangered species?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: analogies denialists idiots Republicans
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 6: Department of Tribal Ironies
The NYT’s blog “Scientist At Work” reports on a study done in Mongolia which shows that the herders there are very much up to date on how bad things are getting:
Mongolian herders may not know the term “global climate change,” but almost all know that their weather is changing. If asked whether the weather will get better, stay the same or get worse, most of them will say the weather will get worse. Mongolian herders already face difficult seasons with winter temperatures down to minus 40 degrees Celsius and strong, gusty cold spring winds. Summer may not offer much of a respite. The days alternate between cold nights and daytime heat waves or cold, windy, rainy days. Over the last 20 years strong wind gusts have become more frequent and storms arrive with little warning. The herders love their lives, but many are afraid there may be no future in herding for their children.
I sent this as a letter to the Times on July 20, but I’m also sending it as a comment to this blog; I’m a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy, I guess.
It used to be that the phrase “outer Mongolia” was a kind of not-so-clever shorthand for “the back of beyond” — a place utterly removed from the fast-moving news of the day, with a population steeped in ignorance and superstition. How far we’ve come. The herders of Mongolia are fully aware of the vagaries of our fluctuating climate; they may be remote, but they’re not stupid, and their lives and their livings are threatened by the rapid transformation of Earth’s atmosphere. Meanwhile, in our own country, the proudly ignorant citizens of Republicanistan cling to complex and irrational belief systems. Rejecting as irrelevant such modern concepts as evidence, proof, causality and logic, they base their tribal decision-making on magic incantations and the invocation of divine forces. What does it say about our contemporary political environment when Mongolian herders are more sensible about climate issues than over half of the US Congress?
Warren Senders
environment: denialists idiots media irresponsibility
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 5: Send In The Clowns
The July 19 Colorodoan (CO) runs an article very properly pointing out that arch-denialist Fred Singer is a buffoon:
Don’t worry, be happy about the changing climate.
And don’t believe newspaper articles like this one – the mainstream media are not to be trusted because reporters have been “brainwashed” to believe the prevailing wisdom of climate science, which suggests climate change is real and caused by people.
Those were the messages Monday evening from Colorado State University emeritus atmospheric science professor William Gray and the “dean” of climate change skeptics, Fred Singer, an emeritus professor at the University of Virginia. Singer and Gray spoke to a sometimes unruly and tense audience in a packed CSU auditorium in attempts to convince them that most climate science is “hokum” and “bunk.”
Fear about climate change, Singer said, is a “psychosis” because global warming is natural and harmless.
Presenting almost no data while being peppered with questions from some of CSU’s other atmospheric scientists and faculty, the pair emphatically denied the climate has warmed significantly in recent decades and said rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have only positive implications for humans.
It’s always good to indulge in a little bit of justified character assassination. Sent July 19:
Fred Singer is a living example of Upton Sinclair’s apothegm, “It is difficult to make a man understand something when his paycheck depends upon his not understanding it.” His denials of oil company funding are Nixonian shadings of the truth; many of the organizations he’s affiliated with rely heavily on the fossil fuel industry for their support. If he examined the evidence for human causes of climate change with the kind of genuine skepticism any good professional scientist employs, he’d be forced to abandon a gratifying and remunerative position. Accorded disproportionate prominence in the media due to his rejection of the worldwide climatological consensus on global warming, Singer’s credibility is summarized neatly in your article’s fifth paragraph. “Presenting almost no data,” is not a phrase appropriate to a credible scientist. Singer’s not a skeptic, but a corporate shill exploiting public confusion and fear for personal gain.
Warren Senders
environment: coastlines erosion oceans scientific consensus
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 4: West Coastin’
The July 18 Monterey Herald (CA) reports on a study of Pacific coastal erosion:
The storms that battered the West Coast during the winter of 2009-10 eroded record chunks of shoreline, and more will likely disappear as the changing climate brings more such powerful storm seasons, scientists warn in a new study.
Pacific waves were 20 percent stronger on average than any year since 1997 and higher-than-usual sea levels drove them further inland, tearing away on average one-third m ore land in California.
The state’s beaches were “eroded to often unprecedented levels,” said Patrick Barnard, a coastal geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey who led the research.
“It’s the kind of winter we may experience more frequently” as global temperatures rise, he said.
Nowhere along the West Coast was erosion more pronounced than at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. That winter, the Pacific encroached 184 feet inland, 75 percent more than in a typical season.
Maybe scientists should hold up a big flag when they have something important to say? Sent July 18:
When the U.S. Geological Survey’s Patrick Barnard says, “there’s no indication (of) a light at the end of the tunnel anytime soon, given the current trends that we’re observing,” he’s using language designed for careful and accurate communication. But anyone who understands “science-speak” will recognize the signs: Dr. Barnard is extremely alarmed. While his team’s research on the Pacific coastline’s future in a post-global-warming world has scary enough implications for communities on the ocean’s edge, when you consider that countless regional environments and ecosystems around the planet face similar disturbances, these are frightening findings indeed. Take the changes faced by Ocean Beach and multiply them a hundred thousand times, and you can begin to imagine the disruptions the coming climate chaos will bring. In their precise and unemotional way, the scientists are shouting out a warning: we must act now if we are to mitigate the storms of the coming centuries.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility EPA idiots Republicans
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 3: Hey! I’m-a-talkin’ to YOU!
The July 17 Poughkeepsie Journal runs an interview with their area’s Regional EPA director, prefacing it with some pointed words of criticism:
Nevertheless, it is on that second subject, global warming, that the federal Environmental Protection Agency has been far too tepid in its response. Both the agency and federal elected officials still have to find common ground — and viable solutions.
Judith Enck, the EPA regional administrator, defended the agency’s decision not to press forward more forcibly without congressional support, despite various court rulings that would seem to give the EPA more latitude here.
I think I’m going to start writing to the multinationals directly. Yeah, that’ll work. The Poughkeepsie Journal has a 250-word limit, and I didn’t feel like cutting this one down from 195, so it’s a little longer than the default 150. Sent July 17:
It is irrefutable that the EPA should push harder to limit carbon emissions and give more attention to educating the public on the extremely dangerous future that awaits us if global climate change is not controlled. Sadly, it’s also irrefutable that the current political climate is a dreadful one for progress on environmental issues. With an ideologically constricted Republican party chock-full of anti-science zealots who appear to believe that they can create their own reality if they don’t like this one, meaningful legislative initiatives on what is arguably the most pressing issue of our time are entirely out of the question. Yes, the EPA should do its job more zealously, with special attention to aspects of the environment which transcend national boundaries and affect all the world’s people. But the other side of the equation is that the corporate forces controlling our politics must realize that if their customer base were to experience what biologists delicately call an “evolutionary bottleneck,” it would hurt their future profit margins more than a worldwide shift to renewable energy. Let the world’s multinationals figure this out, and we’ll see Republicans publicly embracing wind turbines and solar panels.
Warren Senders
environment: corporate irresponsibility deforestation forests scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 2: O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum
More on the Forests study, this time from the Christian Science Monitor for July 17:
Want to save the planet? Plant a tree.
Or maybe a lot of them. Or maybe don’t cut down so many.
These are the implications of a new study, which found that the world’s forests play an unexpectedly large role in climate change, vacuuming up the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) and storing the carbon in wood, according to research published online Thursday by the journal Science.
That, in turn, helps regulate CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere – and keeps the planet from overheating.
Kind of a clunky letter, but I’m having kind of a clunky day, so it fits. Sent Sunday, July 17, as the expected heat wave starts moving into position.
Extreme weather events are coming faster and faster, harder and harder, all over the planet. It looks like our carbon dioxide chickens are coming home to roost, as emissions from the last century’s fossil fuel consumption accumulate in the atmosphere. A runaway greenhouse effect may not yet be totally inevitable, but it’s definitely on the horizon unless all of the world’s nations take serious and concerted action against climate chaos. Our history of slash-and-burn deforestation has devastated millions of acres of carbon sink — in the name of disposable paper products. Humanity’s survival cannot be assumed in an economic system that assigns value to destroying the ecosystems of which we are a part. The discovery that our planet’s forests absorb more CO2 than was previously suspected is good news, but it comes with an important caveat: we must ensure that forest lands are preserved and expanded over the coming years.
Warren Senders