Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Is there a game afoot!
Some scientists are warning that the world needs to prepare for a 4 degree rise in global temperatures. This is the warning Bob Watson, chief scientific adviser to the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs issued August 7, 2008.
Watson thinks there is little doubt that limiting global surface temperatures to 2C above pre-industrial temperatures needs to be the global aim, but without knowing how to limit those temperatures…”we need to be prepared to adapt to 4C.” [rise]
Sir David King, the UK’s former chief scientific adviser thinks…Even with the best efforts made to keep temperatures at just a 2C rise there is a 20% risk that temperatures will rise by 4 degrees.
Moriarty: This is not danger. It is inevitable destruction…
King said, “My own feeling is that if we get a 4 degree rise it is quite possible that we would begin to see a runaway[temperature] increase.”
Prof. Neil Adger, an expert on adaptation to climate change at Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research says, “At 4 degrees we are basically into a different climate regime.” “There is no science on how we are going to adapt to 4 degrees warming. It is actually pretty alarming.”
The game is afoot.
Watson is the ex-chief scientist at the World Bank. Not odd then that he would recommend that the “Uk should take a lead in research on carbon capture and storage (CSS).
The World’s biggest carbon offset market, the CDM, is administered by the World Bank.
Watson figures the UK should launch 10 to 20 CCS pilot projects. Of course he is correct. Carbon needs to be kept from, or at least limited, from the atmosphere. He uses the 1960’s effort to put a man on the moon by the U.S. as an analogy of what can be accomplished in a relatively short time when determination prevails. The U.S. had a singularly myopic mind set toward a manned moon mission.
Why isn’t the same determination being focused on pulling the world off the engorged CO2 teat?
You stand in the way not merely of an individual but of a might organization, the full extent of which, even you, with all your cleverness, have been unable to realize…
The energy industry stands to make over $21 Billion in the next 5 years. The windfall profits coming from emissions trading.
You must stand clear, Mr. Holmes, or be trodden under foot…
According to David Victor, carbon trading analyst at Stanford University, …”under the CDM, there will be no global climate benefit because the polluter that buys the offset avoids the obligation to reduce its own emissions.
Analysts estimate that two thirds, 2/3 of the emission reduction obligations may be met through buying offsets rather than by decarbonising…
The CDM scheme will actually increase the net amount of carbon going into the atmosphere. International Rivers report titled ‘Failed Mechanism’ says that hydro firms will earn millions of dollars by selling ‘fake carbon credits to companies and governments which can use those carbon credits to justify an increase in emissions.
Why oh why doesn’t it make more sense to turn our intellectual capital towards new sources of power rather than watching the hole planet go to hell in a hand basket?
No one will convince me it is easier to find ways to capture, transport and then store the captured pollution than to figure out how not to generate it in the first place.
The whole cap and trade scheme is just that; a scheme.
Even the language is offensive. Scheme. Long associated with crafty and secret plans. One rarely finds scheme not associated with conniving.
Yes, the game is afoot and to quote Moriarty again: This is not danger, it is inevitable destruction. You stand in the way not merely of an individual but of a mighty organization, the full extent of which, even you, with all your cleverness, have been unable to realize…
You must stand clear, Mr. Holmes, or be trodden under foot…
Photo by T.Scott Williams
Petrified wood in Blue Mesa badlands
Labels: CCS, CDM, Carbon Capture, Carbon-credit, Global Warming, U.N., World Bank, carbon-trading market
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
UK should take the lead in research on carbon capture and storage.
Friday, August 1, 2008
It was fairly un-nerving when, a chunk of ice broke loose from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf off the coast of Ellesmere Island recently, but it had to have been somewhat expected.
The Ward Hunt is near the most northerly point in North America. Located in quttinirpaaq National Park it is the largest of five remnants of a much larger ice shelf discovered by Admiral Peary in 1906.
More than 6 years ago Derek Mueller, then at Universite Laval, Quebec, found the biggest ice shelf in the Arctic was indeed breaking apart.
Canadian RADARSAT images acquired in August 2002 showed a huge crack running North-south down the center of the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf. Secondary fractures running west had fragmented a large area of the shelf into free-floating ice blocks.
At that time the shelf was home to a fresh water lake. These fresh water lakes are known as ehishelf lakes. That fracturing caused the immediate and catastrophic drainage of an ehishelf lake that had called the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf home. Ehishelf lakes are an important link in the ecology chain. This fresh water ‘floats’ on the more dense ocean water. Located in Disraeli Fjord this was the largest and best-understood epishelf lake in the Northern Hemisphere.
The epishelf lake suddenly spilled more than 3 billion cubic meters of fresh water into the Arctic Ocean.
Ice-dependant ecosystems are made vulnerable by the shifting climate. Microbial communities of algae, micro-invertebrates, and bacteria that could withstand near-freezing water temperatures, freezing and thawing cycles and organisms that used pigment changes to withstand ultraviolet radiation were suddenly and forever lost in that 2000-2002 crack-up and with them much information, and probably many untold secrets.
This most recent chunk of ice to separate from the Ward Hunt is 18 square kilometers across.
The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf is estimated to be around 3,000 years old. Ice core climate data and lake sediments indicate the ‘Little Ice Age’ ended about 150 years ago and the climate has been warming since then. Only about 10% of the original ice shelf may be remaining.
They say the precise triggering mechanism for these fractures isn’t known. Although temperature records from Alert which is 175 km east of the Ward Hunt Ice shelf show a significant increase in the annual mean air temperatures during the last 30 years which parallel the thinning and loss of the epishelf lake.
Derek Mueller, now a Trent University researcher says, “We’re in a different climate now.” “It’s not conducive to regrowing them.” [ice sheets] “It’s a one-way process.
In 2003 Mueller wrote of the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, “…one thing seems clear: it and the other Ellesmere ice shelves are sentinels of high Arctic environmental change…”
Photo Thanks #2 NASA
#1 Canadian Space Agency
Labels: Arctic, Arctic Ice, Canada, Climate Change, Global Warming, North Pole, Quttinirpaaq National Park, Sea Ice, Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, ehishelf lakes
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Sentinels of the high Arctic are disappearing from their posts.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
NOAA predicted the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico will grow to be 8,800 square miles this summer. Forecasters think this summers dead zone will be the largest since 1985.
Nutrients from the fields of the Midwest flow into the Mississippi River which then flows into the Gulf of Mexico. The nutrients are what contribute to hypoxia which is low-oxygen content.
Dead zones are triggered by more than agricultural run-off. Sewage, combustion emissions as well as fertilizers contribute to feeding phyto plankton. River flooding is one natural way dead zones can also be produced.
This year the flooding fields along the Mississippi river are going to contribute to this summer’s anticipated increased dead zone in the Gulf. Sediment records match up with historic flooding.
Slapping myself in the forehead…
“Record corn harvests throughout the Midwest are clearly adding to the problem”, says Eugene Turner. Turner is a scientist with LSU. Turner says there’s “an awful lot of corn and soybeans,” being planted.
Corn and soybeans are both being used in the production of biofuels. Soybean biodiesel has been shown to produce 41% less greenhouse gases. Studies have sown that soybean biodiesel, while having less of an impact on the environment also nets a much higher energy benefit than corn grain ethanol. Soybean biodiesel returns 93% more energy than is used to produce it. Corn; not so much. Corn grain ethanol provides only 25% more energy than is used in its production.
So where does this leave the dead zones?
If farmers stopped planting corn and soybeans yesterday it would take years for to inure any benefits as it relates to the Gulf. Nitrogen leaches from the soil for many years.
soybeans require much less nitrogen fertilizer than does corn.
Meanwhile…
Global warming may increase the cases of Kidney Stones! Kidney stone formation increases in warm climates. Sweating removes fluid, which increases salt levels in the urine (which goes to the sewer which may flow into the ocean, adding to the problem of dead zones).
It’s almost like playing 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon. Everything is related.
And, much to my surprise there is a “kidney stone Belt” in America. Roughly the same area is also the “stroke belt” of the United States. One more piece of, that renewable resource, irony these areas also mess into the “bible belt” America…
Yikes.
Holding what may be a world record for kidney stone production could be one man from Ontario, Canada. The kidney stones this organ passed ranged in size from a grain of sand to a dried pea! The kidney had to be removed but at its peak production it was producing 22 stones in 24 hours.
Photo thanks: KMOX St. Louis
Guinness Medical Record Breakers
Labels: Corn, Flood, Global Warming, Kidney Stones, Mid-west, NOAA, SoyBean, biofuels, fertilizer, ocean dead zone
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Drought and flooding. Corn, kidney stones and 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
It’s all voodoo science until somebody gets an eye put out.
California’s Republican Governor Schwarzenegger says the Bush administration failed to counter global warming emissions. As if that were some sort of new revelation. What is new is the rift opening up in the tight knit collars of the Republican party.
Schwarzenegger makes the nefarious actions of the Bush administrations stance on climate change sound like a play ground ‘nah ney nah ney’.
I’m not going to do it if Mikey isn’t gong to do it too.
Schwarzenegger said the Bush administration didn’t believe they should do anything about it (global warming emissions) since China is not doing anything about it and since India is not willing to do anything why should we?
Way to lead the free world!
Schwarzenegger also said “We don’t wait for other countries to do the same thing. That’s what makes America number one…”
Here’s a little news; most people on the planet noticed a long time ago The U.S. stopped leading and for the past several decades took up the tedious job of mostly pillaging the free world.
Since the EPA decided not to take further actions to stave-off global warming while the lame-duck finishes his term in office, Schwarzenegger said in an interview with George Stephanopoulos that will be aired July 13th, “Well, to be honest with you, if they would have done something this year, I would have thought it was bogus anyway,” (have to love a Republican governor that can use the word ‘bogus’ correctly in a sentence)
California has been on the front lines of the envirmental issues for decades because if it’s unique problems. These problems forced California to take aggressive and costly actions to clean-up the air, water, and agriculture among other problems. For decades the rest of the nation categorized California as tree hugging fruits and nuts, and on the lighter side generally alarmists.
Another one’s collar has begun warming…
Answering a question about climate change asked by one reporter on a flight to Australia, Pope Benedict said, “We have to give impulse to rediscovering our responsibility and to finding an ethical way to change our way of life.” He wants to “wake up consciences”.
The Pope said politicians and experts must be “capable of responding to the great ecological challenge and to be up to the task of this challenge.” “We have our responsibilities toward Creation”.
I am loathed to see politicians and experts used in the same sentence and frankly find ‘give impulse to rediscovering our responsibility and to finding an ethical way to change our way of life’ a statement that is filled with more than a little irony in light of the past behaviour
of the so many authorities in the Pope’s flock, but I digress. If the head of an organization, 1 billion strong, can come up with ‘one quotable’ that fits all questions…he’s worth his weight in gold.
Meanwhile…
California is burning like a wicker cabinet. Raging fires are one of those recurring challenges they’ve had to deal with for decades.
The lame-duck President plans a visit to survey the damage. The last thing California needs right now is more hot air blowing in, but in light of Schwarzenegger’s comments about the Bush administration, the visit might be an icy one which could chill the atmosphere. Fire and ice might too contribute some much needed moisture in the air there.
The White House did not say where Bush would go to get his briefing on Thursday, but it’s always nice to kill two birds with one stone…Bush is scheduled to attend a private Republican fundraising event in the Wine Barrel of the state, Napa.
Multitasking, one quote fits all…we should all be able to rest well knowing there are so many wise captains at the helms.
Photo: NASA’s Terra Satellite…only a small portion of the California fires are shown.
Labels: Bush, Climate Change, EPA, Global Warming, Pope, Schwarzenegger
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Global warming is making some Republican’s hot under the collar.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Biofuels are becoming the next Bogeyman. Is an explosion of fear over food shortages creating a new enemy or is it the Oil Industry?
The best quote I’ve seen in defense of biofuels comes from Brazil’s President Lula. “Don’t tell me, for the love of God, that food is expensive because of biodiesel. Food is expensive because the world wasn’t prepared to see millions of Chinese, Indians, Africans, Brazilians and Latin Americans eat,” say Lula.
Biofuels are being billed as the diversion of food resources. Jean Ziegler at the U.N. calls biofuels a “crime against humanity,” Oil-rich Venezuela warns that biofuels could increase malnutrition in Latin America.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel says, the rise in food prices is due to “inadequate agricultural policies in developing countries”. Merkel says “insufficient forecasts of changes in nutritional habits” in emerging markets are also part of the problem.
Imagine having debate over the ’second meal’. I guess that’s what Merkel feels is a change in nutritional habits. It must be shocking to think people might consider two meals a day. Merkel says of India, “People are eating twice a day, and if a third of one billion people in India do that, it adds up to 300 million people.” Indeed.
Imagine 100 million Chinese suddenly start drinking milk. I would imagine if the world starts eating like the Americans they will start dropping from heart disease and obesity like the Americans too. Perhaps those figures should be added into the mix of long range food forecasts.
Germany is the largest biofuels producer in Europe. Second is France whose biofuels program is said to use up only 7% of French fields.
The World Bank reports, increased bio-fuel production has contributed to the rise in food prices. World Bank President Bob Zoelick called biofuels a “significant contributor” to soaring food prices around the world.
On Tuesday a law went into affect in Britain that requires 2.5 % of all gasoline and diesel sold be derived from biofuels.
What’s the upshot? For now it seems we can’t move to cleaner forms of energy and feed the planet.
How is it possible this global food crisis has seemingly blind-sided the globe?
Labels: Bio Fuels, Climate Change, Food Shortage, Global Warming, Merkel, Survivalist, World Bank
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Will Biofuels Die of Starvation?
Friday, April 18, 2008
On April 9, we published a little entry about bigger families becoming the new status symbol. We mentioned that Ted Turner thinks global warming could lead to cannibalism. Could it be the famous ‘mouth of the south’ got it right?
Market analysts started to verbalize that the cost of food would be taking a sharp
rise as the price per barrel of oil kept hitting record highs. Stories about an eminent lack of food looming on the horizon weren’t being dealt with, not with any sense of urgency at least. No, there was no time for that, not with the U.S. election coverage, designed to send the nation into a collective coma playing non-stop.
Then Ted Turner came out with his comments on too many people too little food and how someday we would all be dead from starvation and those left would be eating each other.
A day or two later the news did mention the Haitians were actually rioting over the price of food. Those riots did result in lowering the price of rice. Then, like a pot that finally boiled over, the stories began to spill out over the Internet. The crisis is still only trickling out over cable news. But, the news about LiLo, the Britster, Obama and Clinton is still abundant. Abundant Hollywood and Washington D.C. news, unlike the world wide lack of food.
Port-Au-Prince, Cairo, the sub-Saharan, and Malaysia. Governments in some Asian countries have too limits on how much rice can be purchased in an effort to limit the hoarding of food by panicked shoppers. Even Thailand which exports millions
of tons more rice than it consumes has taken steps to limit the amount of rice shoppers can buy.
El Salvador’s President Saca calls the impending crisis a scandalous storm that might become a hurricane. “How long can we withstand the situation? We have to feed our people, and commodities are becoming scarce.” Saca also said, “This is a perfect storm,” while attending the World Economic Forum on Latin America earlier this week.
On April 11, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)warned that food riots in developing countries will spread unless something was done about the price of food for the poor. FAO director General Jacques Diouf said at a news conference “The reality is that people are dying already in the riots.”
There are reportedly food riots taking place in 22 nations already. Food riots had already broken out in Indonesia, the Philippines and Haiti plus several African countries. North Korea may be on the brink. Will global warming clean out a cupboard near you?
Labels: Food Crisis, Food Riots, Food Shortage, Global Warming, Ted Turner, U.N. FAO
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Where Has All The Food Gone? Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard; maybe it’s there.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
The West Coast fishery managers put it to a vote; suffer now or maybe suffer forever. They voted on Thursday to ban salmon fishing for one year hoping a rest will allow the salmon population to recover along the Oregon and California coast.
Two years ago the salmon catch was only at 80% of normal and the Commerce Department estimated the losses then at $16 million. This year with the catch being 0% of normal the losses will be unthinkable.
The loss of the king salmon is being billed as the “catastrophic disappearance” of the famous fish.
6 years ago the Sacramento River and tributaries had more than 800,000 salmon spawning. The predictions for this coming fall are a frightening 50,000. The reason for the vanishing king salmon (chinook) could be a ’sudden lack of nutrient-rich deep ocean upwellings. The sudden lack is thought to be caused by ocean temperature changes.
The decline in the salmon isn’t something that happened overnight in spite of the sudden lack of upwelling. There can be problems in the ocean that affect the salmon populations, or problems in the rivers that do the same. This year there are problems in both and that spells catastrophic.
As gas reaches $4.00 a gallon in the U.S. a lovely salmon entree any favorite eatery could reach $40.00 a portion.
This has to be good news for the salmon aquaculture business. For the consumer trying to stay clear of Malachite Green, Ciprofloxacin and Enrofloxacin just to name a few known toxins in aqua-farmed fish this ban on salmon fishing is bad news.
The list of reasons for the down turn in salmon populations could be a foot long. For years juvenile salmon have been turning up in irrigation ditches and in some cases dead juveniles have turned up in fields that are irrigated by those ditches. The laws requiring screens that hold back young salmon have not been enforced and the regulations are not uniform.
Diseases that spread quickly through high density farmed salmon populations can spread to adjacent waters. Some salmon often escape and compromise nearby native salmon habitat.
This news release from the Pacific Fishery Management Council indicates just how bad the situation really is for the salmon population. It also indicates this news came rather suddenly after a very successful rehabilitation of the Chinook previously known as the “work horse”.
Labels: Ciprofloxacin, Enrofloxacin, Global Warming, Malachite Green, Ocean, Ocean Habitat, Salmon, aquaculture, upwelling
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Salmon Season Canceled; Oregon and California take steps to protect the species.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Ted Turner recently made the collective tongues start wagging when he said, “Global warming could lead to cannibalism.”
The famous Turner, who has 5 children of his own, recently told Charlie Rose one way to combat global warming was to stabilize the population. I guess that’s fine for the little people, but for those in the world with the means to transport them in huge gas guzzling tanks and the means to feed all those extra mouths the rules just don’t apply.
“Too many people are using too much stuff” says Turner. Who could disagree with that? There are too many people using too much stuff. But, who is using too much stuff really?
I’d be happy to go toe to toe with Turner. I’ll give up one of my private jets for every one he will give up. Heck I’ll even give up three of my children if he gives up three of his. As you can probably tell…I only have 2 kids. Back in the 70’s I decided to go with that whole zero population growth idea. You know the one that would be good for the planet…Ted opted out on that notion back then. It’s always nice to see that people can change their position; even if it is ‘after the fact’.
The Department of Agriculture estimates that each American child costs an average of 204,060 to raise until the age of 18. They must be estimating how much it costs to raise one of Turner’s kids, or Britney Spear’s kids. For the average Joe, that figure is as meaningless as me saying I’ll give up one of my private jets…In whose world?
“In a world where the young rich use their $13,000.00 Birkin bags as diaper bags…” Are you kidding me? What is a Birkin Bag?
According to Ted Turner, just feeding these kids is going to be a challenge when global warming finally takes over. Ted says, in 30 or 40 years “basically none of the crops will grow”. “Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals.”
Heads up Ted…if the ‘rest of us’ stop having kids..there won’t be anything for your progeny to eat. You might want to start rethinking your position ‘again’.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau the median income in the U.S. was $48,201.00. We have people like Turner to thank for pushing up those numbers. America loves to ‘rank on a curve’. The bottom 20% of households earned less than $23,202.00.
The top 6.37% roughly earned 1/3 of all the income…Well done.
Maybe 6.37% of the people need to stop “using too much stuff”.
Labels: Birkin Bag, Global Warming, Ted Turner
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Bigger Families the New Status Symbol. But can you really haul them without a Hummer?
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Decades ago, James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York was crying carbon dioxide,CO2 in the atmosphere would lead to global warming sooner than had been previously predicted. In 1981 Hansen was ringing the alarms that climatologists had missed their predictions by as many as 30 years.
Since then Hansen has been facing an uphill climb with more and more obstacles being placed before him by administration after administration. He says now, “Interference with communication of science to the public has been greater during the current administration than at any time in my career.”
Is the government really trying to silence science? Why would the government, who in reality, is the employee of the tax payer, want to keep the truth from their bosses?
Evidently the government no longer works for the tax payers. Hansen thinks the policy makers are “the people who need to know are ignorant of the actual status of the matter, and the gravity of the matter, and most important, the urgency of the matter.”
Exxon Mobil profits exceed $11.7 Billion for the 4th quarter of 2007 so it’s no surprise they find themselves with heavy pockets. Their pockets are even heavier when the fat politicians crawl inside to pick them.
Jim Hansen was one of Time Magazine’s top 100 most influential people in 2006.
Labels: CO2, Global Warming, James Hansen, Speak no Evil
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Earth In Crisis; We can’t say they didn’t warn us; or can we?
Friday, March 21, 2008
The White House’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2009 restored a bit of good news for 3 of 5 key climate instruments crucial in tracking earth changes. CERES, a sensor to measure the Earth’s radiation, another instrument that tracks solar irradiance and the OMPS-Limb instrument (Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite) all received a sentence commute in the proposed 2009 budget.
The death sentence handed down to 2 other instruments intended to measure sea-surface temperatures and wind directions over the oceans were left twisting in the wind.
Given the fact that scientists, on a whole, generally behave in an unflappable manner hearing words and phrases such as; ‘alarm bells’, ‘borders on criminal negligence’,'devastating’, ‘grave jeopardy’ and ‘blinding’ do not evoke feelings of confidence in the future. Since blowing winds and sea-surface temperatures are two key ingredients increasing the dead zones in our oceans.
A panel of scientists at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science held in Boston last month reported…Climate change is rapidly transforming the world’s oceans by increasing the temperature and acidity of seawater, and altering atmospheric and oceanic circulation…
In the past ocean dead zones could be attributed to fertilizers, farm run-off, and sewage which over fed phytoplankton which are eaten by bacteria when they die that use up the oxygen in the water. These dead zones in the past were more likely to be found in places where rivers run into the oceans like the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico, but more dead zones are being found in the open oceans.
We need to have more ability to observe these growing dead zones, not less.
Image NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Scientific Visualization Studio
Labels: AAAS, Global Warming, NOAA, NPOESS, Ocean, Phytoplankton, ocean dead zone
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Ocean Dead Zones Observation Left Twisting In The Wind.
