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Earth Day sounds alarm on climate catastrophe
As Earth Day 2006 approaches, Barry Heimlich is worried about global warming. He lives 4 miles from the Atlantic Ocean in South Florida’s Broward County. For the millions of Floridians living in “Hurricane Alley,” increasingly severe tropical storms and rising sea levels fueled by global warming pose a real and present danger as well as a long-term threat.
“It’s a global problem, not a local one, but it’s going to manifest itself locally,” he said.
Multimillion-dollar projects to stem beach erosion in the area are fighting a losing battle, said Heimlich, who is president of the Broward County Audubon Society. “I don’t have to tell you beaches are important to the economy here. In Broward County most of the beaches have been washed away, and the same is true in Palm Beach.”
Rising sea levels pose a longer-term catastrophic threat. South Florida, one of the nation’s fastest growing metropolitan areas, is particularly vulnerable. It is basically flat. Parts of Dade County are below sea level. A 3-foot sea level rise would wipe out beaches and inundate coastal wetlands, causing flooding throughout the area. Much of the Everglades would be engulfed. Sea levels are expected to rise by up to 3 feet or more within the next 90 years as a result of global warming, as land-based ice melts and ocean temperatures rise. Some scientists say melting of ice caps and glaciers could raise sea levels as much as 25 feet.
In addition there’s the threat to the complex fresh water systems that not only maintain the Everglades but provide the region’s drinking water. “We get all our water from the fresh water aquifer about 100 feet below us,” Heimlich said in a phone interview. Intrusion of salt water from ocean flooding would “jeopardize our water supply.”
A thousand miles north in the Midwest, global warming means greater weather extremes — harsher storms, more tornados, Emily Green, senior Midwest representative for the Sierra Club, told the World. The region can expect colder winters, hotter summers and declining lake levels, spelling trouble for farmers and for Great Lakes shipping.
“The bottom line is, we’re really at a tipping point, about to set our planet on a course of no return,” Green said.
A growing volume of scientific research has shown major global climate changes over the past century, driven by human activity that is heating up the earth’s atmosphere.
“Human activities, mainly the burning of coal and oil, but also agriculture and deforestation, have dramatically increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere,” Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said in a March 30 speech at Yale University. “The impacts we are seeing now — today — are happening much sooner than anyone might have anticipated even a decade ago. These changes were predicted, but even the scientists who made the predictions are surprised at the rate at which they are now occurring.”
Despite Bush administration efforts to squash the evidence, polls show increased public concern over the issue. In an ABC/Time/Stanford University poll last month more than two-thirds said the federal government “should do more than it’s doing now to try to deal with global warming.”
More
http://pww.org/article/articleview/8970/1/318/
Multimillion-dollar projects to stem beach erosion in the area are fighting a losing battle, said Heimlich, who is president of the Broward County Audubon Society. “I don’t have to tell you beaches are important to the economy here. In Broward County most of the beaches have been washed away, and the same is true in Palm Beach.”
Rising sea levels pose a longer-term catastrophic threat. South Florida, one of the nation’s fastest growing metropolitan areas, is particularly vulnerable. It is basically flat. Parts of Dade County are below sea level. A 3-foot sea level rise would wipe out beaches and inundate coastal wetlands, causing flooding throughout the area. Much of the Everglades would be engulfed. Sea levels are expected to rise by up to 3 feet or more within the next 90 years as a result of global warming, as land-based ice melts and ocean temperatures rise. Some scientists say melting of ice caps and glaciers could raise sea levels as much as 25 feet.
In addition there’s the threat to the complex fresh water systems that not only maintain the Everglades but provide the region’s drinking water. “We get all our water from the fresh water aquifer about 100 feet below us,” Heimlich said in a phone interview. Intrusion of salt water from ocean flooding would “jeopardize our water supply.”
A thousand miles north in the Midwest, global warming means greater weather extremes — harsher storms, more tornados, Emily Green, senior Midwest representative for the Sierra Club, told the World. The region can expect colder winters, hotter summers and declining lake levels, spelling trouble for farmers and for Great Lakes shipping.
“The bottom line is, we’re really at a tipping point, about to set our planet on a course of no return,” Green said.
A growing volume of scientific research has shown major global climate changes over the past century, driven by human activity that is heating up the earth’s atmosphere.
“Human activities, mainly the burning of coal and oil, but also agriculture and deforestation, have dramatically increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere,” Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said in a March 30 speech at Yale University. “The impacts we are seeing now — today — are happening much sooner than anyone might have anticipated even a decade ago. These changes were predicted, but even the scientists who made the predictions are surprised at the rate at which they are now occurring.”
Despite Bush administration efforts to squash the evidence, polls show increased public concern over the issue. In an ABC/Time/Stanford University poll last month more than two-thirds said the federal government “should do more than it’s doing now to try to deal with global warming.”
More
http://pww.org/article/articleview/8970/1/318/
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Two Big Ideas to Keep in Mind When Considering Climate Woes This Week
As you consider the many worthy Earth Day stories this week, we pray you will keep the following fresh reconnaissance in mind. It includes the bad news on the most imminent CO2 disasters we now face, and the good news that understanding these crises reveals a remarkable short-term cure.
TO BEGIN WITH THE WORST: THE SEAS ARE DYING AS WE SPEAK.
The terrestrial harms of global warming, which we're finally hearing the truth about, will descend upon us slowly in 30 to 100 years and seriously affect our children's lives. This will be tragic enough, but if you look beneath the surrounding seas, you will find a series of grimmer tragedies that are already underway.
The increasing CO2-driven acidity of the surface oceans is not simply attacking coral; much worse for the biosphere, it is lethally thinning the carbonate bodies of diatoms. Paraphrasing Whitman's "all beef is grass" insight, oceanographer Henry Bigelow declared, "All fish is diatoms" (diatoms being half the tiny plankton plants that feed all swimming life and exhale 30% of the global oxygen supply as well).
This logically transposes to "no diatoms = no fish and a breathtaking drop in breathable air," which you would think deserves some news. Or consider the recent 80% die-off in krill, the tiny swarming shrimp-like crustaceans that feed on plankton and then nourish our sea birds, fisheries and whales. Their startling collapse has shocked cetologists who fear this means the great whale populations may never be restored.
The current decimation of the Atlantic cod, the Pacific salmon and most large fish worldwide is of course partially due to avaricious corporate fishing, but a bigger factor is the steep decline in their plankton-rooted diets. There is more bad ocean news, but you get the drift, and if you follow it you will see that the cause of the fish famine suggests a powerful commonsense remedy.
FINALLY THE GOOD NEWS: PLANKTON POWER HOLDS THE CURE.
In 2002 NASA reported a 6~9% global die-off in plankton since their first marine census in 1980, with some areas in the Pacific showing a 25% drop. The plankton are suffering from a shortage of micronutrient iron usually delivered in wind-borne dust from arid lands. NASA says that dust has dropped off 25% in the last two decades, largely due to human activities.
This still sounds like the bad news part, but a great green hope arises when you add some simple math. For example, restoring just the 6% of plankton that we've starved would not only recharge the food chain and reduce marine acidity, it would deep ocean sequester an extra 3 billion tons of CO2 annually or half of all our manmade emissions today.
Here the math gets more amazing, because we only have to replenish one ton of missing iron to turn 367,000 tons of CO2 into plankton biomass. Since 10-~20% of that carbon sinks into the abyss for centuries or more, we can evidently regenerate all the plankton we've killed and halve our global warming gases with just a few hundred thousand tons of inexpensive iron dust.
It gets even better because thanks to the international carbon markets that the Kyoto Protocol created, every ton of CO2 the plankton sink can now be sold quite profitably. In Europe, carbon credits now trade for more than $30/ton CO2e. Imagine if green groups were to adopt this enterprise and dedicate the money that they make healing the seas to ridding us of the supply side half of the carbon threat as well. Using these resources to push conservation, clean renewable fuels and radical policy reform, we could make all human activity carbon neutral within our children's lifetime.
Even if everyone joined Kyoto and met their targets by 2012, it would only reduce our greenhouse gases by 6% over 1990 levels. Restoring 6% of the plankton would slash them by half as well as generate the funds to fully cleanse the air and move past fossil fuels. Earth Day stories about hybrids, alternative fuels, and "50 simple things" are fine, but the unknown plight and promise of the seas is news that really counts.
Our firm, Planktos, Inc., is working to revive the seas in the manner suggested above. We use technology proven in ten international ocean trials, invoke strict scientific oversight, and honor the precautionary principle by insisting that all plankton iron replenishment halt at the 6% restoration line. Many others will eventually join in this task since it is our only realistic hope, and we welcome them to begin their education, cooperation and/or competition at http://www.planktos.com.
Sincerely, Russ George, Planktos CEO
As you consider the many worthy Earth Day stories this week, we pray you will keep the following fresh reconnaissance in mind. It includes the bad news on the most imminent CO2 disasters we now face, and the good news that understanding these crises reveals a remarkable short-term cure.
TO BEGIN WITH THE WORST: THE SEAS ARE DYING AS WE SPEAK.
The terrestrial harms of global warming, which we're finally hearing the truth about, will descend upon us slowly in 30 to 100 years and seriously affect our children's lives. This will be tragic enough, but if you look beneath the surrounding seas, you will find a series of grimmer tragedies that are already underway.
The increasing CO2-driven acidity of the surface oceans is not simply attacking coral; much worse for the biosphere, it is lethally thinning the carbonate bodies of diatoms. Paraphrasing Whitman's "all beef is grass" insight, oceanographer Henry Bigelow declared, "All fish is diatoms" (diatoms being half the tiny plankton plants that feed all swimming life and exhale 30% of the global oxygen supply as well).
This logically transposes to "no diatoms = no fish and a breathtaking drop in breathable air," which you would think deserves some news. Or consider the recent 80% die-off in krill, the tiny swarming shrimp-like crustaceans that feed on plankton and then nourish our sea birds, fisheries and whales. Their startling collapse has shocked cetologists who fear this means the great whale populations may never be restored.
The current decimation of the Atlantic cod, the Pacific salmon and most large fish worldwide is of course partially due to avaricious corporate fishing, but a bigger factor is the steep decline in their plankton-rooted diets. There is more bad ocean news, but you get the drift, and if you follow it you will see that the cause of the fish famine suggests a powerful commonsense remedy.
FINALLY THE GOOD NEWS: PLANKTON POWER HOLDS THE CURE.
In 2002 NASA reported a 6~9% global die-off in plankton since their first marine census in 1980, with some areas in the Pacific showing a 25% drop. The plankton are suffering from a shortage of micronutrient iron usually delivered in wind-borne dust from arid lands. NASA says that dust has dropped off 25% in the last two decades, largely due to human activities.
This still sounds like the bad news part, but a great green hope arises when you add some simple math. For example, restoring just the 6% of plankton that we've starved would not only recharge the food chain and reduce marine acidity, it would deep ocean sequester an extra 3 billion tons of CO2 annually or half of all our manmade emissions today.
Here the math gets more amazing, because we only have to replenish one ton of missing iron to turn 367,000 tons of CO2 into plankton biomass. Since 10-~20% of that carbon sinks into the abyss for centuries or more, we can evidently regenerate all the plankton we've killed and halve our global warming gases with just a few hundred thousand tons of inexpensive iron dust.
It gets even better because thanks to the international carbon markets that the Kyoto Protocol created, every ton of CO2 the plankton sink can now be sold quite profitably. In Europe, carbon credits now trade for more than $30/ton CO2e. Imagine if green groups were to adopt this enterprise and dedicate the money that they make healing the seas to ridding us of the supply side half of the carbon threat as well. Using these resources to push conservation, clean renewable fuels and radical policy reform, we could make all human activity carbon neutral within our children's lifetime.
Even if everyone joined Kyoto and met their targets by 2012, it would only reduce our greenhouse gases by 6% over 1990 levels. Restoring 6% of the plankton would slash them by half as well as generate the funds to fully cleanse the air and move past fossil fuels. Earth Day stories about hybrids, alternative fuels, and "50 simple things" are fine, but the unknown plight and promise of the seas is news that really counts.
Our firm, Planktos, Inc., is working to revive the seas in the manner suggested above. We use technology proven in ten international ocean trials, invoke strict scientific oversight, and honor the precautionary principle by insisting that all plankton iron replenishment halt at the 6% restoration line. Many others will eventually join in this task since it is our only realistic hope, and we welcome them to begin their education, cooperation and/or competition at http://www.planktos.com.
Sincerely, Russ George, Planktos CEO
For more information:
http://www.planktos.com
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