Tonight I’m just going to bitch about this one article, but there’s plenty of material there. I’ve talked before about global warming, and how the environment as a whole is in a downward spiral. It seems like other people are finally realizing just how bad it is. Kinda. Maybe.
Fishing, climate change and pollution have left an indelible mark on virtually all of the world's oceans, according to a huge study that has mapped the total human impact on the seas for the first time. Scientists found that almost no areas have been left pristine and more than 40% of the world's oceans have been heavily affected.
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"Our results show that when these and other individual impacts are summed up the big picture looks much worse than I imagine most people expected. It was certainly a surprise to me."
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The oceans at the poles are less affected but melting ice sheets will leave them vulnerable, researchers said.
And in response to that last bit, I give you this, which says that Antarctica is poised and ready for a massive turnover. So just think of what’s already going on elsewhere that our gurus and scholars haven’t twigged to yet. These are two examples of what’s started, but from the looks of it, they still don’t have any idea just how big the repercussions will be. Anyway, back to the first article.
Fiorenza Micheli, an associate professor of biology at Stanford University, said the maps should guide ocean management in future.
"By seeing where different activities occur and whether they occur in sensitive ecosystems we can design management strategies aimed at shifting activities away from the most sensitive areas."
…and instead shifting them toward other areas that will become sensitive, because we’re now dumping our shit there instead, right?
To make the map scientists compiled global data on the impacts of 17 human activities including fishing, coastal development, fertiliser runoff and pollution from shipping traffic.
That’s a start, but I’m willing to bet they didn’t look at the feedback loops, the other “natural” effects that human activities have set in motion.
Halpern said the results, which were published in the journal Science and presented yesterday to the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, still gave room for hope. "With targeted efforts to protect the chunks of the ocean that remain relatively pristine we have a good chance of preserving these areas in good condition."
Check me on this, but that sounds like it’s mutually exclusive with the previous plan. You can either save the areas that haven’t been tainted yet, or you can take advantage of those areas to try and salvage the areas that are already heavily compromised, but not both.
"Humans will always use the oceans for recreation, extraction of resources, and for commercial activity such as shipping. This is a good thing. Our goal, and really our necessity, is to do this in a sustainable way so that our oceans remain in a healthy state and continue to provide us with the resources we need and want."
Well, no, not necessarily. When the oceans become too polluted, they won’t be usable for recreation anymore. When there aren’t any more resources to be extracted, that’ll be done too. And shipping will be pointless if nobody’s got any goods to ship, or the means to ship them (or is just too greedy to share what they’ve got with those who need it). And what do you mean, remain in a healthy state? They haven’t been in a healthy state for over 200 years. And because of that, they’re already failing to “provide us with the resources we need and want.”
Fools. Blind bloody Panglossian fools.
18 February 2008
11 February 2008
It's not just global politics that's getting ugly
After the drought last year in the southeast, Georgia (and Atlanta in particular) is still aching for water. And with no relief in sight, they're turning to their neighbor, Tennessee. But it's not an appeal for help, it's a demand: "Hey, give us back what's ours!" To which Tennessee is responding, "Huh? What you talking' 'bout Willis?"
To try to alleviate their water shortage issues, Georgia wants a share of the Tennessee river, which is just barely outside the northwest corner of Georgia. And to support their claim to a share of the river, they're citing the erroneous surveying job back in 1818, which placed the line just over a mile too far south. Moving the line to where it's "supposed" to be would make the river flow through part of Georgia, entitling it to a share of the flow.
Granted, this may well not develop into anything, but it shows the stress that people are under, and how unreasonable they're willing to get in order to maintain their livelihoods, rather than facing up to the problem and doing something to fix it. Silly little (literal) border conflicts are going to escalate and become uglier and more numerous as more and more resources run shorter and shorter.
Here's another example: Electricity riots in India.
And this one is perfect, in its circularity: Iraq can’t pump and refine oil without electricity. The electricity comes in from Turkey. Turkey doesn’t have enough oil to prevent rolling blackouts (which are now euphemized to “power shedding” for some silly reason), so Iraq gets shafted, and their power gets cut off, which further ensures that Turkey doesn't get enough oil. How much longer before we get armed conflict, one way or the other? Especially with Halliburton over there to make sure the oil keeps flowing?
To try to alleviate their water shortage issues, Georgia wants a share of the Tennessee river, which is just barely outside the northwest corner of Georgia. And to support their claim to a share of the river, they're citing the erroneous surveying job back in 1818, which placed the line just over a mile too far south. Moving the line to where it's "supposed" to be would make the river flow through part of Georgia, entitling it to a share of the flow.
Granted, this may well not develop into anything, but it shows the stress that people are under, and how unreasonable they're willing to get in order to maintain their livelihoods, rather than facing up to the problem and doing something to fix it. Silly little (literal) border conflicts are going to escalate and become uglier and more numerous as more and more resources run shorter and shorter.
Here's another example: Electricity riots in India.
And this one is perfect, in its circularity: Iraq can’t pump and refine oil without electricity. The electricity comes in from Turkey. Turkey doesn’t have enough oil to prevent rolling blackouts (which are now euphemized to “power shedding” for some silly reason), so Iraq gets shafted, and their power gets cut off, which further ensures that Turkey doesn't get enough oil. How much longer before we get armed conflict, one way or the other? Especially with Halliburton over there to make sure the oil keeps flowing?
07 February 2008
“Fear accompanies the possibility of death. Calm shepherds its certainty.”
A quote that I love from the end of the first season of Farscape, that has stuck with me for many years now.
I’m just gonna post a bunch of excerpts from this, a blog post by one of the people behind the movie What a Way to Go that I started talking about last fall.
Hansen says, and McKibben underscores, that there is a critical maximum number of parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to heed to prevent climatic catastrophe. That number, he says, is between 300 and 350.
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We’re at 383 parts per million and counting, well past the number Hansen suggests is critical.
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Hansen and McKibben say it’s not too late. They say: All we have to do is stop using fossil fuels… Now and everywhere.
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It would take closing the highways, now and everywhere. It would take ending industrial agriculture, now and everywhere. It would mean shutting off everyone’s natural gas and oil fueled furnaces, now and everywhere.
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Everything most of us take for granted as part of our daily lives is currently dependent on fossil fuels. When McKibben says “now and everywhere” he’s talking about the shutdown of industrial civilization.
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We asked everyone we talked to, “What’s it going to take for people to change?” And what person after person said was, “It’s going to take a catastrophe. It’s going to take a catastrophe before people will wake up.”
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It’s too late. It’s too late to get out of catastrophe. There’s no way this civilization is going to grind to a halt, get off the fossil fuel train, reduce the population voluntarily by 3/4 and start growing food sustainably, without catastrophe. We’re in for it. And we don’t even know what we’re in for.
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When James Hansen and Bill McKibben say, “It’s not too late,” are they not supporting all of America to embrace denial?
Are statements that suggest it’s not too late not an example of refusing to accept external reality because that reality seems too threatening?
Are such statements not made to argue against a stimulus that provokes high anxiety: the stimulus being the idea that it IS too late?
Are these statements not used to “resolve” our conflicted emotions by supporting Americans to refuse to perceive or consciously acknowledge these unpleasant aspects of external reality?
Are our best and brightest scientists and journalists, Hansen and McKibben being two representatives of those, caught in denial themselves? Or are they just stumped about what to say, what to do, how to be with all of this?
…
Here’s the data I look at: net geothermal, solar, wind, wood and waste electric power went from 195 billion kilowatt hours in 1980 to a whopping 370 billion in 2005.
Wow. Almost double in 25 years. Is there a bright spot here? Those look like big numbers and a large increase. Maybe that’s good. I wonder how those numbers compare with total fossil fuel energy use.
Whoops. Fossil fuels actually provide 93% of the world’s energy use. Renewables provide only about 7%.
I’m just gonna post a bunch of excerpts from this, a blog post by one of the people behind the movie What a Way to Go that I started talking about last fall.
Hansen says, and McKibben underscores, that there is a critical maximum number of parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to heed to prevent climatic catastrophe. That number, he says, is between 300 and 350.
…
We’re at 383 parts per million and counting, well past the number Hansen suggests is critical.
…
Hansen and McKibben say it’s not too late. They say: All we have to do is stop using fossil fuels… Now and everywhere.
…
It would take closing the highways, now and everywhere. It would take ending industrial agriculture, now and everywhere. It would mean shutting off everyone’s natural gas and oil fueled furnaces, now and everywhere.
…
Everything most of us take for granted as part of our daily lives is currently dependent on fossil fuels. When McKibben says “now and everywhere” he’s talking about the shutdown of industrial civilization.
…
We asked everyone we talked to, “What’s it going to take for people to change?” And what person after person said was, “It’s going to take a catastrophe. It’s going to take a catastrophe before people will wake up.”
…
It’s too late. It’s too late to get out of catastrophe. There’s no way this civilization is going to grind to a halt, get off the fossil fuel train, reduce the population voluntarily by 3/4 and start growing food sustainably, without catastrophe. We’re in for it. And we don’t even know what we’re in for.
…
When James Hansen and Bill McKibben say, “It’s not too late,” are they not supporting all of America to embrace denial?
Are statements that suggest it’s not too late not an example of refusing to accept external reality because that reality seems too threatening?
Are such statements not made to argue against a stimulus that provokes high anxiety: the stimulus being the idea that it IS too late?
Are these statements not used to “resolve” our conflicted emotions by supporting Americans to refuse to perceive or consciously acknowledge these unpleasant aspects of external reality?
Are our best and brightest scientists and journalists, Hansen and McKibben being two representatives of those, caught in denial themselves? Or are they just stumped about what to say, what to do, how to be with all of this?
…
Here’s the data I look at: net geothermal, solar, wind, wood and waste electric power went from 195 billion kilowatt hours in 1980 to a whopping 370 billion in 2005.
Wow. Almost double in 25 years. Is there a bright spot here? Those look like big numbers and a large increase. Maybe that’s good. I wonder how those numbers compare with total fossil fuel energy use.
Whoops. Fossil fuels actually provide 93% of the world’s energy use. Renewables provide only about 7%.
27 January 2008
Biofuels are not the answer
The first and most obvious problem with biofuels is that they’re not really solving the pollution problem. At best, it’s a net gain of zero, though admittedly that’s a hell of a lot better than we get out of fossil fuels. Burning biofuels still releases CO2 out of green plants and dumps it into the atmosphere. The fact that it all came out of the atmosphere (as opposed to out of the ground) just means that we break even. That’s not a solution. We need to actively reduce the amount of atmospheric CO2, not just recycle it. The best way to do that (and to make progress regarding many other problems) is to encourage permanent plant growth, not just cut it down every year so we can plant it anew the next year.
But the real problems arise when you get a further step removed from biofuel production itself. The cultivated (and even cultivatable) land is getting divided between fuel production and food production, and which direction the plants go will depend on who’s paying more for it. Which means that merchants will be paying more for both fuel and food, because they have to outcompete the other, which then means that both food and fuel prices for the end consumer will skyrocket.
The solution then is to increase production, which will lower prices. It will also be profitable to bring more land into production, simply because it’s so lucrative. Which then means that more wild land will be put to the plow. Most likely it will have lain fallow in the US, since there’s so little natural growth left, but in Brazil they’re increasing deforestation rates specifically for the purposes of increasing fuel production. That means more CO2 being released, regardless of what type of vegetation is being destroyed, and more annual turnover, meaning less standing biomass, and more CO2 sitting in the atmosphere.
But don’t take my word for it. As usual, I present you with a plethora of links backing up my wild ideas.
But the real problems arise when you get a further step removed from biofuel production itself. The cultivated (and even cultivatable) land is getting divided between fuel production and food production, and which direction the plants go will depend on who’s paying more for it. Which means that merchants will be paying more for both fuel and food, because they have to outcompete the other, which then means that both food and fuel prices for the end consumer will skyrocket.
The solution then is to increase production, which will lower prices. It will also be profitable to bring more land into production, simply because it’s so lucrative. Which then means that more wild land will be put to the plow. Most likely it will have lain fallow in the US, since there’s so little natural growth left, but in Brazil they’re increasing deforestation rates specifically for the purposes of increasing fuel production. That means more CO2 being released, regardless of what type of vegetation is being destroyed, and more annual turnover, meaning less standing biomass, and more CO2 sitting in the atmosphere.
But don’t take my word for it. As usual, I present you with a plethora of links backing up my wild ideas.
25 January 2008
Peaked Oil, OPEC, and other shenanigans
So everybody’s heard of Peak Oil at this point, even if some people are still in denial. But that denial is getting progressively tougher to maintain. Even the Wall Street Journal (review here), which has historically denied it completely, has finally fessed up to “plateauing oil”, and a “limit looming on production” – they can’t keep up the farce that oil production will continue to increase indefinitely anymore.
If people were content with leveling off (which they’d refer to as “stagnation”), it wouldn’t be that big a deal. Gas prices are high, but they wouldn’t continue to get higher. But instead, the overriding theme is “bigger-better-faster-more”, which means that the demand for oil will continue to increase. When demand is high and supply low, prices go up. Simple economics, and it doesn’t require more than half a brain to see it.
So not only does the price of gas continue to increase, but the price of everything else that relies on oil to move around the country increases. These days, buying local requires you to go to certain stores, or at least certain sections of a store, and usually to pay more. But as the cost of moving stuff increases, local goods will become cheaper and more prevalent.
But that’s another post. I’m just dealing with the oil here. A couple weeks ago, Bush implored Saudi Arabia to increase oil production. They told him to stuff it, and to get the US economy and foreign policy under control, because those are the factors that are really driving up oil prices. (The economy obviously isn’t helping, and the foreign policy thing may well be true, but I don’t know enough about politics to speak on that.) Now the US Secretary of Energy is making the same plea, likely with the same result.
But seriously, what motivation does OPEC have to increase production just to reduce cost to the rest of the world? The CIA’s World Factbook says (under Economy, halfway down the page), “High oil prices have boosted growth, government revenues, and Saudi ownership of foreign assets, while enabling Riyadh to pay down domestic debt.” It’s a win-win.
But the truth is that Saudi Arabia can’t increase production. We’re entering the Tough Oil Era. We’ve already pumped all of the “easy oil” out of the ground, and what’s left is getting progressively more difficult to get to, whether because it’s in hazardous environments, logistically inaccessible, or just scattered in small, economically inviable pockets.
It’s not OPEC’s fault that they’re not increasing production. It really is getting tougher, just to maintain production, let alone increase it. But it’s safer to let the rest of the world think they’re being snobbish than to admit that they can’t increase production. Once people realize that dipomacy is ineffective, then they start looking at military strategies. So all the Saudis are actually doing is buying time. But really, that’s all any of us are doing, trying to put off the crash a bit longer.
If people were content with leveling off (which they’d refer to as “stagnation”), it wouldn’t be that big a deal. Gas prices are high, but they wouldn’t continue to get higher. But instead, the overriding theme is “bigger-better-faster-more”, which means that the demand for oil will continue to increase. When demand is high and supply low, prices go up. Simple economics, and it doesn’t require more than half a brain to see it.
So not only does the price of gas continue to increase, but the price of everything else that relies on oil to move around the country increases. These days, buying local requires you to go to certain stores, or at least certain sections of a store, and usually to pay more. But as the cost of moving stuff increases, local goods will become cheaper and more prevalent.
But that’s another post. I’m just dealing with the oil here. A couple weeks ago, Bush implored Saudi Arabia to increase oil production. They told him to stuff it, and to get the US economy and foreign policy under control, because those are the factors that are really driving up oil prices. (The economy obviously isn’t helping, and the foreign policy thing may well be true, but I don’t know enough about politics to speak on that.) Now the US Secretary of Energy is making the same plea, likely with the same result.
But seriously, what motivation does OPEC have to increase production just to reduce cost to the rest of the world? The CIA’s World Factbook says (under Economy, halfway down the page), “High oil prices have boosted growth, government revenues, and Saudi ownership of foreign assets, while enabling Riyadh to pay down domestic debt.” It’s a win-win.
But the truth is that Saudi Arabia can’t increase production. We’re entering the Tough Oil Era. We’ve already pumped all of the “easy oil” out of the ground, and what’s left is getting progressively more difficult to get to, whether because it’s in hazardous environments, logistically inaccessible, or just scattered in small, economically inviable pockets.
It’s not OPEC’s fault that they’re not increasing production. It really is getting tougher, just to maintain production, let alone increase it. But it’s safer to let the rest of the world think they’re being snobbish than to admit that they can’t increase production. Once people realize that dipomacy is ineffective, then they start looking at military strategies. So all the Saudis are actually doing is buying time. But really, that’s all any of us are doing, trying to put off the crash a bit longer.
11 December 2007
One way or another, the human population is going to be reduced
In 1944, 29 reindeer were introduced to St. Matthew Island, Alaska. With no predators and an abundant food supply, the population increased to 6,000 (over 200 times the initial population) in under 20 years. This is an example of resource drawdown. Borrowing from the future to increase survival now, and it leads to overshoot. The population grew, out of control, until all of the resources were depleted, at which point it crashed. Between the severe winter of 1963-64 and the resource depletion, by 1966 there were 42 reindeer left. In the 1980s, the island’s reindeer population disappeared completely.
(More from Catton.)
This shows the importance, and the relevance of the concept of carrying capacity. I’m just going to paste in here part of that article:
Temporary exceptions
It is possible for a species to exceed its carrying capacity temporarily. Population variance occurs as part of the natural selection process but may occur more dramatically in some instances. Due to a variety of factors a determinant of carrying capacity may lag behind another. A waste product of a species, for example, may build up to toxic levels more slowly than the food supply is exhausted. The result is a fluctuation in the population around the equilibrium point that is statistically significant. These fluctuations are increases or decreases in the population until either the population returns to the original equilibrium point or a new one is established. These fluctuations may be more devastating for an ecosystem compared to gradual population corrections since if it produces drastic decreases or increases the overall effect on the ecosystem may be such that other species within the ecosystem are in turn affected and begin to move with statistical significance around their equilibrium points. The fear is a domino like effect where the final consequences are unknown and may lead to collapses of certain species or whole ecosystems.
This is exactly what’s happening now. We have exceeded the Earth’s carrying capacity for humans. If our waste products hadn’t been building up to toxic levels, we might be OK. If we weren’t exhausting our future food supply by farming with unsustainable methods, we might be OK. But both of these factors, as well as others like groundwater mining are decreasing the carrying capacity. Meanwhile the population continues to increase, exacerbating these effects, and further decreasing the resources available for whoever happens to be around in another decade.
As the end of the quoted text says, as one aspect swings out of control, it unbalances other aspects, and the dominoes start falling.
In addition, more and more of the world is trying to become like the US, to live our outsized, overblown, overconsumptive lifestyle, and the downward spiral continues. Otis Graham has said that individual Americans have 32 times the ecological footprint of someone in India. It’s not just gross population, it’s how we’re living, but they are intricately intertwined. We can’t live our current flamboyantly destructive lifestyle without people to support it, and our lifestyle allows us to support the excess people. For now.
So what can we do? For starters, quit reproducing. The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement has a nice big table of reasons (excuses) people give for having kids, what they actually mean when they say those things, and what they should do instead. While they make some good points (and oversimplify others), it ultimately won’t be enough. Too little too late.
The third graph here (another Overshoot excerpt) shows what’s happening now. Our load continues to increase, but we’re decreasing the carrying capacity. At some point, we’re going to hit the same crash the reindeer did, and die off catastrophically. And it’s going to be sooner than any program like VHEMT or any other similar organization can achieve results. Before population peaks and starts to decline “naturally” (ie, on its own, by increasing HDI and people deciding to have fewer kids), people are going to start dying en masse because of what we've done to the planet.
(More from Catton.)
This shows the importance, and the relevance of the concept of carrying capacity. I’m just going to paste in here part of that article:
Temporary exceptions
It is possible for a species to exceed its carrying capacity temporarily. Population variance occurs as part of the natural selection process but may occur more dramatically in some instances. Due to a variety of factors a determinant of carrying capacity may lag behind another. A waste product of a species, for example, may build up to toxic levels more slowly than the food supply is exhausted. The result is a fluctuation in the population around the equilibrium point that is statistically significant. These fluctuations are increases or decreases in the population until either the population returns to the original equilibrium point or a new one is established. These fluctuations may be more devastating for an ecosystem compared to gradual population corrections since if it produces drastic decreases or increases the overall effect on the ecosystem may be such that other species within the ecosystem are in turn affected and begin to move with statistical significance around their equilibrium points. The fear is a domino like effect where the final consequences are unknown and may lead to collapses of certain species or whole ecosystems.
This is exactly what’s happening now. We have exceeded the Earth’s carrying capacity for humans. If our waste products hadn’t been building up to toxic levels, we might be OK. If we weren’t exhausting our future food supply by farming with unsustainable methods, we might be OK. But both of these factors, as well as others like groundwater mining are decreasing the carrying capacity. Meanwhile the population continues to increase, exacerbating these effects, and further decreasing the resources available for whoever happens to be around in another decade.
As the end of the quoted text says, as one aspect swings out of control, it unbalances other aspects, and the dominoes start falling.
In addition, more and more of the world is trying to become like the US, to live our outsized, overblown, overconsumptive lifestyle, and the downward spiral continues. Otis Graham has said that individual Americans have 32 times the ecological footprint of someone in India. It’s not just gross population, it’s how we’re living, but they are intricately intertwined. We can’t live our current flamboyantly destructive lifestyle without people to support it, and our lifestyle allows us to support the excess people. For now.
So what can we do? For starters, quit reproducing. The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement has a nice big table of reasons (excuses) people give for having kids, what they actually mean when they say those things, and what they should do instead. While they make some good points (and oversimplify others), it ultimately won’t be enough. Too little too late.
The third graph here (another Overshoot excerpt) shows what’s happening now. Our load continues to increase, but we’re decreasing the carrying capacity. At some point, we’re going to hit the same crash the reindeer did, and die off catastrophically. And it’s going to be sooner than any program like VHEMT or any other similar organization can achieve results. Before population peaks and starts to decline “naturally” (ie, on its own, by increasing HDI and people deciding to have fewer kids), people are going to start dying en masse because of what we've done to the planet.
05 December 2007
Tipping points
Everybody’s heard about greenhouse gases, and the rainforests being destroyed and the icecaps and glaciers melting, but how about the permafrost melting? How about plankton die-offs? Albedo?
The big problem with climate change isn’t any of these things in isolation. The problem is that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. There are many feedback loops that have already been started in motion, and that’s what I’m going to be talking about here.
But first, a bit of vocabulary. A “negative feedback loop” has nothing to do with a subjective analysis of its quality, but rather is one that negates itself, that is self-correcting, returning to equilibrium. There are many of these in normal body functioning, for instance blood sugar regulation, body temperature regulation, and water and salt conservation. On the other hand, a “positive feedback loop” increases its own output, rather than cancelling; population growth is an example.
The industrial revolution started dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in radical excess of previous levels. There were various buffering mechanisms in place which prevented the effects from being felt for much of the past 150 years. One such mechanism is the oceans.
As the concentration of atmospheric CO2 increases, some of it gets absorbed into the oceans. The reaction looks like this:
CO2 + H2O = H2CO3 = H+ + HCO3-
The middle section is carbonic acid, which is what gives soda its fizz, and why old soda tastes watered-down – the reaction moves from the center to the left, giving off CO2 and leaving water behind.
But that “acid” in the name should trigger an alarm bell. As more CO2 get pushed in from the left, more hydrogen atoms (H+’s) get pushed out the right side. Which means that the more CO2 we put into the atmosphere, the more acidic the oceans get. That’s a bit of a problem.
First of all, it’s only a buffer. It won’t continue to absorb CO2 indefinitely.
Second, the acidification has other effects. If you drop acid on limestone, (formula CaCO3, notice how similar that is above), it bubbles off CO2 too. Limestone is made of the compressed and crushed shells of plankton, the little floating photosynthetic things that make up the base of the marine food chain. So if we follow this chain, it means that the acid in the water starts breaking down the shells of the living plankton, which understandably would have some detrimental effects on their survival.
So the plankton start dying off, which causes the higher levels of the marine food chain to starve. As if we’re not already having enough problems with collapsing fisheries. They are also a very large carbon sink, and their mass death releases even more CO2 into the atmosphere, and the greenhouse effect continues to spiral and escalate.
Furthermore, since they’re not photosynthesizing anymore, they’re not producing oxygen anymore. And phytoplankton produce fully half of the oxygen we breathe.
So next we turn to the arctic permafrost. Or what’s left of it, anyway. All of the organic matter buried in the frozen peat bogs in Siberia and Canada has been fermenting (because of a lack of oxygen), and the resulting methane has been building up. The bubbles haven’t been able to move and escape, because the ground has been frozen. Until recently. Now that the permafrost is thawing, the methane is being released, and the bitch of it is that each molecule of methane contributes to the greenhouse effect 20 times as much as CO2 does.
Another quick chemistry lesson: If a gas molecule in the atmosphere is composed of three or more atoms, it contributes to the greenhouse effect. Nitrogen and oxygen gases, which compose over 98% of the atmosphere, are composed of two atoms each (N2 and O2), and are not greenhouse gases. CO2 consists of two oxygen atoms and a carbon, and is a greenhouse gas. Methane is composed of five atoms, a carbon and four hydrogens (CH4).
And now trending into a meteorology lesson: Water vapor is also a greenhouse gas (H2O), and the amount of water the air can hold is only going to increase as temperature does. That’s why they always talk about relative humidity, because it’s a sliding scale based on the air temperature at the time. That’s also where “dewpoint” comes from – given so much (total) water in the air, how cold does it have to get before the air is saturated, and starts condensing on the ground as dew? So there’s another positive feedback loop.
Now let’s go to another methane source – the deep oceans. Just like in the frozen peat bogs, methane is accumulating, some dissolved in the water, some frozen in pockets buried deep below the ocean floor, and some frozen in the superficial sediments along the edge of the continental shelf. As the oceans warm, the ice gets slushy and starts shifting under the weight of the sediments on top of it. Along the edge of the continental shelf, especially, it can trigger mudslides which will then release that methane into the atmosphere.
This isn’t just what-if thinking, either. It’s happened before, which means it can happen again. This kind of methane release now appears to be the major (immediate) cause of the Permian extinctions around 251 million years ago.
And as that methane oxidized to CO2 (absorbing oxygen in the process), it may have dropped the ambient oxygen concentration from its previous high of 35% down to 12%. Add to that the absence of photosynthetic plankton, and we're in serious trouble. According to that linked Science Daily article above, 16% atmospheric oxygen is like being at 14,000 feet above sea level, and will seriously impede your athletic program. Humans will suffocate at 15%.
So now we come to albedo. Ice reflects up to 90% of incident sunlight, only absorbing 10%. Water, on the other hand, absorbs over 90%, and bare soil and rock aren’t much better. As the ice melts, leaving water and glacier-scoured land behind, less sunlight will be reflected back up into space and more will be absorbed, thus heating the surface more.
And it’s not like stopping global warming today will stop these problems, either. If you drop an ice cube in a room-temperature glass of water, it doesn’t disappear immediately. It takes a while for it to melt completely, even if the glass itself is insulated completely from its surroundings. The melting in Antarctica, Greenland, and the few remaining glaciers around the rest of the world won’t stop immediately; we've heated the glass too much.
But once again, the problem isn’t any one of these alone, it’s all of them in combination. The more ice melts, the more albedo increases, which causes more ice to melt. The more air temperature increases, the more methane is released, which makes more ice melt. The more CO2 we dump into the air, the weaker plankton get, and the more CO2 they release, further increasing the greenhouse effect.
These positive feedback loops, once they get going, are very difficult to stop, because they continually feed themselves until they eventually hit some critical mass or run out of resources and are forcibly shut down. The environmental geeks who know more about this than I do have been talking about “tipping points”, that invisible transition where we’ve pushed things too far and they take off on their own, without any further input from us, and all we can do is watch. Apparently, we’ve already passed it, sooner than most predictions had placed it. And note that these articles are now nearly two years old. Here’s another article, only a little over a year old, that talks about all of the various identified tipping points.
I’ve been believing that it was still possible to stop that kind of runaway-train climate change. Not necessarily feasible, but possible. I thought we had more time before we passed the tipping point. It really wasn’t until finding all the links for this post that I discovered that we passed it two years ago. I really can’t describe how that makes me feel, aside from being a further kick in the ass to get my act together and get the hell out while I still can.
The big problem with climate change isn’t any of these things in isolation. The problem is that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. There are many feedback loops that have already been started in motion, and that’s what I’m going to be talking about here.
But first, a bit of vocabulary. A “negative feedback loop” has nothing to do with a subjective analysis of its quality, but rather is one that negates itself, that is self-correcting, returning to equilibrium. There are many of these in normal body functioning, for instance blood sugar regulation, body temperature regulation, and water and salt conservation. On the other hand, a “positive feedback loop” increases its own output, rather than cancelling; population growth is an example.
The industrial revolution started dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in radical excess of previous levels. There were various buffering mechanisms in place which prevented the effects from being felt for much of the past 150 years. One such mechanism is the oceans.
As the concentration of atmospheric CO2 increases, some of it gets absorbed into the oceans. The reaction looks like this:
CO2 + H2O = H2CO3 = H+ + HCO3-
The middle section is carbonic acid, which is what gives soda its fizz, and why old soda tastes watered-down – the reaction moves from the center to the left, giving off CO2 and leaving water behind.
But that “acid” in the name should trigger an alarm bell. As more CO2 get pushed in from the left, more hydrogen atoms (H+’s) get pushed out the right side. Which means that the more CO2 we put into the atmosphere, the more acidic the oceans get. That’s a bit of a problem.
First of all, it’s only a buffer. It won’t continue to absorb CO2 indefinitely.
Second, the acidification has other effects. If you drop acid on limestone, (formula CaCO3, notice how similar that is above), it bubbles off CO2 too. Limestone is made of the compressed and crushed shells of plankton, the little floating photosynthetic things that make up the base of the marine food chain. So if we follow this chain, it means that the acid in the water starts breaking down the shells of the living plankton, which understandably would have some detrimental effects on their survival.
So the plankton start dying off, which causes the higher levels of the marine food chain to starve. As if we’re not already having enough problems with collapsing fisheries. They are also a very large carbon sink, and their mass death releases even more CO2 into the atmosphere, and the greenhouse effect continues to spiral and escalate.
Furthermore, since they’re not photosynthesizing anymore, they’re not producing oxygen anymore. And phytoplankton produce fully half of the oxygen we breathe.
So next we turn to the arctic permafrost. Or what’s left of it, anyway. All of the organic matter buried in the frozen peat bogs in Siberia and Canada has been fermenting (because of a lack of oxygen), and the resulting methane has been building up. The bubbles haven’t been able to move and escape, because the ground has been frozen. Until recently. Now that the permafrost is thawing, the methane is being released, and the bitch of it is that each molecule of methane contributes to the greenhouse effect 20 times as much as CO2 does.
Another quick chemistry lesson: If a gas molecule in the atmosphere is composed of three or more atoms, it contributes to the greenhouse effect. Nitrogen and oxygen gases, which compose over 98% of the atmosphere, are composed of two atoms each (N2 and O2), and are not greenhouse gases. CO2 consists of two oxygen atoms and a carbon, and is a greenhouse gas. Methane is composed of five atoms, a carbon and four hydrogens (CH4).
And now trending into a meteorology lesson: Water vapor is also a greenhouse gas (H2O), and the amount of water the air can hold is only going to increase as temperature does. That’s why they always talk about relative humidity, because it’s a sliding scale based on the air temperature at the time. That’s also where “dewpoint” comes from – given so much (total) water in the air, how cold does it have to get before the air is saturated, and starts condensing on the ground as dew? So there’s another positive feedback loop.
Now let’s go to another methane source – the deep oceans. Just like in the frozen peat bogs, methane is accumulating, some dissolved in the water, some frozen in pockets buried deep below the ocean floor, and some frozen in the superficial sediments along the edge of the continental shelf. As the oceans warm, the ice gets slushy and starts shifting under the weight of the sediments on top of it. Along the edge of the continental shelf, especially, it can trigger mudslides which will then release that methane into the atmosphere.
This isn’t just what-if thinking, either. It’s happened before, which means it can happen again. This kind of methane release now appears to be the major (immediate) cause of the Permian extinctions around 251 million years ago.
And as that methane oxidized to CO2 (absorbing oxygen in the process), it may have dropped the ambient oxygen concentration from its previous high of 35% down to 12%. Add to that the absence of photosynthetic plankton, and we're in serious trouble. According to that linked Science Daily article above, 16% atmospheric oxygen is like being at 14,000 feet above sea level, and will seriously impede your athletic program. Humans will suffocate at 15%.
So now we come to albedo. Ice reflects up to 90% of incident sunlight, only absorbing 10%. Water, on the other hand, absorbs over 90%, and bare soil and rock aren’t much better. As the ice melts, leaving water and glacier-scoured land behind, less sunlight will be reflected back up into space and more will be absorbed, thus heating the surface more.
And it’s not like stopping global warming today will stop these problems, either. If you drop an ice cube in a room-temperature glass of water, it doesn’t disappear immediately. It takes a while for it to melt completely, even if the glass itself is insulated completely from its surroundings. The melting in Antarctica, Greenland, and the few remaining glaciers around the rest of the world won’t stop immediately; we've heated the glass too much.
But once again, the problem isn’t any one of these alone, it’s all of them in combination. The more ice melts, the more albedo increases, which causes more ice to melt. The more air temperature increases, the more methane is released, which makes more ice melt. The more CO2 we dump into the air, the weaker plankton get, and the more CO2 they release, further increasing the greenhouse effect.
These positive feedback loops, once they get going, are very difficult to stop, because they continually feed themselves until they eventually hit some critical mass or run out of resources and are forcibly shut down. The environmental geeks who know more about this than I do have been talking about “tipping points”, that invisible transition where we’ve pushed things too far and they take off on their own, without any further input from us, and all we can do is watch. Apparently, we’ve already passed it, sooner than most predictions had placed it. And note that these articles are now nearly two years old. Here’s another article, only a little over a year old, that talks about all of the various identified tipping points.
I’ve been believing that it was still possible to stop that kind of runaway-train climate change. Not necessarily feasible, but possible. I thought we had more time before we passed the tipping point. It really wasn’t until finding all the links for this post that I discovered that we passed it two years ago. I really can’t describe how that makes me feel, aside from being a further kick in the ass to get my act together and get the hell out while I still can.
04 December 2007
IM conversation
Him: interesting take on the economic collapse
i've been thinking along a lot of these lines recently
Me: and what have you come up with?
Him: for starters, the housing market is going to continue its eventual implosion
the numbers so far are some of the biggest ever seen in terms of foreclosures
which creates a glut of homes the banks own and can't get off the books because no one can afford them
due, mainly in part, to people just being plain stupid and borrowing and spending beyond their means
Me: which is exactly what the culture in general has been telling them to do
Him: yes, and something i generally tend to insulate myself from these days
Me: helps to be largely oblivious to cultural influences too
Him: television being one those big "influences"
this will also lead to further isolation of communities such as the one i live in now, where travel to and from becomes more and more prohibitively expensive
digital goods might see an upsurge, such as e-books, if there is a need for them and adequate access/infrastructure in place already
Me: right, but with shipping costs spiking, that infrastructure will begin to deteriorate
Him: i was thinking more along the lines of ordering a book online and having it delivered by e-mail or stored on a server somewhere else
not that everyone reads books on computer or PDA or tablet, etc.
Me: I'm talking about the decline of computers in general
Him: yeah, physical goods that have to be shipped will be out of the reach of the majority of the populace
this place [Tennessee] right now is a good microcosm of early indicators since it was already economically tipped into the negative
houses have been on the market here for literally years
but i do see this as a good thing in that it does push for more of the mom 'n pop places to produce goods locally since they will be cheaper by comparison
smaller businesses are the backbone of a healthy/healthier economyand here, that is all too apparent now, more smaller businesses have opened up
and more people are turning to them because of the cost differential
not like it's a bad thing, it's all in how you look at it
Me: no, it's definitely a step in the right direction
Him: we had an economy shift a few years ago, most people didn't notice (service-based economy), but now we're shifting back into something that was here further back, and i don't think it's so bad because it makes us more self-reliant
Me: and will help reduce the impact felt as more things collpase
Him: yep
there will be pockets and areas around the country that won't feel it as much if at all
because they adapted to weather it out
the service-based economy was not a well thought-out one in my opinion
basically we stop manufacturing things and just go to servicing things/people
and most employees of a service industry are paid lower wages
it only benefits those on the top of the large corporations
i kept thinking to myself, while that term was being floated around, "So....if all we're doing is servicing, then who makes the shit?"
Me: there will always be a need for "services rendered", but yeah, production is much more necessary
Him: i thought it was insane to think that we could shift our entire economy over to just being service-oriented
instead of trying to compete with other nations that were reaching at least a moderate level of manufacturing capability next to ours
instead we tucked tail and said, "We give up."
at any rate, we collectively have only ourselves to blame for this
if there is any blame to be had
does it really matter who's fault it is at this point when the problem is here, and it can conceivably be fixed
as long as we know where the true root of the problem lies
people would have to shift their way of thinking to something more long term, instead of the instant gratification mode
i've been thinking along a lot of these lines recently
Me: and what have you come up with?
Him: for starters, the housing market is going to continue its eventual implosion
the numbers so far are some of the biggest ever seen in terms of foreclosures
which creates a glut of homes the banks own and can't get off the books because no one can afford them
due, mainly in part, to people just being plain stupid and borrowing and spending beyond their means
Me: which is exactly what the culture in general has been telling them to do
Him: yes, and something i generally tend to insulate myself from these days
Me: helps to be largely oblivious to cultural influences too
Him: television being one those big "influences"
this will also lead to further isolation of communities such as the one i live in now, where travel to and from becomes more and more prohibitively expensive
digital goods might see an upsurge, such as e-books, if there is a need for them and adequate access/infrastructure in place already
Me: right, but with shipping costs spiking, that infrastructure will begin to deteriorate
Him: i was thinking more along the lines of ordering a book online and having it delivered by e-mail or stored on a server somewhere else
not that everyone reads books on computer or PDA or tablet, etc.
Me: I'm talking about the decline of computers in general
Him: yeah, physical goods that have to be shipped will be out of the reach of the majority of the populace
this place [Tennessee] right now is a good microcosm of early indicators since it was already economically tipped into the negative
houses have been on the market here for literally years
but i do see this as a good thing in that it does push for more of the mom 'n pop places to produce goods locally since they will be cheaper by comparison
smaller businesses are the backbone of a healthy/healthier economyand here, that is all too apparent now, more smaller businesses have opened up
and more people are turning to them because of the cost differential
not like it's a bad thing, it's all in how you look at it
Me: no, it's definitely a step in the right direction
Him: we had an economy shift a few years ago, most people didn't notice (service-based economy), but now we're shifting back into something that was here further back, and i don't think it's so bad because it makes us more self-reliant
Me: and will help reduce the impact felt as more things collpase
Him: yep
there will be pockets and areas around the country that won't feel it as much if at all
because they adapted to weather it out
the service-based economy was not a well thought-out one in my opinion
basically we stop manufacturing things and just go to servicing things/people
and most employees of a service industry are paid lower wages
it only benefits those on the top of the large corporations
i kept thinking to myself, while that term was being floated around, "So....if all we're doing is servicing, then who makes the shit?"
Me: there will always be a need for "services rendered", but yeah, production is much more necessary
Him: i thought it was insane to think that we could shift our entire economy over to just being service-oriented
instead of trying to compete with other nations that were reaching at least a moderate level of manufacturing capability next to ours
instead we tucked tail and said, "We give up."
at any rate, we collectively have only ourselves to blame for this
if there is any blame to be had
does it really matter who's fault it is at this point when the problem is here, and it can conceivably be fixed
as long as we know where the true root of the problem lies
people would have to shift their way of thinking to something more long term, instead of the instant gratification mode
Economic ramblings
The economy is collapsing because it needs continuous outward growth, perpetual further development to be “healthy”. In most business, they’ll tell you that a cessation of growth is the same as a loss. A failure to make money is the same as losing money, which means that apparently there’s no such thing as breaking even. (Businesses have apparently reverted to the Roman system of numbers, where the concept of zero does not exist – that was the major impetus for switching from the Roman numeral system to the Arabic numerals we use now.)
With the foreclosure rate skyrocketing, and more and more people having less and less money (due in no small part to the ever-increasing cost of oil), we’re obviously headed for a recession at best, likely worse. And there’s only so far that the Fed can trim interest rates.
Side note: For those even more clueless than me, every time the Federal Reserve Board, cuts the prime interest rate lower, what they’re actually doing is trying to encourage people to borrow money from banks. That’s what that interest rate refers to, what you pay the bank on a loan you take out from them. The idea goes that if you borrow money, you’ve got more to spend, which will then provide a boost to the economy, by putting more money into circulation, rather than just languishing in a bank’s vaults. Or computers, since money isn’t real anymore anyway, it’s all virtual, it’s all just bits of information in somebody’s computer system. Let’s see how many digressions I can nest together…
Anyway, back to interest rates. There’s only so far down they can go, before that buffer is tapped out. And it appears to be done at this point. This article was written a little over two months ago, and obviously things haven’t gotten that bad, that quickly, but the way things have been going, it’s only a matter of time. And he’s got a much better handle on the large-scale stuff that’s happening now than I do.
According to that, we’re going to see prices of imported goods go through the roof because our money is worthless abroad. Add to that that the cost of actually transporting the junk is climbing, and local goods are going to be more and more affordable.
Over the longer term, as costs of transportation become more and more exorbitant, the Wal-Marts and such will fold, because they won’t be able to ship their junk from China and distribute it to all of their stores cheaply anymore, forcing their prices up and allowing local businesses to be more competitive. And people will have to do something, as those major chains will be closing, meaning a spike in unemployment, and even less money available to spend..
Many fruits are likely to drop in available quantity and quality, because they can’t be produced in the immediate area. Books are likely to become disgustingly expensive, because they all have to be shipped in from their respective publishing houses. As if people really needed less reason to read. Use your imagination.
Another side note: Ron Paul wants to eliminate the IRS, and make government revenue based entirely on a 23% sales tax. The only down side I see to this is all the people who work at the IRS being unceremoniously dumped out of jobs. Also out of work will be everyone at H&R Block and similar companies that are entirely based on doing people’s taxes.
In its favor, the people who have the money to spend will be taxed more than those who don’t. Granted, that means that prices will spike, because of the high tax rate, but paychecks will dramatically increase as well, because you’ll get a hell of a lot more of what you actually earn. It will take a period of adjustment, but I do believe that this will be a good way to prevent the rich from wrangling tax breaks, while the poor get fucked, because they can’t afford people to do their taxes for them.
The other positive aspect I see from that is that it will indirectly contribute to the fall of the major corporations. As prices go up, rather than paying the exorbitant tax on commercial goods, local cottage industries will spring up, based on barter. If you can go to the local farmer’s market or swap meet and trade a bushel of fruit for a blanket, basic staples everyone needs, why would you go to the huge store and pay out the nose for it? Wal-Mart, McDonalds, Pepsi, Starbucks, are all so large and cumbersome that they have to work on cash, for standardization purposes. They won’t be able to stand up to a fleeing customer base who would rather trade with others who are willing to eschew money as well.
With the foreclosure rate skyrocketing, and more and more people having less and less money (due in no small part to the ever-increasing cost of oil), we’re obviously headed for a recession at best, likely worse. And there’s only so far that the Fed can trim interest rates.
Side note: For those even more clueless than me, every time the Federal Reserve Board, cuts the prime interest rate lower, what they’re actually doing is trying to encourage people to borrow money from banks. That’s what that interest rate refers to, what you pay the bank on a loan you take out from them. The idea goes that if you borrow money, you’ve got more to spend, which will then provide a boost to the economy, by putting more money into circulation, rather than just languishing in a bank’s vaults. Or computers, since money isn’t real anymore anyway, it’s all virtual, it’s all just bits of information in somebody’s computer system. Let’s see how many digressions I can nest together…
Anyway, back to interest rates. There’s only so far down they can go, before that buffer is tapped out. And it appears to be done at this point. This article was written a little over two months ago, and obviously things haven’t gotten that bad, that quickly, but the way things have been going, it’s only a matter of time. And he’s got a much better handle on the large-scale stuff that’s happening now than I do.
According to that, we’re going to see prices of imported goods go through the roof because our money is worthless abroad. Add to that that the cost of actually transporting the junk is climbing, and local goods are going to be more and more affordable.
Over the longer term, as costs of transportation become more and more exorbitant, the Wal-Marts and such will fold, because they won’t be able to ship their junk from China and distribute it to all of their stores cheaply anymore, forcing their prices up and allowing local businesses to be more competitive. And people will have to do something, as those major chains will be closing, meaning a spike in unemployment, and even less money available to spend..
Many fruits are likely to drop in available quantity and quality, because they can’t be produced in the immediate area. Books are likely to become disgustingly expensive, because they all have to be shipped in from their respective publishing houses. As if people really needed less reason to read. Use your imagination.
Another side note: Ron Paul wants to eliminate the IRS, and make government revenue based entirely on a 23% sales tax. The only down side I see to this is all the people who work at the IRS being unceremoniously dumped out of jobs. Also out of work will be everyone at H&R Block and similar companies that are entirely based on doing people’s taxes.
In its favor, the people who have the money to spend will be taxed more than those who don’t. Granted, that means that prices will spike, because of the high tax rate, but paychecks will dramatically increase as well, because you’ll get a hell of a lot more of what you actually earn. It will take a period of adjustment, but I do believe that this will be a good way to prevent the rich from wrangling tax breaks, while the poor get fucked, because they can’t afford people to do their taxes for them.
The other positive aspect I see from that is that it will indirectly contribute to the fall of the major corporations. As prices go up, rather than paying the exorbitant tax on commercial goods, local cottage industries will spring up, based on barter. If you can go to the local farmer’s market or swap meet and trade a bushel of fruit for a blanket, basic staples everyone needs, why would you go to the huge store and pay out the nose for it? Wal-Mart, McDonalds, Pepsi, Starbucks, are all so large and cumbersome that they have to work on cash, for standardization purposes. They won’t be able to stand up to a fleeing customer base who would rather trade with others who are willing to eschew money as well.
03 December 2007
Greens vs. Garrisons
Probably the best summary of this article is one line near the end, "solving real problems is hard, but turning a profit from those problems is easy."
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