The environment – Page 162 – a sibilant intake of breath

Geologic time

While the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old, all of human civilization has been compressed into a single geological epoch: the Holocene. This has been ongoing for about 11,500 years, predating the first Mesopotamian civilizations for which we have any evidence. Prior to the Holocene was the Pleistocene, which ended with the Younger Dryas cold spell. Actually, the Holocene exists more as a demarcation for the period of geologic time that has included human civilization than as an epoch with an independent definition.

Our best ice core samples extend back 650,000 years: about a third of the way into the Pleistocene, but just a tiny foray into geologic time. Pollen from Lake Tanganyika might take us through the Pliocene (Greek for ‘more new’) and into the Miocene (‘less new’). Perhaps some yet-unanticipated data source will be able to take us further still.

It is amazing what scientists are able to determine from inference and the meticulous collection of data: from the age of the universe to the evolutionary history of the planet.

Polymers in the Pacific

In addition to nuclear waste, there are other very long lived forms of human detritus accumulating in the world. Most pervasive among those may be plastics. Virtually non-existent before the Second World War, they are now produced in staggering quantities. So far, none of those artificial polymers have broken down chemically; instead, they just break into smaller and smaller pieces, float down rivers to the sea, and end up in places like the North Pacific Gyre. It is also discussed on MetaFilter.

As with vulcanized rubber, these materials will endure in the world until microorganisms evolve the ability to metabolize them. Apparently, when plants first evolved lignin and cellulose, bacteria were unable to digest them. Until that changed, wood would have been as enduring as the plastic wrap currently swirling and collecting persistent organic pollutants in the world’s oceanic gyres, quite probably for millions of years.

The true price of nuclear power

Several times this blog has discussed whether climate change is making nuclear power a more acceptable option (1, 2, 3). One element of the debate that bears consideration is the legacy of contamination at sites that form part of the nuclear fuel cycle: from uranium mines to post-reactor fuel processing facilities. The Rocky Flats Plant in the United States is an especially sobering example.

Insiders at the plant started “tipping” the FBI about the unsafe conditions sometime in 1988. Late that year the FBI started clandestinely flying light aircraft over the area and noticed that the incinerator was apparently being used late into the night. After several months of collecting evidence both from workers and by direct measurement, they informed the DOE on June 6, 1989 that they wanted to meet about a potential terrorist threat. When the DOE officers arrived, they were served with papers. Simultaneously, the FBI raided the facilities and ordered everyone out. They found numerous violations of federal anti-pollution laws including massive contamination of water and soil, though none of the original charges that led to the raid were substantiated.

In 1992, Rockwell was charged with minor environmental crimes and paid an $18.5 million fine.

Accidents and contamination have been a feature of facilities handling nuclear materials worldwide. Of course, this does not suffice to show that nuclear energy is a bad option. Coal mines certainly produce more than their share of industrial accidents and environmental contamination.

The trickiest thing, when it comes to evaluating the viability of nuclear power, is disentangling exactly what sort of governmental subsidies do, have, and will exist. These subsidies are both direct (paid straight to operators) and more indirect (soft loans for construction, funding for research and development). They also include guarantees that the nuclear industry is only responsible for a set amount of money in the result of a catastrophic accident, as well as the implicit cost that any contamination that corporations cannot be legally forced to correct after the fact will either fester or be fixed at taxpayer expense. Plenty of sources claim to have a comprehensive reckoning of these costs and risks, but the various analyses seem to be both contradictory and self-serving.

Before states make comprehensive plans to embrace or reject nuclear power as a climate change mitigation option, some kind of extensive, comprehensive, and impartial study of the caliber of the Stern Review would be wise.

Carbon pricing and local food

I have been hearing a lot about food miles lately. While it is good for people to be aware of the productive processes that support them, I also have issues with the shape of the local foods debate. Just because something is produced closer to where you live does not mean it is more ecologically friendly or less climate harming. To take an extreme case: people living in very cold regions may find that it is far more environmentally sound to import food from warmer places than to grow it in greenhouses nearby. My focus here is on greenhouse gas emissions, but similar arguments can be made regarding water use, pesticides, etc.

What this debate really demonstrates is the lack of proper carbon pricing in the market. If CO2 emissions were included in the price of tomatoes or bananas, producers could choose to base production in whichever location is most efficient when carbon emissions (along with other factors) are taken into account. Until proper carbon pricing exists, there is justification for the intelligent application of the food miles concept. That said, I think the energy of environmentally aware people is much better spent advocating carbon taxes or cap-and-trade schemes than on encouraging people to spent their time buying local zucchini, rather than whatever sort is at the supermarket. By all means, attend farmers’ markets if you like them, but I think it is deluded to think they can make a meaningful contribution to reducing human emissions to 5,000 Mt of CO2 equivalent.

I can already feel the dissenting opinions coming on, for this post…

Children of Men

When was the idea of the post-apocalyptic future invented? I went to Blockbuster tonight in hopes of renting some clever comedy. Because of the unavailability of certain titles, recommendations from staff, delayed consequences from my trip to Morocco, and random factors, I ended up watching Children of Men instead. It makes for an uncomfortable accompaniment to my ongoing reading of The World Without Us. Then, there is Oryx and Crake and 28 Days Later. Even Half Life 2 had similar nightmare-future police-state fixations.

I wonder if it could be traced back, Oxford English Dictionary style, to the point where the first work of fiction emerged that envisioned the future as a nightmarish place. Furthermore, the first such fiction to envision human activities as the origin of the downfall. I wonder if ancient examples could be found, or whether it would all be in the last hundred years or so.

Seafood harm reduction

For those who haven’t taken the plunge into vegetarianism or veganism, but who are concerned about the ecological consequences of fish consumption, there are some good resources online. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has printable pocket-sized seafood guides, highlighting which species are harvested in relatively sustainable ways and which should definitely be avoided. The Blue Ocean Institute also has a number of resources, including a website for looking up species and a guide that can be downloaded.

Species that are particularly threatened (as well as often caught in highly unsustainable ways) include:

Bluefin tuna
Chilean Sea Bass (this is an industry name for Patagonian Toothfish)
Groupers
Orange Roughy
Atlantic Cod
Atlantic Halibut
Oreos (the fish, not the cookies)
Rockfish
Sturgeon Caviar
Snappers
Atlantic Salmon (note, all Atlantic salmon in the U.S. is farmed)
Sharks

While it is inadequate to think about marine conservation in terms of single species, such lists do provide a reasonably accessible way for consumers to scrutinize their actions. In the long run, however, marine resources need to be thought about in terms of whole ecosystems that need to be protected from threats including over-exploitation, toxins, and climatic changes.

A notable volcanic outburst

Most people probably will not have heard 1816 referred to as the Year Without a Summer, but that is exactly what the eruption of Mount Tambora in what is now Indonesia seems to have made it. That May, frost killed or ruined most of the summer crops. In June, two large snow storms produced substantial numbers of human casualties. Hungary and Italy got red snow, mixed with ash, while China experienced famine associated with sharply reduced rice production. In total, about 92,000 people died and the global mean temperature fell by 3°C.

One random yet positive consequence was constant rain causing Lord Byron to propose a writing contest, which Mary Shelley eventually won with Frankenstein. The increased cost of oats may also have driven a German man named Karl Drais to invent the first bicycle. (He called it the ‘velocipede,’ which sounds like a fast-moving and dangerous insect.)

Such incidents are inevitable on a planet that remains geologically active, but they certainly demonstrate the degree to which natural patterns can change rapidly, as well as the degree to which human beings are dependant upon them not doing so.

Ice and pollen

With good reason, ice cores have been getting a lot of attention lately. Their careful analysis gives us priceless insights into the history of Earth’s climate. Using cores from Greenland, we can go back more than 100,000 years, tracking temperature, carbon dioxide concentration, and even solar activity (using beryllium isotopes). Using cores from Antarctica, it is possible to go back about 650,000 years.

Ice cores can be even more valuable when they are matched up against records of other kinds. Living and petrified trees can be matched up, year for year, with the ice record. So can pollen deposits at the bottom of seas and lakes: arguably the richest data source of all. By looking at pollen deposits, it is possible to track the development of whole ecosystems: forests advancing and retreating with ice ages, the species mix changing in times of drought, and the unmistakable evidence of human alterations to the environment, going back tens of thousands of years.

Lake Tanganyika, in Tanzania, offers an amazing opportunity. 676km from end to end, it is the worst’s longest lake. It is also the second oldest and second deepest – after Lake Baikal in Siberia. Core samples from Tanganyika have already documented 10,000 years worth of pollen deposition. With better equipment and more funding, scientists say that it should be possible to collect data from the last five to ten million years: increasing the length of our climate records massively.

I am not sure if such an undertaking is already in the works. If not, it seems like the kind of opportunity we would be fools to pass up. If no government or scientific funding body is willing to stump up the cash, perhaps a billionaire or two can be diverted from their tinkering with rockets.

Polar opposites

By now, everybody knows that the Arctic summer sea ice is at an all-time low. What I only learned recently is that the extent of Antarctic ice is the greatest since satellite observation began in 1979. At the same time, it is undergoing “unprecedented collapses” like the much-discussed Larsen B collapse. Such realities hint at the complexities of the climate system.

Whereas the Arctic doesn’t have any effect on sea level, because it floats, the Antarctic rests on land. As such, changes in its ice mass do affect the depth of the world’s oceans. Antarctica is also the continent for which the least data is available, making it hard to incorporate into global climate models. As with all complex dynamic systems, there are non-linear effects to contend with. That makes it dangerous to extrapolate from present trends, especially when it comes to local conditions.

All this makes you appreciate why scientists frequently sound less certain about the details of climate change than politicians do. The harder you look at systems like the Earth’s climate, the more inter-relationships you discover, and the more puzzles there are to occupy your attention.

The Two Mile Time Machine

Richard Alley’s The Two Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Change, and Our Future provides a good, though slightly dated, explanation of the science of ice core sampling, as a means for studying the history of Earth’s climate. Alley focuses on work conducted in Greenland prior to 2000. The book combines some surprisingly informal background sections with some rather technical passages about isotopic ratios and climatic cycles. Overall, it is a book that highlights the scientific tendency to dive right into the details of one area of inquiry, while skimming over many others that actually relate closely – especially if you are trying to use the science as the basis for sound decision-making.

This book does not really warrant inclusion in the first tier of books to read on climate change, but it certainly provides some useful background for those trying to develop a comprehensive understanding of the area. Arguably, the best contribution it makes is explaining the causes and characteristics of very long climatic cycles: those stretching over millennia or millions of years, with causes including orbital variation, continental drift, and cryosphere dynamics.

Given the amount of new data and analysis that has been undertaken since this book was published, a new edition may well be warranted. In particular, the very tenuous conclusions of Alley’s concluding chapters should either be revised, or defended in the fact of the new data.