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Climate Change Blog 9

By Carl Howard posted 01-25-2018 11:15 AM

  

Climate/Recent Storms

It will never stop. This is McKibben’s “Eaarth” (see Blog 3). A new planet, unpredictable except that the weather will be harsh and dangerous somewhere, all the time. I wrote about the California drought, and wildfires (Blog 9). Certain things logically follow, like fire after drought. But less clear to most of us is that mud-slides would logically follow as the weakened soil gave way in heavy rains. We’re talking big ticket items here. But scientists are out there measuring how plants, animals, birds, grasses, mosses and microscopic organisms, the base of the food chain, cope, or don’t. We know that the microscopic organisms that support the vital food chain in the Arctic has changed. We know major changes will likely result. We know that beavers have expanded their range north into the Arctic too and that the flooding they cause, usually beneficial to the environment, is destructive in the Arctic. Flooding there keeps the soil from freezing which means more methane is being released from the un-frozen tundra. I wrote about this dangerous ‘positive’ feedback loop in Blog 2.

Global warming is adding more moisture to the atmosphere which is why the skiing in Europe is outrageous right now. Six feet of snow fell on Davos in 6 days as heads of state try to fly there for economic meetings. And a powerful wind storm killed at least 7 people in three countries in northern Europe (Netherlands, Belgium and Germany). Heavy winds (87 mph in Holland) grounded 100s of flights, closed roads and the port of Ghent (Belgium), halted trains, ripped roofs off buildings and flipped over trucks and other vehicles. 100s of 1000s were left without power including in Germany and Romania. In the UK, Storm Caroline dumped 11” of snow in Central England and 18” in Wales. Northern Ireland was also slammed.

Such heavy and dangerous storms likely will be a regular topic on this Blog as they are predicted to be the new normal on this new Eaarth. Drastic weather changes cause trouble. Three documented immense and unusual avalanches are attributed to climate change. The first, in the Caucasus in 2002, traveled eight miles reaching speeds of 179 mph causing 120 fatalities in a sparsely populated area of SW Russia. The second, in Tibet in 2016, moved 247 million cubic feet of snow and ice killing 9 people and 100s of animals covering more than five miles in three minutes at speeds of up to 186 miles per hour. That is enough snow and ice to fill one million freight train cars stretching 7,500 miles. A third avalanche in Tibet occurred nearby.

Climate change is being blamed for these unprecedented events. As noted, the warming air holds more moisture, the area has warmed .4 Celcius per decade since the 1960s, so more snow falls in winter. But in the summer, the region has experienced heavier rainfall. The rain creates crevices in the glacier and saturates the ground which lubricates the natural flow of the glacier due to gravitational pull downslope. These increasingly top-heavy, undermined, glaciers are now more prone to collapse which triggers the avalanche.

These three avalanches were in sparsely populated areas. There are many glaciers around the world perched above cities…

Mountain Gorillas/Climate Stability

As pictured above (for Mailchimp recipients of this Blog), I’m just back from Rwanda where I sat with Silver-backed mountain gorillas and watched them eat the surrounding vegetation. The guides said that weather patterns, rain-fall and rising temperatures, have changed. As with the rest of the world, past dry and rainy seasons are less reliable. The timing is off. Rain can be destructively heavy, or absent. The result is a change in the vegetation upon which the gorillas depend. Certain nutritious plants are no longer found where they once were. Sudden changes like this are inconsistent with evolutionary patterns of slow, gradual change and adaptation. It remains to be seen whether the world’s mega-fauna, gorillas, polar bears, whales, can adapt to life on Eaarth.

Eco-tourism to Africa is now a prime income-generating industry. Climate change is a direct threat to the future viability of this multi-billion dollar industry. Should it collapse, the economic and political fall-out could be severe, and dangerous. The gorilla tourism industry was totally shut down in the 1980s when political violence convulsed Rwanda. Rwanda and Uganda now enjoy a robust eco-tourism industry. Congo (the third country from which one can trek to see these gorillas) lags behind but may join its neighboring countries in this lucrative business which is the only reason these gorillas still survive.

Rain, and potable water, are crucial issues globally in terms of political stability. In many countries in Africa and the middle east, water shortages have led to environmental refugees, political instability and the rise of ideologies embraced by groups considered terrorists in the west. The changing global climate relating to rainfall and warming temperatures which dry the soil, reduce crop yield and evaporate surface water, is all based on rising CO2e levels (carbon dioxide equivalent).

The international community has been trying for 30 years to curtail CO2e emissions without success. At the first meeting of world leaders in 1988 in Toronto, the earth’s average temperature was just over half a degree Celsius above the pre-industrial average and global CO2e emissions were about 30 billion tons/year (not including deforestation and land use, two important factors in CO2e emissions and absorption). World leaders called for emissions to be cut by one-fifth.

Instead, by the 1997 meeting in Kyoto, Japan, emissions had increased to 35 bt/yr and the earth’s temperature rose to about .7 C above the pre-industrial average.

At the Paris meeting in 2016, the temperature was at 1.1 C above the pre-industrial average and global emissions had nearly reached 50 bt/yr. There is scientific agreement about how dangerous a path the planet is on in terms of continued human civilization and the survival of its mega-fauna, and yet even nations committed to fighting climate change are making little headway.

In law school, most of us learned of the Tragedy of the Commons. The seemingly rational behavior and thinking where one person chooses to dispose of his waste in the public commons since it costs him nothing except that it degrades the community commons. And so the next and the next person did the same until the commons was so despoiled as to be worthless to them all. The atmosphere is our collective commons and we are despoiling it just as fast as we possibly can with full knowledge of our stupidity and self-destructiveness. It’s really quite remarkable.

No one country is willing to step up in a way that will harm it economically in competition with other nations. Some countries are making huge investments in alternative energy (China with solar and electric vehicles, Norway and other countries have committed to phasing out gas-powered vehicles and going 100% electric by 2050) but some countries may be willing to gamble that the efforts made by others will suffice for all countries.

But that’s not going to happen. Even if every country were to fulfill the commitments it made in the Paris accord (including the US), it still would not satisfy the Paris accord goal of keeping global temperature under 2 C rise above the pre-industrial average (of which we have about .9 C rise left to go and we almost certainly have enough CO2e already emitted to cover this last little rise. Not to mention the contributions from the various ‘positive’ feedback loops noted and referenced above. In fact, if all these commitments were met, by 2030 global C02e emissions would still exceed the level needed to remain under 2 C by 12 -14 billion tons.

And so the warming and the changing weather patterns persist. As predicted, 2017 was one of the warmest years on record, slightly behind 2016 and 2015. And it was every bit as destructive as drought, wildfires, mudslides, famine, reduced crop yield and political instability caused immense suffering and loss of life here in the US and elsewhere globally.

Meetings of the heads of state of 196 nations is a wonderful thing. The world is acutely aware of the danger. The IPCC and many other reports are widely known and accepted. And still CO2e emissions continue to rise. It is virtually certain that island nations such as the Maldives will be submerged and abandoned. This is as unfair as it is cruel. They contributed nothing to CO2e emissions. And yet the world hardly notes this tragedy.

As the destruction and dangers repeatedly hit home in the first world, as environmental refugees continue to wash ashore desperate, starving and begging for entry, the first world will have to take more notice than it is doing now. Californians are taking notice. Floridians and Puerto Ricans and residents of Houston are taking notice. Any of the storms that devastated our southern fellow Americans could easily have come up the eastern sea-board and swamped NYC. As you read this, you could easily have been displaced, your home, your office, the infrastructure you depend on, could all be in disrepair right now. Many of those harmed by Sandy still have not recovered. We are not far from a cycle of overlapping storms and recovery. And that is no way to live. Just ask the Floridians, Puerto Ricans and Houstonians, and Sandy surviviors.

We are not yet having serious discussions about building billion dollar protections for NYC, but we will be. And when we do, if such discussions follow major devestation from a storm, the discussions will be accompanied by mass departures, such as after 9/11, law suits, and devaluation of real estate. But how many of us have been involved in such discussions? Not many, I’m sure. We will be.

If we are to have a chance of meeting the Paris goal of staying under the 2 C limit, we not only must abandon use of fossil fuels, we will need to develop technology that can remove CO2e from the atmosphere. Something more than planting trees. There is little on the drawing board at present.

To escape from the largely unproductive pattern we’ve been following for 30 years, some are thinking more creatively. An individual country may have political difficulty imposing what many believe to be a necessary carbon tax, but perhaps countries acting in concert could do so. Or countries banding together could impose tariffs on imports from non-members who were not similarly committed to reducing their emissions. Or perhaps the target could be more narrowly and strategically set such as the 2016 agreement between 170 nations meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, to reduce hydrofluorocarbon emissions. Or maybe specific industries, like aviation or steel, band together and adopt industry-wide standards on a global basis. There are lots of ideas out there, but not enough action.

A growing concern is that at some point, perhaps after terrible suffering, death, disruption and conflict, desperation steps will be taken either following international debate or unilaterally. Many countries could move toward geoengineering on a global scale, such as injecting aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect the sun’s heat back into space, or deploying jets to spray sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere which would temporarily cool the planet. But such drastic actions would have foreseeable and unforeseeable consequences, especially for mega-fauna which would be unlikely to survive if it comes to that.

From what I’ve read, and reported in my Blogs, we have all the know-how and technology we need. Many trends are going in the right direction, the falling price of wind turbines, solar panels and batteries, the enormous investments in alternative energy, the commitment of many countries to move exclusively to electric vehicles. The primary cause of the lack of sufficient movement is economic competition, the profit motive, politics and the desire for (political) power. The good news is that 196 countries are talking about the issues. The bad news is that things will have to get worse before there is sufficient motivation to get over these obstacles.

Water/Political Stability

Staying with a focus on water for this Blog, and how insufficient amounts contribute to civil unrest, political instability, environmental refugees, conflict and war, look at Nigeria, Syria, Somalia, India and Iran. The World Resources Institute warned recently that water stress in 33 countries is projected to be extremely high by 2040.

Water shortages, like price increases for bread, have sparked street protests and unrest. Water stress in India has caused civil strife and has been exploited by terrorist groups such as the Shabab in Somalia. Lack of water pushes people off ancestral lands and into over-crowded cities. Boko Haram has taken advantage of the unrest in Nigeria, Chad and Niger.

Iran too is experiencing severe water stress and civil unrest. Land that has supported human habitation for 1,000s of years is now barren, arid. Lakes that supported towns and villages and agriculture are gone, nothing left but a dust bowl. Lake Urmia, in northwestern Iran, is nearly 90% gone. Millions of people have moved toward towns and cities where there are no jobs for them. Just militant gangs preaching death to those deemed responsible, especially “the West.” Iran has experience 14 years of horrendous drought. With no end in sight. In fact, it will only get hotter, drier. Worse.

Last summer I was on Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. As much fun as that is to say and write, another lake in Bolivia, Poopo, is dry. Gone. And with it the villages and agriculture dependent upon it.

Policy played a role in Iran’s water shortage. In an effort to be more self-sufficient in food, the government encouraged farmers to plant thirsty crops like wheat throughout the country. The government compounded the problem by offering farmers cheap electricity and favorable prices for their wheat, a two-part subsidy that led to additional planting of wheat and the extraction of more groundwater. Currently, 25% of the water drawn from aquifers, rivers and lakes exceeds the amount that can be replenished naturally. Syrian policy too promoted planting of wheat with similar results.

Iran’s groundwater depletion rate is today among the fastest in the world. Twelve of the country’s 31 provinces likely will exhaust their aquifers within the next 50 years. The internal conflicts over scarce water resources will be intense. External impacts from 100s of 1,000s, eventually millions of refugees will add to the millions of refugees fleeing similarly parched countries. It is happening now. It can only get worse.

Iran is predicted to experience a 25% decline in surface water runoff — rainfall and snow melt — by 2030. In the region as a whole, summers are predicted to get hotter by 2 -3 degrees C. Rains are projected to decline by 10%. Recent studies predict that many major cities in the region could exceed a tipping point for human survival in the not too distant future.

Syria experienced a drought from 2006 to 2009, prompting a mass migration from country to city leading to mass unemployment among the young. By 2011 street protests were frequent and violent, and violently suppressed by the government of Bashar al-Assad. Cvil war erupted. Water did not cause the unrest, but it contributed to it.

Global warming not only evaporates surface water faster, it alters the chemistry of surface water bodies. The Sorpe reservoir in northwest Germany, one of four freshwater reservoirs observed in a recent study, found that carbon dioxide is absorbed in lakes, rivers and streams which can affect entire ecosystems. Scientists are just beginning to investigate this, as they are investigating the impacts of carbon absorption by oceans, but the initial findings are frightening.

Oceanographers began monitoring carbon levels in seawater in the 1980s. Over the past three decades they’ve chronicled a steady rise of carbon dioxide in seawater. The increasing concentration can harm marine life in many ways. We know that it lowers the pH of seawater, making it more acidic and interfering with the chemistry that coral use to build their calcium skeletons. Ocean acidification also thins the shells of oysters and other animals. Less well known is that many marine organisms rely on chemical changes in water to find food and avoid danger. The rapid change in the chemistry of seawater has rendered certain fish unable to detect their predators. Now scientists are finding similar adverse effects in freshwater bodies.

For starters, carbon levels in four reservoirs in Germany tripled from 1981 to 2015. Sure enough, studies showed that organisms comprising the foundation of the freshwater food chain in these reservoirs (water fleas)  were being adversely affected by the changed chemistry of their environment with likely adverse impacts on the entire lake ecosystem. The increased amount of carbon in the water was harming their nervous system and their ability to avoid predators. Other studies showed similar results for other foundation fish (minnows). And other studies showed that different types of mussels, which perform essential filtering services, were also impacted by raised carbon levels.

As I have been advocating from Blog 1, if we adversely affect the foundation layer of the food pyramid, we threaten all life dependent on this base layer, including homo sapiens precariously balanced on top.

But much more study is necessary. A study of a lake in Wisconsin found that between 1986 and 2011, there was no significant carbon level change. Different lakes will respond differently depending on many factors such as the amount of vegetation in the lake which may absorb the carbon. Whether or not we are reaching an absorption saturation point for such vegetation remains to be seen. But initial findings are suggesting at least some water bodies may be experiencing stress and rapid change. And in the ‘old earth’ accustomed to slow, gradual evolutionary change, rapid change produces many more losers than winners.

There is no good reason to risk undermining yet another foundation for life on earth. Glacial collapse, shrinking glaciers too, threaten people living nearby and those dependent upon the melt-water run-off for drinking water and agriculture. Warming temperature, warming seas, changing chemistry of fresh and salt-water bodies also threatens ocean and land-based food resources. Political unrest leads to political instability. All of the foundational blocks upon with human civilization depends are being undermined. The political process to deal with these threats is not working. The move away from fossil fuels is painfully, dangerously, slow.

Washington

Trump recently imposed steep tariffs on imports of, among other things, solar energy cells and panels. Two solar companies, Suniva Inc. and SolarWorld Americas, said imports of cheap solar cells and modules were putting their companies at risk.

While the tariffs were welcomed by the companies that sought them, economists warned the levies could drive up prices for consumers and hurt some American businesses. The solar industry has been split over the tariffs; companies that develop large-scale solar farms, as well as purchasers of solar power such as retailers and tech companies, opposed the tariffs over concerns that they would cost them more money and make solar power less competitive with other energy sources, at least in the short term.

Abigail Ross Hopper, the president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, which opposed the measures, said the decision “will create a crisis in a part of our economy that has been thriving, which will ultimately cost tens of thousands of hard-working, blue-collar Americans their jobs.”

Trump imposed tariffs ranging from 15% to 50% on various imports. He approved solar tariffs for the next four years, starting with levies of 30% that will ultimately fall to 15%. In each of the four years, the first 2.5 gigawatts of imported solar cells will be exempted from the tariff, an exception designed to ensure that existing solar module manufacturers in the US can still access cheap supplies of cells.

The administration said that the tariffs are largely directed at China, which over the past decade has built itself into the world’s largest manufacturer of solar products, flooding global markets with low-cost crystalline silicon panels. While the US has previously imposed restrictions on Chinese solar products, Chinese firms simply moved production to other countries. A China representative stated that China will defend its interests. Currently, more than 95% of America’s solar panels are imported, with half of those imports coming from Malaysia and South Korea.

While cheap global production has undercut American solar manufacturers, it has benefited purchasers of solar power. The average cost of solar installations in the US has fallen 70% since 2010, from $7.50 per watt to around $1 per watt. The tariffs may cause more manufacturers to move to the US but it likely will cause these products to be more expensive, a disadvantage in a highly competitive market. Trump has made clear that he favors fossil fuels over solar power.

-Carl Howard – The views expressed above are my own.
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