This planet is gradually warming, mainly because of the burning of fossil fuels, which add heat-trapping gases to Earth’s atmosphere. The increased temperature changes the climate in other ways too, including the rise in sea levels; ice mass loss in Greenland, Antarctica, the Arctic and mountain glaciers worldwide; shifts in the times when flowers bloom; and extreme weather events.
Life on Earth is dependent on a layer of gases, primarily water vapor, in the lower atmosphere that trap heat from the sun, while radiating some of it back and keeping our planet at a temperature capable of supporting life.
The sunlight that remains trapped is our source of energy and is used by plants in photosynthesis, whereas the remainder is reflected as heat or light back into space. Climate forcing (or “radiative forcing”) is the differential between the amount of sunlight absorbed by Earth and the amount of energy radiated back to space.
Several factors determine the size and direction of this forcing; for example light surfaces are more reflective than dark ones, so geographical regions covered by ice and snow reflect back more than areas covered by dark water or dark forests; this variable is called the “albedo effect.”
Greenhouse gas and climate change
Human activity is currently generating an excess of long-lived greenhouse gases that don’t dissipate in response to temperature increases, resulting in a continuing buildup of heat. They retain more heat than other gases because they are more transparent to the incoming sunlight than to infrared radiation, which is the form in which heat is radiated back out. Consequently, if the amount of greenhouse gas increases, more heat is trapped in the lower part of the atmosphere, warming the whole planet.(1)
The greenhouse gases include water vapor, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, ozone, and various fluorocarbons (freons). Although water vapor is the most abundant of these gases, it is not much affected by human activity and need not concern us here. The alarming climate changes are mainly caused by the increase of gases that contain carbon. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is especially worrisome; its natural sources include the decomposition of living organisms and animal respiration. The main source of excess carbon dioxide emissions is the burning of fossil fuels, while deforestation has reduced the amount of plant life available to turn CO2 into oxygen.
Besides carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gases are methane, nitrogen oxide, and some heavier molecules such as the various forms of freon. These are more effective per molecule than CO2 in causing global warming, but are present in much smaller quantities in the atmosphere. The molecule N2O (nitrous oxide) and the freons have the additional property of depleting the ozone in the stratosphere, especially near the poles. Methane is a cause for major concern, as it evaporates from thawed tundra, and it is also trapped within clathrate compounds in the ocean, which can release it when warmed. Methane is also produced copiously by cattle because of their diet and digestive system. Methane has been variously said to be 34 (or more) times as effective as CO2 in producing global warming. The freons in the atmosphere are hugely more effective than CO2, per molecule, at inducing global warming. Much of the atmospheric freon comes from leaking refrigerators and air conditioners, especially old or discarded ones. Preventing freon from reaching the atmosphere is thus a municipal concern.
The quantity of greenhouse gas varies over time. For example, there are seasonal variations. The amount of carbon dioxide in the northern hemisphere increases somewhat in the autumn and winter but decreases in the spring. This happens because plants take in carbon dioxide when they are growing but release it when their leaves fall off and decay.
The composition of Earth’s oceans, land, atmosphere, and plants change continuously. For example, gases can dissolve in the ocean, but they also can evaporate and move around in the wind. At present, the oceans are absorbing slightly more carbon dioxide than they are emitting. The amount of carbon being held inside plants varies; when forests are replaced by annual crops, less of it is contained in plants, so more of it is in the air. The more of it in the air, the more the planet warms. Our warming climate is also creating a feedback loop, a “vicious cycle,” by releasing greenhouse gases from the thawing Arctic permafrost, thereby warming the planet even more.(2)
Climate change is an urgent threat to humanity, since the excess CO2 in the atmosphere diffuses slowly into the ocean, which is rapidly becoming less alkaline. Eventually the ocean will become acid, if the present trend continues, and the dying of the ocean will accelerate. A key factor will be the inability of the ocean’s phytoplankton to produce oxygen. About 252 million years ago the Earth experienced a transition similar to the one the human race is setting off today. That transition is known as the Permian-Triassic (or just the Permian), and resulted from a series of natural causes that put a great deal of CO2 into the atmosphere. The transition eliminated 95 percent of then existing species, and it took forests five million years to recover.
Today we urgently need to keep more greenhouse gas “locked away”, instead of circulating in the atmosphere. Whenever it is kept out of circulation, it is said to be “sequestered” in a “carbon sink.”(3) The ocean is currently a carbon sink because it is absorbing more carbon dioxide than it is emitting. Soil and forests are also great carbon sinks that could sequester even more carbon than at present without being saturated. Unfortunately, today they often are instead “carbon sources” because of the way human beings are mis-using them. When more trees are being felled than grown, and when land is eroding or being flooded, those forests and soil are carbon sources – releasing more greenhouse gas to the atmosphere than they take in and sequester.
There are other important carbon sources too: notably “fossil fuels.” Thousands of years ago large carbon sinks (dead plants and animals) happened to become buried and turned into oil, coal, or methane (a carbon-based greenhouse gas). Then in the eighteenth century, the Industrial Revolution began in Britain. Machines were developed on a large scale for manufacturing and transportation. These new technologies have spread so widely that global civilization today is dependent on energy produced by burning coal, gas, or petroleum products, though doing so releases more and more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, thereby heating up the planet.
Adding even a small amount of heat to the planet can make a large difference. Already Earth is almost one degree Celsius hotter than during pre-industrial times,(4) and if nothing is done to change the trend, it may become as much as four degrees hotter within the foreseeable future, leading to the catastrophic extinction of life forms.
There are two ways to prevent this: (a) reduce the new emissions of greenhouse gas, and (b) increase the capture and sequestering of greenhouse gas into carbon sinks. Both will require drastic and rapid changes to our current lifestyle, but they should already be proceeding quickly, reducing the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Regrettably, however, many people still even deny that there is a problem, sometimes adducing as evidence the snow outside their windows.
The local weather on any given day proves nothing about the global climate. When the planet warms, the additional heat is not distributed evenly around the globe. Ocean and wind currents are circulating constantly. When, for example, glaciers and polar ice melt, the fresh water flows into the ocean, raising the sea level and possibly changing the direction of ocean currents in ways that alter the climate in many localities. More extreme weather events occur — not only heat waves, droughts, and forest fires, but also blizzards, typhoons, hurricanes, and floods.(5)
Thousands of measurements must be collected from all parts of the world to get an overall picture of the climate as it changes. The greenhouse gases are constantly flowing and mixing. With the exception of air samples from, say, expressways or industrial zones, the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere tends to be similar around the world. There is nowhere to hide from global warming.
Acting to limit climate change
This section of the Platform for Survival discusses six policy proposals for changes to allay climate change. If adopted, they will give the world a fair chance of avoiding the impending climate transition, namely, a transition from a generally cool climate to a much warmer climate without ice caps, as was the Permian-Triassic. The prime actions are two: eliminating human-induced emissions of CO2, and sequestering CO2 that is already in the atmosphere. In addition to the natural means of reducing climate change, such as planting trillions of trees, we shall also consider other technological suggestions for sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere on a large scale.
Footnotes for this article can be seen at the Footnotes 2 page on this website (link will open in a new page).
Stanford Designer is Making Bricks Out of Fast-Growing Mushrooms That Are Stronger than Concrete
Andy Corbley | Good News Network | 10 December 2020
“While there aren’t any species of mushroom large enough to live in, one Bay-area designer thinks he can make one if he only cranks out enough of his patented “mushroom bricks.”
In fact, he knows he can do it, because he’s already build a showpiece called “Mycotecture”—a 6×6 mushroom brick arch from Ganoderma lucidum or reishi mushrooms.
Phil Ross doesn’t use the mushroom, or fruiting body of the reishi; he uses mycelium, the fast-growing fibrous roots that make up the vast majority of fungus lifeforms.
Mycelium grows fast, and is incredibly durable, waterproof, non-toxic, fire-resistant, and biodegradable.
Ross uses it to build bricks by growing mycelium in bags of delicious (to mushrooms) sawdust, before drying them out and cutting them with extremely heavy-duty steel blades.
This works because mushrooms digest cellulose in the sawdust, converting it into chitin, the same fiber that insect exoskeletons are made from.
“The bricks have the feel of a composite material with a core of spongy cross grained pulp that becomes progressively denser towards its outer skin,” explained Discover Magazine. “The skin itself is incredibly hard, shatter resistant, and can handle enormous amounts of compression.”
One design/architecture website described these mushroom bricks as “stronger than concrete,” while another quotes Ross in an interview suggesting that it could replace all manner of plastic polymer building materials.
Indeed, designers have already used mycelium to make cloth hats, sea-worthy canoes, and eco-friendly coffins. Ross’ next plan, according to the same interview, is to build an entire house for 12-20 people out of reishi mycelium.”
Link: https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/phil-ross-invents-mycelium-mushroom-bricks-arch/
Trias of carbon, silicon and water – silicate weathering and “stone eating microbes”
1) Important is the trias of carbon, silicon and water. Silicon as biochar increase soil water capacity. Plant and soil need silicates, which are produced by continues weathering. Weathering of one molecule silicate, e.g. MgSiO4 consumes 4 molecules of CO2: “Mg2SiO4 + 4 CO2 + 4 H2O ⇌ 2 Mg2+ + 4 HCO3− + H4SiO4. [H4SiO4 = Si(OH)4].
2) So silicates work as antacids/liming agents, without liberating CO2 (opposite to usual liming agents). Silicate weathering is promoted by “stone eating microbes, especially mycorrhizaea” [Koele N, Hildebrand EE (2008) ]
3) Plants consume silicates the same amounts as main cations and decrease the plant available silicon. Recycling is important, but usually cannot replace the losses. The space science could show the importance of silicon by astronauts. On the earth – possibly in oceans – the losses of silicon can be balanced by silicon amendments, e.g. by fine stone meal.
(Reference: Hensel J (1894) Bread from Stones: A New and Rational System of Land Fertilization and Physical Regeneration.
4) Space science should build one or several “laboratory community/ies” on the earth for studying and improving the methods for managing recycling and silicate-carbonate cycle.
Capture it in the Smokestack
The IEA (International Energy Agency) says that Carbon Capture, Sequestration and Storage (CCUS) is an important part of the mix in moving forward on mitigating climate change, so the article below is good news.
Carbon capture and storage pipeline grows by 10 large scale facilities globally 8th June 2020
8 June 2020, Washington, DC – The Global CCS Institute, an international think tank, has added 10 carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities to its global database, bringing the total number of CCS facilities in various stages of development to 59 with a capture capacity of more than 127 million tonnes per annum (mtpa). There are now 21 facilities in operation, three under construction, and 35 in various stages of development.
“Our recent CO2RE Database update shows that despite the current CV-19 crisis we are observing a significant increase in CCS facilities in the pipeline which demonstrates continued progress towards meeting climate targets, and will also result in significant job creation and economic growth”, said Global CCS Institute CEO Brad Page.
In a recent flagship report on the value of CCS, the Global CCS Institute found that CCS deployment in line with the Paris Agreement and energy-related Sustainable Development Goals could create some 100,000 jobs in the industry by 2050.
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The facilities added continue trends in CCS deployment that include innovative applications such as natural gas power, negative emissions and cement, as well as stacked and offshore geologic storage. Fuelled by targeted incentives and sustained government support the US adds nine facilities, while the UK adds one facility
“We are thrilled to see the diversity of CCS applications. The average capture capacity of the new facilities is 2.6 mtpa, as opposed to 2 mtpa for those already in the pipeline, indicating that new facilities are aiming for economies of scale, and strengthening CCS’ role in large-scale emissions abatement. Nonetheless, with 21 facilities operating today, we still need at least a 100-fold scale-up to reach climate goals”, adds Brad Page.
In the UK, the Drax bioenergy with CCS project aims to capture 4 mtpa from one of the existing biomass-fired power units by 2027, before converting all of its remaining biomass units to bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) by 2035. The carbon dioxide (CO2) will be transported by pipeline and stored in the southern North Sea via dedicated geological storage. The project will be an anchor for the wider Zero Carbon Humber Cluster.
The US continues to add a large number of facilities mainly as the result of the 45Q tax credit, and the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard CCS Protocol. For example, the combined incentives contribute to the economic viability of both California Resources Corporation’s (CRC) CalCapture Project, and Velocys’ and Oxy Low Carbon Ventures’ Bayou Fuels Negative Emission Project. Multiple projects were also awarded US Department of Energy (DOE) front-end-engineering-design (FEED) study grants, or part of CarbonSAFE, seeking to establish large-scale storage of 50 mtpa and more. The Zeros Project in Texas, in an important development for the CCS facilities pipeline, has also completed its FEED and entered pre-construction.
“This is an important time for CCS in the US,” says Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy Steven Winberg. “Policy incentives and research from DOE projects are working together to help industry move forward towards the goal of net-zero carbon emissions.”
>While the US does not currently have any natural gas plants equipped with CCS, the database update includes three gas plant projects: Mustang Station in Texas, Plant Daniel in Mississippi and CRC’s CalCapture facility in California. This brings the total natural gas-fuelled power plants with CCS under development globally in the database to six.
“The CalCapture project offers multiple benefits including substantial emissions reductions, prolific positive economic impacts across the California economy, and development of a key technology needed worldwide to meet future energy transition targets. The FEED for the Cal Capture project is expected to be completed by the end of 2020, which would position the project for permitting, construction and commissioning by mid-decade”, said Shawn Kerns, CRC Executive Vice President of Operations and Engineering.
Moreover, two projects, the San Juan Generating Station and CRC’s CalCapture facility, are also evaluating plans for stacked storage, using both geologic storage with enhanced oil recovery, as well as dedicated storage in saline formations.
Oxy Low Carbon Ventures (LCV) has teamed up with LaFarge Holcim and Total to evaluate the capture of CO2 from a cement plant in Colorado, and Oxy LCV also intends to store CO2 from Velocys’ biofuel production, delivering negative emissions.
The facilities update comes on the heels of continued momentum for CCS, including the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line becoming fully operational, a positive investment decision by Equinor, Shell, and Total for the Northern Lights project, supportive policy momentum in Australia, and a $131 million funding announcement by the US Department of Energy.
View the Global CCS Institute database at co2re.co
Lucy Temple-Smith (Melbourne): +61 466 982 068 lucy.temple-smith@globalccsinstitute.com
Guloren Turan (London): + 44 782 505 7765 guloren.turan@globalccsinstitute.comAbout the Global CCS Institute: The Global CCS Institute is an international think tank whose mission is to accelerate the deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS), a vital technology to tackle climate change and provide energy security. For more information, visit http://www.globalccsinstitute.com
https://www.globalccsinstitute.com/news-media/press-room/media-releases/carbon-capture-and-storage-pipeline-grows-by-10-large-scale-facilities-globally/
Location(s):
CCS Projects
There seems to be a lot of disagreement about this technology. Most environmentalists (I think) say it is too expensive to be realistic. (They laugh and say that “clean coal” is a ludicrous oxymoron.) However, I know a physicist who thinks it is the best available solution at the present. What do the numbers say when people calculate costs?
Eucalyptus Problem in California
A significant factor within the California and Portuguese contexts came from the introduction of eucalyptus trees in the 1850s. These trees -– introduced from Australia – became quite popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries -– and were planted in mass groves.
However -– the trees are very flammable, invasive, and are full of volatile oils that burn hotter and more intense than endemic ecosystems -– such as California’s oak woodlands. The endemic oak woodlands require low-intensity fires to maintain surrounding savannah ecosystems. However, the eucalyptus trees throw this balance off – creating very, very intense and high-heat fires – which cause widespread damage to surrounding areas and are difficult to control. Perhaps mitigation of the eucalyptus trees in California would help reduce the damage caused by the fires – though may not eliminate the problem.
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“At very high temperatures, eucalypt species release a flammable gas that mixes with air to send fireballs exploding out in front of the fire. With eucalyptus, you see these ember attacks, with huge bursts of sparks shooting out of the forests, Bowman says. “It’s just an extraordinary idea for a plant.”
Though it’s difficult to prove, Bowman suspects the trees evolved to be “uber flammable.” Sixty million years ago eucalyptus species hit on a way to recover from intense fire, he explains, using specialized structures hidden deep within their bark that allow rapid recovery through new branches, instead of re-sprouting from the roots like other trees. “They have this adaptive advantage of not having to rebuild their trunk. Whether their oil-rich foliage is also an adaptation, we don’t know.”
When I lived in California I was told that people planted them to function as windbreaks. But they shed strips of bark that made a big mess. We had some by our front yard and the grass would not survive within a few feet of the tree. Still, Eucalyptus oil is great when you have a cough. Just rub it on your chest or inhale it. You have buy it, though. I never heard of anyone making their own eucalyptus oil.
Climate Change, Trees and Cows
By Metta Spencer, Peace Magazine, January 2020
The two most feasible ways to limit global warming are planting a trillion more trees and sequestering carbon in the soil. Yet both could do more harm than good. Shall we plant trees in the Arctic and boreal forest? Shall we go vegan or double the livestock herds? Answer: It depends.
Though we should eagerly seize upon most new means of limiting global warming, there are two seemingly brilliant ideas that deserve closer scrutiny: Should we plant a trillion trees? And should we all become vegans? Unless qualified, both of these ideas may bring unanticipated and unwanted consequences. The current state of evidence is too ambiguous to justify any firm conclusions, but we have to make crucial decisions anyway.
Two things are clear: First, we should keep buried carbon buried. Second, we should suck ambient carbon out of the atmosphere and bury it. What remains uncertain is how best to fulfill these goals.Sometimes trees also can do Earth’s temperature more harm than good. That’s why we need to look so carefully at the unsettling evidence, which is the purpose of this paper.
People have little control over the planet’s carbon, for nature is mostly in charge. All living cells contain carbon. It’s everywhere: in rocks, in plants, in the soil, in petroleum, in the air, in crystals at the bottom of the ocean, and in 30,000-year-old muskox carcasses and frozen grass roots in Siberia’s permafrost. Nature moves carbon around continually, smashing ocean waves against rocks to form soil, then blowing it away as dust or feeding it to trees or flooding it into your basement. For eons, nature has balanced the carbon cycle by locking carbon in storage “sinks” that offset other ongoing emissions. But over the most recent dozen decades humans have botched nature’s routine. We’ve pulled petroleum, coal, and methane out of the earth for fuel and cut down forests for farmland. We’ve degraded and desertified areas of land larger than Newfoundland each year, turning fertile earth into barren dust. Land use (including agriculture and forestry) produces about 24 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, largely through misuse, for if the land were managed well, it would be a sink instead of a source of emissions. Unless we repair the damage quickly, we shall suffer catastrophic consequences.
The repairs must begin by halting our continuing blunders, so the first task is to stop emitting carbon. That’s easier said than done, but by now it’s insufficient anyway. We also have to undo previous mistakes by recapturing some of the carbon that’s already in the air. Global warming will almost inevitably exceed the two-degree target adopted in the Paris Agreement of 2016, but by promptly using effective “negative emissions technologies” (NETs), scientists believe it possible to reduce it afterward to under 1.5 degrees.
Though several NETs are being developed, only two of them are realistic options for the urgent eleven-year target that scientists have set: First, let’s plant a trillion trees and, second, let’s adopt farming methods that recapture more carbon from the atmosphere than we are emitting. These changes will reverse the ongoing deforestation and desertification trends and may enable the expected human population of about 11 billion1 to be fed adequately in 2100. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has called for an increase of one billion hectares of forest to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. [2] At least 20 countries have begun major efforts to reverse farmland and forest losses, and the effort is only getting underway. It can be accomplished for only about $300 billion—equivalent to the world’s military spending every sixty days.3 But we must hurry!
Our tool is photosynthesis: the mysterious biochemical trick every plant uses for capturing carbon dioxide and making it into sugar for its own functions. Even when a plant dies or is harvested, its roots may leave some carbon in the soil, enriching the fertility for future crops. Moreover, wooden houses and furniture can store carbon for centuries, so, as we shall see, both forests and farmland can be vast carbon “sinks”—or not. Today, farming is a major net source of carbon, emitting more to the atmosphere than it sequesters.
Forests and Climate
A scientific lab in Zurich led by Thomas Crowther has done the most extensive inventory of the world’s forests, estimating that there are now approximately three trillion trees on the planet. Is there room for another one trillion? After examining photos of some 80,000 plots of land around the world, the lab published a report by Jean-François Bastin et al. that gained worldwide attention.4 It noted that, whereas about 8.7 billion hectares (two-thirds of all the soil on the planet) could support forests, only 5.5 billion of that land is actually forested. Of the remaining 3.2 billion hectares, most is either cropland or urban areas. That leaves about 0.9 billion hectares as potentially available for restoration of forests. The researchers conclude that “the global forest restoration target proposed by the IPCC of 1 billion hectares (defined as >10% tree cover) is undoubtedly achievable under the current climate.” Those trees could theoretically store an additional 205 gigatonnes of carbon. Since there is an excess of about 300 gigatons of anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere now, they infer that such enlarged forests could clean up about two-thirds of the mess we humans have made so far. In theory, then, trees can save us.
But the authors emphasize that we must act quickly, for global warming is reducing the amount of suitable land. At the current rate of warming, about 450 million hectares of tropical rainforests will be lost by 2050. This subtracts 46 gigatonnes from the 205 gigatonnes reductions now possible. Nevertheless, the researchers assure us that there is ample available land for the new forests—especially in six countries. More than 50 percent of the tree restoration potential can be found in diminishing order in Russia, United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil, and China.5
Most readers worldwide rejoiced upon learning of these findings, but not everyone. Adam Rogers, among others, soon published a withering criticism in the same journal.6 He claims that the Zurich research team had greatly over-estimated the total amount of carbon uptake by trees. Correcting such errors would largely negate their upbeat findings.
The report shocked some of us in a different way—by suggesting that many of the anticipated new billion hectares of forest will be in the Arctic. Hadn’t those researchers heard the bad news about forests and permafrost? We wrote to the lead author, Jean-François Bastin, to express our alarm, but he denied that their paper had recommended planting trees anywhere. They had only predicted that trees can, and unless people interfere, probably will proliferate in the tundra of Russia, Canada, and Alaska.
And that is true. Forests can grow in the Arctic and indeed are encroaching into the sparse grasslands of that region.7 However, even if quite large canopies grow there, the forests will sequester far less carbon per hectare than those in the tropics. A tree in a boreal forest (or “taiga,” as it is called in Russia) grows too slowly to sequester much carbon. Worse yet, forests in the Arctic may even be increasing global warming.8 This detrimental effect, which was discovered by climate scientists, initially surprised many foresters, who had assumed that photosynthesis everywhere has the same benign cooling effect on the planet. The trees in the Arctic do sequester some carbon but they also have another, less desirable, effect. Whereas the snow-covered grass reflects sunlight (the “albedo effect”), the trees make the landscape darker and therefore warmer. Second, it seems that some tree roots also stimulate the decomposition of organic material in the soil, so that long-frozen microbes revive and begin producing methane, which is twenty times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.9
Iain Hartley has compared carbon stocks of vegetation and soils between tundra and a birch forest. There was far less carbon in the forest than in the tundra nearby.10 Thus, despite sequestering some carbon, trees in a carbon-rich permafrost may have an overall warming effect on the climate. This possibility is so crucial for the climate crisis that much more research is urgently needed to clarify where trees are beneficial and where they are harmful—and more specifically, which trees, in which types of soil. For example, black spruce forests in some regions may actually protect the permafrost and help keep the earth cold, in contrast to birch forests.11
There is a huge amount of carbon involved: the northern hemisphere contains an estimated 1,672 billion tons of organic carbon. If just ten percent of it thaws, one estimate projects that it will release enough carbon to raise global temperature by 0.07 degrees Celsius by 2100.12 Another recent study estimates that already more carbon is lost from the permafrost regions during the winter than is taken up during the average growing season.13
There’s a major policy implication here: Although overall the Arctic is presumably still a carbon sink (sequestering more carbon than it emits), it will become a net source of greenhouse gas if forests continue encroaching there. That means it would be wholly inadvisable to plant billions of trees in carbon-rich permafrost soil—the type that is most widespread in the Arctic, especially Siberia.
The Zimovs
An even more impassioned warning against Arctic trees comes from two Siberian ecologists, the father and son Sergey and Nikita Zimov. They have spent most of their lives studying the changing climate in Russia’s eastern Arctic. Contrary to the widespread assumption that the Arctic had always been a desert of ice and thin soils, they say that in the Pleistocene era it was a fertile grassland, rich with huge wild animals, such as bison and woolly mammoths, despite the 5 to 10 degree colder average temperature than today. They find vast numbers of ancient bones in the melting permafrost near the river Kolyma. These animals knocked down any saplings and prevented the warming of soil. By trampling the snow in winter, they also kept the soil cold.
“At the time,” writes Sergey Zimov, “the biomass of big herbivores on the planet reached 1.6 billion tons…. Bison and deer killed trees by eating the bark. Elephants and mammoths simply broke trees. Through fertilizing, harvesting, and trampling, herbivores managed their pastures in any climate.”14 The region still would be entirely grassland, they say, if stone age hunters had not killed off the huge animals —especially woolly mammoths—that had roamed the tundra in herds.
The Zimovs conduct their research in a large reserve called “Pleistocene Park,” which attracts scientist visitors from all over the world. They keep its land colder than the surrounding region by importing large animals and driving a vehicle around, knocking down every tree possible. According to their records, when air temperature sank to –40°C in winter, the temperature of the ground was found to be only –5°C under an intact cover of snow, but –30°C where the animals had trampled down the snow.15 The Zimovs are eagerly awaiting the progress of George Church, a Harvard geneticist who is trying to breed a larger elephant that can thrive in cold, to repopulate the Arctic with a close approximation of the woolly mammoth.
We cannot wait for that strange solution but there is now a sufficient basis for prohibiting the planting of forests in permafrost regions. However, if trees must not be planted in the Arctic, that will reduce the 0.9 billion hectares that Crowther’s team had defined as potentially available. Worse yet, permafrost is not limited to the Arctic, so it may be necessary to avoid reforesting in other places too. Professor Google explains that “Permafrost is widespread in the northern part of the Northern Hemisphere, where it occurs in 85 percent of Alaska, 55 percent of Russia and Canada, and probably all of Antarctica.” But the northern parts of Alaska, Russia, and Canada are the main places where Crowther et al suggest new forests could be established. To limit global warming, must we also reduce the size of our boreal forest and taiga? Surely almost no one would take seriously such a shocking proposal.
But the expansion proposal also looks difficult. A trillion is a lot of trees— a thousand billions. The current human population in 2019 is 7.7 billion. A trillion trees equal 130 trees per person. When prime ministers of countries are in a good mood, they offer to plant two billion trees, as Justin Trudeau has recently done, but even if every country in the United Nations planted two billion, we would reach only about one-third of our goal. And one trillion is not enough. The realism of any particular target number will depend on the effectiveness of the planting program. China is carrying out the most ambitious planting program of all (their target is 100 billion trees by 2050) but some Beijing researchers report that “on-the-ground surveys have shown that, over time, as many as 85 percent of the plantings fail.”16 So shall we aim for two trillion, say, or even three?
And if not in most of Russia, the United States, and Canada, where can even one more trillion trees be planted? The Crowther lab’s paper has explicitly excluded land now being used for crops as well as urban land. Most of the remainder therefore can only be in remote areas, beyond cities and farms, mainly far from roads.
Logically, it seems we must (a) choose very promising species, (b) plant them in the most suitable plots of soil © densely enough to maximize the number of trees per hectare, (d) in places where people can reach them easily and care for them regularly, and (e) protect them from fires and deforestation until they are mature and ready to be replaced. And, even so, we cannot rely entirely on new forests to save us, but must adopt other NETs as well—notably regenerative farming.
Regenerative Agriculture
Big trees generally sequester more carbon than other plants, but even vegetables, flowers, grass, and grain put a lot of it into the soil. Although human beings are releasing 9.4 billion metric tons of carbon, the actual concentration of CO2 that stays in the atmosphere is only about half that. The rest is already being sequestered by oceans and land. Our challenge is to develop methods that sequester much more—even the 320 billion tons excess that we have put into the air and now must remove. Plants make that possible and there is evidence that increasing soil carbon content also increases the amount and quality of food grown there.
In 2015 France launched an exemplary campaign called “4 per 1000” at the COP 21 meeting. This is a plan to increase global soil organic matter stocks by 4 per 1000 (or 0.4%) per year, which would offset 20–35% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. As a strategy for climate change mitigation, soil carbon sequestration would buy time over the next ten to twenty years while other effective technologies become viable.17
These agricultural innovations have come from a variety of different traditions such as organic farming, which are merging now and being called “regenerative agriculture”—farming that goes beyond being “sustainable” by actually reversing carbon loss on degraded land. This regeneration is necessary because poor land management is continuously degrading soil all around the world and, if not reversed, will make it impossible to feed the growing human population.
Techniques that increase carbon storage also tend to increase water retention and support the bacteria, fungi, and other organisms in healthy soil that live on carbohydrates produced by decaying roots and other plant materials.
There are promising genetic discoveries now that may soon improve the quality of several plant foods, such as soybeans. By selective breeding (not modifying genes) it is possible to create “super-plants” with deep roots that greatly increase the amount of carbon they sequester. A biochemical called suberin determines the length of roots, and scientists are developing suberin-rich varieties that may become available to farmers within a decade or so.19
But there are already other practical regenerative methods that about ten percent of North American farmers now are using. And around the world, such innovations are spreading as the extensive use of composts and mulching to avoid chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Leading farmers now keep their land covered year-round with cover crops. They avoid plowing the soil, so as to protect the roots of the plants for transferring carbon downward. And instead of planting crops in furrows, they insert seeds into soil that still is covered with the residue of last season’s crop. They replace annual crops with perennials.
To aerate the surface layer of soil without turning over the earth, some farmers use “key-line” methods, such as slicing narrow grooves into the soil, into which they may pour “compost tea” brewed from special bacteria and fungi, which they serve to the growing plants with minimal damage to the roots.
Such biological additives can multiply the crop yield and the soil sequestration many times over.20 Or they apply biochar— charcoal that is pure carbon, and which can stay in the soil for thousands of years, enriching it and retaining moisture. “Keyline” farming was invented by Australians during droughts; they created ponds and swales to move the water around the contours of hills and allow it to sink in deeper, instead of eroding the topsoil. Indeed, within a few years, these practices together can create 12 inches of new topsoil.21
By now, regenerative practices are well-established and uncontroversial, with one exception: “holistic management,” which involves the use of livestock to regenerate degraded soil. Livestock means meat, and meat is a fighting word nowadays, with almost all environmentalists opposing it.
Livestock and Meat
First let me summarize the overwhelming case against meat. Around the world, lush grasslands and gardens are becoming barren wastelands, and for this, livestock is largely blamed. One-third of the planet’s arable land is used to produce crops for livestock,22 which includes about a billion cows and bulls. Nearly one-fifth of the world’s land is threatened with desertification, which is partly attributed to overgrazing by animals. Farmers are urged to remove their cattle from the land and let it rest until the vegetation recovers. Then the world’s grasslands could sequester carbon equivalent to 0.6 gigatonnes of CO2 per year.23
Moreover, meat production is clearly a source of global warming. Global livestock supply chains are the source of 14.5 percent of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions—5 percent of the carbon dioxide, 44 percent of the methane, and 53 percent of the nitrous oxide emissions. Although less prevalent than carbon dioxide, methane is more potent because it traps 28 times more heat.24 Nitrous oxide is 264 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over 20 years, and its lifetime in the atmosphere exceeds a century, according to the IPCC.
Farmers feed grain to cows, pigs, and other animals before slaughtering or milking them for human consumption. If we ate that grain our selves, we would supposedly be healthier and there would be enough food for the entire human population. Vegetarians say they get along fine without meat and vegans manage without animal protein at all.
Ruminants such as cows are the worst culprits, for they directly add greenhouse gas to the air from both their front and rear ends. In the cow’s extra stomach—the one that enables it to digest the cellulose in grass and leaves —bacteria ferment its lunch and generate the methane. The nitrous oxide is released by decomposing manure.
These arguments for veganism are powerful and valid. The only logical advice seems to be this: Eat plants, not meat! Nevertheless, there are other facts (or at least claims) that may justify this contradictory response: Eat meat if you want to, and raise more livestock!
Let’s run through the health issue first, since in principle that could be settled by empirical research. In reality, though, such studies produce weak evidence. There are two reasons: First, people fib when reporting what they eat and, second, other factors confound the results. For example, vegetarians are so health conscious that they disproportionately exercise, avoid smoking, get plenty of sleep, etc, and these may be the real causes of any health differences.
One major review compared 54 different studies and concluded that, if there is any difference whatever between the mortality rates of vegetarians and omnivores, it amounts to less than one percent over a twenty-year period—too trivial to warrant any dietary changes.25 One study found that vegetarians and vegans suffer slightly fewer heart attacks but slightly more strokes than omnivores.
India is a good place to make these comparisons because most families there are consistently and permanently either vegetarians or not. Dr. Prabhat Jha is studying the health habits of a million households in India where someone had recently died. He finds no differences in mortality between male vegetarians and non-vegetarians, but vegetarian women have slightly shorter lives. He thinks this sex differential will be found only in India, for women there customarily serve the men and children first and eat only the (mainly carbohydrate) leftovers themselves.26 Vegetarian women in India probably consume too little protein.
In any case, health concerns are not a strong reason for choosing whether to raise livestock and eat meat. The consumer’s decision should probably be based mainly on the effects of livestock on global warming and on the importance of livestock for the livelihood on the world’s population.
As for the effect of cattle on sequestration of carbon in the soil, some, but not all, studies have shown that their grazing is beneficial. As one review of the research reports,
“Reeder and Schuman reported higher soil carbon levels in grazed—compared with ungrazed—pastures, and noted that when animals were excluded, carbon tended to be immobilized as above-ground litter and annuals that lacked deep roots. After reviewing 34 studies of grazed and ungrazed sites (livestock exclusion) around the world, Milchunas and Lauenroth reported soil carbon was both increased (60 percent of cases) and decreased (40 percent of cases).”27
The loss of carbon can be attributed to two forms of mismanagement: over-grazing and under-grazing, both of which will degrade the soil, harming not only the world’s climate but also the survival prospects of the world’s poorest people. Over one billion people depend on livestock—including 70 percent of those living on less than US$1 per day.28 It is unreasonable to espouse a doctrine that would deprive these people of the main or only source of their livelihood. Pastoralism is not about to end. The point is to make it more productive.
Holistic Management
We have already considered the plight of the Zimovs as they struggle to keep the permafrost from melting around them. One is inclined to smile at their solution: Bring vast herds of giant herbivores—preferably woolly mammoths—back to the Arctic. That does not seem feasible. Cattle would have many of the same effects as super-elephants, but they cannot survive the Arctic winters outdoors. Bison can, and if there were a sufficient demand for their meat, quite large bison herds might be raised there, though not as quickly as they are needed.
Anyway, we should not ignore the ecological basis for the Zimovs’ proposal. During the ice age, the tundra flourished superbly as a grassland, while feeding far more animals than exist on the planet today. Those huge creatures stomped around eating constantly, and the grasses sequestered immense quantities of carbon. Today, buried in the circumpolar region of the Arctic, are 1.4 trillion tons of carbon, two times more than in all the forests on the planet. According to our current assumptions, such “overgrazing” should certainly have desertified the Arctic, but it had precisely the opposite effect! Is there a lesson here for cattle-ranchers elsewhere?
Allan Savory did not learn from the Zimovs but from his own observations of the barren land in Zimbabwe. Nevertheless, his conclusions are completely compatible with theirs. He says that saving the world from desertification will require more cattle, not fewer.
And, like the Zimovs, his evidence comes largely from the past, when vast numbers of huge animals roamed the African savannah.29 There were, as in the Arctic, about as many predators as herbivores, which stayed closely bunched together in herds; those closest to the centre were less likely to be eaten. There was luxuriant grass for these herds, which kept moving around, leaving manure behind. As they moved, their hooves trampled the grass and aerated the top layer of soil. If they stayed too long, their overgrazing would indeed degrade the land, but they would not return to the same spots until their previous deposits of manure and urine had been absorbed. Such herds maintained a thick grassland that retained rainwater that would otherwise have run off in gullies.
Savory learned from ecological history; he teaches regenerative farmers to restore their barren soil by enlarging their herds of livestock. He says the key is not their numbers so much as the way they are maintained. Conventional farmers around the world today let their whole herds stay on the same common paddock indefinitely, loosely spaced and grazing independently rather than in tight herds, for there are no longer predators to encourage crowding. By contrast, Savory’s “holistic management” instead requires the farmer to move his animals around in dense, grazing herds from one paddock to another, on a schedule determined by observing their impact, day by day, on the grass. Such a close herd is often surrounded today by a temporary electric fence that can readily be moved to the next paddock within a day or two, as required.
Another factor that must influence herding practice is the quality of soil being grazed. Savory classifies it as either “brittle” or “non-brittle,” which is a more important distinction than the difference between “arid” or “dry” land. “Brittle” soil receives most of its annual rainfall in a brief period, then remains dry for long intervals. The effect on vegetation is more challenging than that of a “non-brittle” landscape, where the humidity is distributed evenly throughout the year. Brittle land requires the services provided by especially large herds of animals, managed holistically. However, even non-brittle cropland that is producing vegetables, grain, and fruit also benefit from having heavy animal impact on the land, though not necessarily every year.
Livestock perform two other remarkable services: counteracting gravity and maintaining biodiversity. Water runs downhill, taking the nutrients with it. If unchecked, this phenomenon would mean that valleys would be fertile but the soil at the top of hills and mountains would be barren. However, herbivores eat the plants that grow in valleys, then wander uphill and excrete. Their manure contains, not only the nutrients that they have consumed, but a number of seeds from all the plants they have eaten along the way. This re-diversifies plant species and fertilizes the ground where they grow.
Holistic management has its critics—more, it seems, in the popular press than among researchers or ranchers, who are apparently becoming converts. Agronomists cite Savory in their FAO reports, asserting for example that
“Overgrazing is a function of time (grazing and recovery) and not of absolute numbers. It results when livestock have access to plants before they have time to recover. Compromised root systems of overgrazed plants are not able to function effectively.”30
On the Internet one can find hundreds of photos of landscapes split down the center by a fence. The land on one side is degraded but on the other side verdant—allegedly because of the proper grazing methods used there. And on Facebook there are regenerative farming and grazing groups with ten thousand members. They prohibit debates about global warming or vegetarianism but exchange the pragmatic know-how that working farmers need.
Sheldon Frith, a farmer-scholar advocate of holistic management, notes in his book Letter to a Vegetarian Nation that there are about 100 million cattle in Canada and the United States now. He estimates that between 27 million and 135 million are needed to maintain the cropland soil; about 58 million cattle to maintain rangelands; and about 59 million to regenerate and maintain North American tundra. That would mean that the existing livestock should be approximately doubled, and of course maintained holistically.31 And indeed, farmers around the world are increasingly adopting holistic management because it does evidently restore degraded ecosystems.
But What About the Methane?
Unfortunately, Frith’s proposal seems totally incompatible with our earlier acknowledgment that these animals emit huge quantities of methane—a far more powerful agent of global warming than even carbon dioxide. There is obviously a great need for additional research to resolve much contradictory evidence.
It seems to be an established fact that good grazing practices enhance the health of the soil, enabling plants and soil organisms to flourish. However, we must also ask whether good grazing also increases the long-term sequestration of carbon—and that is a controversial question.
The climate crisis requires clear answers, yet the best methods of measuring carbon uptake are unsettled, and there are obviously so many other factors involved that the evidence is questionable. One meta-analysis, for example, reached the upbeat conclusion that “grazing lands generate carbon surpluses that could not only offset rural emissions, but could also partially or totally offset the emissions of non-rural sectors.”32 (In other words, cows can save us.)
Yet another meta-analysis reported flatly that “study after study arrived at similar conclusions. Grazing did not increase carbon sequestration in soils.” (In other words, cows do great things for the environment and can feed us, but they can’t save us from climate change.)
What does ecological history tell us about the equilibrium between methane emissions and uptake? Remember the astounding biomass of herbivores that lived in the Pleistocene period‚ a total far exceeding that of all animals, including humans and livestock, living today. Woolly mammoths and other megafauna also emitted methane. Nevertheless, ice cores from the Pleistocene period show that the atmosphere contained lower levels of methane than today. How so? Probably the answer lies in the balance between methane-excreting animals and methane-eating microbes in the soil.
It is not easy to break methane molecules apart to sequester the carbon in soil, but there is one category of bacteria that do so: methanotrophs, which eat methane and thrive best in areas where it is abundant—ocean floors, swamps, and pastures. During the Pleistocene, methanotrophs must have flourished, fed by the herds of megafauna. Presumably their abundance explains the stupendous quantities of ice age carbon in today’s Arctic soil.
Methanotrophs have a protein called methane monooxygenase, or MMO—an enzyme that contains copper. The metal us stored energy to destroy the super-strong methane bond and make MMO the only known protein that can break apart methane. Scientists are now studying it with the hope that MMO can be cultivated on a large scale for the fight against global warming.33 The methane from ruminant animals would be sequestered by methanotrophs instead of emitted into the atmosphere as greenhouse gas. However, this research is not advanced enough to offer the solution to our current predicament—that, although the health of our soil depends on grazing animals, they are probably also worsening our climate crisis.
In the short term, the most promising way reducing the livestock dilemma may be to find ways of limiting the methane produced in ruminant stomachs. Vaccination may be able to eliminate the causative enteric bacteria. Another solution is to feed cows small amounts of seaweed, which reduces about 80 percent of their methane emissions.34 If successful on a large scale, this would diminish the basis for abolishing livestock and the consumption of meat. Unfortunately, seaweed seems to be more effective with cows kept and fed in pens than with cattle that graze on pastures, restoring the fertility of the land.
Thinking about Solutions
So yes, maybe trees and cows can save us—if they don’t kill us first, which is equally likely. Everything depends on how we manage them. A trillion of the right species of trees in the right location might capture and sequester enough carbon to offset our worst past mistakes, giving us a couple of decades to phase in better technologies. But large forests in carbon-rich permafrost might set off a positive feedback loop that becomes irreversible.
Likewise, with proper management, cattle, sheep, bison, and other livestock might restore to fertility a large part of the earth’s degraded land. But poorly managed flocks, especially ones that graze too long or with too little hard impact as a herd, will hasten the desertification of our planet.
Both of these challenges require more scientific information than exists at present. The search for optimum solutions may be the most urgently consequential policy facing humankind, so everyone is obliged to join in the discourse. Every advanced country must immediately speed up the quest for clear answers.
Until more is known, the following policies seem to be the wisest practices:
A. Plant no trees in the Arctic and probably in no other area of permafrost.
B. Do not reduce (and maybe even increase) the number of grazing animals for meat and milk, but use holistic methods of managing them.
Since permafrost areas and savannahs are among the places that Crowther’s lab had counted as potential forest areas, removing them from the plans for afforestation will diminish the prospect of planting a trillion trees—or the several trillion that will be required if they are not cared for properly.
We must recognize the inevitable competition for the use of land, with food crops deserving high priority, and we are ambivalently including meat as one of the foods to be produced. Cities were also excluded from the 0.9 billion hectares that Crowther’s lab initially designated for prospective new forests. Therefore, the remaining available land would mostly be far away from where people live or grow their food. Will governments fly hordes of workers, students, and soldiers out in helicopters with spades and bundles of saplings? And will they fly them back every month to weed and water their trees?
How about less labor-intensive methods? There are stories on the Internet about “seed balls” made of clay and dung containing seeds. They are thrown into vacant lots or even dropped from airplanes with the expectation that they will become new forests. This apparently never happens.
What about drones? We interviewed some people who are using that technique.35 They do know the results of carefully monitored studies but for various reasons would not share that information with us. Probably drone planting succeeds in some environments but we were more pessimistic at the end of our interviews than at the beginning. Tree-planting machines exist too, but no one claims they are quicker than people.
Thus we need a billion hectares of land that will support trees, and we need a lot of human labor to plant them and maintain a good survival rate, so we will have to squeeze many saplings onto land that Crowther’s people declared off-bounds: farms and cities. And perhaps we can plant more trees per hectare than had been planned.
There actually are beneficial ways of maximizing land-use. Silvopasturing, for example, is being praised in FAO publications as a way of raising cattle on pastures where there are also some trees. And some food crops (notably coffee) thrive best in the shade of other trees.
Miyawaki Forests
Biodiversity can actually improve the carbon sequestration of trees, though this depends on the combination of trees that are put together, e.g. planting adjacent trees of differing heights, so they do not compete for canopy space.36 Moreover, biodiversity and dense planting can work together to speed up the growth of trees. This is best demonstrated in the forests created by the Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki, which actually grow ten times faster than the monoculture plantations that are planted by the logging industry.
An Indian engineer named Shubhendu Sharma studied with Miyawaki and has created a company called Afforestt, which is creating mini-forests in cities and degraded plots of land all around the world.
First Sharma’s team collects seeds from a wide variety (say, 60 or 70) of local indigenous trees, rejecting any alien species. They classify them by expected height at maturity, start them growing in pots until they are saplings about two years old. Next they remove the first meter of degraded soil, mix it with an appropriate blend of organic matter from the same locality, and replace it. Then they plant the trees and shrubs very densely—about four per square meter, with all four plants chosen for their differing expected heights. They water and weed them for about two years, after which the trees generate their own water and can continue growing with no maintenance for hundreds of years.
Of course, many or most of these closely-planted trees die, but Afforestt does not thin them out. They see trees as social beings who form their own friendships and alliances. Sharma lets the trees themselves “decide” which of their companions shall survive, for they all benefit from their closeness. It is impossible to walk through a Miyawaki-type forest, for they are all so dense.37
Most of these mini-forests are in cities, and some are only the size of a parking spot or tennis court. Some communities hire Afforestt to plant urban forests so their children can learn the care of trees. Such urban forestry, if done on a mass scale, could locate billions of trees where people live, work, and can conveniently volunteer their spare time. It enhances the community-spirit in a neighborhood. Certainly not all trillion of the new trees can be planted in cities, but possibly enough urban to compensate for preventing Arctic forests.
In North America and much of Europe, huge amounts of urban space can be reclaimed beneficially, not from degraded land but from lawns. In the United States, lawns take up more acreage than the top eight crops combined.38 This was not always the case. Historically, only the wealthy could afford the space and servants to keep lawns. The invention of the lawnmower, the shortening of the work week to forty hours, and the spread of tract suburban housing after World War II enabled the middle class to acquire the habit. Indeed, having a proper lawn became a badge of respectability.
The climate crisis must call this symbol into question. Matt Weber reminds us that,
“We apply more synthetic fertilizers and pesticides to our lawns than an equivalent area of cropland. Not only can this hurt local wildlife, these chemicals can end up in our own drinking water. The manufacture and use of these chemicals require large amounts of fossil fuels and contribute to global warming. Running a single lawn mower for an hour emits just as much pollution as 40 automobiles, according to the EPA. [Each] lawn mower produces more pollution than multiple cars. In a year, a hectare of lawn can contribute as many greenhouse gases as a jet flying halfway around the world… [and] 50–70 percent of all residential water in the United States goes to landscaping. Irrigated lawns take up nearly three times as much space as irrigated corn.”39
Weber did not mention one of the worst offenses of lawn-owners: they are maintaining major sources of nitrous oxide. This greenhouse gas has global warming effects 298 times greater than carbon dioxide on a 100-year timescale. It is increasing in the atmosphere each year because of fertilizer use in landscaping and lawns.40
But perhaps this destructive symbolism is ending. Florida has just passed a law saying that cities cannot prohibit people from growing food on their front yards. Next maybe they will let us plant Miyawaki forests. Those two measures are among the promising changes that can be made on land to save the world. (And we have not even considered here the prospects for increasing carbon sequestration in the oceans. Paul Beckwith helpfully reminds me: “Don’t forget plankton. If you like trees, you’ll love plankton.”)
Current research on forestry and regenerative agriculture is incomplete. The climate emergency requires information that is lacking. Still, we must make fateful decisions in this context of uncertainty. Therefore, the following policies should be considered seriously:
Eat meat if you want to. Raise livestock, using holistic management. Feed them a little seaweed. Replace your lawn with a vegetable garden or a Miyawaki forest. Plant two trillion trees, but none in carbon-rich permafrost areas. Good luck.
Metta Spencer is editor of Peace and Project Save the World.
Notes
1 Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “The World Population Prospects 2019: Highlights”, 17 June 2019. http://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/world-population-prospects-2019.html
2 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “An IPCC Special Report on the Impacts of Global Warming of 1,5 Degrees Centigrade Above Pre-Industrial Levels and Related Global Greenhouse Gas Emission Pathways”. (IPCC, 2018).
3 Adam Majendie and Pratik Parija, “How to Halt Global Warming for $300 Billion,” Bloomberg News, October 24, 2019. business.financialpost.com/commodities/agriculture/how-to-halt-global-warming-for-300-billion.
4 Jean-François Bastin, Yelena Finegold, Claude Garcia, Danilo Mollicone, Marcelo Rezende, Devin Routh, Constantin M. Zohner, and Thomas W. Crowther, “The Global Tree Restoration Potential,” Science, 365, 76-69 (2019) 5 July, 2019.
5 Ibid.
6 Adam Rogers, “Trying to Plant a Trillion Trees Won’t Solve Anything,” Science, Oct. 26, 2019.
7 Jonathan A, Wang, Damien Sulla-Menashe, Curtis E. Woodcock, Oliver Sonnentag, Ralph F. Keeling, and Mark A. Friedl, “Extensive Land Cover Change Across Arctic-Boreal Northwestern North America from Disturbance and Climate Forcing.” Global Change Biology 2019, 00.1 -1-16.
8 Christa Marshall, “Vegetation May Speed Warming of Arctic,” Scientific American, Sept 1, 2019. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vegetation-may-speed-warming-of-arctic
9 Bartosz Adamdzyk et al, “Plant Roots Increase both Decomposition and Stable Organic Matter Formation in Boreal Forest soil,” Nature Communications, Sept. 04, 2019. http://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11993-1
10 Bits of Science, “Trees Starting to Grow in the Arctic due to Climate Change Could Cause Carbon Dioxide Release,” June 17, 2012. Hartley’s research was initially published in Nature Climate Change (no date).
11 Argyro Zerva et al, “Soil Carbon Dynamics in a Sitka Spruce (Picea sitchensis (Bong.) Carr.) Chronosequence on a Peaty Gley,” Forest Ecology and Management 205 (2005) 227–240 .Available online at http://www.sciencedirect.com.
12 Holli Riebeek “The Carbon Cycle”, NASA Earth Observatory, June 15, 2011. earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/CarbonCycle
13 Susan M Natali, Jennifer D Watts, and Donatella Zona, “Large Loss of CO2 in Winter Observed Across the Northern Permafrost Region,” Nature Climate Change (2019) http://www.uarctic.org/news/2019/10/large-loss-of-co2-in-winter-observed-across-the-northern-permafrost-region
14 Sergey Zimov, “This Wild Field Manifesto is a Work in Progress,” Revive and Restore. Nov. 25, 2014. reviverestore.org/projects/woolly-mammoth/sergey-zimovs-manifesto
15 S.A. Zimov, N.S. Zimov, A.N. Tikhonov, F.S. Chapin III (2012). “Mammoth steppe: a high-productivity phenomenon” (PDF). In: Quaternary Science Reviews, vol. 57, 4 December 2012, p. 42 fig.17. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016.
16 Jon Luoma, China’s Reforestation Programs: Big Success or Just an Illusion?” Yale Environment 360. Jan. 17, 2012. e360.yale.edu/features/chinas_reforestation_programs_big_success_or_just_an_illusion
17 Budiman Minasny et al, “Soil Carbon 4 per Mille,” Geoderma, Vol. 292. Aril l14, 2017, pp 59-86. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016706117300095
18 David Fogarty, “Crops with deeper roots capture more carbon, fight drought: study” Reuters Aug 5. 2011. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-crops-carbon/crops-with-deeper-roots-capture-more-carbon-fight-drought-study-idUSTRE77412Q20110805
19 Joanne Chory’s TED talk, “How Supercharged Plants Could Slow Climate Change.” http://www.ted.com/talks/joanne_chory_how_supercharged_plants_could_slow_climate_change
20 John J. Berger, “Can Soil Microbes Slow Climate Change?” Scientific American Mar 26, 2019.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/author/john-j-berger. See also videos by David Johnson. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuW42tFC4Ss and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79qpP0m7SaY
21 Ethan Roland video: “Carbon Farming: Tools for Regenerative Agriculture.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljuJhQtLYt8 and see ethan@regenerativerealestate.com.
22 Alastair Bland, “Is the Livestock Industry Destroying the Planet?” Smithsonian.com. Aug. 21, 2012. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/is-the-livestock-industry-destroying-the-planet-11308007
23 U.N Food and Agriculture Organization: “Key Facts and Findings,” http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode
24 FAO, “Key Facts and Findings.”
25 Bradley C. Johnston et al, “Unprocessed Red Meat and Processed Meat Consumption: Dietary Guideline Recommendations From the Nutritional Recommendations (NutriRECS) Consortium Free” Annals of Internal Medicine, 2019. annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2752328/unprocessed-red-meat-processed-meat-consumption-dietary-guideline-recommendations-from
26 Dr. Prabhat Jha reports these results in a lecture to Science for Peace, video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JcPm_bXISU . See also the defence of meat diets by Chris Kressler, “Do Vegetarians and Vegans Live Longer than Meat-Eaters?” chriskresser.com/do-vegetarians-and-vegans-live-longer-than-meat-eaters. “Eating Meat Reduces Stroke Risk? New Study Says Yes” Topical Thunder, Sept. 5, 2019, reporting on a British study of 48,000 adults. topicalthunder.com/2019/09/05/eating-meat-reduces-stroke-risk-new-study-says-yes/
27 Micharel Abberton, Rochard Conant, and Caterina Batello, “Grassland Carbon Sequestration: Management, Policy, and Economics,” Plant Production and Protection Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome, April 2009.
28 World Bank, 2009.
29 Allan Savory and Jody Butterfield, Hoiistic Management, Third Edition: A Commonsense Revolution to Restore Our Environment, Kindle Book.
30 Abberton et al. op cit.
31 Sheldon Frith, Letter to a Vegetarian Nation, an e-book available on Kindle, 2016 sheldonfrith@hotmail.com, http://www.regenerateland.com
32 E.F.Viglizzo et al, “Reassessing the role of grazing lands in carbon-balance estimations: Meta-analysis and review,” Science of The Total Environment Volume 661, 15 April 2019, Pages 531-542. doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.01.130
33 Alex Berr, “The Bacteria that Eat Methane: An Interview with Soo Ro, Molecular Biophysicist.” Helix, Sept. 15, 2017. helix.northwestern.edu/blog/2017/09/bacteria-eat-methane
34 Emma Bryce “Feeding Cows Seaweed Could Reduce Their Methane Emissions,” Anthropocene Magazine, June 21, 2019. http://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2019/06/feeding-cows-seaweed-could-reduce-their-methane-emissions
35 “Can drones plant a trillion trees?” Video discussion with Sandy Smith, Eric Davies, Elena Fernadez-Miranda and Eman Hamdan. youtu.be/LU8hCkAaYfs
36 Jean-Baptiste Pichancourt, Jennifer Firn, Iadine Cgades, and Tara G. Martin, “Growing Biodiverse Carbon-Rich Forests,” Global Change Biology (2013) 20, 382-393.
37 See my two video interviews with Afforestt staff. “Afforestation and Climate,” with Gaurav Gurjar. youtu.be/4LuYhSN78sI and Shubhendu Sharma, “Miyawaki Forests,” youtu.be/MfPw5VTNZr4 .
38 Matt J. Weber, “Why Everybody Wants a Lawn, and Why It’s Killing the Planet,” Medium, June 26, 2018 medium.com/s/story/this-is-why-everybody-wants-a-lawn-98066ce7aee3
39 Ibid.
40 Amy Townsend Small, Diane E. Pataki, Claudia I. Czimczik, and Stanley C. Tyler, “Nitrous Oxide Emissions and Isotopic Composition in Urban and Agricultural Systems in Southern California,” Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 116, G01013, 2011.
I like the idea of raising forests where there are lawns now. But the roots will ruin the foundations of your house. Maybe there is a solution to that but I don’t know of any.
Beware the balconies! They waste heat!
But as currently constructed, most balconies are ecological pirates. The are built on six-feet-wide extension of the steel girders that hold up the apartment. And the steel conducts the heat out into the world, where it can travel away in all directions.
The answer is: when constructing, put in a “thermal break” — something that blocks the transmission of the heat outward. The apartment building will look like all the normal apartment buildings, but it will do the world a favor.
We could put greenhouses out there and raise vegetables year-round, maybe warming them with that excess heat that is being lost otherwise.
Bullish on Battery Metals
You already know about lithium, which is king right now. But there are other important metals too–especially nickel, cobalt, manganese and copper, which are needed for lithium batteries. An electric vehicle contains four times as much copper as a fossil-fueled model. Nickel is popular with EV battery-makers because it provides the energy density that gives the battery its power and range.
https://palladiumoneinc.com/investors/articles/2020/bullish-on-battery-metals. Feb 3, 2020
How close are they getting to producing batteries that can really enable households to be independent for months at a time? I think that is essential. Every 100 years or so we have to expect a burst of radiation from the sun that will destroy all the electric grids and circuits on the side of the earth facing the sun. So even if we don’t have a cyber war where one country destroys the cyber capacity of the other, we are vulnerable. And the only way to become less vulnerable is to decentralize from the grid and enable households to use the electric power from their own roofs. For that, we will need batteries better than any existing today.
I just watched a video of someone interviewing Bill Gates about sustainable energy. I was shocked. He sounded very pessimistic about being able to run our modern lives with the available types of sustainable energy — solar and wind. He is investing his money in research and development, hoping that someone will come up with breakthrough discoveries that will save us Good batteries are part of the solution, but he is looking for tons of other innovations, and really thinks they are essential.
Green-gap in the construction waste industry
By Gail Johnson
Three years before he got into the waste-disposal business, Ray LaLonde became a father. And having kids who are growing up in the era of environmental consciousness has had a profound impact on the way he runs his company.
“I don’t use landfills any more,” says Mr. LaLonde, owner of Clean Away Disposal, which serves the Metro Vancouver region and specializes in removing debris from small to medium construction projects – in particular, buildings that are Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified.
“I have three young children and I care about the environment, and I don’t like where it’s going. My eight-year-old and my six-year-old twins have their own recycling bins, and it’s hard to explain why a lot of recyclables end up in landfills. It doesn’t make any sense. Everybody’s got to do their part to make a difference.”
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The construction industry is a major source of waste. But combine the popularity of green buildings with the fact that many jurisdictions have already implemented recycling bylaws on construction sites, and the need for eco-friendly enterprises such as Mr. LaLonde’s is only going to escalate.
According to Construction Specifications Canada, an industry association, construction and demolition waste – such as asphalt, concrete, gravel, bricks, ceramics, plumbing, insulation, wood, glass, metal, and electrical fixtures – make up 23 per cent of the overall waste stream. The industry is also the greatest producer of wood waste, making up between 25 and 45 per cent of all solid waste generated in North America.
In Portland, Ore., one construction project, a 5,000-square-foot restaurant, yielded 12,344 pounds of waste, including 7,440 pounds of wood, 1,414 pounds of cardboard, and 500 pounds of gypsum wallboard – materials that are all recyclable.
In fact, more than half of construction and demolition-related debris is recyclable or reusable and doesn’t need to end up in landfills. Construction waste is sometimes illegally dumped or burned, resulting in land, air, and water pollution.
LEED is playing a big role in the growing trend of eco-friendly construction-waste removal companies. The internationally recognized sustainable building certification system promotes green development through a series of rating systems.
In addition to key areas such as energy use and water consumption, the program recognizes performance in the reduction of waste of materials and resources. For new construction projects, LEED awards up to two points for diverting between 50 and 75 per cent of demolition, land clearing, and construction waste from landfills and redirecting recyclables back to the manufacturing process. LEED guidelines allow diversion to include the salvage of materials on-site and the donation of materials to charitable organizations.
Construction material can be reused in many ways: old concrete can be crushed into gravel, steel can be melted and reused, scraps of drywall can be crushed into gypsum then made into new drywall.
Even though environmentally responsible practices are increasingly common, there’s still a lack of awareness about minimizing waste, and some contractors mistakenly assume that environmentally friendly practices will increase their costs, according to Public Works and Government Services Canada.
However, there’s a business case to be made for sustainable refuse removal. The diversion of waste from landfills can reduce disposal costs by up to 30 per cent, the federal body claims, through lower tipping fees as well as the sale of reusable materials – materials that are becoming more and more valuable as the cost of construction goes up and the availability of natural resources – such as lumber – goes down.
Mr. LaLonde says that taking construction waste to specific material-recovery facilities can sometimes be more time-consuming if he’s working on a project that’s located closer to a landfill.
Green construction-waste removal is also more challenging in smaller communities that don’t have places to divert or recycle such material. Still, Mr. LaLonde says the future of construction-waste disposal is definitely green.
“Even compared to when I started out, we have a lot more choices,” he says; his company’s services also include coming up with demolition- or construction-waste management plans and providing documentation that’s required for LEED certification. “The whole thing has really taken off in the last two years.”
From The Globe and Mail, Dec. 2011.
Four several years I kept a worm composter in my apartment. I would save food scraps in a sealed plastic contained until they got really smelly, and then put them in the box with about 1,000 worms. Every spring I would spread them out on a plastic sheet and keep removing the top layer of soil (which by then was rich with excellent fertilizer castings), and the worms would keep struggling to get lower, away from the light. Afte removing layer after layer from the top, the bottom layer would be full of fat worms, which I would gather up and put back into the box, with about ten pounds of new soil. It worked fine. The composter did not smell bad. I could have kept it in my living room (I have a friend who did so) but actually kept it in the laundry room. However, after I had surgery I needed help and the people who took care of me were squeamish about the worms so I got rid of them. I sort of miss them but I won’t start over. I will advise anyone else who wants to try it, though.
Shockingly Simple!
How Farmland Could Absorb an Extra 2 Billion Tonnes of CO2 From the Atmosphere Each Year
Adding crushed rock dust to farmland could draw down up to two billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air per year and help meet key global climate targets, according to a major new study led by the University of Sheffield.
Research identifies the nation-by-nation potential for CO2 drawdown, as well as the costs and the engineering challenges involved
Findings reveal the world’s highest emitters (China, India and the US) also have the greatest potential to remove CO2 from the atmosphere using this method
Scientists suggest unused materials from mining and the construction industry could be used to help soils remove CO2 from the atmosphere
Adding crushed rock dust to farmland could draw down up to two billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air per year and help meet key global climate targets, according to a major new study led by the University of Sheffield.
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The technique, known as enhanced rock weathering, involves spreading finely crushed basalt, a natural volcanic rock, on fields to boost the soil’s ability to extract CO2 from the air.
In the first nation-by-nation assessment, published in Nature, scientists have demonstrated the method’s potential for carbon drawdown by major economies, and identified the costs and engineering challenges of scaling up the approach to help meet ambitious global CO2 removal targets. The research was led by experts at the University of Sheffield’s Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation, and the University’s Energy Institute.
Meeting the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global heating to below 2C above pre-industrial levels requires drastic cuts in emissions, as well as the active removal of between two and 10 billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere each year to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. This new research provides a detailed initial assessment of enhanced rock weathering, a large-scale CO2 removal strategy that could make a major contribution to this effort.
The authors’ detailed analysis captures some of the uncertainties in enhanced weathering CO2 drawdown calculations and, at the same time, identifies the additional areas of uncertainty that future work needs to address specifically through large-scale field trials.
The study showed that China, the United States and India – the highest fossil fuel CO2 emitters – have the highest potential for CO2 drawdown using rock dust on croplands. Together, these countries have the potential to remove approximately 1 billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere, at a cost comparable to that of other proposed carbon dioxide removal strategies (US$80-180 per tonne of CO2).
Indonesia and Brazil, whose CO2 emissions are 10-20 times lower than the US and China, were also found to have relatively high CO2 removal potential due to their extensive agricultural lands, and climates accelerating the efficiency of rock weathering.
The scientists suggest that meeting the demand for rock dust to undertake large-scale CO2 drawdown might be achieved by using stockpiles of silicate rock dust left over from the mining industry, and are calling for governments to develop national inventories of these materials.
Calcium-rich silicate by-products of iron and steel manufacturing, as well as waste cement from construction and demolition, could also be processed and used in this way, improving the sustainability of these industries. These materials are usually recycled as low value aggregate, stockpiled at production sites or disposed of in landfills. China and India could supply the rock dust necessary for large-scale CO2 drawdown with their croplands using entirely recycled materials in the coming decades.
The technique would be straightforward to implement for farmers, who already tend to add agricultural lime to their soils. The researchers are calling for policy innovation that could support multiple UN Sustainable Development Goals using this technology. Government incentives to encourage agricultural application of rock dust could improve soil and farm livelihoods, as well as reduce CO2, potentially benefiting the world’s 2.5 billion smallholders and reducing poverty and hunger.
Professor David Beerling, Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation at the University of Sheffield and lead author of the study, said: “Carbon dioxide drawdown strategies that can scale up and are compatible with existing land uses are urgently required to combat climate change, alongside deep and sustained emissions cuts.
“Spreading rock dust on agricultural land is a straightforward, practical CO2 drawdown approach with the potential to boost soil health and food production. Our analyses reveal the big emitting nations – China, the US, India – have the greatest potential to do this, emphasizing their need to step up to the challenge. Large-scale Research Development and Demonstration programs, similar to those being pioneered by our Leverhulme Centre, are needed to evaluate the efficacy of this technology in the field.”
Professor Steven Banwart, a partner in the study and Director of the Global Food and Environment Institute, said: “The practice of spreading crushed rock to improve soil pH is commonplace in many agricultural regions worldwide. The technology and infrastructure already exist to adapt these practices to utilize basalt rock dust. This offers a potentially rapid transition in agricultural practices to help capture CO2 at large scale.”
Professor James Hansen, a partner in the study and Director of the Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions Program at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, said: “We have passed the safe level of greenhouse gases. Cutting fossil fuel emissions is crucial, but we must also extract atmospheric CO2 with safe, secure and scalable carbon dioxide removal strategies to bend the global CO2 curve and limit future climate change. The advantage of CO2 removal with crushed silicate rocks is that it could restore deteriorating top-soils, which underpin food security for billions of people, thereby incentivizing deployment.”
Professor Nick Pidgeon, a partner in the study and Director of the Understanding Risk Group at Cardiff University, said: “Greenhouse gas removal may well become necessary as we approach 2050, but we should not forget that it also raises profound ethical questions regarding our relationship with the natural environment. Its development should therefore be accompanied by the widest possible public debate as to potential risks and benefits.”
Reference: “Potential for large-scale CO2 removal via enhanced rock weathering with croplands” by David J. Beerling, Euripides P. Kantzas, Mark R. Lomas, Peter Wade, Rafael M. Eufrasio, Phil Renforth, Binoy Sarkar, M. Grace Andrews, Rachael H. James, Christopher R. Pearce, Jean-Francois Mercure, Hector Pollitt, Philip B. Holden, Neil R. Edwards, Madhu Khanna, Lenny Koh, Shaun Quegan, Nick F. Pidgeon, Ivan A. Janssens, James Hansen and Steven A. Banwart, 8 July 2020, Nature.
https://scitechdaily.com/shockingly-simple-how-farmland-could-absorb-an-extra-2-billion-tonnes-of-co2-from-the-atmosphere-each-year/
By UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD JULY 11, 2020
Crushed Rock Eats CO2. Spread it Around!
The world emits 43 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. Adding rock dust to farmland could remove about two billion tonnes — more than the current total emissions from global aviation and shipping combined — while improving soil fertility. New research provides a detailed initial assessment of this use of crushed rock, called “enhanced rock weathering.”
The new research was led by experts at the University of Sheffield’s Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation, and the University’s Energy Institute. The authors showed that just three countries, China, the United States and India (the highest fossil fuel CO2 emitters, have the potential to remove approximately 1 billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere, at a cost comparable to that of other proposed carbon dioxide removal strategies (US$80-180 per tonne of CO2).
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“Shockingly Simple: How Farmland Could Absorb an Extra 2 Billion Tonnes of CO2 From the Atmosphere Each Year” By University of Sheffield. https://scitechdaily.com/shockingly-simple-how-farmland-could-absorb-an-extra-2-billion-tonnes-of-co2-from-the-atmosphere-each-year/
Thanks for the article and references
If you look at Youtube’s videos by farmers who evaluate rock dust you will see that most of them conclude that it is not significantly helpful in producing better crops. I can’t say that this means that the stuff is without value (maybe the videos are not representative of all the research on the topic), but it would have to influence the popularity of the approach. Do any readers know anything more about this?
Stop cutting down trees for biomass. . .STOP WOODY BIOMASS!
“According to Earth Institute, burning wood biomass emits as much, if not more, air pollution than burning fossil fuels — particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, lead, mercury, and other hazardous air pollutants — which can cause cancer or reproductive effects.” Have other folks heard similar claims?
-STOP WOODY BIOMASS!
According to LSA — University of Colorado/Boulder, wood accounts for 79% of biomass production and accounts for 3.2% of energy production. Wood dominates the worldwide biomass industry.
For perspective purposes, a paid lobbyist on behalf of trees could rightfully claim: (1) Trees cool and moisten our air and fill it with oxygen. (2) They calm the winds and shade the land from sunlight. (3) They shelter countless species, anchor the soil, and slow the movement of water. (4) They provide food, fuel, medicines, and building materials for human activity. (5) They also help balance Earth’s carbon budget. Name another organism with credentials like that!
Meanwhile, the worldwide woody biomass industry consumes forests, gobbling up trees by the minute. But, it’s a wayward ruse to classify woody biomass as “carbon neutral.” It is not carbon neutral. It’s a carbon emitter, the antithesis of clean renewable energy.
A 1,000-kilowatt-hour wood-pellet power plant, enough to power 1,000 homes, emits a total of 1,275 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated. That’s according to Dr. Puneet Dwivedi, a research professor at the University of Georgia. By way of comparison, a 1,000-kilowatt-hour coal plant emits 1,048 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour. The net result is that coal produces 227 grams less CO2 than the biomass plant. Hmm. (Source: A Burning Question: Throw Wood on the Fire for 21st-Century Electricity? CNBC, Sept. 15, 2017)
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According to the study, the influx of 1/3 more trees would buy humanity time by adding 20 years to meet climate targets. By keeping that many additional trees rather than felling, it effectively “locks-up 205 gigatonnes of CO2.” It’s significant as humanity emits 37 gigatonnes per year. Additionally, the “scale up of the world’s forests by one-third” helps meet IPCC guidelines to hold temp rises to 1.5°C pre-industrial, assuming temperatures are not already overshooting, an issue of some contention. Which depends a lot upon which baseline is used.
The tradeoff between “saving/enlarging forests” rather than “burning trees” is consequential for several reasons, including, the U.S. Energy Information Agency estimates that for each 1% added to current U.S. electricity production from forest biomass an additional 18% increase in U.S. forest harvest is required. At that rate, by the time woody biomass is a meaningful slice of electricity production, the nation’s forests would be leveled.
How long does it take forests to regrow?
Furthermore, is it really possible to regrow a natural efficient forest ecosystem once it has been denuded of key organic life? No.
A Columbia University study argues for leaving trees alone: “Is Biomass Really Renewable?” State of the Planet, Earth Institute/Columbia University, Updated October 19, 2016, to wit: “Cutting or clearing forests for energy, either to burn trees or to plant energy crops, releases carbon into the atmosphere that would have been sequestered had the trees remained untouched, and the regrowing and thus recapture of carbon can take decades or even a century. Moreover, carbon is emitted in the biomass combustion process, resulting in a net increase of CO2.”
Additionally, according to the Columbia study: “Most of the new biomass electricity generating plants being proposed in the U.S. will burn wood. Plants in the Southeast U.S. are churning out wood pellets to meet Europe’s increasing need for wood. Last year, wood pellet exports from the Southeast increased 70 percent; the Southern U.S. is now the largest exporter of wood pellets in the world. Since there isn’t enough logging residue to meet the increased demand for biomass, many fear that more standing trees will be chopped and more forests clear-cut.”
The overriding issue is that woody biomass negatively impacts climate change, the health of people, and the overall environment. Yet, the market is growing by leaps and bounds in Europe and the U.S. Go figure!
According to Earth Institute, woody biomass power plants actually produce more “global warming CO2” than fossil fuel plants, i.e., 65% more CO2 per megawatt hour than modern coal plants and 285% more CO2 than natural gas combined cycle plants (which use both a gas and steam turbine together). This analysis confirms the conclusion of several similar university-level studies that woody biomass is inefficient and thus a sensible rationale for outright banning of woody biomass.
Furthermore, according to Earth Institute, burning wood biomass emits as much, if not more, air pollution than burning fossil fuels — particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, lead, mercury, and other hazardous air pollutants — which can cause cancer or reproductive effects.
The “air pollution emitted by biomass facilities,” which the American Heart Association and the American Lung Association have called “a danger to public health,” produces respiratory illnesses, heart disease, cancer, and developmental delays in children.” (Earth Institute)
Nevertheless, in 2009 the EU committed to 20% renewable energy by 2020, including biomass (heavily sourced by forests, especially from Canada and the U.S.) as a renewable energy, which it categorized as “carbon neutral.” This was done to meet obligations under the Paris climate agreement of 2015. Several other countries followed with commitments to “subsidize” biomass development.
As a result, today 50% of EU renewable energy is based upon biomass, and it is on the rise. Expect a command performance of massive growth by biomass in upcoming years.
For example, in the UK, the Drax Group converted 4 of 6 coal-generating units to biomass, powering 12% of UK electricity for 4 million households. The Drax biomass plant has an enormous appetite for wood, e.g., in less than two hours an entire freight train of wooden pellets goes up in smoke, spewing out smoke signals that spell “O Canada” and “Say, can you see. . . By the dawn’s early light.”
According to Drax’s PR department, their operation has slashed CO2 by over 80% since 2012, claiming to be “the largest decarbonization project in Europe.” (Source: Biomass Energy: Green or Dirty? Environment & Energy – Feature Article, Jan. 8, 2020)
Ahem! When scientists analyzed Drax’s claims, they do not hold up. Not even close!
When wood pellets burn, Drax assumes the released carbon is “recaptured instantly by new growth.” That is a fairy tale.
According to John Sherman, an expert on Complex Systems Analysis at MIT: The carbon debt payback time for forests in the eastern US, where Drax’s wood pellets originated, compared to burning coal, under the best-case scenario, when all harvested land regrows as a forest, the wood pellet “payback time” is 44 to 104 years. Whoa!
Alas, not only is the carbon payback nearly a lifetime when using wood, but according to Sherman: “Because the combustion and processing efficiencies for wood are less than coal, the immediate impact of substituting wood for coal is an increase in atmospheric CO2 relative to coal. This means that every megawatt-hour of electricity generated from wood produces more CO2 than if the power station had remained coal-fired.”
Study after study after study finds that burning coal instead of woody biomass reduces the impact of CO2 atmospheric emissions. Coal is the winner, but problematically coal has already been cast into no-man’s land as a horrific polluter. Therefore, this scenario is a massive complexity as countries have committed to using trees to meet carbon neutral status, but the end results are diametrical to their stated intentions.
Therefore, a preeminent question arises: Why continue using woody biomass if it emits more CO2 per kilowatt-hour than coal?
Alas, not only is it insane to burn trees, but burning “forest residues” rather than whole trees also produces a net emissions impact of 55%-79% greater than direct emissions after 10 years. This is based upon analysis by Mary Booth, an ecosystem ecologist and a director of the Partnership for Policy Integrity, Pelham, Massachusetts.
According to scientist Bill Moomaw, co-author of the Nobel Peace Prize-Winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report and co-author of four additional IPCC reports and widely recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on “carbon sinks”: “If we let some of our forests grow, we could remove an additional 10 to 20 percent of what we emit every year. Instead, we’re paying subsidies to have people cut them down, burning them in place of coal, and counting it as zero carbon.” (Source: Europe’s Renewable Energy Policy is Built on Burning American Trees, Vox, Mar. 4, 2019 – this article was endorsed by the Pulitzer Center)
Dr. Moomaw led a group of 800 scientists that petitioned the EU parliament (Jan. 2018) to “end its support for biomass.”
In June 2018, the EU Commission voted to keep biomass listed as a renewable energy, joined in their position by the support of the U.S. and Britain.
Under the influence of U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, the 2018 fiscal spending bill, as directed by Congress, instructed federal agencies to pass policies that “reflect the carbon-neutrality of biomass.” Among the many benefits mentioned by Congress, three seem almost Orwellian. Oops, scratch that. They are Orwellian, to wit: “To promote environmental stewardship by improving soil and water quality, reducing wildfire risk, and helping ensure our forests continue to remove carbon from the atmosphere.”
Congress’s emphasis on biomass that fells trees “ensuring that our forests continue to remove carbon from the atmosphere.” Really?
What about reams upon reams of scientific analyses that conclude it is a huge mistake to fell forests for biomass?
In the final analysis, the sorrowful impact of woody biomass can be summed up by two short sentences: (1) Wood-pellet power plants emit more CO2 into the atmosphere than coal-powered plants. (2) If forests are left alone an additional 10% to 20% of human-generated CO2 emissions are absorbed by the forests every year. Ipso facto, nature does the dirty work all by itself. . .for free!
(Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and is a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.) Photo: Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
Title: The Biomass Fiasco
Author: Hunziker, Robert
Publication(s): City Watch
Date: 4 May 2020
Link: https://citywatchla.com/index.php/cw/los-angeles/19708-the-biomass-fiasco
But eventually the trees fall over and rot or burn, so isn’t it better to harvest them and make good use of the wood before that happens?
Right, Ruth. Or (better yet) make them into charcoal and sequester a lot of carbon, while improving the soil. I keep thinking about the trees killed by the pine beetle in the Rockies. They are going to rot away and all that carbon will go into the atmosphere but we could make them into biochar and really do a favor for the world.
Stopping Deforestation Can Prevent Pandemics
By the Editors of Scientific American, June 1, 2020
Three quarters of the emerging pathogens that infect humans leaped from animals, many of them creatures in the forest habitats that we are slashing and burning to create land for crops, including biofuel plants, and for mining and housing. The more we clear, the more we come into contact with wildlife that carries microbes well suited to kill us—and the more we concentrate those animals in smaller areas where they can swap infectious microbes, raising the chances of novel strains. Clearing land also reduces biodiversity, and the species that survive are more likely to host illnesses that can be transferred to humans. All these factors will lead to more spillover of animal pathogens into people.
Stopping deforestation will not only reduce our exposure to new disasters but also tamp down the spread of a long list of other vicious diseases that have come from rain forest habitats — Zika, Nipah, malaria, cholera and HIV among them. A 2019 study found that a 10 percent increase in deforestation would raise malaria cases by 3.3 percent; that would be 7.4 million people worldwide. Yet despite years of global outcry, deforestation still runs rampant. An average of 28 million hectares of forest have been cut down annually since 2016, and there is no sign of a slowdown.
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Societies can take numerous steps to prevent the destruction. Eating less meat, which physicians say will improve our health anyway, will lessen demand for crops and pastures. Eating fewer processed foods will reduce the demand for palm oil—also a major feedstock for biofuels—much of which is grown on land clear-cut from tropical rain forests. The need for land also will ease if nations slow population growth—something that can happen in developing nations only if women are given better education, equal social status with men and easy access to affordable contraceptives.
Producing more food per hectare can boost supply without the need to clear more land. Developing crops that better resist drought will help, especially as climate change brings longer, deeper droughts. In dry regions of Africa and elsewhere, agroforestry techniques such as planting trees among farm fields can increase crop yields. Reducing food waste could also vastly lessen the pressure to grow more; 30 to 40 percent of all food produced is wasted.
As we implement these solutions, we can also find new outbreaks earlier. Epidemiologists want to tiptoe into wild habitats and test mammals known to carry coronaviruses — bats, rodents, badgers, civets, pangolins and monkeys — to map how the germs are moving. Public health officials could then test nearby humans. To be effective, though, this surveillance must be widespread and well funded. In September 2019, just months before the COVID-19 pandemic began, the U.S. Agency for International Development announced it would end funding for PREDICT, a 10-year effort to hunt for threatening microbes that found more than 1,100 unique viruses. USAID says it will launch a new surveillance program; we urge it to supply enough money this time to cast a wider and stronger net.
In the meantime, governments should prohibit the sale of live wild animals in so-called wet markets, where pathogens have repeatedly crossed over into humans. The markets may be culturally important, but the risk is too great. Governments must also crack down on illegal wildlife trade, which can spread infectious agents far and wide. In addition, we have to examine factory farms that pack thousands of animals together — the source of the 2009 swine flu outbreak that killed more than 10,000 people in the U.S. and multitudes worldwide.
Ending deforestation and thwarting pandemics would address six of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals: the guarantee of healthy lives, zero hunger, gender equality, responsible consumption and production, sustainably managed land, and climate action (intact tropical forests absorb carbon dioxide, whereas burning them sends more CO2 into the atmosphere).
The COVID-19 pandemic is a catastrophe, but it can rivet our attention on the enormous payoffs that humanity can achieve by not overexploiting the natural world. Pandemic solutions are sustainability solutions.”
Sweden shuts down coal power two years early!
Great news from Sweden in that Sweden shut down their last coal-fired power plant 2 years ahead of schedule!
“It seems like a lot of countries are falling behind on their climate goals lately, and Sweden is currently putting them all to shame — and that’s not only because the Nordic country produced Greta Thunberg. Sweden just shut down its last remaining coal-fired power plant, two years before it was scheduled to close.
The coal-fired cogeneration plant KVV6 at Värtaverket, located in Hjorthagen in eastern Stockholm, has been in operation since 1989, according to Stockholm Exergi, the local energy company that owns the plant. Stockholm Exergi is equally owned by the municipality of Stockholm and Fortum, a Finnish energy company that operates across Europe and Asia.
As Stockholm Exergi explained, before the winter of 2019-2020, the company shut down one of KVV6’s two boilers, and converted the other to a power reserve. Because the winter wound up being mild, Stockholm Exergi did not need to use energy from the reserves, meaning the company was able to close the plant down this month, rather than in 2022 as planned.
Additionally, there is a chance that the COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on Sweden’s recent energy use. For example, Britain just beat its personal record of going more than 18 days without using coal-powered electricity, thanks in part to the recent mild weather, but more interestingly, due to people needing less power during the coronavirus pandemic. With many areas on lockdown, people are using less electricity and driving cars less, reducing dependence on fuel overall.
“Our goal is for all our production to come from renewable or recycled Exergi,” Anders Egelrud, CEO of Stockholm Exergi, said in a translated statement. “This plant has provided the Stockholmers with heat and electricity for a long time, today we know that we must stop using all fossil fuels, therefore the coal needs to be phased out and we do so several years before the original plan.”
“Since Stockholm was almost totally fossil-dependent 30-40 years ago, we have made enormous changes and now we are taking the step away from carbon dependency and continuing the journey towards an energy system entirely based on renewable and recycled energy,” Egelrud added.
In 2018, 54.6 percent of the energy used in Sweden came from renewable sources, according to the Swedish Energy Agency. While that is still pretty far from the country’s goal of 100 percent renewable energy, Sweden is far ahead of many other countries. For example, in 2018, renewable energy sources only accounted for 11 percent of U.S. energy consumption, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
As reported by The Independent, Sweden is the third country in Europe to cut off its reliance on coal. Belgium closed its last coal power plant in 2016, according to Climate Change News, and Austria said Auf Wiedersehen to its last remaining coal-fired power station earlier this April, as per CNBC. Hopefully now that three European countries no longer have coal-fired power plants, other nations across Europe — and all over the world — will ramp up efforts to do the same.”
I am reading this carefully to find out what renewable sources they are turning to instead of fossil fuels. They don’t explain it. Obviously, Sweden is so far north that they are in the dark a lot of the time. They surely cannot count on solar for much of their needs. What about wind? Water? Nuclear? Geothermal?
Why the Most Environmental Building is the Building We’ve Already Built
About one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings. That’s why we should be retro-fitting our houses and workplaces. But watch out for the demolition that precedes rebuilding. Half of the residue winds up in landfills. But retrofitting is almost always more energy efficient–especially if we reduce the amount of waste.
By Emily Badger
Reusing an old building pretty much always has less of an impact on the environment than tearing it down, trashing the debris, clearing the site, crafting new materials and putting up a replacement from scratch. This makes some basic sense, even without looking at the numbers.
But what if the new building is super energy-efficient? How do the two alternatives compare over a lifetime, across generations of use?
“We often come up against this argument that, ‘Oh well, the existing building could never compete with the new building in terms of energy efficiency,’” says Patrice Frey, the director of sustainability for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. “We wanted to model that.”
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Retrofit an existing building to make it 30 percent more efficient, the study found, and it will essentially always remain a better bet for the environment than a new building built tomorrow with the same efficiencies. Take that new, more efficient building, though, and compare its life cycle to an average existing structure with no retrofitting, and it could still take up to 80 years for the new one to make up for the environmental impact of its initial construction.
Crisis in the Arctic Ocean
The Arctic Ocean is changing faster than any other body of water on Earth. In some cases, elements of the ecosystems and environments appear to be changing quicker than studies can be conducted – and many undiscovered species are thought to exist in the region.
Article Excerpt(s):
“The top of the world is turning upside down, says the first overall assessment of Canada’s Arctic Ocean.
The assessment, the result of work by dozens of federal scientists and Inuit observers, describes a vast ecosystem in unprecedented flux: from ocean currents to the habits and types of animals that swim in it.
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The Arctic Ocean, where climate change has bitten deepest, may be changing faster than any other water body on Earth, said lead scientist Andrea Niemi of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
“As the Arctic changes, the rest of the ecosystem is going to track with those changes,” she said. “There isn’t going to be a delay.”
Changes are coming so fast scientists haven’t even had a chance to understand what’s there.
Sixty per cent of the species in the Canada Basin — like the worms found living in undersea mud volcanoes and living off expelled methane — are yet to be discovered, the report suggests.
“Who knows what else is down there?” Niemi asked. “So much in the Arctic, we’re still at step one.”
The first assessment of fish species in the Beaufort Sea wasn’t done until 2014, she said.
Changes hard to miss
Still, changes are hard to miss, right down to the makeup of the water.
It’s 33 per cent less salty than in 2003 and about 30 per cent more acidic — enough to dissolve the shells of some small molluscs.
The Beaufort Gyre, a vast circular current that has alternated direction every decade, hasn’t switched in 19 years.
Nutrient-rich water from the Pacific Ocean isn’t getting mixed in as it used to, which affects the plankton blooms that anchor the Arctic food web. Sea ice is shrinking and thinning to the point where Inuit communities can’t get to formerly dependable hunting grounds.
Shorelines are on the move. Erosion has more than doubled in the last few decades. The mix of species is changing.
Killer whales are becoming so frequent they’re altering the behaviour of other species such as narwhal and beluga that Inuit depend on. Pacific salmon, capelin and harp seals are moving up from the south.
“In some cases, the communities are putting out their nets and they’re just catching salmon,” Niemi said.
The effect of the salmon on other species is unknown.
Coastal fish species are being found much further offshore.
Ringed seals can’t finish moulting before the ice breaks up and accompanying high ocean temperatures seem to be making them sluggish and more prone to polar bear predation.
Humans are making their presence felt, too. Increased Arctic shipping is making the ocean noisier and masking the sounds animals from seals to whales use to communicate.
Lack of long-term data on the North
The report’s conclusions are hamstrung by a lack of long-term data all over the North.
Niemi said it’s hard to measure changes when you don’t know what was there in the first place. Even when the changes can be measured, it’s difficult to know what’s causing them.
Inuit communities want to know what’s going on in their home, she said. “They’re interested in a holistic view of what’s going on. But we’re just handcuffed sometimes to provide the mechanisms behind the changes.”
One thing is certain: The old idea of the frozen North, with its eternal snows and unchanging rhythms, is gone forever.
“People see it as a faraway frozen land,” Niemi said. “But there is much happening.””
Title: First Federal Assessment of Arctic Ocean Finds Drastic Change
Author: The Canadian Press
Publication(s): CBC North
Date: 27 April 2020
Link: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/arctic-ocean-assessment-change-1.5545655
What are the Russians doing and thinking about this? They have far more people living in the Arctic than Canada does. Whole cities! They must be feeling the effects as much as the Canadians living in the north, but I don’t hear anything about them protesting. Why not? Or maybe they do but we just don’t hear about it. I bet Putin doesn’t like to hear from them.
Each cherry tree can absorb 20 pounds of greenhouse gas!
By Aila Slisco
This is an excerpt of an article on research from South Korea on the potential of cherry trees as carbon sinks.
A study from South Korea’s Forest Research Institute indicated that each 25-year-old cherry tree can absorb about 20 pounds of emissions each, according to a Tuesday report from UPI.
The country’s cherry trees are said to be capable of absorbing about 2.4 tons of carbon, roughly equivalent to the emissions of 6,000 cars per year. Thee emissions of a single car can be absorbed by 250 mature trees.
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The amount of carbon absorbed by cherry trees may pale in comparison to other types of trees, with Black walnut, horse-chestnut, Douglas fir and pine trees among some that are thought to be especially adept.
The average mature tree can absorb 48 tons per year according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Trees absorb emissions with a system of respiration that also releases oxygen. The carbon that is absorbed by trees is then sequestered in trunks, roots, branches and leaves. Trees that have reached at least 20 years of age are believed to absorb carbon better than young or very old trees.
A significant amount of carbon is eventually released back into the atmosphere, typically within a couple hundred years as the trees die and decay. Small amounts are also released during respiration and the overall amount of carbon that trees can capture is also finite.
Environmentalists have long proposed planting massive amounts of trees in an effort to counter climate change and many government programs around the world have already been planting trees to help increase forested areas.
Research from 2019 indicated that up to two thirds of emissions currently in the atmosphere could be absorbed, leading some scientists to promote tree-planting as a powerful tool to combat climate change.
“[Forest] restoration isn’t just one of our climate change solutions, it is overwhelmingly the top one,” researcher Professor Tom Crowther of the Swiss university ETH Zürich told The Guardian. “What blows my mind is the scale. I thought restoration would be in the top 10, but it is overwhelmingly more powerful than all of the other climate change solutions proposed.”
However, other scientists have been less enthusiastic and insist that reducing overall emissions remains the most effective strategy to mitigate climate change. In order for tree-planting have a significant effect on the climate, a trillion trees may need to be planted.
Although opinions are divided, some have warned against relying on mass tree-planting schemes due to risks of upsetting the biodiversity of areas where the trees are planted.
“There is an idea that you can just buy land and plant trees but that’s too simplistic—there is a risk of doing more harm than good,” Nathalie Seddon, professor of biodiversity at the University of Oxford, told the BBC.”
Single Cherry Tree Can Offset 20 Pounds Of Carbon Emissions Each Year, New Study Says, by Slisco, Aila. Newsweek 7 April 2020
https://www.newsweek.com/single-cherry-tree-can-offset-20-pounds-carbon-emissions-each-year-new-study-says-1496698
Mutant Enzymes feed on Plastic
Party time!
I have heard a number of reports of microorganisms or microorganism-derived compounds which have been discovered to have potential to decompose plastic. Most of the time it appears as if these are studied, though subsequently have limited applications outside of laboratories and test sites. Has anyone heard of large-scale applications of these microorganisms that eat plastic?
Regardless, I would like to share this interesting article with readers of Plank 9 – as it bears relevance to the subject. This article specifically discusses an enzyme – discovered in a compost pile – which breaks the plastic down to building blocks that facilitate recycling of the material into high quality (and food quality) products. Notably, the enzyme can be derived from specific types of fungi.
Read more
Title: Scientists Create Mutant Enzyme That Recycles Plastic Bottles In Hours
Author: Carrington, Damian
Publication(s): The Guardian
Date: 8 April 2020
Link: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/08/scientists-create-mutant-enzyme-that-recycles-plastic-bottles-in-hours
Article Excerpt(s):
“A mutant bacterial enzyme that breaks down plastic bottles for recycling in hours has been created by scientists.
The enzyme, originally discovered in a compost heap of leaves, reduced the bottles to chemical building blocks that were then used to make high-quality new bottles. Existing recycling technologies usually produce plastic only good enough for clothing and carpets.
The company behind the breakthrough, Carbios, said it was aiming for industrial-scale recycling within five years. It has partnered with major companies including Pepsi and L’Oréal to accelerate development. Independent experts called the new enzyme a major advance.
Billions of tonnes of plastic waste have polluted the planet, from the Arctic to the deepest ocean trench, and pose a particular risk to sea life. Campaigners say reducing the use of plastic is key, but the company said the strong, lightweight material was very useful and that true recycling was part of the solution.
The new enzyme was revealed in research published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. The work began with the screening of 100,000 micro-organisms for promising candidates, including the leaf compost bug, which was first discovered in 2012.
“It had been completely forgotten, but it turned out to be the best,” said Prof Alain Marty at the Université de Toulouse, France, the chief science officer at Carbios.
The scientists analysed the enzyme and introduced mutations to improve its ability to break down the PET plastic from which drinks bottles are made. They also made it stable at 72C, close to the perfect temperature for fast degradation.
The team used the optimised enzyme to break down a tonne of waste plastic bottles, which were 90% degraded within 10 hours. The scientists then used the material to create new food-grade plastic bottles.
Carbios has a deal with the biotechnology company Novozymes to produce the new enzyme at scale using fungi. It said the cost of the enzyme was just 4% of the cost of virgin plastic made from oil.
Waste bottles also have to be ground up and heated before the enzyme is added, so the recycled PET will be more expensive than virgin plastic. But Martin Stephan, the deputy chief executive at Carbios, said existing lower-quality recycled plastic sells at a premium due to a shortage of supply.
“We are the first company to bring this technology on the market,” said Stephan. “Our goal is to be up and running by 2024, 2025, at large industrial scale.”
He said a reduction in plastic use was one part of solving the waste problem. “But we all know that plastic brings a lot of value to society, in food, medical care, transportation. The problem is plastic waste.” Increasing the collection of plastic waste was key, Stephan said, with about half of all plastic ending up in the environment or in landfill.
Another team of scientists revealed in 2018 that they had accidentally created an enzyme that breaks down plastic drinks bottles. One of the team behind this advance, Prof John McGeehan, the director of the Centre for Enzyme Innovation at the University of Portsmouth, said Carbios was the leading company engineering enzymes to break down PET at large scale and that the new work was a major advance.
“It makes the possibility of true industrial-scale biological recycling of PET a possibility. This is a very large advance in terms of speed, efficiency and heat tolerance,” McGeehan said. “It represents a significant step forward for true circular recycling of PET and has the potential to reduce our reliance on oil, cut carbon emissions and energy use, and incentivise the collection and recycling of waste plastic.”
Scientists are also making progress in finding biological ways to break down other major types of plastic. In March, German researchers revealed a bug that feasts on toxic polyurethane, while earlier work has shown that wax moth larvae – usually bred as fish bait – can eat up polythene bags.”
I am shocked!
I am shocked there is not a separate section on this site for invasive species management – particularly as these are linked to ecological decline.
Icy Road Ahead!
With Global Warming, Arctic Ice Road Season Grows Shorter
“Many people avoid driving on icy roads. But in Northern Canada’s Arctic tundra, some roads are made of ice.
By Sarah Kennedy
Article Excerpt:
A network of seasonal roads on frozen rivers and lakes allows trucks to reach remote areas. Many of these places are otherwise accessible only by boat or plane. But as the climate warms, the ice road season is getting shorter.
Xiao Yang of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill analyzed more than three decades of satellite images of rivers around the globe. He looked at which rivers were frozen and when.
“We detect widespread decline in river ice in the past 34 years,” he says. “In general, we have later freeze-up of the river surface and we have earlier breakup of the river surface. … And that has consequences for … when you can actually be on these ice roads.”
Yang also studied what is likely to happen to river ice if global carbon pollution and temperatures continue to rise. He found that by 2100, some rivers could be ice-free for weeks longer than they are now.
Read more
So global warming could continue to shorten the ice road season and make it harder and more expensive to reach some remote and isolated places in the Arctic.”
Author: Kennedy, Sarah
Publication(s): Yale Climate Connections
Date: 24 March 2020
Link: https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/03/with-global-warming-arctic-ice-road-season-grows-shorter/
So how do people drive on the ice? Dont they just skid around?
Deforestation in the Congo
By Eliza Barclay, Umair Irfan and Tristan MConnell
Read more
We traveled to protected areas deep inside these countries to learn the superpowers of three tree species that play an unusually important part in staving off environmental disaster, not just locally, but globally. These trees play many ecological roles, but most impressive is how they produce rainfall, remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and support hundreds of other species.
If these ecosystems collapse, the climate effects are likely to be irreversible. And so what happens to these forests truly affects all life on Earth.
This is the story of three trees at the center of our climate crisis that provide big benefits to you, me, and the world. Meet the trees, get to know their superpowers, and learn how scientists are trying to protect them.”
NASA satellite images reveal dramatic melting in Antarctica after record heat wave
By Sophie Lewis February 22, 2020 / 2:58 PM / CBS News
Article Excerpt
Earlier this month, temperatures in Antarctica appeared to reach a record-breaking 64.9 degrees Fahrenheit, matching the temperature in Los Angeles that day. New images released by NASA show the dramatic ice melt caused by the heat wave, a phenomenon that is becoming more and more common in the peninsula.
NASA’s Earth Observatory released two new images Friday by the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8 that show the difference on the Eagle Island ice cap between February 4 and February 13.
The before-and-after snapshots show a dramatic decrease in ice and snow along the northern tip of the Antarctic peninsula. In the later shot, a large portion of the ground is visible, as are bright blue melted ponds in the center of the island.
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Eagle Island is only about 25 miles from Argentina’s Esperanza research base, which recorded the potentially record-high temperature on February 6. According to NASA climate models, the island experienced peak melt — about 1 inch — on that same day, leading to a loss of 4 inches total in a one-week period.
Eagle Island lost around 20% of seasonal snow accumulation in that single event, NASA said.
“I haven’t seen melt ponds develop this quickly in Antarctica,” Mauri Pelto, a glaciologist at Nichols College in Massachusetts, said in a NASA press release Friday. “You see these kinds of melt events in Alaska and Greenland, but not usually in Antarctica.”
According to Pelto, this kind of rapid melting is caused by sustained temperatures significantly above freezing, an almost-unheard-of phenomenon in Antarctica until the 21st century that’s become more common in recent years.
“If you think about this one event in February, it isn’t that significant,” said Pelto. “It’s more significant that these events are coming more frequently.”
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is still working to verify the record temperature, but the agency called the Antarctic Peninsula one of the faster warming regions on Earth.
The heatwave was the culmination of several atypical weather patterns off the coast of South America. Warm temperatures built up due to a ridge of high pressure over Cape Horn, Chile. While warm air is typically kept out of the peninsula by strong winds, the westerlies were in a weakened state, allowing warm air to reach the ice sheet.
Scientists also recently found warm water for the first time beneath a vital point of Antarctica’s “doomsday glacier,” a nickname for one of Antarctica’s fastest melting glaciers. The collapse of the 74,000-square-mile Thwaites could release a mass of water roughly the size of Florida or Great Britain, raising sea levels by more than three feet.
On Elephant Island, just slightly north of the peninsula, chinstrap penguins have suffered a 60% decline because of the increasing temperatures, researchers found. WMO researchers have also discovered that the average temperature in Antarctica has increased by more than five degrees Fahrenheit over the last 50 years — a rate five times the global average.
First published on February 22, 2020 / 2:58 PM
© 2020 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Sophie Lewis is a social media producer and trending writer for CBS News, focusing on space and climate change.
I am aware that both the Arctic and Antarctica are experiencing climate change more than temperate climates. I hear that all the time. But nobody has explained to me yet why that happens. Will someone please explain it? Thank you.
Read Karen Smith’s contribution. She partly explains it. It’s the ozone hole or something.
Earthships: Heat Your House with Car Tyres and Earth
Earthships use earth and tires for insulation. Gorgeous ones have been built in several countries, including the UK and the US, but to build yours, you may have to change the local building codes first.
By Kris de Decker
A dirt cheap and 100 percent ecological house that has all the comforts of an ordinary home, without being connected to the electricity grid, waterworks, sewer system or the natural gas network. It does exist, but in most countries, building one is not allowed.
An Earthship is a completely self-sufficient house that has a natural temperature regulation, without the use of a heating system. The building also generates its own electricity, collects and filters its own drinking water and cleans its own effluent water. The house is partly buried into the earth and is constructed mainly with waste materials; car tyres, aluminium cans and glass bottles. This low-tech building approach is ecologically as well as economically advantageous.
This autumn, the British coastal city of Brighton approved the construction of 16 Earthships. It’s the first time that a European city council has given builders the green light to mass construct this radical ecological housing form. In the United States nearly one thousand Earthships have been built, most of them in the desert of New Mexico.
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The ecological damage produced by a traditional house is not only the consequence of the energy used during its lifetime, but also through the building materials required to construct it
Earthships are the brainchild of American architect Michael Reynolds, who first put the concept into practice in the seventies, during the first oil crisis. Sharp falling energy prices in the 80’s and 90’s restricted the idea for a long time to mostly anarchistic communities and individuals. Recently however, this revolutionary architecture is slowly gaining credibility in other sections of society. Oil prices continue to climb and uneasiness surrounding global warming grows. Moreover, thanks to 30 years of evolution, many of the initial glitches Earthships faced have been ironed out.
The autonomous nature of an Earthship is not as revolutionary as it was 30 years ago. The technology required to generate energy, filter water and recycle waste water apart from the existing infrastructure has significantly advanced. What makes an Earthship special and interesting these days is that it is mainly built out of waste materials and partly buried into the earth.
Thick Walls:
The house has very thick walls, with a diameter of around one metre. The walls are not made from concrete or bricks, but from piled up car tyres covered with clay. Every tyre is filled with earth and then tamped down with a sledge-hammer. Depending on the climate, two to three walls are surrounded by a heaped up wall, or built into a slope. Combined with a sun lounge on the south side of the building (the north side on the southern hemisphere) the construction provides a natural heating and cooling system.
The solar heat that enters the house through the large windows is absorbed by the thick walls. The walls have a large thermal mass thanks to the car tyres and the earth – insulation is extremely effective. During the night and on cloudy days, the heat is then slowly released. The same system cools the house in summer, as the surrounding earth and the car tyres are colder than the open air. Thanks to this natural air-conditioning, the inside temperature varies from 17 to 24 degrees all year round.
“No matter how sensible the idea is, building houses with car tyres and aluminium beer cans sounds ludicrous to most politicians”
Scrapped car tyres are the foundations of an Earthship. They are the key to the natural air-conditioning system and they take care of the solidity of the bearing walls. For non-bearing walls, aluminium cans or glass bottles are used. The roof and the veranda are made of wood. While the wood can be re-used, in many instances new wood is preferred. Because the tyres are completely packed in earth, the walls are also fireproof – it is impossible for oxygen to reach the rubber. During a forest fire in New Mexico, the interior of an Earthship was completely destroyed, but the walls were left intact.
Building houses out of car tyres and cans might sound unconventional, but the ecological benefit is so large that the concept deserves to be given some serious consideration. The fact that an Earthship does not use fossil fuels for heating or electricity (and therefore emits no CO2) is not even its most important advantage. By using waste material, the result is even better.
40 million car tyres = 40,000 Earthships
Firstly, great amounts of waste materials can be utilized. In the United Kingdom alone, 40 million car tyres are dumped annually. The project in Brighton uses a thousand tyres for one house, which theoretically means that with the yearly UK supply of dumped tyres, 40,000 Earthships could be built.
Furthermore, one is re-using, not recycling; a much greener option than grinding down tyres to produce speed bumps for example, since the waste is not undergoing an additional industrial, energy consuming process.
Secondly, and even more importantly, by using waste materials, thousands upon thousands of tonnes of building materials could be saved; concrete, mortar and bricks. The ecological damage produced by a traditional house is not only the consequence of the energy used during its lifetime, but also through the building materials required to construct it.
More traditional shapes may help with the general acceptance of this type of building method by the general public
Concrete production is one of the most energy-intensive industrial processes that exist. The sector is responsible for ten percent of global CO2-emissions, which makes it the third highest producer of greenhouse gases (following transport and energy production). Thus, building houses using waste materials (whether the buildings are self-sufficient or not) is an environmental advantage in more ways than one.
Old buildings are often demolished with the argument that replacement buildings have better insulation and therefore consume less energy. What is being overlooked is that both the pulling down of the old house as well as the building of the new house implicates a huge amount of building materials and energy (embodied energy), which completely negate the advantages of better insulation.
And the cost?
Using waste materials does not necessarily mean than an Earthship is cheaper than a traditional house – the homes on offer in Brighton will even be slightly more expensive due to the labour intensive nature of the Earthship (labour is taxed much more heavily than use of energy or materials). Although, once the house is built, the extra investment is quickly recovered as there are no gas, water or electricity bills.
Building an Earthship yourself with some friends could be very cheap, but is time consuming. The largest Earthships in the United States took almost ten years to build. If you build one on your own, the biggest cost would be the purchasing of solar panels and batteries, followed by the large windows, pumps and filters. Waste materials could be delivered for free, as people have to pay to get rid of them.
Unconventional and revolutionary ideas need to be adopted if we want to help prevent a worldwide fight for energy.
At the moment, there are only a handful of Earthships in Europe, with half of them built illegally, but the concept following is strong, with various national organisations promoting the idea. The most pressing problem is obtaining a building permit. No matter how sensible the idea is, building houses with car tyres and aluminium beer cans sounds ludicrous to most politicians.
Most Earthships in the US take on an unconventional form. They have fairy-tale like features that remind one of the works of architects like Gaudí and Hundertwasser. But others, like the 16 Earthships being built in Brighton (picture above), hardly look any different from conventional houses. These more traditional forms may help with the general acceptance of this type of building method by the general public.
Built up environments
Until now, most Earthships were built in isolated places, where most people live in built-up urban environments. The problem with the feasibility of an Earthship is the size of the plot on which it is built. This plot is significantly larger than the size of a conventional house.
But the idea is flexible enough to adapt to different situations. When an Earthship is built, earth mounds are formed, which in turn may provide support for another Earthship, and so on. The result would be revolutionary and unconventional. However, in response to the recent warnings from the International Energy Agency, unconventional and revolutionary ideas need to be adopted if we want to help prevent a worldwide fight for energy.
Low Tech Magazine, 29 December 2007
Is Russia Finally Waking Up to Climate Change?
By Daniel Kozin, The Moscow Times, 4 March 2020
Notes: Mr. Kozin is the Saint Petersburg correspondent for the Moscow Times.
Article Excerpt:
“However, Russian leaders have been reluctant to take steps to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. While this comes as no surprise — as Russia’s economy is largely dependent on fossil fuel exports — it also means the country is doing little to slow global warming.”
Read more
[…]
“The vast majority of Russia’s greenhouse gases are emitted by the energy industry (78.9%). Nearly half of these emissions come from the production of electricity and heat for the general population, while the rest largely come from the production of solid fuels, petroleum refining and fuels used in transportation.
Russia’s industrial production accounts for a further 10.8% of total greenhouse gas emissions — with metals production accounting for most. Agriculture makes up another 5.9% of total emissions and waste 4.4%.”
[…]
“Meanwhile, the plan lists possible economic benefits for Russia from climate change that must be exploited — like increased access along the Northern Sea Route due to melting ice and more space for agriculture and livestock.”
Fruit Walls: The Centuries old Technology
[Article excerpt here, but check out the original article for its interesting photos and explanations!]
“We are being told to eat local and seasonal food, either because other crops have been tranported over long distances, or because they are grown in energy-intensive greenhouses. But it wasn’t always like that. From the sixteenth to the twentieth century, urban farmers grew Mediterranean fruits and vegetables as far north as England and the Netherlands, using only renewable energy.
These crops were grown surrounded by massive “fruit walls”, which stored the heat from the sun and released it at night, creating a microclimate that could increase the temperature by more than 10°C (18°F). Later, greenhouses built against the fruit walls further improved yields from solar energy alone.
It was only at the very end of the nineteenth century that the greenhouse turned into a fully glazed and artificially heated building where heat is lost almost instantaneously — the complete opposite of the technology it evolved from.
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The modern glass greenhouse, often located in temperate climates where winters can be cold, requires massive inputs of energy, mainly for heating but also for artificial lighting and humidity control.
According to the FAO, crops grown in heated greenhouses have energy intensity demands around 10 to 20 times those of the same crops grown in open fields. A heated greenhouse requires around 40 megajoule of energy to grow one kilogram of fresh produce, such as tomatoes and peppers Source — page 15. This makes greenhouse-grown crops as energy-intensive as pork meat (40-45 MJ/kg in the USA).”
Low Tech Magazine, 24 Dec. 2015.
The Unexpected Link Between The Ozone Hole And Arctic Warming: U of T Expert
By Karen Smith, University of Toronto News, 19 February 2020
Article Excerpt:
“One of the earliest climate model predictions of how human-made climate change would affect our planet showed that the Arctic would warm about two to three times more than the global average. Forty years later, this “Arctic amplification” has been observed first-hand.
Record-breaking Arctic warming and the dramatic decline of sea ice are having severe consequences on sensitive ecosystems in the region.
But why has the Arctic warmed more than the tropics and the mid-latitudes?
We now know that this is due, in part, to tiny concentrations of very powerful greenhouse gases, including ozone-depleting substances such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).
A wonder gas?
The ozone layer is the protective layer in the stratosphere, roughly 20-50 kilometres above the Earth, that absorbs harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Ozone-depleting substances are potent greenhouse gases, but they are more commonly known for their devastating effect on the ozone layer.
These chemicals were invented in the 1920s. They were touted as “wonder gases” and used as refrigerants, solvents and propellants in refrigerators, air conditioners and packing materials. It wasn’t until the 1980s when scientists discovered a hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica that they realized the full extent of the ozone-depleting nature of these chemicals.
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In 1987, 197 countries agreed to phase out their use of ozone-depleting substances by ratifying the Montréal Protocol. The success of this historic international agreement has reduced the emissions of CFCs to nearly zero; however, the recovery of the ozone hole has been slower as CFCs remain in the atmosphere for decades.
Due to the effect of ozone-depleting substances on the ozone layer, climate scientists who study these chemicals and their climate impacts have been focused on the consequences of ozone depletion. The climate impact of ozone-depleting substances themselves has been typically considered small given the very tiny concentrations of these gases in the atmosphere, and has been largely unexplored.
Experimenting with climate models
My colleagues and I were interested in understanding how ozone-depleting substances might have influenced late-20th century warming from 1995 to 2005. We specifically chose this time period in order to capture the rapid rise in ozone-depleting substances in the atmosphere over this time. Since the early 2000s, atmospheric concentrations have been declining.
One way that climate scientists approach problems like this one is to use computer models of the Earth to understand what the effects of different phenomena, such as volcanic eruptions and greenhouse gases such as methane, might have on air temperatures, ocean circulation patterns, rainfall and so on.
To explore the contribution of ozone-depleting substances to late-20th century warming, we ran a climate model over the period from 1955 to 2005. One of the simulations incorporated all of the various historical climate drivers – those that warm the climate, like carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone-depleting substances, and those that cool the climate, like volcanic particulate matter. The second simulation had all the historical climate drivers, except the ozone-depleting substances.
This is one of the first times the role of ozone-depleting substances had been isolated. Typically, climate model experiments that examine the roles of different climate drivers will lump all greenhouses gases together.
Comparing the two model simulations revealed that global warming was reduced by a third and Arctic warming by half when the ozone-depleting substances were not included in our simulation.
Arctic amplification
Why do ozone-depleting substances have such a large impact despite their very small atmospheric concentrations? First, these chemicals are very potent greenhouse gases, a fact that we have known for a long time. Second, in the late-20th century, warming from carbon dioxide was partially cancelled out by the cooling that comes from particulate matter in the atmosphere, allowing CFCs and other ozone-depleting substances to contribute substantially to warming.
Finally, when it comes to Arctic amplification, we know that this phenomenon arises from feedbacks within the climate system that act to enhance warming, and this is exactly what we find in our model simulations. In the simulation without ozone-depleting substances, the climate feedbacks were weaker than in the simulation with them, resulting in less Arctic amplification.
Understanding why the feedbacks differ is the aim of our future research but, in the meantime, our work clearly demonstrates the significant impact of ozone-depleting substances on Arctic climate.
Thirty years ago, those who signed the Montréal Protocol were not thinking about climate change. Yet, research such as ours underscores the important role this agreement will play in mitigating future warming as the concentrations of ozone-depleting substances decline over time.
That said, without massive reductions in carbon dioxide emissions in the coming decades, the gains we will achieve through the Montréal Protocol will be quickly overwhelmed. Further action is needed to protect the Arctic – and our planet.
The Conversation
Seeding oceans with iron may not impact climate change
By Jennifer Chu, Phys. org Feb 17, 2020
Publication(s): Phys.org [Science X Network]
Article Excerpt:
“Historically, the oceans have done much of the planet’s heavy lifting when it comes to sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Microscopic organisms known collectively as phytoplankton, which grow throughout the sunlit surface oceans and absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, are a key player.
To help stem escalating carbon dioxide emissions produced by the burning of fossil fuels, some scientists have proposed seeding the oceans with iron—an essential ingredient that can stimulate phytoplankton growth. Such “iron fertilization” would cultivate vast new fields of phytoplankton, particularly in areas normally bereft of marine life.
A new MIT study suggests that iron fertilization may not have a significant impact on phytoplankton growth, at least on a global scale.
The researchers studied the interactions between phytoplankton, iron, and other nutrients in the ocean that help phytoplankton grow. Their simulations suggest that on a global scale, marine life has tuned ocean chemistry through these interactions, evolving to maintain a level of ocean iron that supports a delicate balance of nutrients in various regions of the world.
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“According to our framework, iron fertilization cannot have a significant overall effect on the amount of carbon in the ocean because the total amount of iron that microbes need is already just right,” says lead author Jonathan Lauderdale, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.
The paper’s co-authors are Rogier Braakman, Gael Forget, Stephanie Dutkiewicz, and Mick Follows at MIT.
Ligand soup
The iron that phytoplankton depend on to grow comes largely from dust that sweeps over the continents and eventually settles in ocean waters. While huge quantities of iron can be deposited in this way, the majority of this iron quickly sinks, unused, to the seafloor.
“The fundamental problem is, marine microbes require iron to grow, but iron doesn’t hang around. Its concentration in the ocean is so miniscule that it’s a treasured resource,” Lauderdale says.
Hence, scientists have put forth iron fertilization as a way to introduce more iron into the system. But iron availability to phytoplankton is much higher if it is bound up with certain organic compounds that keep iron in the surface ocean and are themselves produced by phytoplankton. These compounds, known as ligands, constitute what Lauderdale describes as a “soup of ingredients” that typically come from organic waste products, dead cells, or siderophores—molecules that the microbes have evolved to bind specifically with iron.
Not much is known about these iron-trapping ligands at the ecosystem scale, and the team wondered what role the molecules play in regulating the ocean’s capacity to promote the growth of phytoplankton and ultimately absorb carbon dioxide.
Read more
“People have understood how ligands bind iron, but not what are the emergent properties of such a system at the global scale, and what that means for the biosphere as a whole,” Braakman says. “That’s what we’ve tried to model here.”
Iron sweet spot
The researchers set out to characterize the interactions between iron, ligands, and macronutrients such as nitrogen and phosphate, and how these interactions affect the global population of phytoplankton and, concurrently, the ocean’s capacity to store carbon dioxide.
The team developed a simple three-box model, with each box representing a general ocean environment with a particular balance of iron versus macronutrients. The first box represents remote waters such as the Southern Ocean, which typically have a decent concentration of macronutrients that are upwelled from the deep ocean. They also have a low iron content given their great distance from any continental dust source.
The second box represents the North Atlantic and other waters that have an opposite balance: high in iron because of proximity to dusty continents, and low in macronutrients. The third box is a stand-in for the deep ocean, which is a rich source of macronutrients, such as phosphates and nitrates.
The researchers simulated a general circulation pattern between the three boxes to represent the global currents that connect all the world’s oceans: The circulation starts in the North Atlantic and dives down into the deep ocean, then upwells into the Southern Ocean and returns back to the North Atlantic.
The team set relative concentrations of iron and macronutrients in each box, then ran the model to see how phytoplankton growth evolved in each box over 10,000 years. They ran 10,000 simulations, each with different ligand properties.
Out of their simulations, the researchers identified a crucial positive feedback loop between ligands and iron. Oceans with higher concentrations of ligands had also higher concentrations of iron available for phytoplankton to grow and produce more ligands. When microbes have more than enough iron to feast on, they consume as much of the other nutrients they need, such as nitrogen and phosphate, until those nutrients have been completely depleted.
The opposite is true for oceans with low ligand concentrations: These have less iron available for phytoplankton growth, and therefore have very little biological activity in general, leading to less macronutrient consumption.
The researchers also observed in their simulations a narrow range of ligand concentrations that resulted in a sweet spot, where there was just the right amount of ligand to make just enough iron available for phytoplankton growth, while also leaving just the right amount of macronutrients left over to sustain a whole new cycle of growth across all three ocean boxes.
When they compared their simulations to measurements of nutrient, iron, and ligand concentrations taken in the real world, they found their simulated sweet spot range turned out to be the closest match. That is, the world’s oceans appear to have just the right amount of ligands, and therefore iron, available to maximize the growth of phytoplankton and optimally consume macronutrients, in a self-reinforcing and self-sustainable balance of resources.
If scientists were to widely fertilize the Southern Ocean or any other iron-depleted waters with iron, the effort would temporarily stimulate phytoplankton to grow and take up all the macronutrients available in that region. But eventually there would be no macronutrients left to circulate to other regions like the North Atlantic, which depends on these macronutrients, along with iron from dust deposits, for phytoplankton growth. The net result would be an eventual decrease in phytoplankton in the North Atlantic and no significant increase in carbon dioxide draw-down globally.
Lauderdale points out there may also be other unintended effects to fertilizing the Southern Ocean with iron.
“We have to consider the whole ocean as this interconnected system,” says Lauderdale, who adds that if phytoplankton in the North Atlantic were to plummet, so too would all the marine life on up the food chain that depends on the microscopic organisms.
“Something like 75 percent of production north of the Southern Ocean is fueled by nutrients from the Southern Ocean, and the northern oceans are where most fisheries are and where many ecosystem benefits for people occur,” Lauderdale says. “Before we dump loads of iron and draw down nutrients in the Southern Ocean, we should consider unintended consequences downstream that potentially make the environmental situation a lot worse.”
Oh hell! This is a disturbing article. I was beginning to pin a lot of hope on the iron filings gambit. Paul Beckwith had almost convinced me that it is the easiest and best solution. Now I have to get back to him and have another conversation.
How Produce Stickers Contribute to Climate Change
By Emily Chung, CBC: What on Earth? 14 February 2020
Article Excerpt:
“About three years ago, Susan Antler was at a composting facility in B.C. when a truck full of rotting avocados pulled up.
It was “51 feet, 52 feet [approx. 14 metres] — like, [a] massive truckload,” said Antler, executive director of the Compost Council of Canada. “And the facility just wouldn’t accept it.”
Why? Because each of those thousands of rotting avocados was “contaminated” by a little plastic PLU (or price look up) sticker. It carries a number, standardized around the globe, that identifies the type of produce and whether it’s conventionally or organically grown, to help cashiers enter the right price at the supermarket checkout.
Jane Proctor, vice-president of policy and issue management at the Canadian Produce Marketing Association, said while the stickers are voluntary, most chain supermarkets require them. “It is not a regulatory requirement,” she said. “It’s a business requirement.”
The stickers are too small to be screened out in the waste sorting process, but don’t break down during composting. Antler said they end up sprinkled as “foreign matter” through the finished product — compost that’s destined to be used to enrich soils in places such as gardens, farmland and parks.
The stickers aren’t toxic and don’t harm the compost — although presumably they add microplastics to the environment — so it’s mostly a cosmetic issue, Antler acknowledged. But there are strict guidelines about how much foreign matter is allowed in compost, especially higher grades. And too much can make compost unmarketable.
Read more
Mindful of the old adage “garbage in, garbage out,” composting plants that want to produce and sell higher grades of compost need to be careful about what raw materials they take.
In the case of the B.C. facility, Antler offered to remove the stickers from the avocados, but the composting plant manager declined. “He just sent the truck away, so that material went to landfill.” She’s pretty sure it happens all the time. “The scale of waste is massive.”
It’s not just a waste — it could also speed up climate change.
At a compost plant, organic matter typically decomposes in the presence of oxygen, generating CO2 and compost that can nourish plants. At a landfill, it decomposes without oxygen into methane, a greenhouse gas that has about 30 times the global warming impact of CO2 over a century. (Some organics plants use anaerobic digestion, which also generates methane, but it is captured and burned so it doesn’t go into the atmosphere.)
But there are solutions, including other ways to affix the PLU to bulk fruits and veggies, such as:
1) Paper stickers or certified compostable plastic stickers, which have been successfully tested in the U.S.
2) Ink stamps like the ones used to label eggs.
3) “Branding” with lasers.
Proctor said produce sellers often don’t see the extra investment as worthwhile when many customers don’t have access to municipal composting. She added that the recent introduction of scannable barcodes on PLU stickers — which Canadian stores are expected to adopt soon — requires the labels to show fine detail and maintain durability, which only plastic enables.
In the meantime, you can help by making sure you take the little stickers off your fruit and veggie peels and rinds before tossing them in your green bin at home.”
These stickers have always irritated me. Now I know why!
Heavy fuel oil and the Arctic — are they compatible?
By Niels Bjorn Mortensen, Lloyd’s List: Maritime Intelligence, 1 July 2017
Article Excerpt:
“Whether carried or burned, heavy fuel oil is a particular threat in Arctic waters
Rapid melting of the Arctic sea ice and the Arctic glaciers is predicted to have negative global effects. Melting of glaciers will result in rising sea levels globally, threatening the existence of many island states. Many large cities will also need to invest in expensive climate change mitigation enterprises, such as increasing the height and extent of dykes and barriers. Two obvious examples are New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and New York/New Jersey during hurricane Sandy. Rising sea levels and a likely increase in frequency and violence of hurricanes is a toxic mix for low-lying cities and countries.
Massive melting of ice in the Arctic might also, according to some scientists, force the Gulf Stream to take a more southerly course, which will result in a much colder northern Europe. So even in a global warming scenario, there might be regions that will experience colder weather and climate.
HFO is a dirty and polluting fossil fuel that powers ships around the world. Around 75% of marine fuel currently carried in the Arctic is HFO, over half by vessels flagged to non-Arctic states — countries that have little if any connection to the Arctic. Combined with an increase in Arctic state-flagged vessels targeting previously non-accessible resources, this will greatly increase the risk of an HFO spill.
If HFO is spilled in the colder waters of the Arctic, it breaks down even more slowly than in warmer waters, with long-term devastating effects on both livelihoods and ecosystems.
HFO is a larger source of high emissions of harmful air pollutants — such as sulphur oxide, nitrogen oxide and particulate matter, including black carbon — than alternative fuels such as distillate and liquid natural gas. When emitted and deposited on Arctic snow or ice, the climate warming effect of black carbon is five times more than when emitted at lower latitudes, such as in the tropics.
Mitigating risks
Canada along with Finland, Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway and the US have now proposed, in time for next week’s 71st meeting of the IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee, that work begins on mitigating the risks of use and carriage of HFO as fuel by ships in the Arctic. The European Parliament has broadly supported this move by adopting its resolution calling for a ban on the use of HFO in Arctic waters.
Meanwhile, Danish Shipping (the association of Danish shipowners) and Arctic expedition cruise operator Hurtigruten, among others, have called for regulation banning the use of HFO in the Arctic.
The submission from Canada et al is a request for a new output from the IMO, hence there are no concrete text amendments proposed. However, it is already embedded in Marpol Annex I that carriage of Heavy Grade Oil in the Antarctic, ie south of latitude 60 S, is prohibited. Heavy Grade Oil is defined as oil with a density greater than 900 kg/m3 or a viscosity (at 50°C) of 180 centistokes (cSt) or above. Thus, drafting of the relevant text to introduce a similar ban in the Arctic would be the least of the challenges.
It is noteworthy that the proposal will cover only the carriage of HFO as fuel, not as cargo. There are huge known oil reserves in the region, not least in the Russian Arctic, and a possible ban of transporting this at sea would presently not be feasible. Oil transported as cargo will most certainly be carried on board double-hulled tankers, whereas the requirement to double side skin protection of fuel tanks has taken effect only for ships built after January 1 this year.
It is also interesting that Canada et al in the submission do not use the damaging effects of Black Carbon as part of the rationale for a ban.
In October 2016, the IMO at MEPC 70 decided that from January 1, 2020, all ships operating outside Emission Control Areas must not burn fuel oil with a sulphur content above 0.5% (by mass). When that rule was adopted in 2008, it was believed that such future fuel oil would be distillate, either marine gas oil or marine diesel oil.
One could then suggest that the problem of carriage of HFO in the Arctic would resolve itself by 2020.
Well, if only the world were so simple.
In connection with the 0.1% sulphur limit in ECAs in 2015, the world saw a number of new fuels that did not fall under the traditional definition of distillate fuel. It is expected that the 2020 global cap of 0.5% sulphur limit will see the introduction of many new fuels. Some of these are expected to be based on de-sulphurised HFO derived from sweet crude, others might be blends of HFO with low-sulphur products. It could even be new oil products that the world has not yet seen.
It should thus be evident that a carriage ban only on HFO as fuel might not solve the potential problem. Whether the definitions of Heavy Grade Oil, as used for the Antarctic, will suffice is not for this author to judge. It would be recommended to involve refinery and bunker experts to ensure a robust definition of a fuel ban in the Arctic.
At this July’s MEPC meeting, IMO member states must not only support the action proposed by Canada and others to mitigate the risks of HFO use in the Arctic, they must commit to any measures taken by the IMO to reduce these risks — including a ban.”
Fuel Oil Pollution in the Arctic!
Too much heavy fuel is used the Arctic. Heavy fuel is a dirty fuel that causes lots of pollution.It poses a risk regardless of whether it is burned for energy or being transported. Cold temperatures in the environment and water cause the fuel to break down slower and prolongs the impact on ecosystems. There are ongoing calls – by countries such as Canada and the Scandinavian nations – to prohibit the use of heavy fuel as a fuel source in the Arctic. However, these proposals will not prevent heavy fuel from being shipped as cargo through the Arctic.
BY Niels Bjorn Mortensen
“Whether carried or burned, heavy fuel oil is a particular threat in Arctic waters
As Arctic waters open up, most likely due to human use of fossil fuels, vessels powered by heavy fuel oil are likely to divert to Arctic waters in search of shorter journey times. This will mean more burning of marine fuels and black carbon emissions, accelerating further melting. More open water means further absorption of the sun’s warmth and heating of the Arctic Ocean — a vicious cycle.
As a former navigator I have sailed on ships in both the Arctic and the Antarctic. In 1979 I was second officer on the first ship to east Greenland that season and we arrived at Angmagssalik around July 1 after spending a day navigating very heavy multi-year ice. Later that year, I was in the Thule (Qaanaaq) district in northwest Greenland, which opened up for ship traffic only in early August.
Read more
Much later, around 1998, I got involved in the International Maritime Organization’s work on drafting the Polar Code. The first draft was brought to the IMO by Canada, but it needed quite some work in order to appear as an IMO document. The first version was adopted in 2002 as a set of voluntary guidelines, whereas the present version, which entered into force on January 1 this year, is a mandatory IMO Code under both the Solas and the Marpol Conventions.
Looking again at this year’s ice chart, it appears that the areas I visited back in 1979 will be open to ship traffic much earlier and the navigable window will be much longer.
Is that good? Well, from a purely navigational view, an ice-free Arctic for half of the year would be convenient. Many tonne-miles would be saved and thereby less fuel burned on a global basis, which arguably could have a mitigating effect of shipping on climate change and even delay the 2°C temperature increase scenario by several weeks. But overall, is this significantly beneficial compared with the negative side-effects of global warming, and the potential impacts of burning heavy fuel oil in the Arctic?
Rapid melting of the Arctic sea ice and the Arctic glaciers is predicted to have negative global effects. Melting of glaciers will result in rising sea levels globally, threatening the existence of many island states. Many large cities will also need to invest in expensive climate change mitigation enterprises, such as increasing the height and extent of dykes and barriers. Two obvious examples are New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and New York/New Jersey during hurricane Sandy. Rising sea levels and a likely increase in frequency and violence of hurricanes is a toxic mix for low-lying cities and countries.
Massive melting of ice in the Arctic might also, according to some scientists, force the Gulf Stream to take a more southerly course, which will result in a much colder northern Europe. So even in a global warming scenario, there might be regions that will experience colder weather and climate.
HFO is a dirty and polluting fossil fuel that powers ships around the world. Around 75% of marine fuel currently carried in the Arctic is HFO, over half by vessels flagged to non-Arctic states — countries that have little if any connection to the Arctic. Combined with an increase in Arctic state-flagged vessels targeting previously non-accessible resources, this will greatly increase the risk of an HFO spill.
If HFO is spilled in the colder waters of the Arctic, it breaks down even more slowly than in warmer waters, with long-term devastating effects on both livelihoods and ecosystems.
HFO is a larger source of high emissions of harmful air pollutants — such as sulphur oxide, nitrogen oxide and particulate matter, including black carbon — than alternative fuels such as distillate and liquid natural gas. When emitted and deposited on Arctic snow or ice, the climate warming effect of black carbon is five times more than when emitted at lower latitudes, such as in the tropics.
Mitigating risks
Canada along with Finland, Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway and the US have now proposed, in time for next week’s 71st meeting of the IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee, that work begins on mitigating the risks of use and carriage of HFO as fuel by ships in the Arctic. The European Parliament has broadly supported this move by adopting its resolution calling for a ban on the use of HFO in Arctic waters.
Meanwhile, Danish Shipping (the association of Danish shipowners) and Arctic expedition cruise operator Hurtigruten, among others, have called for regulation banning the use of HFO in the Arctic.
The submission from Canada et al is a request for a new output from the IMO, hence there are no concrete text amendments proposed. However, it is already embedded in Marpol Annex I that carriage of Heavy Grade Oil in the Antarctic, ie south of latitude 60 S, is prohibited. Heavy Grade Oil is defined as oil with a density greater than 900 kg/m3 or a viscosity (at 50°C) of 180 centistokes (cSt) or above. Thus, drafting of the relevant text to introduce a similar ban in the Arctic would be the least of the challenges.
It is noteworthy that the proposal will cover only the carriage of HFO as fuel, not as cargo. There are huge known oil reserves in the region, not least in the Russian Arctic, and a possible ban of transporting this at sea would presently not be feasible. Oil transported as cargo will most certainly be carried on board double-hulled tankers, whereas the requirement to double side skin protection of fuel tanks has taken effect only for ships built after January 1 this year.
It is also interesting that Canada et al in the submission do not use the damaging effects of Black Carbon as part of the rationale for a ban.
In October 2016, the IMO at MEPC 70 decided that from January 1, 2020, all ships operating outside Emission Control Areas must not burn fuel oil with a sulphur content above 0.5% (by mass). When that rule was adopted in 2008, it was believed that such future fuel oil would be distillate, either marine gas oil or marine diesel oil.
One could then suggest that the problem of carriage of HFO in the Arctic would resolve itself by 2020.
Well, if only the world were so simple.
In connection with the 0.1% sulphur limit in ECAs in 2015, the world saw a number of new fuels that did not fall under the traditional definition of distillate fuel. It is expected that the 2020 global cap of 0.5% sulphur limit will see the introduction of many new fuels. Some of these are expected to be based on de-sulphurised HFO derived from sweet crude, others might be blends of HFO with low-sulphur products. It could even be new oil products that the world has not yet seen.
It should thus be evident that a carriage ban only on HFO as fuel might not solve the potential problem. Whether the definitions of Heavy Grade Oil, as used for the Antarctic, will suffice is not for this author to judge. It would be recommended to involve refinery and bunker experts to ensure a robust definition of a fuel ban in the Arctic.
At this July’s MEPC meeting, IMO member states must not only support the action proposed by Canada and others to mitigate the risks of HFO use in the Arctic, they must commit to any measures taken by the IMO to reduce these risks — including a ban.”
There was a big spill in an industrial town in Siberia recently. Not from a ship but industry. Equally dangerous, though.
Ship pollution is bad for public health
By Samuel White
Additionally of note: “the NGO Transport & Environment said, “Marine fuel is 2,700 times dirtier than road diesel and €35 billion of fuel tax is paid yearly in Europe for road transport, while shipping uses tax-free fuel.”
“Given that shipping accounts for over one fifth of global fuel consumption, the fact that its emissions are not more strictly regulated is cause for concern.”
Read more
Shipping emissions are an invisible killer that cause lung cancer and heart disease, a new study has found, but researchers say the 60,000 deaths they cause each year could be significantly cut by exhaust filtration devices.
The University of Rostock and the German environmental research centre Helmholzzentrum Munich have established a firm link between shipping exhaust emissions and serious diseases, that cost European health services €58 billion annually.
Conventional ship engines that burn heavy fuel oil or diesel fuel emit high concentrations of harmful substances including heavy metals, hydrocarbons and sulphur, as well as carcinogenic particulate matter (PM).
People in coastal areas are particularly at risk, researchers said. Up to half of PM-related air pollution in coastal areas, rivers and ports comes from ship emissions, according to the study.
Lief Miller, the CEO of conservation NGO NABU, said, “The results are frightening and confirm our worst fears. Emissions from ships cause serious lung and heart diseases.”
Fine particle emissions have been linked to increased health risks for decades. Although substantial efforts have been made to reduce the sulphur and diesel soot emissions from cars and lorries, no comparable efforts have been made for the shipping sector.
The NGO Transport & Environment said, “Marine fuel is 2,700 times dirtier than road diesel and €35 billion of fuel tax is paid yearly in Europe for road transport, while shipping uses tax-free fuel.”
Given that shipping accounts for over one fifth of global fuel consumption, the fact that its emissions are not more strictly regulated is cause for concern.
Improving air quality through exhaust filtration
For the researchers, legislation enforcing particle filtration and PM limits in shipping is the “next logical target for improving air quality worldwide, particularly in coastal regions and harbour cities”.
Dietmar Oeliger, NABU’s transport expert, said, “We really underline the recommendation of the scientists to urgently switch to low sulphur fuels together with effective emission abatement techniques.”
The most effective method of cleaning up emissions from shipping is to combine PM filters with low-sulphur fuels, a measure that has long been in place on the roads.
Other options include converting ships’ engines to run on gas or retrofitting them with exhaust gas cleaning systems known as “scrubbers”.
Controlling sulphur emissions
The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has capped the sulphur content of shipping fuel at 3.5%. By 2020, the IMO will limit sulphur content in ship’s fuel to 0.5% worldwide.
In many of Europe’s coastal waters the limit is 1%, and as of January 2015, the limit in the Sulphur Emission Control Areas (SECAs) of the North and the Baltic Seas is just 0.1%.
According to Transport & Environment, the health benefits from the implementation of the new stricter SECAs are projected to be worth up to €23 billion.
But these limits are not strictly enforced, and the options available for reducing sulphur and PM emissions remain too expensive for the majority of ship operators.
As well as severe health risks to humans, sulphur causes acid rain and leads to a host of environmental problems including soil and water quality degradation and damage to biodiversity.
“We need meaningful measures to incentivise the uptake of cleaner marine fuels as a stepping stone towards cleaning up the sector,” said Sotiris Raptis, clean shipping officer at Transport & Environment.
EURACTIV, June 10, 2016
Pollution from ships kills thousands each year
European health agencies spend approximately €58 billion ($83 billion CAD) each year on serious diseases connected to ship emissions and ship-related pollution. These are mostly heart and lung diseases. Furthermore, this annual €58 billion ($83 billion CAD) expense does not include environmental damage.
Given that shipping accounts for over one fifth of global fuel consumption, the fact that its emissions are not more strictly regulated is cause for concern.”
By Samuel White. Euractiv, June 20, 2015
Article Excerpt:
The University of Rostock and the German environmental research centre Helmholzzentrum Munich have established a firm link between shipping exhaust emissions and serious diseases, that cost European health services €58 billion annually.
Conventional ship engines that burn heavy fuel oil or diesel fuel emit high concentrations of harmful substances including heavy metals, hydrocarbons and sulphur, as well as carcinogenic particulate matter (PM).
People in coastal areas are particularly at risk, researchers said. Up to half of PM-related air pollution in coastal areas, rivers and ports comes from ship emissions, according to the study.
Read more
Lief Miller, the CEO of conservation NGO NABU, said, “The results are frightening and confirm our worst fears. Emissions from ships cause serious lung and heart diseases.”
Fine particle emissions have been linked to increased health risks for decades. Although substantial efforts have been made to reduce the sulphur and diesel soot emissions from cars and lorries, no comparable efforts have been made for the shipping sector.
The NGO Transport & Environment said, “Marine fuel is 2,700 times dirtier than road diesel and €35 billion of fuel tax is paid yearly in Europe for road transport, while shipping uses tax-free fuel.”
Given that shipping accounts for over one fifth of global fuel consumption, the fact that its emissions are not more strictly regulated is cause for concern.
Improving air quality through exhaust filtration
For the researchers, legislation enforcing particle filtration and PM limits in shipping is the “next logical target for improving air quality worldwide, particularly in coastal regions and harbour cities”.
Dietmar Oeliger, NABU’s transport expert, said, “We really underline the recommendation of the scientists to urgently switch to low sulphur fuels together with effective emission abatement techniques.”
The most effective method of cleaning up emissions from shipping is to combine PM filters with low-sulphur fuels, a measure that has long been in place on the roads.
Other options include converting ships’ engines to run on gas or retrofitting them with exhaust gas cleaning systems known as “scrubbers”.
Controlling sulphur emissions
The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has capped the sulphur content of shipping fuel at 3.5%. By 2020, the IMO will limit sulphur content in ship’s fuel to 0.5% worldwide.
In many of Europe’s coastal waters the limit is 1%, and as of January 2015, the limit in the Sulphur Emission Control Areas (SECAs) of the North and the Baltic Seas is just 0.1%.
According to Transport & Environment, the health benefits from the implementation of the new stricter SECAs are projected to be worth up to €23 billion.
But these limits are not strictly enforced, and the options available for reducing sulphur and PM emissions remain too expensive for the majority of ship operators.
As well as severe health risks to humans, sulphur causes acid rain and leads to a host of environmental problems including soil and water quality degradation and damage to biodiversity.
“We need meaningful measures to incentivise the uptake of cleaner marine fuels as a stepping stone towards cleaning up the sector,” said Sotiris Raptis, clean shipping officer at Transport & Environment.
UN Will Force Shipping to Clean Up its Act
By Laramée de Tannenberg, Valéry, Euractiv, 26 October 2016
Article Excerpt:
The UN’s International Maritime Organisation (IMO) is pondering measures to cut shipping pollution and bring emissions into line with the Paris Agreement. EURACTIV’s partner Journal de l’Environnement reports.
Like commercial aviation, marine transport slipped through the cracks in the Paris Agreement. Responsible for more than 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions, commercial shipping is also a major source of local air pollution.
But the IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee (MPEC) has begun to take local and global impact of shipping pollution seriously; it was on the agenda for the committee’s 70th meeting in London this week.
The UN organisation is considering enforcing stricter regulations on large ships. Under the proposals, the owners of the tens of thousands of ships with a displacement greater than 5,000 tonnes would be obliged to measure their fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, and to declare the results to the IMO and the ships’ countries of registration. This is a first step.
Read more
At its meeting in April this year, MPEC also agreed on the need for marine transport to take account of the Paris Agreement. The IMO plans to adopt binding measures to reduce the sector’s carbon footprint, and could lay out its timetable this week.
Cutting Sulphur Emissions:
The 171 members of the IMO will also have to agree on a date for the entry into force of the new rules on the reduced sulphur content of fuels. Adopted in 1997, the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) placed a limit of 0.5% on the sulphur content of shipping fuel, which will come into force in 2020.
60,000 premature deaths per year
Existing rules limit the sulphur content of shipping fuel to 3.5%, making marine transport the biggest emitter of sulphur oxides in the world. Exceptions can be found in the Sulphur Emission Control Areas (SECAs) of North America and Northern Europen where the mlimit is 0.1%.
In 1999, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University estimated that between 5% and 30% of the concentration of airborne sulphates in coastal regions was down to commercial shipping. These particles are harmful to marine and land environments, as well as to human health.
Later research by the University of Delaware attributed more than 60,000 premature deaths per year in Europe and Asia to this pollution, and predicted that that figure would rise by 40% by 2012.
Opposition from refiners
But refiners of shipping fuel have spoken out against the mandatory sulphur reduction. At least, if it comes into force so soon.
Cutting sulphur content would require big changes to machinery and investments in the billions of dollars. According to the consultancy CE Delft, the success of the reduced sulphur convention will depend on the ability of the refiners to provide low-sulphur fuel from 2020. If not, the oil companies and some shipping companies plan to push the entry into force of Annex VI of the MARPOL convention back to 2025.
One interesting detail: the Cook Islands pushed hard to strengthen the Paris Agreement, but are one of the fiercest opponents of binding emissions limits on maritime transport.
UN Will Force Shipping to Clean Up its Act
By Laramée de Tannenberg
The UN’s International Maritime Organisation (IMO) is pondering measures to cut shipping pollution and bring emissions into line with the Paris Agreement. EURACTIV’s partner Journal de l’Environnement reports.
Like commercial aviation, marine transport slipped through the cracks in the Paris Agreement. Responsible for more than 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions, commercial shipping is also a major source of local air pollution.
Read more
But the IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee (MPEC) has begun to take local and global impact of shipping pollution seriously; it was on the agenda for the committee’s 70th meeting in London this week.
The UN organisation is considering enforcing stricter regulations on large ships. Under the proposals, the owners of the tens of thousands of ships with a displacement greater than 5,000 tonnes would be obliged to measure their fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, and to declare the results to the IMO and the ships’ countries of registration. This is a first step.
At its meeting in April this year, MPEC also agreed on the need for marine transport to take account of the Paris Agreement. The IMO plans to adopt binding measures to reduce the sector’s carbon footprint, and could lay out its timetable this week.
Cutting Sulphur Emissions:
The 171 members of the IMO will also have to agree on a date for the entry into force of the new rules on the reduced sulphur content of fuels. Adopted in 1997, the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) placed a limit of 0.5% on the sulphur content of shipping fuel, which will come into force in 2020.
60,000 premature deaths per year
Existing rules limit the sulphur content of shipping fuel to 3.5%, making marine transport the biggest emitter of sulphur oxides in the world. Exceptions can be found in the Sulphur Emission Control Areas (SECAs) of North America and Northern Europen where the mlimit is 0.1%.
In 1999, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University estimated that between 5% and 30% of the concentration of airborne sulphates in coastal regions was down to commercial shipping. These particles are harmful to marine and land environments, as well as to human health.
Later research by the University of Delaware attributed more than 60,000 premature deaths per year in Europe and Asia to this pollution, and predicted that that figure would rise by 40% by 2012.
Opposition from refiners
But refiners of shipping fuel have spoken out against the mandatory sulphur reduction. At least, if it comes into force so soon.
Cutting sulphur content would require big changes to machinery and investments in the billions of dollars. According to the consultancy CE Delft, the success of the reduced sulphur convention will depend on the ability of the refiners to provide low-sulphur fuel from 2020. If not, the oil companies and some shipping companies plan to push the entry into force of Annex VI of the MARPOL convention back to 2025.
One interesting detail: the Cook Islands pushed hard to strengthen the Paris Agreement, but are one of the fiercest opponents of binding emissions limits on maritime transport.
Euractiv, Oct 26, 2016
Builders Shouldn’t Count on Liquified Natural Gas
Revealed in a Common Ground magazine article (“BC’s LNG industry – flogging a dead horse,” posted Dec. 8, 2018) is that Coastal GasLink’s liquefied fractured gas project is a bad deal for both British Columbians and the environment, with the following disturbing facts (extracted and listed below as published in point-form word for word) I’ve yet to hear reported in the mainstream news-media:
“ …. Faced with such competition for a resource product widely available worldwide, BC’s fledgling gas industry turned to Governments for concessions to help “make them competitive”.
Read more
So we now have publicly-funded concessions that Federal and Provincial Governments – past and present – have placed in the industry’s begging bowl, including:
–no Provincial Sales Tax on gas purchased;
subsidized (6 cents/ kilowatt-hour) electricity rates (residential customers pay 12 cents/KWh). The 6-cent industrial rate was originally conceived for labour-intensive industries, which LNG definitely is not;
–zero percent LNG royalty tax; 9 percent corporate tax rate on future profits declared in BC. Royalty taxes are payments to the resource owners – in this case the BC public. Much of the LNG industry is financially structured to offshore any profits to lower-tax jurisdictions, as Australia has already learned to its chagrin;
–$35/tonne carbon tax cap and $0/tonne on “fugitive” (vented and leaked) gases. The public will pay much higher carbon taxes, as this is ramped up in future years to limit global climate disruption. Fugitive emissions, when fully and accurately accounted for, make LNG a worse climate-warmer than coal;
–$120 Million a year for infrastructure costs (roads and pipelines to fracking holes). When this is factored into the skimpy returns to the public purse, the fracked gas industry remits less to BC’s coffers than do parking fees and fines in the City of Vancouver;
–reduced property assessments and property taxes. BC has legislated discounted property tax rates for all port facilities;
–relaxed Temporary Foreign Worker restrictions for imported workers. Unlike Australia, Canada has not negotiated local employment guarantees for the construction and operation of LNG facilities and pipelines;
–exemption from 25% import duty on machinery and equipment. The industry is also appealing a ruling by Canadian International Trade Tribunal imposing a hefty anti-dumping tariff on LNG modules constructed in Korea and floated here for final assembly. Constructing these units abroad denies jobs to Canadian steelworkers and revenue to Canada;
–accelerated capital cost write-downs. The Harper Government hiked the speed at which the LNG industry could write off its huge capital costs (to 30 percent per annum, previously 8 percent), effectively delaying income taxes and reducing borrowing costs for the industry.
All in all, this is extremely generous treatment for a foreign-owned industry which would employ, at most, a tiny fraction of BC’s 2.5 million-strong workforce – far fewer than each of BC’s high-tech, film and tourism industries. A 2014 study by the Centre for Policy Alternatives showed that, at a $12 LNG price in Asia, it would be 14 years before the capital costs of these projects were written off and LNG royalties begin to trickle into BC’s public coffers. The fracked gas industry has built up tax credits of a whopping $3 billion, meaning that, should it ever actually record a profit locally, the first $3 billion will be tax-free. As the LNG price has fallen to under $10/mmBTU, that 14-year break-even timing is likely to be further delayed. This mirrors the Australian LNG experience, which has shown break-even periods of 15 years or more for its LNG projects, and a tripling of local gas prices in the face of export competition for local supplies. Australians are paying more for their own gas than are foreign buyers.
Natural gas is composed primarily of methane, as a greenhouse gas 34 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Fracking for natural gas causes severe damage to local environments, permanently pollutes local groundwater, and has been identified as the cause of a series of earthquakes in north-eastern BC. …”
https://commonground.ca/bcs-lng-industry-flogging-a-dead-horse/
Canadian Cacti: Let’s eat ’em!
Did you know that Canada has several native cacti species? These are all in the Opuntia family of cacti – commonly called prickly pears. Opuntia (prickly pears) are more commonly found in Latin America, Mexico, and the Southwestern USA – though grow throughout the Americas. Indigenous and Latin American peoples have used the species for centuries as sources of dyes, fibers, and food. One common cuisine produced from Opuntia (prickly pears) are Nopales – which are grilled cacti pad. Thornless varieties or cacti pads with the thorns (glochids) removed are preferred for culinary applications. Prior to colonization, cacti were only native to the Americas.
Read more
However – attention has been drawn to the species in recent years due to its drought resistance and its potential to become an essential crop in areas presently facing and/or at risk of droughts. The cactis are a source of minerals and additionally store significant quantities of water in arid and desert environments.
Here is a report from the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nation around the benefits of Opuntia (prickly pears):
Title: Cactus pear deserves a place on the menu: Turning a useful food-of-last-resort into a managed and valuable crop
Author: Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations
Date: 30 November 2017
News Agency: Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations
Link: http://www.fao.org/fao-stories/article/en/c/1070166/
Article Excerpt:
“Climate change and the increasing risks of droughts are strong reasons to upgrade the humble cactus to the status of an essential crop in many areas,” said Hans Dreyer, director of FAO’s Plant Production and Protection Division.
[…]
Cactus pear cultivation is slowly catching on, boosted by growing need for resilience in the face of drought, degraded soils and higher temperatures. It has a long tradition in its native Mexico, where yearly per capita consumption of nopalitos – the tasty young pads, known as cladodes – is 6.4 kilograms. Opuntias are grown on small farms and harvested in the wild on more than 3 million hectares, and increasingly grown using drip irrigation techniques on smallholder farms as a primary or supplemental crop. Today, Brazil is home to more than 500,000 hectares of cactus plantations aimed to provide forage. The plant is also commonly grown on farms in North Africa and Ethiopia’s Tigray region has around 360,000 hectares of which half are managed.
The cactus pear’s ability to thrive in arid and dry climates makes it a key player in food security. Apart from providing food, cactus stores water in its pads, thus providing a botanical well that can provide up to 180 tonnes of water per hectare – enough to sustain five adult cows, a substantial increase over typical rangeland productivity. At times of drought, livestock survival rate has been far higher on farms with cactus plantations.
Projected pressure on water resources in the future make cactus “one of the most prominent crops for the 21st century,” says Ali Nefzaoui, a Tunis-based researcher for ICARDA, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas.
Here is a YouTube Video from the UNFAO on the benefits of Opuntia (prickly pears):
Title: Opuntia cactus: a useful asset for food security
Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Date: 24 November 2017
News Agency: UNFAO (YouTube)
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–0EdaCtR_4
For those of you interested in the Ontario context, here is an article and a website about the Opuntia (prickly pears) native to Ontario.
Title: Eastern prickly pear cactus
Author: Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks
Date: 2009 / 2014
News Agency: Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks
Link: https://www.ontario.ca/page/eastern-prickly-pear-cactus
Title: Prickly pear cactus at home anywhere
Author: Lee Reich
Date: 5 November 2008
News Agency: The Toronto Star
Link: https://www.thestar.com/life/homes/outdoor_living/2008/11/05/prickly_pear_cactus_at_home_anywhere.html
I cannot believe Canada even has Cacti, it’s so cold here.
Are these cacti endangered? I’ve never seen them. Where do they grow in Canada?
Russia’s $300B investment in Arctic oil and gas
By John Last, CBC News, 15 February 2020
Russia’s $300 billion gas and oil investment in the Arctic will encourage development of and increased traffic in Northern sea routes. What impacts will these activities will have on locals – including Indigenous (Chukchi, Nenets, etc.) peoples? There is international concern that gas and oil drilling in this ecologically sensitive region could result in long-term, environmental damage through leaks or spills.
The Soviet Union formerly used the Barents Sea, Kara Sea, and areas around Novaya Zemlya as a nuclear waste dump. These areas abut and/or intersect the Northern Sea Route. Several gas and oil companies proposed drilling the Kara Sea due to its large gas and oil reserves but shifted plans about 5 years ago. In recent years, Russia additionally has developed floating nuclear reactors, such as the Academic Lomonosov, which can be moved along the Northern Sea Route to supply power to remote regions.
Article Excerpt:
“Last month, the Russian government pushed through new legislation creating $300 billion in new incentives for new ports, factories, and oil and gas developments on the shores and in the waters of the Arctic ocean.
The incentives are part of a broader plan to more than double maritime traffic in the Northern Sea Route, on Russia’s northern coast — and give a boost to state energy companies like Gazprom, Lukoil, and Rosneft.
But analysts say their immediate impact will be increased exploration and development for offshore oil and natural gas.
How is the money being spent?
Russia’s government is offering tax incentives for offshore oil and gas developments, including a reduced five per cent production tax for the first 15 years for all oil and gas developments.
Read more
Projects in the east Arctic, closer to Canada’s Beaufort Sea, receive an even greater incentive — no extraction tax for the first 12 years of operation.
Russia may be borrowing a page from Canada’s book in drafting the policy. Doug Matthews, a Canadian energy writer and analyst, said the incentive package sounds “rather like our old national energy program in the … Beaufort [Sea] back in the ’70s and ’80s.”
What new projects are getting the go-ahead?
Russia’s minister of the Far East and Arctic, Alexander Kozlov, said in a press release that those incentives are resulting in three new massive offshore oil projects.
Currently, there is only one producing offshore oil platform in Russian waters — the Prirazlomnaya platform, located in the Pechora Sea.
Russia’s state oil companies are also expected to massively intensify their onshore Arctic operations.
Rosneft’s Vostok Oil project, billed as the “biggest in global oil,” will involve the construction of a seaport, two airports, 800 km of new pipelines, and 15 new towns in the Vankor region.
“The project is expected to become the stepping stone for large scale development of Arctic oil,” said Nikita Kapustin, an energy researcher with the state-funded Energy Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in an email.
Developments in the Laptev, East Siberian and Chukchi Seas — nearer to Alaska — are “more distant prospects,” Kapustin said.
But massive incentives for Arctic ports and pipelines could make exploiting those regions more feasible in the future.
What could the environmental impacts be?
Simon Boxall, an oceans scientist at the University of Southampton, said sending more goods via the Northern Sea Route could actually have a positive environmental impact.
“You’re knocking thousands of miles off of that route, and that of course saves energy, it saves fuel, it saves pollution,” he said.
The problem, Boxall says, comes with what those ships are carrying. Any spilled oil degrades slowly in cold Arctic waters, and is easily trapped beneath ice.
Boxall is optimistic that moderate spills from Russia’s offshore oil projects could be contained to “a fairly small locality,” and would be unlikely to affect Canadian shores.
But Tony Walker, an assistant professor at the School of Resource & Environmental Studies at Dalhousie University, disagrees.
“Any petroleum products released into surface water could easily get to the Northwest Territories in just a matter of days,” he said.
“Basically, it’s everybody’s problem.”
Walker says most Arctic nations have limited capacity to perform cleanups in the region. Russia’s fleet is mostly based in Murmansk, near its western border, he says, and is mostly decommissioned anyway.
“So it would really be virtually impossible,” he said.
How could this affect oil and gas prices?
Despite enabling access to more than 37 billion barrels of oil — equivalent to about a fifth of Canada’s total remaining reserves — analysts say the effect on prices should be negligible.
“The main intention of Arctic oil is to replace production of some of the more mature Russian fields,” said Kapustin.
“I don’t see much of an effect on price,” said Matthews.
The primary market for Russia’s Arctic oil and gas is China. Canada’s market share there is so small, Matthews says, it’s unlikely to make a difference.
Could Canadian businesses benefit?
Since U.S. and EU sanctions were put in place in 2014, international oil companies have been reluctant to co-invest in Arctic oil projects. Sanctions prohibit collaboration on offshore oil projects with Russia’s biggest companies.
Canadian businesses also might not have the expertise needed any longer, according to Matthews.
“We were really the leaders back in the ’70s and ’80s for technology for Arctic exploration,” Matthews explained. But “when the oil industry in the Beaufort [Sea] shut down in the mid-’80s … we really lost that technological edge.”
Canada’s recent investment in pipelines means some Canadian companies have built expertise in their construction, including in cold-weather environments.
But Matthews and other analysts say Russia is more likely to look to the East for expertise and investment — to Japan and China, and to India, which Kapustin said has already invested in the Vostok Oil project.”
This explains why Russia may be slow to develop electric cars (Arctic oil is profitable)
Russia is investing $300 billion in the Arctic – specifically within the realm of gas and oil. These investments would encourage development of and increased traffic in Northern sea routes. There is hope that this could assist with economic bolstering and potential development of remote Northern communities along the Northern Sea Route. What impacts these activities will have on locals – including Indigenous (Chukchi, Nenets, etc.) peoples – has yet to be fully determined.
The Soviet Union formerly used the Barents Sea, Kara Sea, and areas around Novaya Zemlya as a nuclear waste dump. These areas abut and/or intersect the Northern Sea Route. I am hoping that some of these $300 billion in investments could go towards cleaning up these sites. Former President Boris Yeltsin’s science advisor first reported on the state of the Kara Sea nuclear waste dump in 1993 – though according to recent media articles – little has been done in subsequent decades to clean-up and contain the nuclear waste, move it to a more appropriate and secure location, and remediate the contaminated environments. Interestingly, several gas and oil companies proposed drilling the Kara Sea due to its large gas and oil reserves – but shifted plans about 5 years ago.
Read more
Multiple agencies – including environmental groups – indicated concern of drilling activities in close proximity to a nuclear waste dump. In recent years, Russia additionally has developed floating nuclear reactors which can be moved along the Northern Sea Route to supply power to remote regions – with a particular focus on resource extraction activities. Here is a news item by the CBC.
“Last month, the Russian government pushed through new legislation creating $300 billion in new incentives for new ports, factories, and oil and gas developments on the shores and in the waters of the Arctic ocean.
The incentives are part of a broader plan to more than double maritime traffic in the Northern Sea Route, on Russia’s northern coast — and give a boost to state energy companies like Gazprom, Lukoil, and Rosneft.
But analysts say their immediate impact will be increased exploration and development for offshore oil and natural gas.
With Canadian and U.S. offshore oil developments still on ice, here’s what Russia’s big spending could mean for the Arctic — and Canadians.
How is the money being spent?
Russia’s government is offering tax incentives for offshore oil and gas developments, including a reduced five per cent production tax for the first 15 years for all oil and gas developments.
Projects in the east Arctic, closer to Canada’s Beaufort Sea, receive an even greater incentive — no extraction tax for the first 12 years of operation.
Russia may be borrowing a page from Canada’s book in drafting the policy. Doug Matthews, a Canadian energy writer and analyst, said the incentive package sounds “rather like our old national energy program in the … Beaufort [Sea] back in the ’70s and ’80s.”
What new projects are getting the go-ahead?
Russia’s minister of the Far East and Arctic, Alexander Kozlov, said in a press release that those incentives are resulting in three new massive offshore oil projects.
Currently, there is only one producing offshore oil platform in Russian waters — the Prirazlomnaya platform, located in the Pechora Sea.
Russia’s state oil companies are also expected to massively intensify their onshore Arctic operations.
Rosneft’s Vostok Oil project, billed as the “biggest in global oil,” will involve the construction of a seaport, two airports, 800 km of new pipelines, and 15 new towns in the Vankor region.
“The project is expected to become the stepping stone for large scale development of Arctic oil,” said Nikita Kapustin, an energy researcher with the state-funded Energy Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in an email.
Developments in the Laptev, East Siberian and Chukchi Seas — nearer to Alaska — are “more distant prospects,” Kapustin said.
But massive incentives for Arctic ports and pipelines could make exploiting those regions more feasible in the future.
What could the environmental impacts be?
Simon Boxall, an oceans scientist at the University of Southampton, said sending more goods via the Northern Sea Route could actually have a positive environmental impact.
“You’re knocking thousands of miles off of that route, and that of course saves energy, it saves fuel, it saves pollution,” he said.
The problem, Boxall says, comes with what those ships are carrying. Any spilled oil degrades slowly in cold Arctic waters, and is easily trapped beneath ice.
Boxall is optimistic that moderate spills from Russia’s offshore oil projects could be contained to “a fairly small locality,” and would be unlikely to affect Canadian shores.
But Tony Walker, an assistant professor at the School of Resource & Environmental Studies at Dalhousie University, disagrees.
“Any petroleum products released into surface water could easily get to the Northwest Territories in just a matter of days,” he said.
“Basically, it’s everybody’s problem.”
Walker says most Arctic nations have limited capacity to perform cleanups in the region. Russia’s fleet is mostly based in Murmansk, near its western border, he says, and is mostly decommissioned anyway.
“So it would really be virtually impossible,” he said.
How could this affect oil and gas prices?
Despite enabling access to more than 37 billion barrels of oil — equivalent to about a fifth of Canada’s total remaining reserves — analysts say the effect on prices should be negligible.
“The main intention of Arctic oil is to replace production of some of the more mature Russian fields,” said Kapustin.
“I don’t see much of an effect on price,” said Matthews.
The primary market for Russia’s Arctic oil and gas is China. Canada’s market share there is so small, Matthews says, it’s unlikely to make a difference.
Could Canadian businesses benefit?
Since U.S. and EU sanctions were put in place in 2014, international oil companies have been reluctant to co-invest in Arctic oil projects. Sanctions prohibit collaboration on offshore oil projects with Russia’s biggest companies.
Canadian businesses also might not have the expertise needed any longer, according to Matthews.
“We were really the leaders back in the ’70s and ’80s for technology for Arctic exploration,” Matthews explained. But “when the oil industry in the Beaufort [Sea] shut down in the mid-’80s … we really lost that technological edge.”
Canada’s recent investment in pipelines means some Canadian companies have built expertise in their construction, including in cold-weather environments.
But Matthews and other analysts say Russia is more likely to look to the East for expertise and investment — to Japan and China, and to India, which Kapustin said has already invested in the Vostok Oil project.”
Hooray for Thunder Bay!
Article Excerpt:
Thunder Bay is among nine other Canadian cities being recognized for their commitment to urban forestry management by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Arbor Day Foundation.
The Tree Cities of the World list was released last week, and includes cities from across the world and in Canada, including Edmonton, Toronto, Halifax, and Regina, in addition to Thunder Bay.
Read more
“It’s really exciting that we could be recognized as a Tree City of the world alongside Toronto and Edmonton and Halifax,” he said. “Those are places that you would think of as a little greener than Thunder Bay.”
Scott said that despite the size of Thunder Bay, the city has all the same tree and forest management strategies as larger cities, which allowed for the city to receive the designation.
“We have a very good management strategy for these trees and it should be recognized throughout the city as something we should continue and build upon, especially as we face climate change,” Scott said. “The city has declared a climate emergency, so I think this really ties into the sustainability of Thunder Bay as a whole.”
The city had to meet a number of standards to be considered for the designation. One of the items provided by the city was the inventory of Thunder Bay’s public tree assets as well as a tree canopy estimate.
Other necessary criteria of the designation covered areas such as allocation of resources and policy that outlines management of the trees.
“We congratulate the first cities to be recognized for 2019, our inaugural year,” said Hiroto Mitsugi, assistant director general, FAO in a press release. “Together, these Tree Cities form a new global network of urban forestry leaders that share the same values for city trees and forests.”
Author: CBC Thunder Bay
Date: 11 February 2020
News Agency: CBC Canada: Thunder Bay
Link: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/thunder-bay-recognized-for-forestry-management-1.5458612
Crocheting Plastic
“Renee Outhouse is crocheting plastic sleeping mats for people who are homeless, just as Fundy Region Solid Waste plans to stop accepting plastic bags for recycling beginning in March.”
“Because the mats are made of plastic, fleas or bedbugs won’t nest in them, Outhouse said. The mats would melt if exposed to fire, however.”
Read more
[…]
“The mats will be about a metre wide and two metres long.
Title: Rothesay woman crochets plastic bags together to make sleeping mats for homeless
Author: Semerad, Elke
Date: 10 February 2020
News Agency: CBC New Brunswick
Link: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/plastic-mats-bags-homelessness-1.5457934
What a nutty form of charity! Wouldnt you do better spending your time working on a campaign to ensure that everyone has a place to live?
Indigenize Toronto’s Black Oak Savannah
There’s a wonderful urban black oak savannah in Toronto’s High Park that reflects indigenous land stewardship in urban contexts.
Article Excerpt:
An Indigenous collective wants a more active role in land restoration and management in Toronto, with a focus on High Park’s rare black oak savannah.
The Indigenous Land Stewardship Circle is a collective of elders, knowledge holders and members of the urban Indigenous community who want to Indigenize and decolonize land restoration by healing the land through traditional approaches.
Read more
“What we’re talking about is restoring the right relations with the land,” said Catherine Tamarro, who is part of the land stewardship circle.
Tamarro is a Wyandot elder who belongs to the Wyandot of Anderdon Nation in Michigan. She’s a multimedia artist who lives in Toronto.
“Indigenous people have been in that space for thousands of years,” she said.
“I think that the idea is to have those rights of stewardship returned to us.”
What is a black oak savannah?
Prior to the arrival of European settlers, the majority of southern Ontario was covered in densely forested areas that were broken up by two kinds of tallgrass ecosystems, prairies and savannahs.
Black oak savannah is characterized by grasses, shrubs and widely spaced oaks, and is an ecosystem relatively rare in Canada. Savannas are dependent on fire, either natural or human-caused, to maintain the open space. The black oak is resistant to fire, and some of the largest ones in Toronto are located in High Park.
The savannah is a place for traditional medicines and berries to grow and would attract grazing animals for hunting.
“It is a remnant of Indigenous land stewardship that exists in the city,” said Tamarro. “It’s very precious.”
The black oak savannah in High Park is estimated to be approximately 4,000 years old. Since savannahs are characterized by open spaces, they were often the first areas to be cleared for settler developments and agriculture, and suppression of wildfires also reduced their expanses.
Challenges of park management
“It’s significant because it’s an approach to managing the landscape that is in pretty stark contrast to how Canadian municipal and federal authorities manage it,” said Doug Anderson who is a Métis earthworker in the land stewardship circle.
Some of the challenges around managing High Park include controlling invasive plant species and looking for a sustainable way to restore the park to its natural state while still allowing for recreational usage.
The land stewardship circle believes that the use of pesticides for dealing with invasive species is detrimental to the entire ecosystem that exists within the savannah.
For decades, the city has been also been doing controlled burns in the park to maintain the savannah. While no burns happened in 2019, the land stewardship circle hopes that in the future contracts offered by the city for restoration are offered to Indigenous stewards.
Restoring the savannahs is a first step in restoring Indigenous relationships with the land for future generations, according to Anderson.
“We need to teach our kids how to heal the land,” said Anderson.
“We have to have relationships with the land and we have to know how things grow and balance and how you can get a lot of food off it. We need to actually live with all of these things and in balance.”
City says it welcomes feedback
The City of Toronto’s Park’s, Forestry and Recreation department said in a statement “We are engaged in conversations with the Indigenous community about incorporating Indigenous knowledge and practices in High Park.
“These conversations are ongoing, and we welcome feedback and suggestions for collaboration.”
The statement said High Park is one of Toronto’s most popular and ecologically sensitive parks.
“Practices, including prescribed burn management, have been selected based on research and experience and are part of the city’s long-term management plan to protect and sustain Toronto’s rare black oak woodlands and savannahs.
“Parks, Forestry and Recreation staff are committed to building a relationship with Indigenous communities, as well as exploring new partnerships and land use practices.”
********
Title: ‘It’s very precious’: Indigenous collective wants input into managing High Park’s oak savannah
Author: Rhiannon Johnson
Date: 15 February 2020
Publication: CBC Indigenous / CBC News
Link: https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/high-park-indigenous-land-stewardship-1.5456265
There are comparisons to recent initiatives to revitalize the black oak savannah in the Niagara and St. Catharines regions of Ontario. More information about the Niagara and St. Catharines initiatives can be found here:
Title: Work begins to restore Niagara’s oak savannah
Author: Julie Jocsak
Date: 1 March 2019
Publication: The Standard (St. Catharines)
Link: https://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/news-story/9201748-work-begins-to-restore-niagara-s-oak-savannah/
Hey, Israel! Trees are not your enemy!
Israel’s army blocks activists who work with Palestinians from planting trees in the West Bank. More information about this can be found at the link below – though unfortunately the article is now behind a paywall.
Title: Israeli Army Blocks 200 Activists From Planting Trees With Palestinians in West Bank
Author: Hagar Shezaf
Date: 14 February 2020
Publication: Haaretz
Link: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israeli-army-blocks-200-activists-from-planting-trees-with-palestinians-in-west-bank-1.8533033
Geothermal energy has significant potential for a number of global regions. Dr. Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility recently shared this article indicating geothermal energy is being explored in Massachusetts. Is there an opportunity for expansion of geothermal systems to other regions?
Thinking About A Geothermal Future
By Bruce Gellerman, 13 January 2020, WBUR (Boston University)
Natural gas utilities in Massachusetts are facing an existential crisis: they could be out of business by mid-century. That’s because the state’s 2008 Global Warming Solutions Act requires emissions from burning fossil fuels — like natural gas — be cut by 80% economy-wide by 2050.
But now a solution that could help save the companies — and the climate — is at hand. Or, more accurately, underfoot. It’s geothermal energy, which takes advantage of the biggest energy storage system on earth: the earth itself.
Our planet absorbs the sun’s solar energy and stores it underground as thermal energy that can be used to heat and cool homes and businesses. Just a few yards down, the earth’s temperature is a constant 50 to 60 degrees; warmer than the air above during winter, cooler in the summer. You can take advantage of the temperature difference using what is called a geothermal or ground source heat pump: plastic pipes filled with water and antifreeze pick up the heat from the ground, and the pump circulates it through a building.
Read more
“The site has to be appropriate,” said architect Lisa Cunningham, who recently designed a gut renovation of a private Brookline home using geothermal energy. The best sites for geothermal systems have lots of space to install horizontal pipes in relatively shallow ground. But because the Brookline lot is so small, workers had to drill two holes 500 feet deep.
“One thing that’s so great about having a project like this right in the heart of a very dense town, we’re showing people it can be very cost-effective,” Cunningham said, adding that the cost for installing the system in the Brookline home “came in less than a comparable gas system.”
But that includes thousands of dollars in state rebates and federal tax incentives that are expiring. Cost is still a big hurdle, said Zeyneb Magavi, co-executive director of Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET), a Cambridge-based environmental nonprofit.
“Geothermal ground source heating has been around a long time, and it has usually been installed one house by one house individually,” she said. “It works. However, it is a fairly high up-front cost, and you have to have the means and motivation to be able to do it.”
Magavi, a clean energy advocate, said she asked herself: Who already digs holes and puts pipes in the ground, has big money and is motivated to find a new business model? Her answer: natural gas distribution companies.
Magavi was familiar with the gas utilities through her work — along with HEET co-executive director Audrey Schulman and the Gas Leaks Allies — helping gas companies identify leaky pipes most in need of repair.
Together, they found it would cost $9 billion over 20 years to fix the aging infrastructure. Magavi suggested they use for money to transform the industry instead.
“The idea is that a gas utility takes out its leaky gas pipe and, instead of putting in new gas pipe, we put in a hot water loop,” Magavi said. “If we’re going to invest in infrastructure, let’s invest in infrastructure for the next century. Let’s not invest in infrastructure that was hot in 1850.”
HEET commissioned a study to investigate if there were a way to make geothermal energy appealing to both utilities and environmentalists.
“We wanted something that was renewable, resilient, reliable, kept gas workers in jobs, [was] equal or lower cost than gas, and safe and doable,” Magavi said. She found that “networking” — connecting geothermal systems to many homes and businesses — ticked all of the boxes.
“The beautiful thing is that when you interconnect them, the more customers you put on the system, the more efficient it gets,” Magavi said.
Magavi showed the results to senior officials with Eversource, the largest energy delivery company in New England.
It was an unusual pitch, but she felt that “they also understood that we were approaching this always from a data- and fact-based conversation, and they took us very seriously,” Magavi said.
Eversource Senior Vice President and Chief Customer Officer Penni Conner said the company likes the idea.
“This looks a lot like the gas business that we’re in except it’s totally clean,” Conner said. “Eversource can bring the capital and the expertise to this. We know how to build infrastructure.”
Eversource conducted its own study of networked geothermal heat pump systems, leading it to propose three different pilot projects to Massachusetts regulators in order to prove that the networked systems are feasible.
Under a networked system, homes and businesses would own the geothermal heat pumps, while Eversource would own and manage the system of pipes, sensors and pressure regulators, Conner said. That would convert the gas utility into a networked, thermal management company.
“Maybe I have a laundromat that has a lot of heat load, maybe it’s working a lot in the evening,” Conner said. “So they are leveraging putting heat back into the system potentially in the evening when others need it for cooling. So you get that benefit.”
State regulators are now reviewing Eversources’s proposals for networked pilot projects, and could give the go-ahead within a year.
“I think we can move fast,” Magavi said. “My vision of the future is that we have wires delivering us renewable energy competing with pipes delivering us renewable energy. So thermal power and electric power grids, and the two benefit each other.”
Geothermal energy heating our homes, with pumps powered by solar- and wind-generated electricity. If this unusual collaboration between a natural gas utility and an environmental organization pays off, a clean energy future could be right under our feet.
https://www.wbur.org/earthwhile/2020/01/13/heat-eversource-geothermal-energy-climate-change
A Geothermal Future
By Bruce Gellerman, 13 Jan 2020
Natural gas utilities in Massachusetts are facing an existential crisis: they could be out of business by mid-century. That’s because the state’s 2008 Global Warming Solutions Act requires emissions from burning fossil fuels — like natural gas — be cut by 80% economy-wide by 2050.
But now a solution that could help save the companies — and the climate — is at hand. Or, more accurately, underfoot. It’s geothermal energy, which takes advantage of the biggest energy storage system on earth: the earth itself.
Our planet absorbs the sun’s solar energy and stores it underground as thermal energy that can be used to heat and cool homes and businesses. Just a few yards down, the earth’s temperature is a constant 50 to 60 degrees; warmer than the air above during winter, cooler in the summer. You can take advantage of the temperature difference using what is called a geothermal or ground source heat pump: plastic pipes filled with water and antifreeze pick up the heat from the ground, and the pump circulates it through a building.
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The technology, developed in the late 1940s, does away with furnaces, air conditioners and hot water heaters, and is the most efficient way to heat and cool a building. While it’s widespread in some countries, like Sweden, it’s been slow to catch on here.
“The site has to be appropriate,” said architect Lisa Cunningham, who recently designed a gut renovation of a private Brookline home using geothermal energy. The best sites for geothermal systems have lots of space to install horizontal pipes in relatively shallow ground. But because the Brookline lot is so small, workers had to drill two holes 500 feet deep.
“One thing that’s so great about having a project like this right in the heart of a very dense town, we’re showing people it can be very cost-effective,” Cunningham said, adding that the cost for installing the system in the Brookline home “came in less than a comparable gas system.”
But that includes thousands of dollars in state rebates and federal tax incentives that are expiring. Cost is still a big hurdle, said Zeyneb Magavi, co-executive director of Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET), a Cambridge-based environmental nonprofit.
“Geothermal ground source heating has been around a long time, and it has usually been installed one house by one house individually,” she said. “It works. However, it is a fairly high up-front cost, and you have to have the means and motivation to be able to do it.”
Magavi, a clean energy advocate, said she asked herself: Who already digs holes and puts pipes in the ground, has big money and is motivated to find a new business model? Her answer: natural gas distribution companies.
Magavi was familiar with the gas utilities through her work — along with HEET co-executive director Audrey Schulman and the Gas Leaks Allies — helping gas companies identify leaky pipes most in need of repair.
Together, they found it would cost $9 billion over 20 years to fix the aging infrastructure. Magavi suggested they use for money to transform the industry instead.
“The idea is that a gas utility takes out its leaky gas pipe and, instead of putting in new gas pipe, we put in a hot water loop,” Magavi said. “If we’re going to invest in infrastructure, let’s invest in infrastructure for the next century. Let’s not invest in infrastructure that was hot in 1850.”
HEET commissioned a study to investigate if there were a way to make geothermal energy appealing to both utilities and environmentalists.
“We wanted something that was renewable, resilient, reliable, kept gas workers in jobs, [was] equal or lower cost than gas, and safe and doable,” Magavi said. She found that “networking” — connecting geothermal systems to many homes and businesses — ticked all of the boxes.
“The beautiful thing is that when you interconnect them, the more customers you put on the system, the more efficient it gets,” Magavi said.
Magavi showed the results to senior officials with Eversource, the largest energy delivery company in New England.
It was an unusual pitch, but she felt that “they also understood that we were approaching this always from a data- and fact-based conversation, and they took us very seriously,” Magavi said.
Eversource Senior Vice President and Chief Customer Officer Penni Conner said the company likes the idea.
“This looks a lot like the gas business that we’re in except it’s totally clean,” Conner said. “Eversource can bring the capital and the expertise to this. We know how to build infrastructure.”
Eversource conducted its own study of networked geothermal heat pump systems, leading it to propose three different pilot projects to Massachusetts regulators in order to prove that the networked systems are feasible.
Under a networked system, homes and businesses would own the geothermal heat pumps, while Eversource would own and manage the system of pipes, sensors and pressure regulators, Conner said. That would convert the gas utility into a networked, thermal management company.
“Maybe I have a laundromat that has a lot of heat load, maybe it’s working a lot in the evening,” Conner said. “So they are leveraging putting heat back into the system potentially in the evening when others need it for cooling. So you get that benefit.”
State regulators are now reviewing Eversources’s proposals for networked pilot projects, and could give the go-ahead within a year.
“I think we can move fast,” Magavi said. “My vision of the future is that we have wires delivering us renewable energy competing with pipes delivering us renewable energy. So thermal power and electric power grids, and the two benefit each other.”
Geothermal energy heating our homes, with pumps powered by solar- and wind-generated electricity. If this unusual collaboration between a natural gas utility and an environmental organization pays off, a clean energy future could be right under our feet.
Nine ‘tipping points’ that could be triggered by climate change
By Robert McSweeney, Carbon Brief, 10 Feb, 2020
Link: https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-nine-tipping-points-that-could-be-triggered-by-climate-change
Say Goodbye to Salt, Say Hello to Beet Juice Brine
Did you know that beet juice brine can be used to melt ice on roads in an ecologically friendly manner?
Calgary has undertaken this initiative to use a more ecologically friendly way (than salt) to melt ice on winter roads. Other municipalities are exploring similar options too.
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The CBC explored this subject in a Calgary-focused article.
Title: Beet brine again used to keep Calgary streets clear of snow and ice
Author: Dave Dormer
News Agency: CBC News
Date: 17 November 2018
Link: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-beet-brine-snow-ice-control-1.4909615
I think the real question here is: DOES IT SMELL?
Don’t plant trees in permafrost!
We should GENERALLY protect forests, but not those in permafrost. They — at least most of those in the Arctic — are speeding up the melting. If anything, they should be cut down. Forests and shrubs are spreading throughout the Arctic now — which may be one of humankind’s worst challenges.
I don’t know what is problematic here. What is wrong with the electric grids we have now?
Is Cannabis Better Than Concrete?
Yes, these are hemp bricks
I’ve seen videos lately about hemp bricks instead of concrete. How realistic is that option?
Nordic trash
Reykjavik is additionally monitoring for microplastic contamination within their drinking water system. These are fascinating and initiative technological applications with potential applications for elsewhere globally.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TjAon3R7NA
Sweden wants to ban sale of gas and diesel cars?
“Sweden launches inquiry on how to ban sales of new gasoline and diesel cars and phase-out fossil fuels” – Green Car Congress [25 December 2019]
“The Government of Sweden has launched a study to offer proposals on how to implement a ban on sales of new gasoline and diesel cars, and the timeline for the phase-out of fossil fuels. The final report is to be presented by 1 February 2021.
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Sven Hunhammar will chair the inquiry. Hunhammar holds a Master’s degree in engineering and a doctorate in natural resource management. He is Director of Sustainability and Environment at the Swedish Transport Administration, and has previously worked at the Stockholm Environment Institute, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, Transport Analysis and the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation.
The inquiry is to:
Analyze the conditions for introducing a national ban on sales of new gasoline and diesel cars—and how to exempt vehicles that run on renewable fuels and electric hybrid vehicles from such a ban;
Analyze how to bring about an EU-wide ban on sales of new gasoline and diesel cars and the phasing out of fossil fuels in the EU;
Make the necessary legislative proposals, albeit not in the area of taxation, where the inquiry may only analyse measures and conduct impact analyses; and
Propose a year by which fossil fuels should be phased out in Sweden, and the measures needed for this to happen in the most cost-effective manner possible.
The inquiry’s terms of reference are based on point 31 of the January Agreement, the policy agreement between the Swedish Social Democratic Party, the Center Party, the Liberal Party and the Green Party.”
Link: https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/12/20191225-sweden.html
Cherish the lichens, algae and mosses!
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry noted that these organisms were often omitted from climate models and started researching the role that these played in greenhouse gas cycles.
“Mat-forming ‘‘ground layers’’ of mosses and lichens often have functional impacts disproportionate to their biomass, and are responsible for sequestering one-third of the world’s terrestrial carbon as they regulate water tables, cool soils and inhibit microbial decomposition.”
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Link: https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/49119
and
“Cyptogamic covers are responsible for about half of the naturally occurring nitrogen fixation on land and they take up as much carbon dioxide as is released yearly from biomass burning.”
Link: https://phys.org/news/2012-06-algae-lichens-mosses-huge-amounts.html
Though — there is some debate — as some research points that temperatures above 20C cause these organisms to release large amounts of methane and nitrous oxide.
Link: https://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/15822/20150727/mosses-unexpectedly-release-greenhouse-gasses-more-powerful-c02.htm
Uh oh. That last bit sounds ominous. We have to expect that it won’t be rare for a place to exceed 20C.
How hot does the Arctic get?
Historically, for many Arctic regions — specifically those inland — it would be rare for 20C to be sustained more than a few days a year — if at all — though this is changing with climate change and is becoming increasingly more frequent.
3D printers are now being used to reconstruct homes in areas decimated by natural disasters. Research is additionally being conducted on the notion of using biomimicry (nature-inspired designs) to create crack and earthquake resistant structural design. Fascinating fields!
Resisting Earthquakes with 3D Printers
By Will Webster
Earthquakes are one of the most destructive forms of natural disaster, but the biggest hazard during an quake isn’t the shaking itself – it’s the collapse of human-built structures caused by it.
For centuries people have aimed to make buildings, bridges, and roads stronger and more rigid, with the hope that they would progressively become better at their jobs. That’s largely been the case, apart from when an earthquake strikes, where rigidity immediately becomes a big issue.
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The failure to conquer this issue hasn’t been for lack of trying. Engineers have been hard at work developing structures that can absorb an earthquake’s energy and remain standing. These solutions require a fundamental change in how we approach design and architecture, however. But what if there was a way to address the earthquake issue without tearing up the rulebook, and also going one further?
Researchers from Purdue University have developed a variety of 3D printed structures using cement paste that can not only withstand stress, but also become stronger in the process. We sat down with the team to find out more.
Controlling how the damage spreads
To this day there remains a lot of uncertainty over how a building collapses during an earthquake, but we do know that it begins with a single point of weakness. The team from Purdue set about transforming that single point into many, while also creating a predefined path for the crack to follow – essentially controlling how the damage spreads.
“Depending on the architecture and geometry of these interfaces, the growing crack will eventually run into an obstacle, and initiate the nucleation and growth of other cracks – thus spreading the distribution of damage and delaying damage localisation, which ultimately leads to catastrophic failure of the material,” says Pablo Zavattieri, a member of the research team.
By replacing the formation of one single crack with multiple distributed cracks at weak interfaces, the team were able to improve the toughness of the cement paste without sacrificing on strength. And they’ve been able to do so across several separate 3D printed designs, known as architectures.
Each architecture has been created with the ultimate aim of providing greater resilience to structures. But, as each have very different behaviours, the architectures have been devised for very different use cases. For example, the helicoidal architecture uses weak interfaces to make the material more crack-resistant. Then we have the compliant architecture that gives the structure a spring-like quality, while still retaining its usual strength.
“These architectures can be incorporated in structures under vibration, and use that to generate energy when they are coupled with a piezoelectric device,” explains team member Reza Moini, on the compliant architecture. “The helicoidal architecture though, can be incorporated in the design of structural elements, such as beams and columns of a building or concrete pavements, and provide additional toughness and increased longevity.”
Finding inspiration in millions of years of evolution
The approach taken by the Purdue team is undoubtedly an innovative one, but it’s not entirely original (not in the natural world, at least). The shells of arthropods, such as lobsters and beetles, deploy a helicoidal architecture to gain crack tolerance. And it’s from these wonders of the natural world that the research team found their inspiration, and also the names they’d use.
“Our research team has been inspired by a variety of architectures found in natural materials,” says Zavattieri. ‘But more important than imitating nature’s geometrical design, is to be able to trigger the right damage mitigation mechanisms. While the length scales in our 3D printed architectures are evidently not the same as those observed in nature, we’re still able to mimic the same mechanisms.”
Taking inspiration from nature – or biomimicry – is an ever-growing trend in science and design. After all, there’s a lot to be learnt from millions of years of evolution. For this project, it’s clear to see how important observing nature has been. So does the team have any further biomimetic plans?
“There are a lot of design motifs in nature that we can learn from in the design and fabrication of man-made materials,” says Moini. “We’d like to explore other architectures, such as the brick-and-mortar structures found in Nacre (mother of pearl), rod-like microstructures found in teeth, and foam-like structures found in bones and lightweight structures like Toucan and Woodpecker beaks.”
Scaling up the technology brings challenges
It’s fair to say that nature provides an almost endless source of inspiration, but right now the focus of the Purdue team is most definitely on their 3D printed structures.
The project has only been made possible by developments in 3D printing technology, providing the structures with characteristics that wouldn’t have been possible from traditional casting methods, but there remains a long way to go. 3D printing is a technology still in its infancy, particularly when it comes to the creation of materials for construction and engineering, and that’s not the only hurdle in the way of scaling up the technology.
“The selection and development of a large-scale 3D printer that can reliably handle large movement and motions, as well as the ability to control the material’s deposition rates in the process is critical,” explains Moini. “Similarly, understanding the fresh properties of the material itself, and how to control them during the printing process, and right after the deposition, is crucial as we need material to hold its shape.
“This becomes more important at a large scale, as larger and more complex elements require larger ‘green’ strength build-up. Other challenges will be related to the combination of materials for improved mechanical properties, as well as for improving functionality of these structures.”
There clearly remains a long way to go before we can build homes along a fault line with absolute confidence. Nonetheless, Moini, Zavattieri and their fellow researchers Jan Olek and Jeffrey Youngblood, have made significant progress by giving cement-based structures behaviours that we’d only previously seen in the natural world. So we asked for their next steps.
“We’re planning to look into other types of material processing techniques, and architectures that can improve performance of cement-based materials on a larger scale,” says Zavattieri. “Self-healing and thermal adaptation will be future topics given current technology, and research in the general area of multifunctional materials.”
Self-healing cement sounds more like what would happen if Wolverine went into construction. However, if possible, it will be amazing to see in the real world.
Forest fire smoke transports microbes and other influential particles
I’ll summarize here an article from Popular Mechanics about a newly emerging field of science (pyroaerobiology) which examines how forest fires spread life – specifically microbial life. On a related note, scientists working at the Chernobyl site noted that radiation contamination impedes fungal, insect, and microbial activity (such as decomposition) and can contribute to the increased risk of large forest fires – such as through a larger layer of leaves, old trunks, etc. on the forest floor.
“Pyroaerobiology, a new field of science with a badass name, seeks to understand how colonies of bacteria, fungi, archaea, and viruses are swept up in smoke. These organisms float off into distant lands thousands of miles away, altering the microbial composition of the ecosystem. Microbes floating in this smoke can also impact the weather, seeding the ice crystals that form clouds. There’s also been evidence to suggest these microbiotic zoos could potentially contain allergens that could be harmful to humans.”
Leda Kobziar, the inventor of the field and scientist publishing materials on it, said “I became curious about smoke after I learned that bacteria were being added to snow-making machines—believe it or not—because they act as powerful ice nucleators, which means they can be the nuclei for ice crystals, [spawning snowflakes] at higher temperatures than you would otherwise find.” […]
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“Some of these are organisms that you would typically find in ambient air, but they’re highly concentrated, so we see a lot more of them than we would find in ambient air conditions. Others are organisms that are not typically found in ambient air. So there are things that grow deep in the soil or grow in the insides of plants and not things that would generally be aerosolized just by wind.” […]
“There’s just as much possibility that the movement of these organisms through the smoke has a beneficial impact. Some microbes called “endophytes” can increase plant growth and yield and some even act as antibiotics against plant pathogens, thereby assisting their host species.
We’ve seen a lot of bacteria that act as nitrogen fixers. Of course, nitrogen is the building block of all protein and everything that exists on earth. We wouldn’t have anything if it weren’t for these bacteria, and we’ve seen these bacteria being transported.”
Popular Mechanics, Dec. 20, 2019
Asbestos in the Cement?
“The problem was not the use of asbestos in Canada, which has practically been outlawed. Indeed, Harper’s government is paying millions of dollars to remove asbestos from the Parliament Buildings. Rather, the problem is what Canadian asbestos is doing in other countries.”
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[…]
“No surprise, then, that [asbestos] is effectively banned in Canada. And a surprise, to observers, that Canada exports it to other countries, most notoriously India, where public-health regimes are less vigorous than in Canada.”
But that fact is no more mysterious than two forces that are as well known in India as they are in Canada. One is the power of supply and demand. The other is the vacuum of political indifference.”
Regarding the Indian context:
“Swami worked eight hours a day, six days a week. In return, the Shree Digvijay Cement Co. Ltd. each day dispensed 230 rupees ($5) and a 150-gram lump of dark, sticky cane sugar, called jaggery. His managers instructed him to suck on it through the day. “They told us if we ate it, all the dust that we breathed in would stick to it and move through our system and not hurt us,” he says.
That’s the sort of thing that passed for safety equipment at the factory, where Swami worked until recently. After 10 years of the sugar fix, the workers were given gloves, and cotton handkerchiefs to tie over their mouths. But for more than a decade, there has been nothing at all, Swami says.
India has a voracious market for asbestos, which is used to make a cement composite used in low-cost building products.”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/canadas-chronic-asbestos-problem/article4184217/
One Day= A Million Cars
THIS IS ASTOUNDING, IF TRUE! I QUESTION IT, BUT WE SHOULD NOT IGNORE THE ARGUMENT!
Wind Energy Is Not Renewable, Sustainable Or Climate-Friendly
BY DUGGAN FLANAKIN, Climate Change Dispatch
Wind turbines continue to be the most controversial of so-called “renewable” energy sources worldwide. But, you say, wind energy is surely renewable.
It blows intermittently, but it’s natural, free, renewable and climate-friendly.
That’s certainly what we hear, almost constantly. However, while the wind itself may be “renewable,” the turbines, the raw materials that go into making them, and the lands they impact certainly are not.
And a new report says harnessing the wind to generate electricity actually contributes to global warming!
Arcadia Power reports that the widely used GE 1.5-megawatt (MW) turbine is a 164-ton mini-monster with 116-foot blades on a 212-foot tower that weighs another 71 tons.
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The Vestas V90 2.0-MW has 148-foot blades on a 262-foot tower and a total weight of about 267 tons. The concrete and steel rebar foundations that they sit on weigh up to 800 tons, or more.
And the newer 3.0-MW and even more powerful turbines and foundations weigh a lot more than that.
Citing National Renewable Energy Laboratory data, the U.S. Geological Survey notes that wind turbines are predominantly made of steel (which comprises 71-79% of total turbine mass), fiberglass and resin composites in the blades (11-16%), iron or cast iron (5-17%), copper (1%), aluminum (0-2%), rare earth elements (1-3%) and other materials.
Plus the concrete and rebar that anchor the turbines in the earth.
It takes enormous amounts of energy (virtually all from fossil fuels) to remove the overlying rock to get to the ores and limestone, refine and process the materials into usable metals and concrete, fabricate them into all the turbine components, and ship everything to their ultimate locations.
Petroleum for the resins and composites – and all that energy – must also be extracted from the earth, by drilling and fracking, followed by refining and manufacturing, again with fossil fuel energy.
Wind turbine transportation logistics can be a deciding factor in scheduling, costing and locating a project, Wind Power Monthly admits.
The challenge of moving equipment from factories to ports to ultimate industrial wind power generation sites has become more formidable almost by the year, as the industry has shifted to larger and larger turbines.
Offshore turbine sizes (up to 10 megawatts and 650 feet in height) present even more daunting logistical, maintenance and removal challenges.
Back in 2010, transportation costs totaled an average of 10% of the upfront capital cost of a wind project.
Transporting the nacelles (housings for the energy-generating components, including the shaft, generator, and gearing, to which the rotor and blades are attached) typically required a 19-axle truck and trailer that cannot operate using renewable energy and which a decade ago cost about $1.5 million apiece.
Those costs have continued to escalate.
Highways and city streets must often be closed down during transport to wind farm sites hundreds, even thousands, of miles away – to allow nacelles, 100-foot tower sections and 150-foot blades to pass through.
Transmission lines and transformers add still more to the costs, and the need for non-renewable materials – including more steel, copper, aluminum, and concrete.
To get wind-generated energy from largely remote locations to cities that need electricity and are eager to cash in on the 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour production tax credit, the U.S. is spending $47.9 billion to construct transmission lines through 2025.
Of that, $22.1 billion will be spent on transmission projects aimed at integrating renewable energy into the existing power grid, without making it so unstable that we get repeated blackouts.
On top of all that, wind turbines only last maybe 20 years – about half the life spans of coal, gas and nuclear power plants.
Offshore turbines last maybe 12-15 years, due to constant corrosion from constant salt spray. Then they have to be decommissioned and removed.
According to Isaac Orr, a policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment, the cost of decommissioning a single turbine can reach half a million dollars. Then the old ones have to be replaced – with more raw materials, mining and smelting.
Recycling these materials also consumes considerable energy, when they can be recycled. Turbine blades are extremely hard, if not impossible to recycle because they are complex composites that are extremely strong and hard to break apart.
A lot of times, the blades just get cut up in large segments and dumped in landfills – if they can find landfills that want them. The massive concrete bases often just get left behind.
All these activities require incredible amounts of fossil fuel energy, raw materials, mining lands and waste products (overburden, mined-out rock, and processed ores).
How much, exactly? The wind energy industry certainly isn’t telling, wind energy promoters and environmentalist groups certainly don’t want to discuss it, and even government agencies haven’t bothered to calculate the amounts.
But shouldn’t those kinds of data be presented front and center during any discussion of what is – or is not – clean, green, free, renewable, sustainable, eco-friendly energy?
We constantly see and hear reports that the cost of wind energy per kilowatt-hour delivered to homes and businesses is becoming competitive with coal, gas, nuclear and hydroelectric alternatives.
But if that is the case, why do we still need all the mandates, feed-in tariffs, and other subsidies? And do those reports factor in the huge costs and environmental impacts presented here?
Amid all these terribly inconvenient facts about wind energy, it shouldn’t be too surprising that a new study destroys the industry’s fundamental claim: that wind energy helps prevent global warming.
Harvard professor of applied physics and public policy David Keith and his postdoctoral researcher, Lee Miller, recently found that heavy reliance on wind energy actually increases climate warming!
If this is so, it raises serious questions about just how much the U.S. or other nations should rely on wind power.
As the authors explain, the warming is produced because wind turbines generate electricity by extracting energy out of the air, slowing down wind and otherwise altering “the exchange of heat, moisture, and momentum between the surface and the atmosphere.”
The impact of wind on warming in the studied scenario was 10 times greater than the climate effect from solar farms, which can also have a warming impact, the two scientists said.
The study, published in the journal Joule, found that if wind power supplied all U.S. electricity demands, it would warm the surface of the continental United States by 0.24 degrees C (0.43 Fahrenheit).
That is far more than any reduction in warming achieved by totally decarbonizing the nation’s electricity sector (around 0.1 C or 0.2 F)) during the 21st century – assuming climate models are correct about the amount of warming that carbon dioxide emissions are allegedly causing.
“If your perspective is the next ten years, wind power actually has – in some respects – more climate impact than coal or gas,” says Keith, a huge wind power supporter. But, he added, “If your perspective is the next thousand years, then wind power is enormously cleaner than coal or gas.”
Of course, his analysis assumes significant warming that has yet to occur, despite the increasing use of fossil fuels by China, India, Indonesia, and other countries.
It also assumes the world will still be using increasing amounts of coal and natural gas 100 to 1,000 years from now – a highly dubious proposition.
And it ignores every point made in this article, which clearly explains why wind energy is not really cleaner than coal or gas.
Maybe, my friends, the answer is not blowing in the wind.
Duggan Flanakin is Director of Policy Research at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org)
https://climatechangedispatch.com/wind-energy-not-renewable-sustainable-climate-friendly/?fbclid=IwAR0gMR5v-wamUAeYoYDlMaGMIAKC7bEEby9BTajXLm6zVVMJQ74KyPjGqJw
Which Premiers are promoting small modular reactors?
Many areas in Canada have concerning trends in the management and trends of radioactive waste products – such as radioactive materials being stored only a few hundred meters from the shores of various Great Lakes (Lake Huron, Lake Ontario.). Where will the eventual waste products (spent activation products) from these small modular reactors be stored for hundreds or thousands of years post-use?
Is it worth encouraging exploration and investment in other modes of energy production? Surely New Brunswick, Ontario, and Saskatchewan have potential for hydroelectric, solar, and wind to various extents… Could these be integrated in ecologically friendly manners?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/group-of-premiers-band-together-to-develop-nuclear-reactor-technology-1.5380316
Dilbit, Dilbat
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and those of like-mind have such a strong sense of free-flow dilbit-oil revenue entitlement that they cannot see or really care about its serious environmental consequences.
They, including PM Justin Trudeau, appear recklessly blind to the significantly increased risk caused by the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project to B.C.’s far-more valuable (at least to us) tourism, food and sports fishing industries—not to mention pristine natural environments and ecosystems themselves—in the case of a major oil spill, which many academics believe is inevitable.
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How much more does Kenney actually believe Trudeau’s Liberal government can realistically do to more hastily complete the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project—that is, without the police state and/or armed forces getting brutally involved?
What more could he realistically do, considering the fact aboriginal title rights must be observed, along with general populace constitutional and charter rights?
Would the large number of project protesters—including those of many aboriginal nations—actually be expected to drop their undoubtedly strong moral and ethical convictions simply because some government tells them so?
Indeed, the federal government used the very same National Energy Board as did the Harper Conservatives to now twice approve (many call it rubber stamping) the pipeline project, while failing to consider the threats the greatly increased oil tanker traffic will pose to B.C.’s tourist-attracting waters and the life within it, including the endangered Southern Resident Orca whale.
Also, let’s not forget that the governing Liberals early this year gave the increasingly outdated dirty-energy fossil fuel sector 12 times the subsidization allocated to clean renewable energy innovative technologies.
NASA can make food from thin air!
By Robby Berman 05 Aug 2019
It’s likely to first appear on grocery shelves in protein shakes and yogurt. It could be an exciting development: Solein’s manufacturing process is carbon neutral and the potential for scalability seems unlimited — we’ve got too much CO₂, if anything. Why not get rid of some greenhouse gas with a side of fries?
Solar Foods makes Solein by extracting CO₂ from air using carbon-capture technology, and then combines it with water, nutrients and vitamins, using 100 percent renewable solar energy from partner Fortum to promote a natural fermentation process similar to the one that produces yeast and lactic acid bacteria.
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The company is already working with the European Space Agency to develop foods for off-planet production and consumption. (The idea for Solein actually began at NASA.) They also see potential in bringing protein production to areas whose climate or ground conditions make conventional agriculture impossible.
And let’s not forget all those beef-free burgers based on pea and soy proteins currently gaining popularity. The environmental challenge of scaling up the supply of those plants to meet their high demand may provide an opening for the completely renewable Solein — the company could provide companies that produce animal-free “meats,” such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, a way to further reduce their environmental impact.
The impact of the beef — and for that matter, poultry, pork, and fish — industries on our planet is widely recognized as one of the main drivers behind climate change, pollution, habitat loss, and antibiotic-resistant illness. From the cutting down of rainforests for cattle-grazing land, to runoff from factory farming of livestock and plants, to the disruption of the marine food chain, to the overuse of antibiotics in food animals, it’s been disastrous.
The advent of a promising source of protein derived from two of the most renewable things we have, CO₂ and sunlight, gets us out of the planet-destruction business at the same time as it offers the promise of a stable, long-term solution to one of the world’s most fundamental nutritional needs.
Solar Foods’ timetable
While company plans are always moderated by unforeseen events — including the availability of sufficient funding — Solar Foods plans a global commercial rollout for Solein in 2021 and to be producing two million meals annually, with a revenue of $800 million to $1.2 billion by 2023. By 2050, they hope to be providing sustenance to 9 billion people as part of a $500 billion protein market.
The project began in 2018, and this year, they anticipate achieving three things: Launching Solein (check), beginning the approval process certifying its safety as a Novel Food in the EU, and publishing plans for a 1,000-metric ton-per-year factory capable of producing 500 million meals annually.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/nasas-idea-for-making-food-from-thin-air-just-became-a-reality-it-could-feed-billions/
So they add vitamins and “nutrients”. Does that mean the solein has no real food value except for the nutrients and vitamins they put into it? Well, if it is cheap and nourishing, okay. But the writer should have said how much they were adding besides the carbon dioxide and water.
Let’s befriend those helpful methanotropic bacteria
Besides carbon dioxide we have to worry about methane too. It is apparently produced mainly by the agricultural sector — either by ruminant livestock or by rice paddies. But there are methanotropic bacteria that consume methane. From what i have been reading, they live mainly in swamps and waterways. But shouldn’t there be more of them and shouldn’t they live in pastures where the cows produce all that methane? Does anybody know much about these little guys? They sound like things we want to make friends with.
How is fish farming coming along? Is there any way to do that sustainably and without using antibiotics to prevent fish diseases? It seems to me that ought to be a big solution.
I agree. And I too haven’t heard anything about it lately. Have any of you folks?
I’ve heard that it’s just not at all sustainable. The fish are too close together- if one get’s sick, they all get sick so they always use antibiotics- plus, these fish just bring disease to fish in the wild too.
Is recycling really worth it?