Global Warming - Its What’s for Dinner!

(Published May 7, 2008 Crossroads Chronicle, Cashiers, NC)

The other day, I was thinking; because, you know, that’s just something I do. Nothing short-circuited, but it did make some smoke bellow from my ears.

The subject of all this effort, believe it or not, was cows. Not the cute, talking ones affiliated with Chick-fil-a, mind you, but more regarding their 1.3 billion non-talking, non-standing grain fed brethren.

The issue goes to the environmental impact of mankind’s agricultural activities, but also the sustainability of those same activities in a modern system of agribusiness, which is entirely dependant on oil to make food.

In a culture which is accustomed to a stream of incessant entertainment and infotainment, but lacking a solid understanding of physics and science which a high school graduate would possess, it is regrettably not an issue high on the radar screen.

In other words, the environment is not as interesting as say, Brittney Spears.

As we are all stakeholders in about the only decent planet around, maintaining the biosphere should be interesting, or at least important.

Globally, cattle emit an estimated 100 million tons of methane annually, the result of anaerobic digestion of grass and grain in their 7 tummies. Methane is the second major green house gas resulting from human activities, behind carbon dioxide.

Granted, there are other sources of methane, such as rice cultivation, coal mines, land fills, and other ruminants, such as sheep, goats and buffalo.

In the case of mines and landfills, the methane can be captured and used as an energy source, while preventing the gas from reaching the atmosphere to act as a warming agent. An example of this strategy is the Jackson County Green Energy Park in Sylva.

Dr. James Hansen, the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has suggested that a methane reduction strategy could effectively slow global warming in the short term in his paper “Global Warming in the 21st Century: An Alternative Scenario.”

Methane has a 10 to 12 years life cycle in the atmosphere, compared to the 120 years cycle for carbon dioxide. Thus, reductions in methane emission have a relatively quick reduction on warming.

Currently, on a global scale, food prices have risen dramatically over the last several weeks, an indication of the amount of fossil fuel energy used to produce food. On average, about 10 calories of fuel energy are expended to create 1 calorie of food energy. As a result, an increase in energy prices is magnified in the price of food to consumers.

In the case of beef production, the ratio is closer to 60 to 1. Let’s examine the steps. Natural gas is used to create fertilizer. Oil is used to create pesticides. John Deere powered mechanization is used to plant, maintain, and harvest grain. Tractor trailers haul the grain to the cattle. Tractor trailers haul the cattle to processing, which incidentally is a rather cruel process for the Moo-moos. Finally, they haul beef to supermarkets and burger joints. Viola! Dinner is served!

In the coming few decades, as oil prices continue to climb and supplies start to drop off, one strategy may be to produce our own locally grown food to minimize the dependence on the dwindling resource. In fact, the issue extends into the realm of food security, two words which have not been typically used together to describe the situation in the US.

Well, all this ruminating has left me a bit peckish. Probably mosey over to The Library for a Filet Mignon and a martini. You know, hand mashed potatoes and olives are considered veggies. Then I’ll probably download some Brittney Spears.


http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/features/altscenario/

A Tale of Two Toads

(Published July 30, 2008 Crossroads Chronicle, Cashiers, NC)

On the July 4^th weekend, we saved a toad. Please allow me to explain.

Like so many critters, it had gotten caught by a human made structure. It had hopped into the window well of our basement condo, and it couldn’t get out. In a way, it had fallen; and it couldn’t get up. We all get that way sometimes.

Now, the author is no herpetologist, but the toad looked to be an American Toad. I believe it to be of the genus kisseous americanus. At this point, the reader is probably thinking… “Gross. Who cares about some stupid toad? Besides, it could have been a Fowlers’ toad.”

To the first point, toads are important because of the vast quantities of insects they consume. By eating insects that destroy crops, American toads can save farmers, horticulturists and consumers substantial amounts of money. Also, they are part of nature. Besides, the American toad may be distinguished from the closely related Fowler’s toad by the presence of enlarged warts on the lower section of each leg (tibia).

Reluctantly, I picked up the toad.

It was dry to the touch, and had probably been down there some time. It could just barely move its eyes.

We put it in a bowl of water, and it sunk down underwater for some time. I reported to my wife at one point that our patient would probably not make it.

But toads are hardy. The next time we checked, the toad was standing up in the bowl, on watch like some noble creature.

I found a beetle and a cave cricket, and set them next to our toad. When I returned, the bugs were gone, and our toad was enroute towards the woods.

You can probably imagine how I felt. You know; you give someone shoes, and they just walk away. Sometimes, I wonder if some princess isn’t holding him, going, “Maybe, this is the one?”

We know, not all stories can have a fairy tale ending. For the Golden Toad (Bufo periglenes), the story is different.

The golden toad was only discovered and named in 1966. It lived in Costa Rica, in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve.

True to its name, the males are a brilliant gold, lighting up the forest floor beneath the canopy above. The females are a mottled black, yellow and scarlet.

For much of the year, its a secretive creature, spending its time underground in burrows among the root masses of the woodland. As dry season gives way to the wet in April and May, it appears above ground en masse, for just a few days or weeks.

The last mating season of the golden toad was chronicled in detail by amphibian expert Marty Crump, a researcher working with the Golden Toad Laboratory for Conservation.

In April of 1987, Crump noted that with the dry weather, the pools containing the eggs had dried completely. The toads tried to breed again in May. Of the 43,500 eggs in the ten pools she studied, only 29 tadpoles survived longer than a week, for the pools again dried quickly.

The following year at Monteverde, Crump found only a single male after a long search. On May 15, of 1989, a solitary male was again sighted. He was almost certainly the same one seen the previous year, sitting only ten feet from the previous sighting. He was, as far as we know, the last of his species, as the golden toad has not been seen since.

The golden toad, along with 122 other amphibians since 1980, has vanished forever. They are today’s canary in the coalmine.

Numerous studies and papers have been written about this disturbing trend, and most come to the same conclusion. The amphibians are dying from a fungal infection, and the disease is likely spreading, or exacerbated by, global climate change.

“Disease is the bullet killing frogs, but climate change is pulling the trigger,” says Alan Pounds, an ecologist at the preserve in Costa Rica.

No bulldozer is responsible for killing these amphibians in their pristine habitat, but rather it is coal-fired power plants in North Carolina, and cars in China, that are responsible. And a bowl of water and a couple of bugs, will not change any of that, so intractable is the problem.

http://www.nature.com

http://www.herpsofnc.org

Tim Flannery, The Weather Makers, pp 114-122

Dr. James Hansen for President

(published by the Crossroads Chronicle, Cashiers, NC, October 29, 2008)

To anyone who is paying attention, we are in something of a sticky wicket.

That is, we are within a decade of oil production peaking over, for which we are unprepared. And we are witnessing ecosystems teetering on the brink of collapse, with the current extinction rate between 100 and 1,000 times the normal background rate. Climate change resulting from global warming is beginning to play a major role in these extinctions, not requiring a bulldozer or chainsaw to kill these animals in their pristine habitat.

We’ll get through current financial crisis, but these other two concerns have the capacity to collapse the global economy and kill the biosphere.

Inherent to both of these problems is one simple fact: the earth is a closed system. By burning a few hundred million years worth of hydrocarbons in a period of just a century or two, mankind is throwing the carbon cycle out of whack. What CO2 that is not absorbed by ocean or forest remains in the atmosphere. The oceans are becoming acidic, and carbon dioxide levels are 30% higher than anytime in the last million years.

Current CO2 levels, along with other greenhouse gases (GHGs), are melting the polar ice cap, Greenland and West Antarctica. As much of humanity lives within a few meters of sea level, there could be some economic, ecological and humanitarian consequences.

Recent warming trends are accelerating. Natural feedback cycles are reinforcing anthropogenic (man made) warming. And those feedback cycles, which were thought to be slow, such as the albedo flip of melting glaciers and sea ice, are happening at an alarming rate. Instead of reflecting 90% of solar irradiance, exposed deep sea reflects only 10% and absorbs 90%. This albedo flip is causing the poles to warm as much as five times the global average, which by the way is .8 degrees Celsius since the Industrial revolution.

Permafrost across Canada and Siberia is thawing, releasing CO2 and methane from decomposing organic matter. Roads, forests, train tracks and buildings are collapsing into sinkholes. Google it and see for yourself. Permafrost is thought to contain some 500 billion tons of carbon, which if allowed to thaw and decompose, is good for enough GHGs to cause tens of degrees warming.

So, current business as usual scenarios of capping off CO2 at 450 or 550 ppm, if implemented, are not going to be just dangerous. A warming of 3 to 6 degrees Celsius would be somewhere between calamitous and cataclysmic. Most species will not be able to adapt to a rate of warming which could exceed .4 degrees C per decade.

The United States, we must admit, has played a major role in GHG emissions. We emit about a quarter of emissions. We have set the example of a lifestyle most are trying to emulate.

Our rise as a superpower was largely shaped by our bounty of oil reserves. Up until the 50s or 60s, we were the Saudi Arabia of the world. Now, we know, the situation is reversed, with $700 Billion being sent annually to unstable regions.

There is now a narrow time window in which we can affect the changes required to save both this nation and this planet. For less than we are sending oversees, a recent Scientific American article illustrated, we could build the infrastructure for solar thermal power generation based in the southwest which would obviate our need for coal, and provide enough electricity to charge a nation of electric cars.

Oil is used as a feedstock to make over 300,000 products, including fertilizer and pharmaceuticals, so it might be wise to save some for those uses, as well as for future generations.

Both candidates have expressed a desire to cut dependence on foreign oil and expand renewable energy sources. Current efforts though, such as ethanol, are costing taxpayer dollars, exacerbating global warming, and causing children to starve.

Political expedience, and business as usual, are grinding the United States of America and the biosphere into oblivion. I say, let’s elect Jim Hansen of NASA, America’s top climate scientist. Its high time that logic, science, and compassion play some role in our decisions.

You never know, the planet we save could just be our own.