Humans as "Super-Predators" – New Study Offers Startling Information about Hunting and Fishing

 

Submitted by Jim Burnett on January 18, 2009 - 4:00am

 

 

A prized specimen for hunters, but how does removing the biggest and best affect the long-term health of the herd? 
 
Photo by bmass via Flickr.

Most areas of the National Park System are closed to hunting, a long-standing policy which is the subject of ongoing debate. A recently released study offers a scientific basis for the value of that policy to the overall health of both animal and plant species—and it includes some startling information about the impacts of humans as the "Super-Predators" in today's world.

I'd like to offer one disclaimer at the onset: I'm certainly not opposed to hunting, and properly-regulated hunting can be a useful wildlife management tool, especially in areas where natural predators have been removed from the equation.

That said, areas such as NPS sites where hunting is not allowed are valuable for many reasons, including the opportunities they provide for an increasingly urban population to readily observe a variety of wildlife species.

A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides an even more important reason to continue protecting wildlife and plants in parks from human predation: those populations may prove to be critical to the overall health or even the survival of some wild species.

Dr. Chris Darimont is a biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the lead investigator for the study,"Human Predators Outpace Other Agents of Trait Change in the Wild." Co-authors are five scientists from respected universities across North America.

The study looked at data on 29 species, including fish, invertebrates, mammals and plants. Several species studied are of particular interest in a number of parks: bighorn sheep, caribou, and American ginseng.

The study found that fishing and hunting, as currently managed, are causing surprisingly rapid changes in the body size of a variety of species, along with impacts on their ability to reproduce. The average body size of harvested populations was found to be 20 percent smaller than previous generations, and the average age of first reproduction was 25 percent earlier.

"By harvesting vast numbers and targeting large, reproductively mature individuals, human predation is quickly reshaping the wild populations that remain, leaving smaller individuals to reproduce at ever-earlier ages," said Darimont.

The rate of these changes was also startling. In animal and plant populations subject to human predation, observable changes were occurring three times faster than in natural systems.

Why is this a problem? Earlier breeders often produce far fewer offspring. Taken together, the "reduction in size and decrease in breeding age of fish and other commercially harvested species are potentially jeopardizing the ability of entire populations to recover."

"The pace of changes we're seeing supercedes by a long shot what we've observed in natural systems, and even in systems that have been rapidly modified by humans in other ways," Darimont noted. "As predators, humans are a dominant evolutionary force…Harvested organisms are the fastest-changing organisms of their kind in the wild, likely because we take such high proportions of a population and target the largest. It's an ideal recipe for rapid trait change."

So, what does this have to do with restrictions on hunting in most NPS areas?
I asked Dr. Darimont to comment on the idea that protected areas such as national parks can serve as reservoirs of genetic vigor and diversity for wild animals and plants, since other than losses due to poaching, the larger and older individuals are more likely to live and reproduce longer in those areas. He responded:

"Yes, protected areas, both marine and terrestrial, can safeguard fishes and mammals from potential evolutionary influences of human predation. The trick is to have them large enough to adequately protect mobile species that cannot recognize the boundaries of smaller parks or no-catch areas."

What about areas—in parks and elsewhere—where sport and subsistence hunting is allowed? You don't see many photos of proud hunters with spike bucks in hunting magazines, and conventional wisdom has been that removal of trophy-quality individuals from a population is not a problem.

This research offers a different opinion that's bound to generate some controversy—and keep in mind that the research findings deal not only with hunting, but also fishing:

"Ironically, some wildlife and fish management policies contribute to the rapid pace of trait changes. "Fishing regulations often prescribe the taking of larger fish, and the same often applies to hunting regulations," said Darimont. "Hunters are instructed not to take smaller animals or those with smaller horns. This is counter to patterns of natural predation, and now we're seeing the consequences of this management." In Alberta, Canada, for example, hunters who are permitted to target the largest specimens of bighorn sheep have caused average horn length and body mass to drop by about 20 percent during the last 30 years.

Even more startling than the reduction in size is the unexpectedly rapid rate of change in these individuals.

"The public knows we often harvest far too many fish, but the threat goes above and beyond numbers," said Darimont. "We're changing the very essence of what remains, sometimes within the span of only two decades. We are the planet's super-predator."

The findings aren't limited to animals. Dr. Paul Paquet is a biologist at the University of Calgary, and another scientist participating in the study. He notes that as ginseng is harvested in the wild, "the robustness and size of the plant is declining." Ginseng poaching has been a long-standing problem in some parks, and this study supports the need to continue efforts to control poaching in protected areas.

While subsistence poachers of wildlife are less selective when looking for meat for the freezer, those mature elk and bighorn sheep with the prized racks are prime targets for other illegal hunters. Based on this research, the impact of such trophy selection may be greater than previously believed.
There are other implications for NPS managers.

A number of parks are wrestling with how to deal with an overpopulation of deer or elk. Where that's the case, there's plenty of debate about how to reduce those numbers—and who should do the work. Should the area be opened to public hunting, or should reductions be accomplished in a more controlled manner using pre-screened and presumably better qualified hunters? Would the best results be achieved using park or other government personnel?

That debate about the "who" goes on, but if it's deemed necessary to reduce wildlife populations in some parks, this study confirms the need for careful controls on not only how many, but perhaps even more important, which animals are taken. "This should be a wake-up call for resource managers," Darimont said. "We should be mimicking natural predators, which take far less and target smaller individuals."

I asked Dr. Darimont for his opinion about managed wildlife reduction programs. He replied,

"As a general rule, we'd expect less evolutionary impact if hunting and fishing mimics natural predation. This means forgoing our typical preference for the largest and taking far fewer individuals from a population each year. But in the context of parks, instead of control efforts, I would strongly favor restoration of natural predators like wolves over lethal control by park managers."

Not all areas are good candidates for reintroduction of predators, but the findings of this research deserve careful consideration as part of the planning for any reduction programs. It will be very interesting to watch the reaction of the wildlife management and hunting and fishing communities to this study, because it clearly calls for a reexamination of some well-entrenched practices.

There's also a significant political dimension to potential changes in hunting and fishing guidelines. In parks where hunting or fishing is allowed, regulations are usually under the control of state agencies, not the NPS. There's a lot at stake in financial as well as biological terms, and if this research receives the attention it deserves, expect some monumental political battles in the years ahead.

As a minimum, this information confirms the value of continuing to protect some animal and plant populations that are as free of human interference as possible. Those populations may prove to be invaluable—and irreplaceable—reservoirs of genetic diversity and vigor.

National parks have long been valued by many as places of "wildness" (as distinguished from "wilderness.") Henry D. Thoreau's quote, "In Wildness is the preservation of the world” is a popular one with advocates of preserving natural areas for their intrinsic values. This new study of human impacts on both plant and animal populations suggests that in recognizing the values of "wildness," Thoreau seems to have been on to something.

Is Climate Change Fueling a Deadly Disease in California and Other Parched States?

Environment  

AlterNet / By Tara Lohan

Is Climate Change Fueling a Deadly Disease in California and Other Parched States?

Environmental changes may be to blame for spiking rates of an often misdiagnosed and potentially fatal disease.

 

 

 

 

Photo Credit: Rob Hainer/ Shutterstock.com

 

 

 

May 8, 2013  |  

 

 

If you haven’t heard of valley fever, you’re not alone. Although cases in states like California are rising, public awareness is low and misdiagnoses from doctors are sadly high. The AP reported an 850 percent spike in cases across the country from 1998 to 2011, with California and Arizona being the worst states.

“The fever has hit California’s agricultural heartland particularly hard in recent years, with incidence dramatically increasing in 2010 and 2011,” wrote the AP’s Gosia Wozniacka. “The disease — which is prevalent in arid regions of the United States, Mexico, Central and South America — can be contracted by simply breathing in fungus-laced spores from dust disturbed by wind as well as human or animal activity.”

Why have things gotten so bad? “The fungus is sensitive to environmental changes, experts say, and a hotter, drier climate has increased dust carrying the spores,” wrote Wozniacka.

Valley fever can have a host of symptoms and is painful, debilitating and sometimes deadly. It sometimes starts with flu-like symptoms but “the infection can spread from the lungs to the brain, bones, skin, even eyes, leading to blindness, skin abscesses, lung failure, even death,” reported Wozniacka.

The Reporting on Health Collaborative has been collecting stories from Californians who have been affected.  

Bernadette Madrid, 29, says she “was tested for practically everything except valley fever.” After months of misdiagnoses doctors finally realized she had valley fever, but by then it was so severe she was hospitalized and her parents were told she likely wouldn’t live. Her weight dropped to 80 pounds, and despite seven surgeries the disease has left her blind, and the drugs prescribed to fight it have destroyed her kidneys. 

Karen Werts said, “I have lost two years of my life to valley fever and now live with these constant fears in the back of my mind. I would not wish this for anyone, even my worst enemy.” It took doctors two months after her symptoms started to test Werts, 53, for valley fever. She said: 

The valley fever symptoms were bad, and I also had two bouts of pneumonia and the night chills and sweats continued. But I was placed on the highest dosage allowed of Diflucan, and I would compare the side effects of this anti-fungal medication to chemotherapy. I lost my eyelashes, eyebrows and most of my hair, and had sores in my nose and mouth. I had severely cracked and bleeding lips, and joint pain that made moving unpleasant. I was so fatigued that even getting up to use the bathroom was a huge effort. I also had to undergo constant blood tests to check my liver function, due to the Diflucan.

“On January 9, 2001, my big, strong healthy husband of 30 years died at age 49, a 144-pound shell of his former self,” said Cheryl Youngblood, who lost her husband Michael to valley fever. “He left behind four children and two grandchildren. It was just three months shy of our 30th wedding anniversary.” 

In California in recent years, hundreds have died from valley fever. Humans are not the only ones at risk: dogs are just as susceptible to valley fever as people are, and the disease is often fatal, when owners -- and even veterinarians -- cannot figure out their pets' puzzling and painful symptoms.

One of the groups most at risk are prison inmates. “Prisoners are vulnerable both because they are more likely to have chronic diseases like HIV and diabetes, and because they are often coming from outside the geographic area and have not developed immunity to the fungus,”wrote Tracy Wood from the Voice of OC for the Reporting on Health Collaborative. 

Rebecca Plevinreported that 200 inmates in California, mostly from the San Joaquin Valley, are hospitalized a year because of valley fever. “A study by the state prison health system found that the rate of valley fever in Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga was 600 times the rate found outside the prison walls in Fresno County,” she wrote. “On top of that, research studies have shown that blacks are far more likely to develop the most serious form of the disease. The prison population has a higher proportion of blacks than whites, and prisoner advocates criticize state and federal agencies for putting black inmates in harm’s way.”  

A new federal health order is seeking the relocation of 3,000 highly at-risk inmates from two San Joaquin Valley prisons.

Tara Lohan, a senior editor at AlterNet, has just launched the new project Hitting Home, chronicling extreme energy extraction. She is the editor of two books on the global water crisis, including most recently, Water Matters: Why We Need to Act Now to Save Our Most Critical Resource. Follow her on Twitter @TaraLohan.

Natural Austerity: Ready for Rationing? Why We Should Put the Brakes on Consumption If We Want to Survive

Environment  

AlterNet / By Robert Jensen

Ready for Rationing? Why We Should Put the Brakes on Consumption If We Want to Survive

 

 

Stan Cox talks about his new book "Any Way You Slice It: The Past, Present, and Future of Rationing."

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 30, 2013  |  

 

 

This article was published in partnership with GlobalPossibilities.org.

It’s not clear whether Stan Cox is a plant breeder with a penchant for politics, or a political provocateur who finds time to do science. Whichever aspect of his personality is dominant, Cox artfully draws on both skill sets to make the case for rationing, perhaps the most important concept that is not being widely discussed these days. The power of his new book, Any Way You Slice It: The Past, Present, and Future of Rationing, comes from his blending of scientific analyses of dire resource trends with a compelling moral argument about the need to reshape politics and economics.

In his day job at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, the country’s premier sustainable agriculture research facility, Cox works to develop perennial sorghum. A member of the editorial board of the magazine Green Social Thought (formerly Synthesis/Regeneration), Cox also has been thinking long and hard about the multiple ecological crises we face. In 2010 he published Losing Our Cool, a sharp-edged examination of the impacts of our society’s obsession with air-conditioning.

In this new book on rationing, he argues that we have to become a society that puts the brakes on consumption—in an egalitarian fashion—if we want to survive. A society dependent on reckless growth that enriches a small minority of people cannot expect to endure and flourish for the long haul. Cox believes that the right kind of rationing can produce a happier and healthier life for everyone.

Robert Jensen: In your book, you mention that some have compared raising the possibility of rationing to “shouting an obscenity in church.” Why is that idea so unacceptable today?

Stan Cox: People have shown a willingness to accept rationing in a broad variety of situations in which society-wide scarcity is obvious—wartime, say, or when governments have a fixed supply of subsidized food to sell, or in a drought when there's only so much water to go around. But if rationing is proposed as a way to preserve resources and ecological life-support systems for the future—for dealing with environmental problems or providing equitable healthcare, for example—then we are talking about limiting consumption when there is no apparent scarcity. In that situation, we all like to believe that we exercise freedom in the marketplace, and to many it seems outrageous to limit that freedom. 

RJ: Before getting to the specifics of how rationing might work, let’s talk about those cultural assumptions about freedom and abundance. We live in a world that routinely tells us there are no limits, that whatever limits we bump up against we can overcome with human creativity and advanced technology. You seem to believe that we live in a physical world with physical limits.

That’s a rather sensible position, of course, but it seems to cast you in the role of Eeyore, always the gloomy one. How do you defend yourself?

SC: OK, you’re getting down to the heart of the matter right away here. When opposing any kind of environmental responsibility, the Right loves to raise the specter of rationing, but it’s really the bigger idea of overall limits to growth that’s at the heart of our anxiety. We face an irresolvable contradiction: We all know intellectually that no kind of growth can go on to infinity, yet if we exist within a capitalist economy, our lives and livelihoods wholly depend on unceasing expansion of economic activity. A year, even a quarter, of slack or negative growth might reduce national carbon emissions but it also triggers widespread human misery. The converse isn’t true; robust growth doesn’t necessarily bring prosperity to all. In recent decades, the benefits of growth have flowed almost exclusively to the top of the economic pyramid.    

With the imposition of any serious physical or ecological limits on the economy, familiar capitalist economic relations would malfunction, to say the least. So those at the top of the economy who benefit from growth have every reason to be alarmed by the idea of fair rationing. And if we agree to overall limits but remain committed to the current means of rationing resources and goods—that is, “to each according to ability to pay”—then the rest of us should be alarmed as well. But with a commitment to “fair shares for all,” as they put it back during World War II, and with everyone playing by the same rules (and of course with a much smaller chance of global ecological breakdown), life under physical limits could well be a better life for the great majority of us. 

RJ: You mention WWII, one of the cases of successful rationing. As you say, the conventional wisdom is that such rationing is only possible in times of crisis, when the need to limit consumption is clear. So, how would you explain the crises we face today that make rationing necessary? 

SC: In the 1940s, Washington did shore up support for the ration system by promising a world of plenty once the war was over. And except in a few resources like rubber, there was no absolute scarcity. Farms and factories were highly productive, there was no unemployment, and wages were rising. But a huge share of what was produced—for example, 4,000 calories worth of food per soldier per day—was diverted to Europe and the Pacific. People could see that with the end of the war, all those resources and goods were to be available again to everyone.

Now the green future, if there is one, will parallel the wartime ‘40s in the sense that a large part of the economy will have to be diverted for a period of years, or in this case, decades. We won’t be using resources to pump up the consumer economy, because they will have to be shifted into vast projects needed to build non-fossil, non-nuclear energy sources; convert to a much less energy-dependent infrastructure; build or convert to more compact, low-consumption housing; rework agriculture; and rearrange living and working patterns to reduce the amount of transportation required. The economist Minqui Li has estimated for the United States that building the necessary wind and solar capacity alone would cost $120 trillion.

All of that production will be unavailable to the consumer economy. It may provide stimulus, but with a nationwide policy of leaving resources in the ground, bigger paychecks will serve to drive up the prices of goods that are available. If the past is any guide, the only acceptable solution will be price controls and fair-shares rationing. Indeed, in both the ‘40s and the ‘70s, there was popular demand for formal rationing. Next time around, as you say, we won’t have the consolation that we can look forward to a peacetime or post-energy-crisis cornucopia. For example, alternative energy sources, even at full capacity, will provide far less total energy than do fossil fuels today. However, we may still be able to anticipate better times to come, once the physical conversion of society has achieved its goals.

At that point, not only will most of the economic effort that had gone into the conversion become once again part of the “civilian” economy, but that new economy will be able to satisfy more real needs for each unit of physical consumption. I guess if there is any light at the end of the tunnel, that’s it. If the conversion is successful, there won’t be as much easy energy around, and GDP won’t be rising, but quality of life will have been given the space needed for improvement.

RJ: Let’s go back to these two basic points that are so contentious. Your pitch for rationing is partly based on an assessment of physical realities: Resources are finite, and technological capacities to stretch resources have limits. Lots of people don’t accept that. You also are arguing that we are going to live with a much a lower level of consumption. For lots of people, that is depressing. Let’s tackle both of those.

First, one of the major things you argue we have to ration is energy, at a time when lots of people are celebrating new technologies that allow humans to tap into new sources of fossil fuels (fracking, tar sands, etc.).  How do you see our energy future? 

SC: Until a few years ago, a lot of environmentally minded people were hoping that the imminent peak and subsequent decline in the annual extraction of conventional fossil fuels would do our work for us, enforcing strict limits on consumption. Now a bonanza of so-called unconventional fuel reserves has blown that possibility away, forcing us to face the necessity of practicing self-restraint. Can we leave precious energy in the ground when we have the ability to bring it out? If we manage to do that, I guess it will be a first. But that’s what we need to do.

It will be a test of how addicted to dense energy we really are. Are we willing to launch an all-out assault on the Earth, just to avoid a disruption of economic business-as-usual? Unconventional fuels are a disaster—destroying vast landscapes, wrecking water supplies, causing spills of petroleum and nasty chemicals, increasing carbon emissions, and giving the human economy the capacity to do all the usual ecological damage that potent energy sources encourage. And these fuels are no free lunch. Individual gas wells are small and dry up quickly, so enormous numbers of them have to be drilled. They require a huge investment of energy and other resources to produce each unit of usable fossil energy. Yet even with all those problems, that energy is too valuable not to use, and we face a seemingly irresistible temptation to use up these resources as fast as we can extract them. You could say we’ve met our 21st-century Mephistopheles in the sands of Alberta and the Marcellus shale.

RJ:Second, in a world where so many people associate happiness with consumption, how do you make the argument that for those of us in the more affluent parts of the world, less can be more?

SC: In the early 1990s, several economists took note of an apparent statistical anomaly. While people in richer countries tend to be happier than those in poorer countries, increases in average real income in richer countries have not conferred an increase in happiness. In the words of Richard Easterlin, a University of Southern California economics professor whose name has become attached to this seeming paradox, “raising the incomes of all” will not “raise the happiness of all.”

It’s a fascinating problem, but the solution is just as dreary as most explanations of modern life. As society becomes materially richer in the aggregate, it takes a higher income every year just to keep up and maintain the same level of contentment. When everyone has an increasing income, it becomes harder and harder for anyone to achieve greater happiness. In this sense, times haven’t changed much in the century-plus since Thorstein Veblen described this phenomenon. Erosion of happiness is largely a result of everyone trying to keep up with the Joneses.

It’s not just the global north. In many nations once considered poor (and in which most people still are poor), rising incomes are not bringing happiness. On the contrary, examination of average income levels in countries worldwide has shown that more rapid aggregate growth is associated with a reduction in average happiness. The kind of breakneck growth that can carry a nation as a whole from poverty to affluence in a single generation also tends to worsen inequality and eat away at its citizens’ sense of well-being. But make no mistake, simply putting more emphasis on the pursuit of happiness cannot tame a capitalist economy any more effectively than can appeals to life or liberty. Inequitable growth in consumption is in the DNA of capitalism, and that has to be faced directly.

RJ: It’s clearer now why rationing is like an obscenity in church. It means leaving fossil fuels in the ground and permanently reducing overall consumption for almost everyone in the United States. That will require collective action through government and a serious overhaul of the economy. All this has to happen at a moment when what passes for leadership in the political system can’t face the basic problems, let alone imagine serious systemic change.

So, last question: What do you hope your book will accomplish? It’s a clear, compelling argument for rationing in a society that seems unwilling to accept limits and unable to comprehend the need for them. How do we get this into the public conversation?

SC: My aim is, in a way, parallel to what I tried to do with Losing Our Cool—to touch off a debate where there seemed to be total agreement. Air-conditioning has always been viewed as being of pure benefit to humanity, which it’s not. Rationing is constantly being held out by the Right as an unutterably nightmarish fate that awaits us if we get serious about ecological restraint and fairness. Meanwhile, the environmental establishment (in basic agreement with the Right) wants to go on letting people believe that the human economy can just keep on growing, that the market can allocate fairly, and that rationing is indeed an evil to be avoided at all costs.

My purpose with this book is to ask, so rationing’s the worst that could happen? Really? Well, let’s see how bad it might actually be—which may not be as bad as you think. And then let’s compare it to major-league worst-case scenarios, like the global ecological meltdown and all-against-all conflict that we could well see if we don’t restrain ourselves.

Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin. He is the author of Arguing for Our Lives (City Lights, 2013) and All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice (Soft Skull Press, 2009) among other works. He can be reached at rjensen@austin.utexas.edu. Twitter: @jensenrobertw.

Methane Outbreak Alert!

by Robert Hunziker / April 27th, 2013

A cadre of the world’s top climate scientists have seen enough evidence of prospective runaway climate change that they are now sounding the alarm, putting the world on notice that an extinction event may be in the cards. The principal actor in this macabre tragedy: Methane.

The following is a quote from the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (“AMEG”), which is the organization created by these high level climate scientists.

An Assessment by AMEG:
Could the World be in Imminent Danger and Nobody is Telling?
Uniquely and fearlessly AMEG has studied key non-linear trends in the Earth-human System and reached the stunning conclusion that the planet stands at the edge of abrupt and catastrophic climate change as a result of an unprecedented rate of change in the Arctic.

Methane (CH₄) is over twenty times more powerful, over a 100-year period, per molecule, than is carbon dioxide (CO₂). Or, put another way, methane is more effectual than carbon dioxide at absorbing infrared radiation emitted from the earth’s surface and preventing it from escaping into space. Methane, during its first few years upon entering the atmosphere, is 100 times as powerful as an equal weight of CO₂.

As it happens, it appears excessive levels of methane are just now starting to seriously impact the Earth’s atmosphere… in a big way!

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, as of February 2013, methane levels in the atmosphere are measured at 1,874 ppb (parts per billion.) This level, in an historical context, is more than twice as high as any time since 400,000 years before the industrial revolution. In the past, methane has ranged between 300-400 ppb during glacial periods and 600-700 ppb during warm interglacial periods.

Newly Identified Sources of Methane Emissions in Deep Arctic Seas

In 2012, expeditionary teams in the Arctic were shocked, and dismayed, to find methane bubbling up from deep ocean sites. “Previous observations have pointed to large methane plumes being released from the seabed in the relatively shallow sea off the northern coast of Siberia, but the latest findings were made far away from land in the deep, open ocean where the surface is usually capped by ice.”¹
 
Physicist Eric Kort (Ph.D., Applied Physics, Harvard University) of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Pasadena, California was surprised to see methane levels rise so convincingly each time their research aircraft flew over cracks in the sea ice. These methane measurements come from Hiaper Pole-to-Pole Observations, which uses aircraft loaded with scientific instruments flying long distances at varying altitudes. The study, covering numerous flights into the Arctic at different times of the year, was published in Nature Geoscience. The study covered an area about 950 miles north of the coast of Alaska and 350 miles south of the North Pole.

Moreover, as if discovering methane emissions from the deep seas of the Arctic isn’t already of major concern, a recent study discovered immense amounts of methane locked under Antarctic ice: “They… calculated that the potential amount of methane hydrate and free methane gas beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet could be up to 4 billion metric tons, a similar order of magnitude to some estimates made for Arctic permafrost. The predicted shallow depth of these potential reserves also makes them more susceptible to climate forcing than other methane hydrate reserves on Earth.”²
 
The Arctic is in Meltdown: At the same time, Methane Gushes into the Atmosphere

According to the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (AMEG), the “Arctic is in meltdown.” As such, AMEG has declared: “An extremely high international security risk of acute climate disruption followed by runaway global warming.”
Likewise, Russian scientists have spotted methane plumes/bubbles that are more than a kilometer in diameter coming to surface along the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, which is the largest continental shelf in the world. Seventy-five percent (75%) of the sea over the shelf is shallow water, less than 50 metres deep, and consequently more immediately exposed to warming trends.

“The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.”³
 
“We carried out checks at about 115 stationary points and discovered methane fields of a fantastic scale – I think on a scale not seen before. Some of the plumes were a kilometer or more wide and the emissions went directly into the atmosphere – the concentration was a hundred times higher than normal,” says Dr. Igor Semiletov of the International Arctic Research Centre at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, who led the 8th joint US-Russia cruise of the East Siberian Arctic seas.³
 
Regarding the amounts of methane released into the atmosphere, according to Dr. Natalia Shakhova of the International Arctic Research Centre: “The concentration of atmospheric methane increased unto three times in the past two centuries… That’s a huge increase, between two and three times, and this has never happened in the history of the planet.”³
 
The cause of this emerging outbreak of methane, as explained by AMEG, is a horrendous cycle that started 20-30 years ago when Atlantic and Pacific Ocean currents, warmed by greenhouse gases, flowed into the Arctic Ocean. This extra heat into the Arctic Ocean causes declines in the sea ice, and it increases temperatures. As it happens, the extra heat travels into shallow seas along the continental shelf and, over time, the warming also spreads to the deep seabed, destabilizing methane hydrates and free gas trapped over millennia in the permafrost cap. As follows, methane that has been trapped for millions upon millions of years is released into the atmosphere.

The quantities of methane in the continental shelf are so huge and overwhelming that only 1% or 2% of the methane released could lead to an unstoppable chain reaction of runaway overheating of the planet. This is why some of the world’s most renowned climate scientists formed AMEG, because they were prompted by indisputable signals of the beginning stages of massive releases of methane, thus, threatening an extinction event on planet Earth.

Historical Methane Mass Extinction Event: “The Great Dying”

Approximately two hundred million years ago methane was involved in a mass extinction event, referred to as “The Great Dying.” The outcome was the extinction of over half of all life forms. Some studies suggests a volcanic eruption started the warming cycle, triggering positive feedback by causing underwater permafrost to melt and release methane gas to the atmosphere (similar to today, except humans are the trigger rather than a volcano) which further amplified warming even more, releasing more methane, and the feedback grew, and grew, until conditions became so inhospitable that mass extinction occurred.⁴
 
Arctic Methane Emergency Group 

According to an Arctic Methane Emergency Group Press Release d/d November 11, 2012: “Abrupt climate change is upon us… Food prices will go through the roof. The government’s climate change policy is in tatters. The government should have acted years ago. Now it may be too late… There has been an elephant in the room, and it has been totally ignored. It’s all about Arctic sea ice….”

AMEG recently completed a new film: Arctic Methane – Why the Sea Ice Matters.⁵ The following excerpts are taken from this film:

Peter Wadhams, President of the International Association on Sea Ice and Head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group/Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, says: “It is quite urgent that we recognize what is going on… the ice has been getting thinner over the last 40 years since I have been measuring it, and it has lost about one-half of its thickness… five years ago the shrinkage started to accelerate. Now, melting in summer is greater than freezing in winter.”

James Hansen, adjunct professor, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University and former Head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies claims the melting ice could lead to the point where ocean floor warming triggers massive release of methane hydrate, i.e., methane molecules trapped in ice crystals, which would become a “tipping point.” As well, methane is already being released from thawing tundra on land, and it is bubbling up in the Arctic Ocean, which is clear evidence of the warming of the Arctic Ocean waters. Thus and so, there is evidence that the warming ocean floor is already beginning to release massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere, with dire consequences to follow.


According to David Wasdell, International Coordinator, Meridian Programme: “A runaway climate change is now clear and beginning to be quantified for the first time… the greatest threat we face as a planet… The rate of change we’re generating in the current situation is between 200-300 times faster than that experience of any extinction event apart from the asteroidal impact. If you look at the general background change, for instance, it takes about 10,000 years to change the concentration of carbon dioxide by 100 ppm — we’re doing it in 30 years at this year’s rate… so, the rate of change in the climate is phenomenal compared to previous extinction events.”

Wasdell continues, “We’re already in a mass extinction event. We’re losing species and losing populations, partly by climate change and partly by habitat change, partly by overexploitation of habitat like fisheries… We’ve lost about 40% of the phytoplankton in the oceans which is the basis of the food chain.”
Imagine 40% of land crops disappearing, the world would be in a state of chaos involving hordes of desperate people invading other countries for their food and water. In contrast, what can marine life do upon losing 40% of its primary food source as a result of human-induced climate change?

Jet Stream Impact Threatens World Food Supply

The warming Arctic impacts the entire Northern Hemisphere in a negative fashion, threatening humankind’s food supply. As the Arctic warms, the jet streams change, and the jet streams drive weather systems, most prominently in the Northern Hemisphere. As a result of the warming Arctic, the jet streams become wavier and slower, causing freakish weather all across the Northern Hemisphere.
As an example: A couple of years ago the jet streams were locked and the trough of the wave was over Pakistan; the crest was over Russia. The jet stream did not move for 35 days. The trough was low pressure with lots of rain, and as a result, Pakistan flooded, beyond one month. At the time, worldwide television networks sent broadcasts of groups of Pakistanis huddled together on small landmasses surrounded by water. Simultaneously, Moscow was under a high-pressure ridge, experiencing a powerful 35-day heat wave. An estimated 50,000 Russians, over and above the normal mortality rate, died (not mentioned on TV), and the country lost 40% of its wheat crop. Russia halted wheat exports.

In 2012 the United States’ drought was the worst since 1950. Syria, part of the Fertile Crescent breadbasket of the Middle East, had a 6-year drought only recently, and India has had two droughts the past four years. And, the list does not end here….

Radical Climate Change in Arctic

According to AMEG, here’s how climate change in the Arctic has changed weather patterns: Over the past three decades, snow cover has been reduced by 17-18% per decade and sea ice is declining fast because of human-induced global warming. Consequently, the albedo effect is collapsing in the Arctic.
Albedo is the reflection of Sun’s radiation off the white ice and white snow surfaces. Unfortunately, when the albedo effect collapses, the dark sea and dark land mass absorb most of the Sun’s radiation. A collapsing albedo effect is ominously apocalyptic for the Arctic, and for the world. And, disturbingly, Arctic albedo is already in the collapsing stage. This will inevitably lead to ever more methane emissions and a vicious cycle of feedbacks leading to an extinction event, probably unstoppable.

According to physicist Paul Beckwith, University of Ottawa, since 2007, there has been a sharp increase in methane release, and he says methane is the key now to a ‘tipping point’ in the climate. He believes it is entirely possible that before 2020 the Arctic will be clear of sea ice with open waters three months of the year, as a minimum, and without sea ice, and with the loss of the reflective albedo, all the feedbacks will kick into gear. This will, in turn, trigger runaway warming of the planet and fractured weather patterns like extra-prolonged droughts or sudden, torrential rains as the entire world begins to sizzle!

Solution?

Beckwith believes geo-engineering is the only salvation for the Arctic. This involves injecting sulfur dioxide into the Arctic atmosphere, which acts like a large erupting volcano, blocking out sunlight, allowing the Arctic to cool. Be that as it may, there are serious scientists and legal scholars, e.g., experts at both Harvard and UCLA, who question the value of geo-engineering without first taking the time to establishing very tight international protocols. On the other hand, and controversially, some scientists fear potential consequences of a ‘Frankenstein atmosphere’ once humans begin tampering with nature.

The problem: There are no good solutions absent question marks.

In that respect, this begs the question of why the governments of the world have not been, as rapidly as humanly possible, promoting renewables as a replacement for fossil fuels. Renewable energy technology is proven, and for the uninitiated, renewables have been around for decades. And, renewables are climate friendly.

At the end of the day, runaway climate change may be the result of the greatest failure of political leadership in recorded history… assuming recordkeeping is still maintained within the context of an extinction event.

All of which goes to prove, humans and asteroids are on the same level.
Postscript: A quote from Astronaut Ulf Merbold (71), Federal Republic of Germany, who participated in three space flights for a total of 49 days, 21 hours, and 38 minutes:

For the first time in my life I saw the horizon as a curved line. It was accentuated by a thin seam of dark blue light – our atmosphere. Obviously this was not the ocean of air I had been told it was so many times in my life. I was terrified by its fragile appearance.

1. Steve Connor, Danger from the Deep: New Climate Threat as Methane Rises from Cracks in Arctic Ice, The Independent (UK), April 23, 2012. [↩]
2. EcoAlert: New Climate-Change Threat? Immense Amounts of Methane Locked Under Antarctic Ice, The Daily Galaxy (University of California/Santa Cruz), Aug. 29, 2012. [↩]
3. Steve Connor, Vast Methane ‘Plumes’ Seen in Arctic Ocean as Sea Ice Retreats, The Independent (UK), Dec. 13, 2011. [↩] [↩] [↩]
4. George Papadakis, UK, Methane Gas Hydrates: A Potential Threat to Climate Stability, Climate Emergency Institute, Dec. 22, 2011. [↩]
5. Envisionation, Producer: Nick Breeze, Spring 2012. [↩]

Robert Hunziker (MA in economic history at DePaul University, Chicago) is a former hedge fund manager and now a professional independent negotiator for worldwide commodity actual transactions and a freelance writer for progressive publications as well as business journals. He can be contacted at: 

rlhunziker@gmail.com. Read other articles by Robert.

This article was posted on Saturday, April 27th, 2013 at 8:01am and is filed under Climate Change, Environment.

Is Sustainability Even Possible?

Is Sustainability Even Possible?

More than 40 years after Earth Day, human civilization is still far from the ideal of sustainability. David Biello reports

Listen to this Podcast

Some questions to ponder on Earth Day: how much of an environmental problem is the growing human population? And is the problem too many people or the throwaway culture of too many things?

A new paper in the journal Science attempts to assess the burdens placed on people and the planet by individuals’ decisions to have large families and/or consume a lot.

A key factor in the creation of large families is young women without access to schools or family planning. So one way to address population growth is to educate and empower women.

Good news. That's happening. In fact, the rate of population growth peaked back in the 1960s and has been falling ever since.

What about consumption? Our global economy's toll in pollution and degradation of the environment remains high, though its focus has shifted around the globe. For example, the current uptick in Brazilian deforestation can be traced largely to exports of beef and soybeans to China.

The conclusion of the Science paper: "contemporary economic growth is unsustainable." And true sustainability has to be long-term: it means ensuring that whatever decisions we make now do not lessen the ability of future generations to have at least as good a life as we enjoy today. We can't buy our way out of the problem.

—David Biello

[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]

Tar Sands Is Worse Than You Can Imagine: Incredible Images You Have to See

  Environment  

AlterNet / By Leslie Moyer

Tar Sands Is Worse Than You Can Imagine: Incredible Images You Have to See

 

AlterNet is teaming up with the Post Carbon Institute to bring you mind-blowing images and stories that will inspire you to take action.

 

 

 

The Suncor Energy upgrading refinery, on the banks of the Athabasca River.
Photo Credit: Copyrighted image; photographer not disclosed.

April 15, 2013  |  

 

 

Post Carbon Institute and Alternet have partnered to shed a powerful light on the true costs of our addiction to fossil fuels, starting with the Alberta tar sands . 

Every powerful photo is linked to three meaningful actions that you can take right now to fight back against tar sands mining. We need your help getting the word out; please take a look at the images, take a stand , and share far and wide with your friends, colleagues and neighbors. 

The mining of the Alberta tar sands is the biggest industrial project on earth and quite possibly the world's most environmentally destructive. The visuals are hard to stomach, but the story is an important one to tell.  

click the thumbnails to see the slideshow

As conventional oil and gas deplete, the energy industry must resort to unconventional resources that are more expensive, more technically challenging to access, and pose far greater risks to ecosystems and communities than ever before. The result is destruction on an unprecedented level. 

The tar sands tale is told frame by frame in the image deck, guiding us from the clear-cutting of pristine Boreal forest and creation of vast open-pit mines all the way to the pipelines that transport diluted bitumen across the continent. 

The connection between the astounding environmental destruction taking place in Canada and the debate over approval of the Keystone XL pipeline here in the US is clear. As the recent rupture of the Pegasus Pipeline in Arkansas makes abundantly clear, the transport of diluted bitumen from Alberta via pipelines to oil refineries thousands of miles away poses unacceptable environmental risks. 

As important, the Keystone XL Pipeline is a key litmus test for the Obama Administration and the country as a whole. And the rest of the world is watching.  

Although the Canadian tar sands contribute a small percentage of total global oil production and the Keystone XL Pipeline is just one of many contested fossil fuel projects in the world (in fact, First Nations and thousands of other Canadians are fighting an equally dangerous tar sands pipeline, the Northern Gateway Pipeline), this decision by President Obama is a keystone of a different kind - representing the kind of energy future we want for ourselves and our loved ones.  

For that reason, it's not mere hyperbole to say that this is a life and death decision.  

We're reaching out to you to speak up against the Keystone XL Pipeline by sharing these images with your friends, family, and neighbors, and by clicking on one of the calls to action associated with each image.  

Stay tuned as PCI and Alternet unveil our next collaborate visual effort in the coming weeks. 

See

Share

Act

Leslie Moyer is the Energy Reality Campaign Director for Post Carbon Institute.

Dead dolphins and shrimp with no eyes found after BP clean-up

Dead dolphins and shrimp with no eyes found after BP clean-up

 

Chemicals used to disperse Gulf of Mexico spill blamed for marine deaths and human illness

Emily Dugan

Sunday 14 April 2013 

 

 

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Hundreds of beached dolphin carcasses, shrimp with no eyes, contaminated fish, ancient corals caked in oil and some seriously unwell people are among the legacies that scientists are still uncovering in the wake of BP's Deepwater Horizon spill.

This week it will be three years since the first of 4.9 billion barrels of crude oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico, in what is now considered the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. As the scale of the ecological disaster unfolds, BP is appearing daily in a New Orleans federal court to battle over the extent of compensation it owes to the region.

Infant dolphins were found dead at six times average rates in January and February of 2013. More than 650 dolphins have been found beached in the oil spill area since the disaster began, which is more than four times the historical average. Sea turtles were also affected, with more than 1,700 found stranded between May 2010 and November 2012 – the last date for which information is available. On average, the number stranded annually in the region is 240.

Contact with oil may also have reduced the number of juvenile bluefin tuna produced in 2010 by 20 per cent, with a potential reduction in future populations of about 4 per cent. Contamination of smaller fish also means that toxic chemicals could make their way up the food chain after scientists found the spill had affected the cellular function of killifish, a common bait fish at the base of the food chain.

Deep sea coral, some of which is thousands of years old, has been found coated in oil after the dispersed droplets settled on the sea's bottom. A recent laboratory study found that the mixture of oil and dispersant affected the ability of some coral species to build new parts of a reef.

Doug Inkley, a senior scientist for the US National Wildlife Federation and author of a report published this week on wildlife affected by the spill, said: "These ongoing deaths – particularly in an apex predator such as the dolphin – are a strong indication that there is something amiss with the Gulf ecosystem."

Scientists believe that the 1.8 million gallons of dispersant, sprayed as part of the clean-up, have cemented the disaster's toxic effect on ocean life and human health. The dispersant, called Corexit, caused what some scientists have described as "a giant black snowstorm" of tiny oil globules, which has been carried around the ocean in plumes and has now settled on the sea floor. A study last November found the dispersant to be 52 times more toxic than the oil itself.

Larry McKinney, director of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, said: "Before we depend on dispersants to get rid of oil and get it out of sight, we need to understand what it can do in the open ocean. We're told to keep oil off the shore and away from estuaries, but we've not dealt with something like this before, that's in the open ocean and gone from top to bottom, affecting the whole water column."

Scientists believe the addition of dispersants to the oil made it more easily absorbed through the gills of fish and into the bloodstream. Dr William Sawyer, a toxicologist, has studied concentrations of petroleum hydrocarbon (PHC) in edible fish and shellfish in the region. Samples before the spill had no measurable PHC in the tissue, whereas fish tested in recent months show tissue concentrations as high as 10,000 parts per million, or 1 per cent of all tissue. He said: "The study shows that the absorption [of the oil] was enhanced by the Corexit."

BP says the dispersants it used are "government approved and safe when used appropriately", and that extensive testing has shown seafood in the Gulf states is safe to eat.

Louisiana State University's Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences has found sea life in the Gulf with lesions and deformities that it believes may be linked to the use of dispersants. These include shrimp with no eyes and crabs with no eyes or without claws. BP claims these abnormalities are "common in marine life", had been seen in the region before, and are caused by bacterial infections or parasites.

In a blow to the region's tourism, tar balls continue to wash up along the affected coastline, which now stretches from the beaches of Louisiana to Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Marco Kaltofen, a chemical engineer at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, said: "We have a reservoir of petroleum and petroleum-contaminated sediment that lies just offshore of several Gulf beaches. Every time we have a storm, all of a sudden you're getting these tar balls washing up."

It is not just wildlife that scientists believe has been affected. Michael Robichaux, a Louisiana doctor, has documented 113 patients who he thinks were made ill by exposure to chemicals associated with the spill. Their most common symptoms include headaches, memory loss, fatigue, irritability, vertigo, nausea, blurred vision and insomnia.

One of Dr Robichaux's patients, Jorey Danos, 32, is a formerly healthy father of three. Since working for BP on the clean-up, he says he has experienced serious ill health, including severe abdominal and joint pain that has left him walking with a cane. Several doctors, including a neurologist, have put his condition down to the neurological impact of exposure to the chemicals related to the spill.

Mr Danos said: "I worked 21 days in one of the boats skimming the oil and we were sprayed directly with Corexit from above on three occasions. My skin came out with bumps and burning and I started having breathing problems. When a speedboat with BP representatives came by I asked for a respirator but they said no, because it would lead to bad media attention. Now I'm still dealing with it three years later." BP said all workers were provided with safety training and protective equipment and would have had the opportunity to join a class action settlement.

Geoff Morrell, BP's head of US communications, said: "No company has done more to respond to an industrial accident than BP has in the US Gulf of Mexico."