Warming Warnings Heating Up

There is a constant patter of global warming news these days. You know that things are getting serious when the head of Shell Oil Company (Ron Oxburgh) publicly voices his fears for the planet (Guardian, 6/17/04). Oxburgh argues that we need to immediately start capturing global warming gases and store them underground (sequestration). Actually, the preferred method is storing them in the ocean floor (ocean sequestration)

There is an expectation that seas could rise anywhere from 40 inches to 40 feet (Wired). A 40 inch rise would push water inland about 300 feet, "pushing high-water marks 300 feet inland and flooding Florida, Bangladesh and even most of Manhattan." The 40 inch estimate is if the ice sheets don't melt. However, they are melting and that pushes the ocean rise to 40 feet. That rise would push the ocean 3600 feet inland. I don't know what that would cover, but my guess is that it would drown most islands, most of Japan, and everything on the east coast of the US up to the Catskills (just a guess).

To add trouble to the already strapped south Asia region, The U.N. Warns Aral Sea in Asia Could Dry Up (Newsday, 6/18/04). The Aral Sea is one of the largest inland water masses, and it has shrunk to half its normal size. And New York, will be hit multiply by this disaster - rising ocean as mentioned above, and health impacts (Earth Institute News):

"In the future we can look forward to more and longer air quality alerts, more heat stress, and illness or deaths related to these, according to project director Joyce Rosenthal of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Mailman School. �Some neighborhoods will suffer more, especially poorer neighborhoods with less greenery and more asphalt, which can create a heat island effect.� The study looked at climate and health projections through 2050."

NOTE: The study referenced in this quote is the Metropolitan East Coast Assessment, which is part of the US Global Change Research Group

Therefore, it is not surprising that there is an Urgent action call on US climate (BBC, 6/15/04). We are still the largest global contributor to global warming (both through our energy use and global consumption). China and India are gaining rapidly through accelerated development. However, I don't think we are going to get into a long global warming period. I believe that the climate will tip into an ice age first (see Environmental collapse - sooner not later (Wolf, 2/04/04).

So the issue is how to address the disaster that is looming over us. I would agree with the PEW Research Report -Coping with Global Climate Change: The Role of Adaptation in the U.S.. There are two major areas to address - mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation is changing what we are doing to slow down (and perhaps reverse) the damage. Adaptation includes preparing for the change in a variety of ways. Certainly one of those is getting the global population off the coast lines, relocating critical infrastructure and industry, developing technologies to address climatic extremes, etc.

Sequestration, mentioned earlier, is one of the mitigation strategies being pushed. It essentially means capturing global warming gases (somehow) and putting them someplace out of the atmosphere (underground or under the ocean). This may work on the short term, but I can't help but feel it is fraught with problems. Let's take the example of pumping millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the ocean floor.

One of the things that carbon dioxide does on the surface is to make the earth "breathe deeper" (McKibben, A Special Moment in History). This means that it forces increased plant growth. I would assume that it might do the same thing on the ocean floor. Or if that is an anaerobic environment, it might kill off what is there. Either way, it seems likely that it is not going to stay put. One scenario for it getting out (or getting up) is through violent storm activity. In a 6/18/04 report from the Independent/UK - An ocean in bloom: Storms breathe life into the Atlantic - Connor states that the recent hurricanes have caused a dramatic growth in the amount of phytoplankton. The massive storms stir up the sea floor, releasing minerals. One thing we are relatively sure of at this time is that global warming is going to dramatically disrupt the weather patterns, and increase both the number and severity of massive storms. Therefore, it seems highly possible that global warming gases "sequestered" on the ocean floor are unlikely to stay there.

Underground sequestration doesn't seem a much better option to me. Wouldn't such gases eventually just "percolate" up?

The good and bad news is that we are likely to run out of oil. Good news (possibly) because its demise will dramatically reduce the global warming emissions (unless we replace it with some other hydrocarbon). The bad news is that we have built industrial society and the global economy on petroleum. At this point, without oil many will die and societies will fall. The estimates of when peak oil production will start a rapid decline has been moved up considerably from 2030 to 2007 (Are we ready for when the oil runs out?, Leggett, Guardian, 6/19/04).

Folks we just lost TWENTY-THREE YEARS of preparation time. No big deal since we are refusing to prepare anyway. 2007 is less than 3 years away. While Leggett is optimistic that we can replace oil consumption with "renewable" sources, I don't share that optimism. Most "renewable" sources at this time require massive amounts of (oil-based) energy to create. Just replacing oil as fuel for transportation is a massive undertaking.

Let's look at replacing automotive fuel. First, it would take the equivalent of billions of gallons of gasoline a DAY for the US alone. Second, we have a fuel delivery infrastructure that was created (largely) at tax payer expense. That delivery system doesn't exist for say hydrogen. Battery charging and replacement also draws on energy resources and we are not equipped for a mass jump to that either. But there is a bigger issue here in relationship to transportation. The transportation of cargo. We live in an interdependent global economy that is totally dependent on massive cargo shipments. Huge tankers and cargo carriers using the energy it takes to run NY City for a day, are not only going strong, but the fleet is being expanded. Are we going to shift them to hydrogen in 3 to 5 years?

It seems clear to me that we need to be expending our time and money on preparing for what is coming at us like an avalanche. Instead, the developing world is spending more on defense (Verma, OneWorld South Asia, 6/17/04). In 2003, global defense spending went over $1 TRILLION. Of course it is being well spent (not), as we can see in the genocide in the Sudan (Darfur) and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is estimated that 17 million people are going to starve to death this year alone, and AIDS is a growing curse decimating populations, and leaving millions of orphans. The next pandemic is waiting to break, SARS or super bugs or ebola or avian flu. The money is not going to address these critical issues either. Instead, we spend money on defense and expanding the reach of an (oil driven) global economy that is causing even greater inequality ( Global Shifts Raising Issues of Income Equality, Boston Globe, 6/20/04).

It is clear we are going in the wrong direction; that we are squandering precious resources, lives and TIME. The powers that be have no interest (apparently) in doing anything but continuing to make things worse. That means it is up to us folks.

Sequestration Articles/Info
Ocean Carbon Sequestration Abstracts Office of Science - DoE.

Climate Change Scenarios Compel Studies of Ocean Carbon Sequestration, Paul Preuss, Berkley Lab

Global Warming - Impacts & Strategies
Costs of Warming on the Rise, Leahy, Wired, 6/19/04.

Coping with Global Climate Change: The Role of Adaptation in the U.S. PEW Research Center

Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan (2004), Committee to Review the U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan, National Research Council

Posted by rowan at June 20, 2004 11:16 AM | TrackBack | [eMail this article!] |