Washington Post food-politics columnist Ezra Klein has taken a stand: people should eat less meat, because of its vast greenhouse gas footprint. To make his case, Ezra cited the FAO’s landmark “Livestock’s Long Shadow” report, which found that global meat production is responsible for 18 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions.
To be honest, when I read Ezra’s column, I thought, “yeah, and?” Of course we should eat less meat. But how far will individual choice take us? Shouldn’t we focus on forcing the meat industry to pay up for its massive externalities, including its contribution to climate change? Yet this eat-less-meat plea ended up generating more controversy than I thought possible.
In a letter to the editor published Monday, J. Patrick Boyle, president of the American Meat institute, fired back, declaring Klein’s take on meat “inaccurate and not scientifically based.” How so? According to Boyle:
The Environmental Protection Agency concluded that in 2007, only 2.8 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions came from animal agriculture.
He concludes: “The animal protein sector in the United States is environmentally and socially responsible, and we strive to provide the safest, most abundant and most wholesome product to consumers domestically and worldwide.”
Oh, really?
Boyle is a veteran fighter for the big-meat cause. The AMI lobbies on behalf of meat packers like Tyson, Cargill, and Smithfield. According to his bio, Boyle has led AMI since 1990. He had prepped himself for a career as a top lobbyist the traditional way—by working for the agency he would later lobby. His bio declares:
From 1986-89, Boyle was administrator of the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). At AMS, he oversaw such programs as federal meat grading and the national beef and pork checkoff programs. He was responsible for administering 37 federal statutes affecting food quality, safety, research and marketing of meat, poultry, milk, fruits, vegetables, cotton and tobacco.
Indeed, the AMI is a popular stop for those who swing through the revolving door between government jobs and plumb lobbying positions. Click around its staff page and you’ll find plenty of former USDA and Congressional-staff apparatchiks.
So what of Boyle’s claim that Klein way overstated the GHG footprint of U.S. meat—that meat, in fact, contributes just 2.8 percent of total U.S. GHG emissions as compared to the FAO’s global estimate of 18 percent?
First, it should be noted that Klein and Boyle are talking about different things: Klein used global numbers, while Boyle pointed to strictly U.S. numbers.
And as Ralph Loglisci of The Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins University points out in a recent blog post, the U.S. number will certainly be lower than the global one, for the simple reason that the U.S. spews out so much more greenhouse gases from all sources than the rest of the world.
We’re the globe’s largest per-capita emitter of greenhouse gas (and a close second to China in overall emissions). Here, the meat industry exists alongside a 211 million-strong fleet of generally low-mileage cars (propped up by a low-functioning mass-transit system), a network of coal-fired power plants that supply half of our electricity, and a built environment characterized by low-density sprawl.
In short, comparing meat’s share of greenhouse gas emissions domestically and globally, the denominator—total emissions—is relatively much higher domestically. To use that truism to excuse the carbon footprint of the U.S. meat industry is ridiculous—a form of vulgar relativism. Just because they’re surrounded by an abundance of SUVs and coal-fired power plants doesn’t make our meat factories any more benign.
Next, it must be acknowledged that the FAO study Klein cites and Boyle’s EPA source were measuring different things. As Loglisci points out, the FAO sought to calculate meat’s total GHG footprint—not only methane from cows and nitrous oxide from manure, but also emissions related to growing and hauling feed grains and moving processed meat to market. The EPA numbers cited by Boyle, by contrast, measure only methane from livestock and nitrous oxide from manure. Emissions related to feed are accounted for elsewhere, as is carbon released in the process of ventilating massive confinement houses, and moving meat from production centers like North Carolina and Iowa to far-flung markets.
Perhaps most egregiously of all, Boyle’s cherry-picked stat thus wrongly absolves the meat industry from nitrous oxide emissions associated with growing corn—a massive source of greenhouse gas.
How massive? According to the National Corn Growers Association (PDF), 44 percent of U.S. corn becomes domestic animal feed, and another 10 percent ends up in feed rations as the ethanol byproduct distillers grains. That means more than half of U.S. corn—our nation’s largest farm crop—ends up on feedlots.
And farmers use more nitrogen fertilizer on corn than any other crop by a wide margin. Using data from the charts on this USDA page, I estimate corn sucks in about 44 percent of nitrogen fertilizer applied in U.S. agriculture. So based on its reliance on corn, U.S. feedlot agriculture is responsible for nearly a quarter of total U.S. nitrous oxide emissions. And Boyle’s number conveniently omits that.
The omission is not trivial. In the agriculture section (PDF) of its “Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions, 1990-2007,” the EPA credits “agriculture soil management”—i.e., nitrous oxide from fertilizer application—with about half of ag-related GHG emissions. And guess what? The EPA may be seriously underestimating here. A 2007 study by the Dutch Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, an atmospheric chemist, concluded (PDF) that the accepted estimates for how much nitrogen fertilizer ends up in the air as NO2 could be off by a factor of as much as five.
So if Boyle’s 2.8 percent figure is off the mark, what percentage of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions does actually stem from meat production? Loglisci of The Center for a Livable Future says it’s hard to pinpoint. “As far as I know, no one has crunched the numbers to determine a comparable GHG emissions number for U.S. livestock,” he writes.
Working with a Johns Hopkins researcher, Loglisci compiled some rough numbers and came out with an estimate of about 9 percent—half of the global FAO number cited by Klein, but three times the figure pushed by Boyle. “And in real numbers, not percentages, U.S. livestock production’s GHG contribution could still be the largest in the world,” Loglisci writes.
So, yes, Ezra Klein was right—there’s a strong case for eating less meat.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Obama admin teams with grassroots groups to ‘Green the Block’
Ensuring that low-income communities and minority youth benefit from green jobs programs is the goal of a new partnership between the White House and two grassroots organizations—Hip Hop Caucus and Green For All.
Two Cabinet members and leaders of the grassroots groups unveiled the Green the Block initiative Tuesday at a White House press conference, describing the partnership as as both a campaign and a coalition that is designed to build political support for greening efforts in low-income and minority communities..
“The 20th century was defined by civil rights and The 21st century will be defined by clean energy,” said Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., president of the Hip Hop Caucus. “Future generations will measure us by our success in transitioning from a fossil fuel economy to a clean energy economy, and in the process building opportunity and prosperity for our most economically disenfranchised communities.”
“We have to convince our generation that this truly is our lunch-counter moment of the 21st century,” said Yearwood, referring to the sit-ins held at segregated diners during the Civil Rights era.
The initiative will officially kick-off with a day of service on September 11, 2009—part of the White House’s already announced United We Serve program. The Green the Block website has more information on local initiatives taking place around the country.
“September 11 is about bringing people together to recognize that change happens not in the corridors of Washington, DC, but it happens in the streets of Detroit, Cleveland, San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond, and cities across the country,” said Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, CEO of the Oakland-based group Green for All.
The cabinet members—EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan—touted some of the investments that the Obama administration has made to assist low-income Americans through greening efforts. In the economic stimulus package, $14 billion is designated for housing upgrades, including $5 billion to make low-income housing more energy efficient. Noting that the government currently spends $5 billion a year providing monetary assistance for energy bills to low-income households, Donovan said investments like those in the stimulus plan will help offset costs for families and the government in the long run.
Jackson noted the EPA’s Tuesday announcement of $61 million for brownfields revitalization efforts. The funds will go toward job training programs.
Jackson also touted the climate and energy bill that passed the House in June as another potential means of growing the green economy and creating new jobs. Green for All’s Ellis-Lamkins praised the House bill for including provisions that help ensure jobs will be created in low-income and minority communities, which include local hiring requirements and devotes a portion of pollution permit revenues to job training programs. She said it will be important to get these communities engaged in the debate as the bill moves in the Senate, in order to ensure that this type of provision is included in the final bill.
“If communities of color aren’t engaged, you won’t see provisions like that,” said Ellis-Lamkins.
Two Cabinet members and leaders of the grassroots groups unveiled the Green the Block initiative Tuesday at a White House press conference, describing the partnership as as both a campaign and a coalition that is designed to build political support for greening efforts in low-income and minority communities..
“The 20th century was defined by civil rights and The 21st century will be defined by clean energy,” said Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., president of the Hip Hop Caucus. “Future generations will measure us by our success in transitioning from a fossil fuel economy to a clean energy economy, and in the process building opportunity and prosperity for our most economically disenfranchised communities.”
“We have to convince our generation that this truly is our lunch-counter moment of the 21st century,” said Yearwood, referring to the sit-ins held at segregated diners during the Civil Rights era.
The initiative will officially kick-off with a day of service on September 11, 2009—part of the White House’s already announced United We Serve program. The Green the Block website has more information on local initiatives taking place around the country.
“September 11 is about bringing people together to recognize that change happens not in the corridors of Washington, DC, but it happens in the streets of Detroit, Cleveland, San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond, and cities across the country,” said Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, CEO of the Oakland-based group Green for All.
The cabinet members—EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan—touted some of the investments that the Obama administration has made to assist low-income Americans through greening efforts. In the economic stimulus package, $14 billion is designated for housing upgrades, including $5 billion to make low-income housing more energy efficient. Noting that the government currently spends $5 billion a year providing monetary assistance for energy bills to low-income households, Donovan said investments like those in the stimulus plan will help offset costs for families and the government in the long run.
Jackson noted the EPA’s Tuesday announcement of $61 million for brownfields revitalization efforts. The funds will go toward job training programs.
Jackson also touted the climate and energy bill that passed the House in June as another potential means of growing the green economy and creating new jobs. Green for All’s Ellis-Lamkins praised the House bill for including provisions that help ensure jobs will be created in low-income and minority communities, which include local hiring requirements and devotes a portion of pollution permit revenues to job training programs. She said it will be important to get these communities engaged in the debate as the bill moves in the Senate, in order to ensure that this type of provision is included in the final bill.
“If communities of color aren’t engaged, you won’t see provisions like that,” said Ellis-Lamkins.
Judge approves Smoky Canyon Mine expansion
An environmental group promises to appeal a federal ruling that on Tuesday approved the expansion of a phosphate mine into a roadless area near Yellowstone National Park.
In his decision, U.S. District Judge Mikel Williams said the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management followed the necessary steps when considering the J.R. Simplot Company's request to expand its Smoky Canyon Mine.
"We already know we're going to appeal," said Marv Hoyt, executive director of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, which sued to stop the expansion. "We basically believe the judge erred in virtually every one of the claims we brought forward."
The J.R. Simplot Co. has mined phosphate rock from leased land in the Caribou National Forest since 1983, supplying about 1.5 million tons of phosphate ore a year to the company's Don fertilizer plant in Pocatello. But the Smoky Canyon Mine's phosphate reserves were expected to be completely played out by the summer of 2010, and last June the Bush administration approved a plan to allow the mine to expand into roadless areas of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest.
The company said the expansion into land about 100 miles south of Yellowstone National Park would provide enough phosphate to keep the Don plant running for another 15 years.
The Greater Yellowstone Coalition sued, contending the expansion would further harm a region already polluted with selenium from past phosphate mining. Pollution from other mines in the 1990s resulted in the deaths of horses and hundreds of sheep grazing in areas tainted by selenium.
In its lawsuit, the coalition said the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management violated several federal rules, including the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Act.
Several entities intervened in the case to throw their support behind the mine, including the cities of Pocatello and Chubbuck, Idaho and Afton, Wyo., counties on both sides of the state line, United Steel Workers Local 632 and the Idaho Farm Bureau. All said they would be hurt by disruptions to Simplot's phosphate supply.
In his ruling, Williams wrote that the case had been one of the more difficult issues for the court to decide and said that the Greater Yellowstone Coalition made some very good arguments on how the ground and surface water could be affected.
But ultimately, Williams said, the environmental group was making its claim based on a hypothetical future violation of federal clean water rules.
It's not the job of the court to judge the wisdom of government decisions, but only to make sure the agencies took a hard look at a proposed action, Williams said.
"The NEPA process worked here as it was designed to work," Williams wrote, noting that there was opportunity for the public, environmental groups and government agencies to comment on the expansion. "As a result of those comments and the Agencies' response, the ultimate action is more protective of the environment than it would have been without the process."
The expansion appears to strike a reasonable balance between the need of Simplot and its employees, farmers and stakeholders, the judge said.
"We're delighted by the decision and looking forward to continuing to mine phosphate rock in an environmentally responsible manner as we have done for many years," Simplot Company spokesman David Cuoio said in a prepared statement.
"We're also happy that the communities that are affected by this decision will continue to benefit economically from our phosphate-related operations."
In his decision, U.S. District Judge Mikel Williams said the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management followed the necessary steps when considering the J.R. Simplot Company's request to expand its Smoky Canyon Mine.
"We already know we're going to appeal," said Marv Hoyt, executive director of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, which sued to stop the expansion. "We basically believe the judge erred in virtually every one of the claims we brought forward."
The J.R. Simplot Co. has mined phosphate rock from leased land in the Caribou National Forest since 1983, supplying about 1.5 million tons of phosphate ore a year to the company's Don fertilizer plant in Pocatello. But the Smoky Canyon Mine's phosphate reserves were expected to be completely played out by the summer of 2010, and last June the Bush administration approved a plan to allow the mine to expand into roadless areas of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest.
The company said the expansion into land about 100 miles south of Yellowstone National Park would provide enough phosphate to keep the Don plant running for another 15 years.
The Greater Yellowstone Coalition sued, contending the expansion would further harm a region already polluted with selenium from past phosphate mining. Pollution from other mines in the 1990s resulted in the deaths of horses and hundreds of sheep grazing in areas tainted by selenium.
In its lawsuit, the coalition said the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management violated several federal rules, including the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Act.
Several entities intervened in the case to throw their support behind the mine, including the cities of Pocatello and Chubbuck, Idaho and Afton, Wyo., counties on both sides of the state line, United Steel Workers Local 632 and the Idaho Farm Bureau. All said they would be hurt by disruptions to Simplot's phosphate supply.
In his ruling, Williams wrote that the case had been one of the more difficult issues for the court to decide and said that the Greater Yellowstone Coalition made some very good arguments on how the ground and surface water could be affected.
But ultimately, Williams said, the environmental group was making its claim based on a hypothetical future violation of federal clean water rules.
It's not the job of the court to judge the wisdom of government decisions, but only to make sure the agencies took a hard look at a proposed action, Williams said.
"The NEPA process worked here as it was designed to work," Williams wrote, noting that there was opportunity for the public, environmental groups and government agencies to comment on the expansion. "As a result of those comments and the Agencies' response, the ultimate action is more protective of the environment than it would have been without the process."
The expansion appears to strike a reasonable balance between the need of Simplot and its employees, farmers and stakeholders, the judge said.
"We're delighted by the decision and looking forward to continuing to mine phosphate rock in an environmentally responsible manner as we have done for many years," Simplot Company spokesman David Cuoio said in a prepared statement.
"We're also happy that the communities that are affected by this decision will continue to benefit economically from our phosphate-related operations."
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Meteorologists Find That Increased Ocean Temperatures Cause Increasingly Intense Hurricanes
Climate change experts studying hurricanes documented a 35-year warming trend in ocean surface temperature and linked it to larger hurricanes. The increase has been 1 degree Fahrenheit, resulting in four percent more atmospheric water vapor and six to eight percent more rainfall. Though global warming does not guarantee that each year will see record-strength hurricanes, the long-term ocean warming should raise the baseline of hurricane activity.
According to new research, hurricanes in the North Atlantic are stronger and larger than ever before. Scientists now say they know what's to blame.
Winds topping over 75 miles per hour … rain slamming down … waves crashing into the coast!
Some climate scientists believe hurricanes in the North Atlantic loom more dangerous than ever. But now they say … they think know why.
"Since about 1970, there has been a warming of the global oceans including the areas where the hurricanes form due to increases in carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," Kevin Trenberth, NCAR Scientist in Boulder, Colo., told Ivanhoe.
Trenberth builds his case asking the tough questions. "Do they get more intense? Do they get bigger? Do they last longer? Are there more of them?" Trenberth asks.
Over the past 35 years, the Atlantic's sea surface temperature has increased one degree Fahrenheit. The result … a four-percent increase of atmospheric water vapor and a six to eight-percent increase in rainfall.
Conditions that contribute to larger, more forceful, hurricanes. The cause -- Trenberth says predominantly global warming. "What we think is likely to happen, they will get more intense, they will likely get a little bigger, but maybe there may not be quite as many," Trenberth said. Other scientists aren't so convinced and believe the warming is a natural occurrence, but either way -- a forecast for the future that impacts us all.
How does a hurricane form? A hurricane is a type of tropical cyclone, a low-pressure system that usually forms in the tropics and has winds that circulate counterclockwise near the earth's surface.
Storms are considered hurricanes when their wind speeds surpass 74 MPH. Every hurricane arises from the combination of warm water and moist warm air. Tropical thunderstorms drift out over warm ocean waters and encounter winds coming in from near the equator.
Warm, moist air from the ocean surface rises rapidly, encounters cooler air, and condenses into water vapor to form storm clouds, releasing heat in the process. This heat causes the condensation process to continue, so that more and more warm moist air is drawn into the developing storm, creating a wind pattern that spirals around the relatively calm center, or eye, of the storm, much like water swirling down a drain. The winds keep circling and accelerating to form a classic cyclone pattern.
According to new research, hurricanes in the North Atlantic are stronger and larger than ever before. Scientists now say they know what's to blame.
Winds topping over 75 miles per hour … rain slamming down … waves crashing into the coast!
Some climate scientists believe hurricanes in the North Atlantic loom more dangerous than ever. But now they say … they think know why.
"Since about 1970, there has been a warming of the global oceans including the areas where the hurricanes form due to increases in carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," Kevin Trenberth, NCAR Scientist in Boulder, Colo., told Ivanhoe.
Trenberth builds his case asking the tough questions. "Do they get more intense? Do they get bigger? Do they last longer? Are there more of them?" Trenberth asks.
Over the past 35 years, the Atlantic's sea surface temperature has increased one degree Fahrenheit. The result … a four-percent increase of atmospheric water vapor and a six to eight-percent increase in rainfall.
Conditions that contribute to larger, more forceful, hurricanes. The cause -- Trenberth says predominantly global warming. "What we think is likely to happen, they will get more intense, they will likely get a little bigger, but maybe there may not be quite as many," Trenberth said. Other scientists aren't so convinced and believe the warming is a natural occurrence, but either way -- a forecast for the future that impacts us all.
How does a hurricane form? A hurricane is a type of tropical cyclone, a low-pressure system that usually forms in the tropics and has winds that circulate counterclockwise near the earth's surface.
Storms are considered hurricanes when their wind speeds surpass 74 MPH. Every hurricane arises from the combination of warm water and moist warm air. Tropical thunderstorms drift out over warm ocean waters and encounter winds coming in from near the equator.
Warm, moist air from the ocean surface rises rapidly, encounters cooler air, and condenses into water vapor to form storm clouds, releasing heat in the process. This heat causes the condensation process to continue, so that more and more warm moist air is drawn into the developing storm, creating a wind pattern that spirals around the relatively calm center, or eye, of the storm, much like water swirling down a drain. The winds keep circling and accelerating to form a classic cyclone pattern.
Sick Fish May Get Sicker Due To Climate Change And Other Stresses
Entire populations of North American fish already are being affected by several emerging diseases, a problem that threatens to increase in the future with climate change and other stresses on aquatic ecosystems, according to a noted U.S. Geological Survey researcher giving an invited talk on this subject August 3 at the Wildlife Disease Association conference"A generation ago, we couldn't have imaged the explosive growth in disease issues facing many of our wild fish populations," said Dr. Jim Winton, a fish disease specialist at the USGS Western Fisheries Research Center. "Most fish health research at that time was directed toward diseases of farmed fish."
In contrast, said Winton, recent studies in natural aquatic systems have revealed that, in addition to being a cause of natural death, infectious and parasitic fish diseases can produce significantly greater mortality in altered habitats leading to population fluctuations, extinction of endangered fish, reduced overall health and increased susceptibility to predation.
In addition, said Winton, populations of certain fish species have suffered catastrophic losses after non-native diseases were first introduced into a water body. Examples include whirling disease in the intermountain west and the recent introduction of viral hemorrhagic septicemia in the Great Lakes.
"The scientific community is increasingly concerned that global trade, extensive habitat alteration, accumulations of contaminants and other human-caused stresses stressors, including climate change, will affect the distribution or severity of fish diseases and contribute to increasing population-scale losses in these important natural resources," Winton said.
Disease is often ignored as a factor affecting wild populations of fish and wildlife because the effects are difficult to observe and quantify, noted Winton. But as cold-blooded animals, fish are highly dependent on environmental conditions, especially temperature, to help maintain critical physiological processes such as immune function that can affect whether a fish gets a disease or parasite, how it is affected by it, and how the disease progresses.
In particular, said Winton, some fish – such as salmon, trout and muskellunge - have a fairly narrow range of water temperatures they can live in. "If that temperature is exceeded over a period of time, not only may die-offs occur, but also, the increased stress and altered immune function will lead to greater levels of infectious or parasitic diseases which is why global warming is of particular concern.
Winton said that increased scientific recognition of fish diseases as a potential population-limiting factor in wild populations of fish is partly the result of the emergence of high-profile diseases such as whirling disease in wild-spawning rainbow trout in the Rocky Mountain West, viral hemorrhagic septicemia in the North Pacific Ocean and the Great Lakes, and a fungal-like disease, ichthyophoniasis, in adult Chinook salmon in the Yukon River.
The 58th annual meeting of the Wildlife Disease Association (WDA) will be August 2-7, 2009, in Blaine, Wash. The theme is Wildlife Health from Land to Sea: Impacts of a Changing World. USGS scientist Dr. Jim Winton, is presenting the paper, "The ecology of emerging diseases among populations of wild fish
in Blaine, Wash.
In contrast, said Winton, recent studies in natural aquatic systems have revealed that, in addition to being a cause of natural death, infectious and parasitic fish diseases can produce significantly greater mortality in altered habitats leading to population fluctuations, extinction of endangered fish, reduced overall health and increased susceptibility to predation.
In addition, said Winton, populations of certain fish species have suffered catastrophic losses after non-native diseases were first introduced into a water body. Examples include whirling disease in the intermountain west and the recent introduction of viral hemorrhagic septicemia in the Great Lakes.
"The scientific community is increasingly concerned that global trade, extensive habitat alteration, accumulations of contaminants and other human-caused stresses stressors, including climate change, will affect the distribution or severity of fish diseases and contribute to increasing population-scale losses in these important natural resources," Winton said.
Disease is often ignored as a factor affecting wild populations of fish and wildlife because the effects are difficult to observe and quantify, noted Winton. But as cold-blooded animals, fish are highly dependent on environmental conditions, especially temperature, to help maintain critical physiological processes such as immune function that can affect whether a fish gets a disease or parasite, how it is affected by it, and how the disease progresses.
In particular, said Winton, some fish – such as salmon, trout and muskellunge - have a fairly narrow range of water temperatures they can live in. "If that temperature is exceeded over a period of time, not only may die-offs occur, but also, the increased stress and altered immune function will lead to greater levels of infectious or parasitic diseases which is why global warming is of particular concern.
Winton said that increased scientific recognition of fish diseases as a potential population-limiting factor in wild populations of fish is partly the result of the emergence of high-profile diseases such as whirling disease in wild-spawning rainbow trout in the Rocky Mountain West, viral hemorrhagic septicemia in the North Pacific Ocean and the Great Lakes, and a fungal-like disease, ichthyophoniasis, in adult Chinook salmon in the Yukon River.
The 58th annual meeting of the Wildlife Disease Association (WDA) will be August 2-7, 2009, in Blaine, Wash. The theme is Wildlife Health from Land to Sea: Impacts of a Changing World. USGS scientist Dr. Jim Winton, is presenting the paper, "The ecology of emerging diseases among populations of wild fish
in Blaine, Wash.
Climate change causing oceans to become more acidic, endangering sea life
Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are a major contributor to climate change, and now a new study has confirmed that atmospheric CO2 is also affecting the ocean chemistry, potentially threatening marine life.
Montana State University scientist Robert Dore has been taking samples of water in the Pacific Ocean for almost two decades.
"We're sailing out of Honolulu harbor. We're in the harbor right now and just about to break away from the dock."
I reached Prof. Dore on board the research vessel Kilo Moana, about to leave for a point in the Pacific known as Station Aloha, where he has been studying the ocean water since the late 1980s.
"We've been going to the same spot in the Pacific Ocean, and we've been measuring a whole suite of different chemical, biological, physical measurements to try and characterize long-term change in the open ocean environment. And one of the key things that we measure is CO2 levels. And we've been able to document this progressive invasion of atmospheric CO2 into the ocean."
Scientists expected that as atmospheric CO2 increased, more and more of the carbon dioxide would be absorbed into the ocean, affecting the chemical balance of the seawater, with a potentially harmful impact on shellfish and coral in particular.
"As carbon dioxide dissolves in water, or seawater in this case, it forms a weak acid, carbonic acid," Dore explains. "And therefore, as the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere goes up and that exchanges with the surface seawater, it drives the pH down, makes it more acidic."
The seawater samples Dore and his colleagues have analyzed confirm what the theory predicts.
"The pH of the ocean out here has been decreasing. And it has been decreasing at pretty much the rate that we'd expect from the physics and the chemistry."
The lower pH levels — measuring increased acidification — varied seasonally and also from year to year. It also varied with depth.
The effect was particular striking at about 250 meters down, and again at 500 meters. Dore and his colleagues came up with two possible explanations. It could be that surface water picked up CO2 and then moved to those depths. Or there could be a biological explanation.
"So you can think of it as algae growing at the surface, taking up CO2, [they] die, sink, bacteria eat them. CO2 comes back out at some deeper depth. It's just a way of actually transporting the signal [measured CO2] to depth more quickly than just mixing."
Dore's laboratory measurements are not just equations and charts in his paper. He says they have a real-world impact.
"It's important to realize that acidification of the oceans is really happening. And it can have negative impacts on a whole variety of marine life from fisheries to coral reefs. It's potentially catastrophic."
Montana State University environmental scientist John Dore's paper appears this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Montana State University scientist Robert Dore has been taking samples of water in the Pacific Ocean for almost two decades.
"We're sailing out of Honolulu harbor. We're in the harbor right now and just about to break away from the dock."
I reached Prof. Dore on board the research vessel Kilo Moana, about to leave for a point in the Pacific known as Station Aloha, where he has been studying the ocean water since the late 1980s.
"We've been going to the same spot in the Pacific Ocean, and we've been measuring a whole suite of different chemical, biological, physical measurements to try and characterize long-term change in the open ocean environment. And one of the key things that we measure is CO2 levels. And we've been able to document this progressive invasion of atmospheric CO2 into the ocean."
Scientists expected that as atmospheric CO2 increased, more and more of the carbon dioxide would be absorbed into the ocean, affecting the chemical balance of the seawater, with a potentially harmful impact on shellfish and coral in particular.
"As carbon dioxide dissolves in water, or seawater in this case, it forms a weak acid, carbonic acid," Dore explains. "And therefore, as the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere goes up and that exchanges with the surface seawater, it drives the pH down, makes it more acidic."
The seawater samples Dore and his colleagues have analyzed confirm what the theory predicts.
"The pH of the ocean out here has been decreasing. And it has been decreasing at pretty much the rate that we'd expect from the physics and the chemistry."
The lower pH levels — measuring increased acidification — varied seasonally and also from year to year. It also varied with depth.
The effect was particular striking at about 250 meters down, and again at 500 meters. Dore and his colleagues came up with two possible explanations. It could be that surface water picked up CO2 and then moved to those depths. Or there could be a biological explanation.
"So you can think of it as algae growing at the surface, taking up CO2, [they] die, sink, bacteria eat them. CO2 comes back out at some deeper depth. It's just a way of actually transporting the signal [measured CO2] to depth more quickly than just mixing."
Dore's laboratory measurements are not just equations and charts in his paper. He says they have a real-world impact.
"It's important to realize that acidification of the oceans is really happening. And it can have negative impacts on a whole variety of marine life from fisheries to coral reefs. It's potentially catastrophic."
Montana State University environmental scientist John Dore's paper appears this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
SCENARIOS: Fate of climate change bill in Congress
The fate of U.S. climate control legislation is in the hands of the Senate, where it faces an uphill climb. Democratic leaders hope to put it to a vote in October.
The House of Representatives narrowly passed its version of a bill to mandate reductions in industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.
Here are some scenarios on how the battle in Congress could play out in coming months:
* BARBARA BOXER'S 'TWEAKS'
The California Democrat, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, says she's taking the House-passed bill and making some "tweaks." Boxer says she will formally introduce her bill in early September.
Environmentalists and others speculate Boxer might opt, as a starting point, for a slightly higher goal for reducing carbon emissions -- say 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, instead of the 17 percent in the House bill.
A big question is whether and how Boxer will "tweak" the initial sale or giveaway of pollution permits utilities and manufacturers will be required to obtain. President Barack Obama wanted all permits to be sold; the House ended up doing nearly the opposite, with 85 percent being given away. Boxer is under pressure from all sides.
Senator John Kerry says the Senate bill will have tougher controls than the House-passed bill to discourage abusive financial market speculation on trading of pollution permits.
Boxer and other committee heads have been given a late September deadline for producing a bill.
* 99 OTHER SENATORS' TWEAKS
The magic number is 60 in the Senate. That's how many votes are needed in the 100-member Senate to rescue bills from opponents' delaying tactics. Reaching 60 votes on the Senate floor will require plenty of deal-making and just about every senator could get involved. Among the possibilities:
-- A lower target for reducing emissions. Some moderates want a 14 percent reduction in carbon output by 2020.
-- Prominent senators like John McCain demand that nuclear energy be included in the "cap and trade" program lowering carbon emissions and letting companies sell pollution permits to each other.
-- Coal-state senators want more breaks and some of them are in a strong position to influence the legislation.
-- If the Senate manages to pass a bill, differences would still need to be worked out with the House, probably early next year.
* THE RENEWABLES ROUTE
Some senators who are lukewarm about a sweeping climate change bill argue there's not enough time to pass one this year. Their solution: Just pass legislation already approved by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee requiring utilities to generate 15 percent of their electricity by 2021 from renewable sources like solar and wind power. The bill also encourages other clean energy investments.
Senate Democratic leaders would like to couple this with the bigger cap and trade climate bill. But if that's not possible, they could opt for the renewables piece, which also would expand some offshore oil drilling.
* LEAVE IT TO EPA
If Congress fails to pass a climate change bill by the end of the year, when countries from around the world meet in Copenhagen to mull coordinated steps to slow global warming, Obama has a fall-back plan: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is poised to go ahead, maybe next March, with its own rules on limiting carbon emissions. Environmentalists think federal legislation would be more effective, but if that's not politically possible, regulation by the executive branch might be the next-best option.
The House of Representatives narrowly passed its version of a bill to mandate reductions in industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.
Here are some scenarios on how the battle in Congress could play out in coming months:
* BARBARA BOXER'S 'TWEAKS'
The California Democrat, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, says she's taking the House-passed bill and making some "tweaks." Boxer says she will formally introduce her bill in early September.
Environmentalists and others speculate Boxer might opt, as a starting point, for a slightly higher goal for reducing carbon emissions -- say 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, instead of the 17 percent in the House bill.
A big question is whether and how Boxer will "tweak" the initial sale or giveaway of pollution permits utilities and manufacturers will be required to obtain. President Barack Obama wanted all permits to be sold; the House ended up doing nearly the opposite, with 85 percent being given away. Boxer is under pressure from all sides.
Senator John Kerry says the Senate bill will have tougher controls than the House-passed bill to discourage abusive financial market speculation on trading of pollution permits.
Boxer and other committee heads have been given a late September deadline for producing a bill.
* 99 OTHER SENATORS' TWEAKS
The magic number is 60 in the Senate. That's how many votes are needed in the 100-member Senate to rescue bills from opponents' delaying tactics. Reaching 60 votes on the Senate floor will require plenty of deal-making and just about every senator could get involved. Among the possibilities:
-- A lower target for reducing emissions. Some moderates want a 14 percent reduction in carbon output by 2020.
-- Prominent senators like John McCain demand that nuclear energy be included in the "cap and trade" program lowering carbon emissions and letting companies sell pollution permits to each other.
-- Coal-state senators want more breaks and some of them are in a strong position to influence the legislation.
-- If the Senate manages to pass a bill, differences would still need to be worked out with the House, probably early next year.
* THE RENEWABLES ROUTE
Some senators who are lukewarm about a sweeping climate change bill argue there's not enough time to pass one this year. Their solution: Just pass legislation already approved by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee requiring utilities to generate 15 percent of their electricity by 2021 from renewable sources like solar and wind power. The bill also encourages other clean energy investments.
Senate Democratic leaders would like to couple this with the bigger cap and trade climate bill. But if that's not possible, they could opt for the renewables piece, which also would expand some offshore oil drilling.
* LEAVE IT TO EPA
If Congress fails to pass a climate change bill by the end of the year, when countries from around the world meet in Copenhagen to mull coordinated steps to slow global warming, Obama has a fall-back plan: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is poised to go ahead, maybe next March, with its own rules on limiting carbon emissions. Environmentalists think federal legislation would be more effective, but if that's not politically possible, regulation by the executive branch might be the next-best option.
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