The Gathering Storm: A Treatise on the State of the World From 1998 to 2008

Jim Swann practiced architecture in Chicago at Swann and Weiskopf for 30 years before moving to Bellingham in 1992. His book on human rights and the environment, “Human Rights and the Ecological Imperative” is available. Please contact Mr. Swann at jimswann@hotmail.com for a copy.

Editor’s Note: Whatcom Watch published early chapters of Mr. Swann’s book “Human Rights and the Ecological Imperative” as a series in July, August and September 2004. The next few months, we’ll publish chapters VIII and IX as a series. The chapters deal with the ecological imperative.

Part 2

I was about to finalize what I considered a definitive look at the future by some of the best scientific minds when I ran across and article in In Context #32. It was a “multilogue” between several scientists on the subject of hope against a background of dire predictions of global disaster entitled “Hope and the Ozone” by William Prescott, formerly associated with the Climate Protection Institute and guest editor for the last edition of In Context. He wrote an article entitled “Global Climate Change.”

What follows is Prescott’s reply to Donella H. Meadows, David Korten, and others. He paints a pessimistic picture indeed and throws it out for the others to counter:

My understanding is that most CFCs haven’t even reached the stratosphere yet, and that their chlorine will later be active for 80 to 120 years. The 5 to 8 percent loss above our heads in the last decade does not include those CFCs (the majority) still migrating upwards. At 5 to 8 percent per decade, 50 to 80 percent of the ozone layer would be gone in a century. Probably making life unlivable on this planet.

But you won’t have to wait: since most of the real danger hasn’t even arrived in the shooting zone, the process of deterioration will most likely be rapid and nonlinear — something like the nonlinear breakdowns we’ve already seen in some acid-rain-soaked forests, or in the bleaching of coral reefs, or in many types of desertification. Or somewhat like what’s expected with climate change. These systems seemed like they might survive for awhile; then they fell apart. Sudden breakdowns on the heels of continued stress.

Systems thinking is a double-edged sword. Along with appreciating interconnectedness and order comes an appreciation for interconnectedness and chaos, disequilibrium. Starting from this assumption — that the stability of natural processes can no longer be depended upon for planning our future — means that the building of humane, sustainable culture becomes a very different, and much less charted, adventure.

Latest reports (2006) on the status of the ozone layer come from University of Alabama scientist Michael Newchurch after analyzing data from three NASA satellites. He says “We’re not gaining ozone but we’re losing it less quickly and the amount of chlorine in that layer of the stratosphere has not yet peaked, but has slowed down significantly, so we should start to see some ozone improvement in the coming years.”

The findings do not put the ozone layer in the clear, however. For one, improvements were seen only in the upper stratosphere. “We don’t see compelling evidence that the destruction of ozone is slowing in the lower stratosphere, where 80 percent of the protective ozone layer exists,” Newchurch says.

That’s because factors in addition to chlorine, such as greenhouse gases and changing wind currents, alter the ozone layer at lower altitudes. But Newchurch notes that the results are a promising beginning for an ozone layer recovery. I take this to mean that we shouldn’t join Prescott in his hopeless state just yet.

There is another factor. Recently scientists have discovered that “dimming of the sun” is lowering projected global warming temperatures, but not uniformly geographically. Atmospheric aerosols, mostly sulfates, are products of fossil fuel burning and other human activities that reflect sunlight back into space, thus creating a cooling effect.

They form in clouds as droplets and partially evaporate leaving concentrated submicron aerosol droplets. They hover in clouds up to 25,000 feet reflecting sunlight outward. They were turning the clouds into mirrors. As scientists started to investigate the effects of global dimming they made the most disturbing discovery of all: those more reflective clouds could alter the pattern of the world’s rainfall with tragic consequences.

They also found that water was evaporating more slowly than 40 years ago. When this was translated into solar energy it amounted to 10 percent less sunlight in some locations and as much as 30 percent in others. Why? Global dimming was the culprit. The loss of sunlight was discovered after the 9/11 attack when airline flights were suspended for three days.

We have heard many reports from those studying the atmosphere, about global warming and how it impacts our lives. Now let’s hear about biodiversity and how human populations are causing “a runaway Malthusian exclusion” according to conservation biologists. It appears that both temperature rise and population growth are major factors. All are a result of fossil fuel technologies.

We are destroying other species and their habitat for our own species’ use both directly through consumption and indirectly through our pollution of the atmosphere, land and sea. Quotes are from an article by Sarah Graham in World Watch Magazine, August 2006.

… species that are lost, or nearly so, are increasingly common because human activities are driving them to extinction a thousand times faster than the normal rate, according to ...Global Biodiversity Outlook 2. The report echoes the United Nations’ Millennium Ecosystem Assessment ... and proclaims that a “sixth mass extinction” is under way, the worst loss of species since the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.

A group of researchers presented perhaps the most comprehensive effort to day to quantify these possible effects in a 2004 paper in Nature magazine. Led by biologist Chris Thomas (then at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom), the group assessed the present distributions of 1,103 animal and plant species and projected how the habitat available to them would change under conditions predicted by the most commonly used computer model of climate change. As the Earth warms, boreal forest is expected to shrink towards the poles, for example, and alpine habitat will retreat up the sides of the mountains.

Reasoning the habitat loss, whether it’s caused by chainsaws or the greenhouse effect, Thomas’s team calculated the proportion of habitat that species are likely to lose as the climate warms, then used the species-area relation to predict the number of extinctions likely to result. They found that, depending on the assumptions of the model, 15 to 37 percent of the species would be on their way to extinction by 2050.

It appears that most species will be affected: plants, animals, birds, fish — they are all interdependent. William Prescott in “Hope and the Ozone” states, “That the stability of natural processes can no longer be depended on for planning our future — means that the building of a sustainable culture becomes very difficult, and much less chartered, adventure.”

One article I read in our local Bellingham Herald is perhaps an illustration of Prescott’s observation. I cannot quote it directly but I will try to summarize it. A mother seal and her pup were found by naturalists in an inexplicable state of confusion when brought to a shelter for observation. The two were briefly left alone.

When the naturalists returned to their horror they found the pup torn to pieces, which could have only been caused by its mother. Through subsequent analysis it was determined that the mother seal had ingested poisoned algae. And how was the algae poisoned? It had been overheated by the sun. The seal had become a victim of global warming.

Oceans were the last to be explored in depth until this century. Here is a brief digest from the experts of what is happening down below, edited from a New York Times article dated February 26, 2008.

The most widespread human fingerprint is a slow drop in the pH of surface waters around the world as a portion of the billions of tons of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere from fuel and forest burning each year is absorbed in water, where it forms carbonic acid.

That progressive shift in ocean chemistry could eventually disrupt shell-forming plankton and reef-building species, particularly where other impacts, including rising temperatures from human-caused global warming, create simultaneous stresses, many marine biologists say.

“I study this stuff all the time and didn’t expect the impacts to be as pervasive as we found,” Dr. Halpern said.

The review provides a baseline necessary for tracking further shifts, he said. It also identifies some unanticipated trouble spots, similar to terrestrial biodiversity “hot spots” that environmental groups have identified over the years.

Such an analysis is long overdue, many marine biologists said in interviews. People’s conservation concerns have mainly focused on land, even though the seas cover two-thirds of the planet and are a vital source of food and pleasure.

Sylvia Earle, an oceanographer and National Geographic Society “explorer in residence,” said people care only about what they know. A big question now is whether such surveys are providing too little knowledge, too late.

“We learned more about the nature of the ocean in the latter part of the 20th century than during all preceding human history,” Dr. Earle said. “But we also lost more.”

A separate mapping effort published this month focused on introduced invasive species and found that 84 percent of the world’s coastal waters were affected, with Arctic waters next in line as shipping there grows in a warming world.

More than half the introduced species that take hold are having deleterious effects, said Jennifer Molnar, a conservation scientist at the Nature Conservancy who led that study, which was published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

The House of Representatives is considering legislation aimed at tightening controls on the ballast water that stabilizes freighters when they are not full. Ballast water and organisms clinging to hulls and anchors have been the source of many costly marine invasions, including the introduction of zebra mussels to American waters and the comb jelly, a small jellyfish, to the Black Sea.

That species exploded after its accidental introduction in 1993, vacuuming up plankton until it made up 90 percent of the sea’s life by weight, causing fisheries to collapse. Its population there has since crashed, partly because of the arrival of a species of jellyfish that eats the established invader.

Among the needed steps, Dr. Lubchenco said, are expanding protected marine areas and curbing pollution, including carbon dioxide.

“We cannot go back in time to some past system,” Dr. Lubchenco said. “But we can protect and restore the functioning of today’s ecosystems so they can be as healthy, productive and resilient as possible.”

Rachel Carson was among the first to alert us to the “unintended side effects” of DDT, a chemical insect spray. Her book “Silent Spring” was the first warning shot in an increasing war against other chemicals whose side effects were also unintentional; e.g., polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs); thence to medications, acid rain, smog, nuclear radiation, ozone depletion, global warming and genetically modified organisms.

The economists had a polite word for what was happening. They called it “externalizing costs,” which translated meant we, the tax-paying citizens, would be paying in dollars or in our poor health for corporate oversights. We might also be jeopardizing our collective biodiversity.

Let me introduce a cautionary note here to the technologists. At first our mistakes were termed “unintended side effects,” those things the technologists forgot to take into account, or perhaps their corporate masters were pushing too hard to get the product to market.

You might call it corporate negligence, something their lawyers could handle later. Sometimes it proved too much for the lawyers: a recall of all cars for some major defect or oil spills that stopped fishing at certain locations for several years. Even in the worst circumstance the lawyers might be able to stall a settlement in the courts for years.

Today there is a new term for those “unintended effects,” those heat sinks that fall outside the usable results sought after. The term is “sequestering” meaning “to set aside” or “to hide.” To date the technologists, looking to the future, have suggested this solution for all their proposed technologies to combat global warming.

For coal they propose coal gasification combined cycle (IGCC), which uses extremely high pressures to turn coal into liquid before it is burned, resulting in less pollution than other coal processes. That (less pollution than … etc.) doesn’t do much to solve our problem so we must also sequester that nasty CO2. This is big coal’s answer for generating electricity.

For transportation the technologists offer us hydrogen fuel cells. These fuel cells operate like a battery, but unlike a battery they do not run down or require recharging. They will produce energy in the form of electricity as long as fuel is supplied; and what is the fuel — natural gas, methanol or gasoline. But to get the hydrogen necessary to operate the fuel cells, they must separate out the H2 from the carbon in the gasoline (Cx). And what to do with the carbon? Sequester it!

So much for electric generation and oil technology for industry, which requires more of the same. Natural gas and liquid natural gas (LGN) are the cleanest of the fossil fuels but limited in supply except in Russia. They can be burned for heating/cooling with efficient existing technology. Finally, there’s nuclear power. We are already sequestering our spent fuel rods in Yucca Mountain with much subsidy and prayer.

Is sequestering a serious possibility? Listen to Jeff Goodell discussing one sequestering field, which is currently the largest in the world. What follows is an excerpt from his book “Big Coal:”

… widespread deployment of geologic sequestration would be a huge engineering project. To make any significant dent in the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere, hundreds of underground CO2 reservoirs would have to be drilled and maintained.

For example, the Weyburn field, which is currently the largest sequestration project in the world, during the project’s 25-year life span, 25 million tons of CO2 will be stored underground. That sounds like a lot, but it’s only about as much CO2 as Georgia Power’s Plant Scherer releases in a single year.

Each CO2 reservoir would spread out 50 or so square miles underground, which means that if carbon sequestration does indeed become widespread, tens of thousands of people will be living above giant bubbles of CO2.

I would suggest an answer but better yet I will mention one other sequestering project that isn’t working. We tried the atmosphere and it has only taken about 50 years of heavy use to get where we are today! We must make a serious attempt to solve our problems. Is it worth doing? It’s only our entire civilization that’s at stake. Is it doable? I’m not sure, but it’s worth a try. We have nothing more to lose.

This is about where most renewables perform basic functions within the ecological scheme of things. When they can be harnessed for human use without disrupting those basic functions we can use them unless the costs of conversion exceeds the net energy produced.

In each case the converters are non-renewables made of high-tech metal and other manufactured items relying on availability. Lastly, these renewables and their converters will be forced to adapt to the reality of global warming and its impact on the biosphere.

Solar Energy: Passive solar used in buildings with insulating glass can reduce heat loss, however photovoltaic devices which convert sunlight to electricity yield no net energy.

Wind Energy: Modern wind turbines on high towers, with the help of computers to adjust for wind loads, can produce net energy where wind velocity is relatively steady. The contribution of net energy is low and good locations for wind farms are limited. That said, wind does have a place where other options are scarce.

Geothermal Energy: In volcanic regions where temperature differences are great enough to produce a net energy, they can be essential. This is the case in Iceland where it is used extensively. However, such locations are rare.

Hydroelectric: Elevated water from mountains, rivers and glaciers dammed with concrete and steel and housing generators for converting water flows into electricity, water for crop irrigation and local consumption.

Summary: With the exception of the big dams and a few scattered geothermal sites no renewable energy options have the net energy capacity to equal those of fossil fuels. They will not support our high level of structure or process of our civilization nor our burgeoning populations.

Many of the major rivers in the U.S. were provided with these huge dams in the 20th century. This allowed for great increase in regional population growth, for electric power, agriculture, drinking water and industry.

On the negative side, these dams frustrate fish migrations, spawning options and migratory fisheries. With growing populations so much water was taken from some rivers that they failed to reach the sea, i.e. the Colorado.

Nuclear Fission: Electric power from nuclear fission is an option but not a renewable one. It relies on the availability of high-grade uranium, which itself may be in short supply soon. These heat engines require structures of steel, titanium, aluminum and concrete. They operate at 1,000 degrees centigrade and currently have an operational life of some 40 years. The U.S. and several European countries have many of these power plants in use today. All require sequestering for their spent rods at great subsidy for an even greater time frame. It’s hard to sequester the used toxic power plants.

Breeder Reactors: Plutonium is a product of the nuclear fission process. Spent fuel rods can be used to generate more heat to ‘breed” more reactions. Note, however, the intense radioactivity of spent rods requires expensive robots for the recovery process, and further note: Plutonium can be used to make atomic bombs with relative little additional technology. Currently Japan and France have breeder reactors.

All reactors’ spent rods must be sequestered for long periods, an expensive operation even for rich countries.

Today we are increasing the use of electricity rapidly signaling a need that can only be filled with nuclear fission. This will entail costly projects, which many countries will not or cannot afford to participate in, or their fulfillment may be too late. Finally, we will miss James Hansen’s 2016 deadline — the 3 degrees centigrade point of no return in temperature rise. Even if Hansen’s projection is wrong, the probability of some or all countries fulfilling their part is slim. §

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