Earth Science for Earth Day

It's Saturday and that mean's its time for another thrilling installment of 

This Saturday in Science!

Due to the proximity of Earth Day (it's on Monday in case you didn't know) this

Monday is Earth Day people.

week's installment will be devoted to all things Earth, including the planet itself, it's weather and the plants and animals that live on it.

Let's begin with the controversy -- Global Warming (or "Climate Change" as the more moderate among us like to say).

Every winter, it snows, and we say "what global warming? It's cold here. Now. In winter."

Well this winter, there weren't much snow to fuel that argument, here or in places that really depend on it, like the drought-starved western states.

In February it became clear that there would only be slim snowpack to break the drought's grip. As The New York Times reported in this article:

Lakes are half full and mountain snows are thin, omens of another summer of drought and wildfire. Complicating matters, many of the worst-hit states have even less water on hand than a year ago, raising the specter of shortages and rationing that could inflict another year of losses on struggling farms.

Reservoir levels have fallen sharply in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. The soil is drier than normal. And while a few recent snowstorms have cheered skiers, the snowpack is so thin in parts of Colorado that the government has declared an “extreme drought” around the ski havens of Vail and Aspen.

“It’s approaching a critical situation,” said Mike Hungenberg, who grows carrots and cabbage on a 3,000-acre farm in Northern Colorado. There is so little water available this year, he said, that he may scale back his planting by a third, and sow less thirsty crops, like beans.

“A year ago we went into the spring season with most of the reservoirs full,” Mr. Hungenberg said. “This year, you’re going in with basically everything empty.”

Thank goodness this whole global warming thing is just a hoax....

It snowed in Jerusalem this year. In Jerusalem!

And hey, global warming can't be real. China experienced the coldest winter in nearly 30 years.

Which is perhaps why "climate change" is the more appropriate term.

It's not so much warming per se, but radical change in normal weather patterns.

As The New York Times reported in January, the evidence is piling up that around the world, extreme weather is the new normal.

China is enduring its coldest winter in nearly 30 years. Brazil is in the grip of a dreadful heat spell. Eastern Russia is so freezing — minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and counting — that the traffic lights recently stopped working in the city of Yakutsk.

Things are really heating up down under...

Bush fires are raging across Australia, fueled by a record-shattering heat wave. Pakistan was inundated by unexpected flooding in September. A vicious storm bringing rain, snow and floods just struck the Middle East. And in the United States, scientists confirmed this week what people could have figured out simply by going outside: last year was the hottest since records began.

According to Omar Baddour, chief of the data management applications division at the World Meteorological Organization, in Geneva, such events are increasing in intensity as well as frequency, a sign that climate change is not just about rising temperatures, but also about intense, unpleasant, anomalous weather of all kinds.

In Australia, the first eight days of 2013 were among the 20 hottest on record.

Every decade since the 1950s has been hotter in Australia than the one before, said Mark Stafford Smith, science director of the Climate Adaptation Flagship at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.

To the north, the extremes have swung the other way, with a band of cold settling across Russia and Northern Europe, bringing thick snow and howling winds to Stockholm, Helsinki and Moscow. (Incongruously, there were also severe snowstorms in Sicily and southern Italy for the first time since World War II; in December, tornadoes and waterspouts struck the Italian coast.)

And then there are the bees.

Stinging aside, bees are an integral part of our food chain and provide crucial pollination services to farmers throughout the world.

Well, they're dying.

As many as half the hives kept by commercial beekeepers died in 2012.
Over the past seven years, the honeybee die-off, known as "colony collapse disorder,"has claimed 5,650,000 hives, valued at $1.61 billion. Italy, France, Slovenia and Germany have taken action to limit the use of bee-killing pesticides. But here in the U.S.? The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is getting ready to approve a deadly new neonicotinoid called Sulfoxaflor.

This bee looks kind of angry to me....

Several environmental groups have filed a lawsuit against the EPA, claiming the agency has failed in its obligation to protect one of the Earth's most vital pollinators from dangerous pesticides.

The Organic Consumers Association urges people to: Take Action Today:
Tell Congress to Ban Neonicotinoid Pesticides before They Devastate the U. S. Bee Population
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ocaactions.cfm?actionnum=8662

RSVP: Swarm the EPA on Earth Day
http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/50865/p/salsa/event/common/public/?event_KEY=70684

Here is more reporting from the Times:

Last year, researchers identified a virus as a major cause of the die-off; the latest suspect is a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids, which are used to protect common agricultural seeds, including corn. The insecticides are systemic, which means they persist throughout the life of the plant. Scientists have demonstrated that exposure to these chemicals damages bees’ brain function, including their ability to home in on the hive.

The data here is a little old, but it just shows how long 

this problem has been growing or, rather, shrinking.

The manufacturers of these chemicals — notably Syngenta and Bayer CropScience — have claimed again and again that they are safe. And it is true that bees face other stresses. Even so, beekeepers managed to keep their hives relatively healthy before the increased use of neonicotinoids began in 2005.

No doubt those same claims were made about DDT's, until they were proven wrong by people who did not stand to make money by their continued manufacture.

(Today's note of irony: It was the effects of DDT and Rachael Carson's landmark book, "Silent Spring," which kicked off the environmental movement and gave us the Earth Day we will mark on Monday.)

So if it all seems like more than we can handle, what can we do?

Well, we can plant trees.

Our forests can help make a difference.

A 40-acre woodlot of 50-year-old trees takes in 30,000 pounds of carbon dioxide sequestered per acre,” according to Timothy J. Fahey, professor of ecology in the department of natural resources at Cornell University. “The forest would be emitting about 22,000 pounds of oxygen.”

The above and below, again, courtesy of The New York Times:

“Every little bit matters,” he said. “In the grand scheme of things, forests in the northeastern United States are counteracting a considerable amount of fossil fuel burning by cars, slowing down the rate at which the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere.”

The contribution varies with the age of the forest and the species involved. There is no real rule of thumb on the difference between conifers and deciduous trees, Dr. Fahey said. Some conifers grow faster, providing more impact sooner.

The Environmental Protection Agency has calculated the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average car as of 2007 at about five metric tons, more than 11,000 pounds, so a single acre of woodlot would be countering the emissions of about 2.7 cars. For 40 acres, that would be about 109 cars.

As U.S. Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, said when asked about the drought out west: “Mother Nature is testing us.”

Lately, I'm not so sure we're going to pass it.

If You Can't Stand the Heat, Get Out Your Wallet

Nati Harnik/Associated Press

Rows of corn stalks in a field south of Blair, Neb., this week. The drought-damaged field was cut down for silage. Can you afford higher food prices?

So it's hot.

It's summer, it's what we should expect right?

Well, it's becoming increasingly clear that not only is it hotter than it ever used to be, but that we have only ourselves to blame.

A National Audubon Society chart of how the greenhouse effect
is making our world warmer.

This comes as no surprise to scientists or those who believe scientists who tell them things they don't want to hear.

It does come as a shock to those living in the fairy land where it's all-natural, it will all be fine and stopping the climate from changing the face of the earth is not more important than jobs (read corporate profits).

Reuters reported yesterday that a new report due out in 2014 will contain evidence that not only is global warming -- climate change, fucked up weather, whatever want to call it -- our fault, but we can now find evidence our carbon footprint can be tied to specific events.

Thanks humans. Thanks a lot.

We're seeing a great deal of progress in attributing a human fingerprint to the probability of particular events or series of events," said Christopher Field, co-chairman of a U.N. report due in 2014 about the impacts of climate change."

"A report by Field's U.N. group last year showed that more weather extremes that can be linked to greenhouse warming, such as the number of high temperature extremes and the fact that the rising fraction of rainfall falls in downpours," according to Reuters.

From the Reuters report: Experts have long blamed a build-up of greenhouse gas emissions for raising worldwide temperatures and causing desertification, floods, droughts, heatwaves, more powerful storms and rising sea levels.

But until recently they have said that naturally very hot, wet, cold, dry or windy weather might explain any single extreme event, like the current drought in the United States or a rare melt of ice in Greenland in July.

But for some extremes, that is now changing.

NOAA's map of the 2011 heatwave in Texas

A study this month, for instance, showed that greenhouse gas emissions had raised the chances of the severe heatwave in Texas in 2011 and unusual heat in Britain in late 2011. Other studies of extremes are under way.

Growing evidence that the dice are loaded towards ever more severe local weather may make it easier for experts to explain global warming to the public, pin down costs and guide investments in everything from roads to flood defenses.

"One of the ironies of climate change is that we have more papers published on the costs of climate change in 2100 than we have published on the costs today. I think that is ridiculous," said Myles Allen, head of climate research at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute.

"We can't (work out current costs) without being able to make the link to extreme weather," he said. "And once you've worked out how much it costs that raises the question of who is going to pay."

In just a few days this year, areas of the Greenland ice sheet that have
never shown any signs of melt before, did so.

Personally, I think the answer to that is pretty clear. You and I are going to pay, and in ways we might not have expected.

Sure, if you have a beach house on a barrier island in New Jersey, you may find it underwater in your lifetime or your children's, but you'll bail it out and rebuild it over and over again before it slips beneath the waves for the final time.

But for those of us without a beach house, we'll pay in other, more essential ways.

Like the 'freaky' storm that blew through the region Thursday. If one of those trees falls on your house, you'll have to pay to have it removed and to fix your house.

Kevin Hoffman/The Mercury

Thursday's "freaky" storm knocked
down this tree on W. Chestnut St.

And if one of those trees falls on some wires and knocks out power, you will have to pay to replace everything in your refrigerator or freezer.

Speaking of food, you'll soon be paying more for it anyway and you can thank global warming for that too.

As the New York Times reported Wednesday, the drought in the mid-west is now so bad, that prices for food basics will increase by 4 to 5 percent next year, just because of the loss of so much of the corn crop.

In fact, "more than half of the country was under moderate to extreme drought in June, the largest area of the contiguous United States affected by such dryness in nearly 60 years. Nearly 1,300 counties across 29 states have been declared federal disaster areas," the Times reported.

"The drought is now affecting 88 percent of the corn crop, a staple of processed foods and animal feed as well as the nation’s leading farm export," the Times reported.

"The drought comes along with heat. So far, 2012 is the hottest year ever recorded in the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, whose records date to 1895," the Times reported (emphasis mine).

"That has sapped the production of corn, soybeans and other crops, afflicting poultry and livestock in turn," thus higher prices for beef and pork as well as vegetables.

2012 is already the hottest year ever recorded in the U.S.

Another way we'll pay is for new roads and, maybe, new or shored up nuclear power plants.

Also on Wednesday, the Times reported on how extreme weather conditions like heat, floods and wind storms, are taking their toll on the nation's infrastructure, infrastructure not designed to withstand such extremes.

"On a single day this month here, a US Airways regional jet became stuck in asphalt that had softened in 100-degree temperatures, and a subway train derailed after the heat stretched the track so far that it kinked — inserting a sharp angle into a stretch that was supposed to be straight. In East Texas, heat and drought have had a startling effect on the clay-rich soils under highways, which “just shrink like crazy,” leading to “horrendous cracking,” said Tom Scullion, senior research engineer with the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University. In Northeastern and Midwestern states, he said, unusually high heat is causing highway sections to expand beyond their design limits, press against each other and “pop up,” creating jarring and even hazardous speed bumps."

We know a thing or two about that.

A buckled section of road in North Carolina. How long before this
happens again on Route 422?

Just last month, in Upper Providence, Route 422 cracked under the extreme and very early heat wave that hit us.

And, in Limerick, it happened last year too, at just about this time.

Then there's the matter of nuclear power plants. We have one of those as well.

"In the Chicago area, a twin-unit nuclear plant had to get special permission to keep operating this month because the pond it uses for cooling water rose to 102 degrees; its license to operate allows it to go only to 100. According to the Midwest Independent System Operator, the grid operator for the region, a different power plant had had to shut because the body of water from which it draws its cooling water had dropped so low that the intake pipe became high and dry; another had to cut back generation because cooling water was too warm."

At the Limerick Generating Station, the cooling water is provided for most of the year by the Schuylkill River, on whose shores the plant is built.

The Schuylkill River intake of the Limerick nuclear plant.

But during the warmer months, when the river, also a drinking water source for more than one million Americans,is low and warm, the plant must draw water from the Delaware River, piping it over to Perkiomen Creek and then over to the plant.

For eight years, Exelon has been pumping water from an abandoned coal mine and from a reservoir near the river's headwaters, into the Schuylkill to augment the flow, and allow the company to pull more water from the Schuylkill than originally envisioned.

On Aug. 28, the Delaware River Basin Commission which has jurisdiction over such experiments, will hold a public hearing at Sunnybrook Ballroom in Lower Pottsgrove on a proposal to make that practice permanent.

Whether rising temperatures made this move necessary -- or will ultimately prove it moot -- is unknown.

Of course, not everything is global warming's fault -- although it is often still our own fault.

Unprecedented floods in Thailand last year, for instance, that caused $45 billion in damage according to a World Bank estimate, were caused by people hemming in rivers and raising water levels rather than by climate change, a study showed, Reuters reported.

And as our food prices go up because of a drought in the Mid-West, we should ask ourselves: Why we are building houses in Lancaster County, home to some of the most fertile, best farming soil in the world, where, currently, there is no drought?