Massive Canadian Ice-Shelf breaks away into the Ocean

Dear Ms. Palin,

Global warming is not a hoax.

The latest disturbing news coming out of the arctic:  (From Reuters)

OTTAWA (Reuters) – A huge 19 square mile (55 square km) ice shelf in Canada’s northern Arctic broke away last month and the remaining shelves have shrunk at a “massive and disturbing” rate, the latest sign of accelerating climate change in the remote region, scientists said on Tuesday.

They said the Markham Ice Shelf, one of just five remaining ice shelves in the Canadian Arctic, split away from Ellesmere Island in early August. They also said two large chunks totaling 47 square miles had broken off the nearby Serson Ice Shelf, reducing it in size by 60 percent.

“The changes … were massive and disturbing,” said Warwick Vincent, director of the Centre for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec.

Temperatures in large parts of the Arctic have risen far faster than the global average in recent decades, a development that experts say is linked to global warming.

“These substantial calving events underscore the rapidity of changes taking place in the Arctic,” said Derek Mueller, an Arctic ice shelf specialist at Trent University in Ontario.

“These changes are irreversible under the present climate and indicate that the environmental conditions that have kept these ice shelves in balance for thousands of years are no longer present,” he said in an e-mailed statement from the research team sent late on Tuesday.

Mueller said the total amount of ice lost from the shelves along Ellesmere Island this summer totaled 83 square miles — more than three times the area of Manhattan island.

The figure is more than 10 times the amount of ice shelf cover that scientists estimated on July 30 would vanish from around the island this summer.

“Reduced sea ice conditions and unusually high air temperatures have facilitated the ice shelf losses,” said Luke Copland of the University of Ottawa.

BLEAK FUTURE

“Extensive new cracks across remaining parts of the largest remaining ice shelf, the Ward Hunt, mean that it will continue to disintegrate in the coming years,” he said.

The first sign of serious recent erosion in the five shelves came in late July, when sheets of ice totaling almost eight square miles broke off the Ward Hunt shelf. Since then that shelf has lost another 8.5 square miles.

Ellesmere Island was once home to a single enormous ice shelf totaling around 3,500 square miles. All that is left of that shelf today are the four much smaller shelves that together cover little more than 300 square miles.

Scientists say the ice shelves, which contain unique ecosystems that had yet to be studied, will not be replaced because they took so long to form.

The rapid melting of ice in the Canadian Arctic archipelago worries Ottawa, which fears foreign ships might try to sail through the waters without seeking permission first.

Last week Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada would toughen reporting requirements for ships entering its waters in the Far North, where some of those territorial claims are disputed by the United States and other countries.

(Editing by Alan Elsner)

SF to Require Meeting LEED Standards

A new law set to be enacted in San Francisco will set increasingly higher energy requirements on new construction.  Large construction/development organizations can be notoriously scheming and vile in order to cut costs, so energy efficiency standards is not something that will ever get any traction as a “voluntary” measure.

I asked a super-smart engineer about possible issues with forcing a company to build to energy specifications that aren’t in their economic best interest and he said, “Building fire-escapes isn’t in their economic interest either, but we force them to do that for the greater good, and they don’t complain.”

Point being, there are a lot of reasons why, as a society, it makes sense to reduce energy demand.  The main three that I can think of being:

1. air pollution / global warming
2. infrastructure and electric grid stress
3. save mad $$ yo

Hopefully, energy code, and public sentiment, will get to the point such that, if a building were to be built with shoddy energy efficiency, it will get the same backlash as if it were built without fire exits.

Air Pollution Prevents Global Warming

…Or at least that’s what this article on Autoblog Green tries to imply.  It’s a compelling and resonable arguement.  Since the environmental movements of the 1960s, air pollution has dramatically decreased in Europe and the US.  All those particulates that used to block the sun are no longer there, allowing more sunlight to hit the ground, hence warming.  The effect is well known, and usually associated with volcanoes.

What the author fails to distinguish, and what an insightful commentor clarified, is that there is a huge difference between local warming because of clearer skies, and the global warming effects of altering the entire atmosphere.  Additionally, if particulates mattered like this on a global scale, do you think China might have some impact there?

Wired’s Shot at Greenies (part II)

Yesterday I commented on an article Wired Magazine wrote to antagonize environmentalists. This is the second part to that commentary.

6.  Accept Genetic Engineering. This is something many environmentalists have a difficult time with, as if humans have not been selectively breeding crops and animals for thousands of years.  But they will point out, rightfully so, that this is a totally different scale.  Yet the unbelievable progress already made, and potential that GMOs have in the future cannot be ignored.  I would like to see a distinction between different parts of the “organic” label.  I’m still very against most pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics.  But engineering a grain to be healthier, increase harvest, or be more drought resistant is ok in my book.  I approve.

7.  Carbon Trading Doesn’t Work. YES YES and YES.  Cap and trade plans work when the bureaucratic mess needed to keep track of them is very simple to organize and maintain.  SOx and NOx emissions from coal power plants is a great example.  For cars the EPA just made standards.  Imagine having a cap and trade for the particulates that come out of the back of your car.  Who is going to measure and verify and report that?  Automatic system?  For what price?  There is one thing that we so desperately need, which would solve every problem given in this list.  A carbon tax.  Amen.

8.  Embrace Nuclear Power.  The writers of the list admitted that it was short sighted, only focusing on global warming.  But a significant expansion of of nuclear would require a capital investment that could be spent instead on established emerging technologies, like your wind and solar and bioengineering of fuels.  This way we won’t be left with thousands of tons of radio-active waste.  And note that we still do not have a permanent storage solution for our crap from the 1940s. Think it’s a good idea to triple that pace?  I will allow one caveat.  In the US, unlike other countries like France, we have not allowed certain types of breeder reactors out of fear of creating weapons grade plutonium and uranium.  These reactors create more energy out of the raw uranium material by recycling and reprocessing the spent fuel to use again.  This may be an intermediate option.  The idea that Al-Qaeda is going to steal uranium-238 from Nevada, bring it back to a cave in Afganistan, and make a nuke, is gravely mistaken.

9.  Used Cars, Not Hybrids. Fair point, but what are they really trying to get at?  Yes, the manufacture of the car creates much of the total emissions, but I don’t see how this adds to the conversation.  If they said “Drive slower cars” I could take that.  Their statement is important; if one drives an efficient car already, the dumbest thing they could do is to go out and buy one that gets 20% better mpg, and dump the old one.  But there are more important elements to the car-argument like driving style, and rising CAFE standards addresses the point anyway.  Not as big of a deal.

10.  Prepare for the worst. Ok fine.  Why not.  Although I would like to not that the authors mention that “Technology lets us build carbon-neutral houses 7,000 feet up in the Colorado Rockies,” which contradicts their assertion that people should live in the south because of heating costs.  (point #1)

The solution to everything here is to put a hefty tax on burning oil, and everything else will fall into place.  I call it my Carbon Adjustment.

Wired’s Shot at Greenies (part I)

In a fit of brash journalism that one would only expect from a national magazine, Wired declared the 10 things that environmentalists are going to have to change their point of views on if they wish to tackle the ultimate problem–global warming. Let’s go through 1-5. I’ll do 6-10 tomorrow.

1. Live in Cities. I enjoy the sense they are trying to talk here. Cities have always enjoyed efficiency advantages over the outlying suburbs and car-based rural areas as well. I approve.
2. A/C is OK. Very interesting point they are making here. If they are correct, and I have no reason to doubt them, then the efficiency gains of only cooling, and not heating, are significant. Therefore the south has an advantage over the north. But more to the point, Wired would have done well to place the emphasis on rigorous building code to enforce efficiency standards. It is technologically feasible to construct carbon-neutral buildings in both climates, and it is cost-effective to build  buildings that get very close. Mentioning this would have been more productive to the arguement than either choosing “hot” or “cold”. Could be smarter.
3. Organics are not the answer. Once again, Wired’s math guys make their point, but miss the larger policy implication. It is no surprise that a doped up cow will make more milk or grow faster, thereby saving emissions on that front. But what I don’t buy is that organic farming techniques and land management do not compensate for that deficit. And even dumber is, that in an article touting carbon cuts above all else, they didn’t call for an outright stoppage of meat production. Could be smarter.
4. Farm the Forests. This is difficult to approach without seeing the science behind it. But I do have comments. The picture they use is of a northern forest, which grows much slower than a warm-weather forest. That is why tree farms are in places like Georgia and Alabama. Cutting and re-growing forests to capture carbon would be most effective in tropical places. Yet warm areas are also some of the most productive for growing crops and for bio-research like pharmaceuticals. My inclination would be that this is a poor use of productive land, but I won’t negate it outright. No educated comment.
5. China is the Solution. I will agree with them here. There is no way to ethically stop China from pursuing economic gain, and we might as well get them to cheaply build our solar, wind, and other technologies. And those who think that China has nothing to lose from global warming are dead wrong. Shanghai has like 30 million people in a global warming flood plane. I am also tired of China bashers that don’t seem to think that per-capita emissions is as important as emissions within an arbitrary boundry. As long as US emissions are 4X per capita as China, is is pompous for American to ask China to reduce their output. Old Chinese coal plants: Bad. Cheap Chinese Green-tech: Good.

I’ll go through 6-10 tomorrow.

Surprise! Reducing Emissions is Actually Going to be a Big Deal

Architecture 2030, a pretty sweet group, lays out on a page of their site how all the seemingly significant things that organizations are doing doesn’t mean shit if we keep building coal plants and don’t cut our energy use. There are 151 coal plants in development in the United States today. A new coal plant goes online in China every two weeks.

Here’s one of them:

Home Depot

Home Depot is funding the planting of 300,000 trees in cities across the US to help absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions… The CO2 emissions from only one medium-sized (500 MW) coal-fired power plant, in just 10 days of operation, will negate this entire effort.

Read them all here.