Energy/Environment – Page 58 – artdiamondblog.com

Global Warming Would Likely Prevent Coming Ice Age in North America

“Scientists like Brian Bencivengo of the National Ice Core Laboratory examine ice cores to determine past air temperatures at the location from which the core was obtained.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A15) In the . . . journal Science, Shaun Marcott, an earth scientist at Oregon State University, and his colleagues compiled the most meticulous reconstruction yet of global temperatures over the past 11,300 years, virtually the entire Holocene. They used indicators like the distribution of microscopic, temperature-sensitive ocean creatures to determine past climate.
. . .
Scientists say that if natural factors were still governing the climate, the Northern Hemisphere would probably be destined to freeze over again in several thousand years. “We were on this downward slope, presumably going back toward another ice age,” Dr. Marcott said.
Instead, scientists believe the enormous increase in greenhouse gases caused by industrialization will almost certainly prevent that.
During the long climatic plateau of the early Holocene, global temperatures were roughly the same as those of today, at least within the uncertainty of the estimates, the new paper shows. This is consistent with a large body of past research focused on the Northern Hemisphere, which showed a distribution of ice and vegetation suggestive of a relatively warm climate.

For the full story, see:
JUSTIN GILLIS. “Global Temperatures Highest in 4,000 Years.” The New York Times (Fri., March 8, 2013): A15.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 7, 2013.)

The Marcott article mentioned, is:
Marcott, Shaun A., Jeremy D. Shakun, Peter U. Clark, and Alan C. Mix. “Report: A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years.” Science 339, no. 6124 (March 8, 2013): 1198-201.

Increased CO2 “Kept a New Ice Age at Bay”

(p. 38) . . . the repeated inventions and spread of agriculture around the planet affected not only the surface of the Earth, but its 100-kilometer-wide (60-mile-wide) atmosphere as well. Farming disturbed the soil and increased CO2. Some climatologists believe that this early anthropogenic warming, starting 8,000 years ago, kept a new ice age at bay. Widespread adoption of farming disrupted a natural climate cycle that ordinarily would have refrozen the northernmost portions of the planet by now.

Source:
Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking Adult, 2010.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

Novelist Anna Quindlen Loves Her Electric Generator

“Feel the Power: Author Quindlen at her home, which is kept up and running with occasional use of her beloved generator.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. M14) I love my generator. It’s not much to look at, a beige box half the size of my desk, hidden by a scrim of native grasses. If my power goes out for more than two minutes, it clears its throat and rumbles into life.

The fridge hums, the TV flares, the water flows from the faucet. Every once in a while I give the generator a pat in passing to show my appreciation.
. . .
. . . , in 2009, the tornado came. One of the things that was freaky was how exactly it conformed to every news report I’d ever seen. Dark air like demonic possession, a sharp path cut across the land by meteorological shears. We were lucky; the sharp path fell directly between the house and the garage. You could follow it from there by looking at the empty spaces in a solid line of trees, the rootballs waving their witchy root toes in the air. We lost a lot of trees. And the power, for five days. Five long days. It’s funny the little things you miss. Our coffee maker is electric. Each morning my friend, Emily, would bring a thermos of coffee and take my phone away to charge it.
But there was a big thing missing, too, and it wasn’t light. Where we live, if you lose power, you lose water. And after five days of keeping a bucket by the back door so I could get water from the pond for the toilets, five days of trying to convince myself that going in the pool was almost like an actual shower, I called the contractor and said, “Generator. Please. Soon.”

For the full commentary, see:
ANNA QUINDLEN. “HOUSE CALL; A Message Delivered by Tornado; After five days without power, a desperate writer calls her contractor to say: ‘Generator. Please. Soon.’.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., April 12, 2013): M14.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date April 11, 2013.)
(Note: ellipses added.)

“Ms. Quindlen’s beloved generator is shown.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited above.

Scientists May Bring Back Extinct Woolly Mammoths to Help Fight Global Warming

“The Southern gastric brooding frog, extinct for a quarter-century. Scientists made early embryos of the frog but they died.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) Last week at a conference in Washington, scientists from Australia reported on their attempt to bring back a weird frog, the Southern gastric brooding frog, that went extinct about a quarter century ago. So far they have only made early embryos, which have died.

It is the early days for this new endeavor — it could be years before scientists succeed in bringing species back from extinction. But many species are now gleams in scientists’ eyes as they think of ways to bring them back. Woolly mammoths. A 70,000-year-old horse that used to live in the Yukon. Passenger pigeons, a species that obsessed Dr. Church’s former student.
. . .
(p. A16) Before humans killed them, the nation had three billion to five billion passenger pigeons. They would take days to cross a city, noted Hank Greely, the director of the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford University. “They left cities covered in an inch of guano,” he said.
. . .
But there could be some unexpected advantages to bringing back certain species, or even to adding their DNA to that of today’s species, Dr. Church said. For example, suppose elephants could live again in the Arctic. When woolly mammoths lived in the Arctic they would knock down trees and enable Artic grasses to flourish. Without trees, more sunlight was reflected and the ground was cooler. In winter, they would tramp down snow into the permafrost, enhancing it.
“Permafrost has two to three times more carbon than all the rain forests put together,” Dr. Church said. “All you have to do to release carbon dioxide and methane is to melt it. With rain forests you have to burn it.”
. . .
Mr. Greely cited another argument in favor of bringing back extinct species. He did not quite buy it, he said, but for him it had “a visceral appeal.”
It is an argument about justice. Take the passenger pigeon. “We are the murderers,” Mr. Greely said. “We killed them off. Shouldn’t we bring them back?”

For the full story, see:
GINA KOLATA. “So You’re Extinct? Scientists Have Gleam in Eye.” The New York Times (Tues., March 19, 2013): A1 & A16.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 18, 2013.)
(Note: ellipses added.)

Hunter-Gatherers Lived “in the Ultimate Disposable Culture”

(p. 30) In a very curious way, foragers live in the ultimate disposable culture. The best tools, artifacts, and technology are all disposable. Even elaborate handcrafted shelters are considered temporary. When a clan or family travels, they might erect a home (a bamboo hut or snow igloo, for example) for only a night and then abandon it the next morning. Larger multifamily lodges might be abandoned after a few years rather than maintained. The same goes for food patches, which are abandoned after harvesting.

Source:
Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking Adult, 2010.

Global Warming Causes Trees to Grow Faster and Absorb More CO2

“CITY TREE, COUNTRY TREE; Scientists have been looking more closely at urban plant growth in places like Central Park.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. D3) . . . , some . . . scientists have moved beyond political questions to explore how rising levels of heat and emissions might provide at least some benefits for the planet.
. . .
Lewis H. Ziska, a plant physiologist for the Department of Agriculture, . . . [said] . . . , “we need to think about the tools we have at hand, and how we can use them to make climate change work for us.”
Among the tools are cities, which have conditions that can mimic what life may be like in the temperate zone of a heated planet.
“The city is our baseline for what might happen in future decades, and with all the negative effects global warming may have, there may be a bit of a silver lining,” said Stephanie Searle, a plant physiologist who led a Columbia University research project on tree growth, and now works as a biofuels researcher at the nonprofit International Council on Clean Transportation. “Higher nighttime temperatures, at least, may boost plant growth.” Robust growth takes more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
. . .
The effects of higher, mostly urban emissions are what prompted Dr. Ziska to reappraise global warming as a potential benefit to humanity. In an essay last summer in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Dr. Ziska and a group of colleagues from across the world argued that an expected increase in world population to 9 billion people from 7 billion by 2050 necessitated a “green revolution” to enhance yields of basic grains. Carbon dioxide, the group suggested, could be the answer.
Since 1960, world atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have risen by 24 percent to 392 parts per million and could reach 1,000 parts per million by the end of this century.
. . .
In New York, the Columbia researchers studied for eight years the growth of red oak seedlings at four locations, including an “urban” site near the northeastern edge of Central Park at 105th Street and a “remote” site in the Catskills 100 miles north of Manhattan near the Ashokan Reservoir.
. . .
The Columbia team’s first red oak experiments ended in 2006, and average minimum temperatures in August were 71.6 degrees at the city site, but 63.5 degrees in the Catskills. Researchers also noticed that the city oaks had elevated levels of leaf nitrogen, a plant nutrient.
The team did two more rounds of experiments, then in 2008 made a final outdoor test using fertilized rural soil everywhere so all the seedlings got plenty of nitrogen. The urban oaks, harvested in August 2008, weighed eight times as much as their rural cousins, mostly because of increased foliage.
“On warm nights, the tree respires more,” Dr. Griffin said. “It invests its carbon sugars to build tissue.” By morning, the tree’s sugars are depleted, and it has to photosynthesize more during the day, he continued. The tree grows more leaves and gets bigger.

For the full story, see:
GUY GUGLIOTTA. “Looking to Cities, in Search of Global Warming’s Silver Lining.” The New York Times (Tues., November 27, 2012): D3.
(Note: ellipses and bracketed “said” added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date November 26, 2012.)

The Ziska article mentioned above, is:
Ziska, Lewis H., James A. Bunce, Hiroyuki Shimono, David R. Gealy, Jeffrey T. Baker, Paul C. D. Newton, Matthew P. Reynolds, Krishna S. V. Jagadish, Chunwu Zhu, Mark Howden, and Lloyd T. Wilson. “Food Security and Climate Change: On the Potential to Adapt Global Crop Production by Active Selection to Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 279, no. 1745 (Oct. 22, 2012): 4097-105.

The article co-authored by Searle and Griffin, and mentioned above, is:
Searle, Stephanie Y., Danielle S. Bitterman, Samuel Thomas, Kevin L. Griffin, Owen K. Atkin, and Matthew H. Turnbull. “Respiratory Alternative Oxidase Responds to Both Low- and High-Temperature Stress in Quercus Rubra Leaves Along an Urban-Rural Gradient in New York.” Functional Ecology 25, no. 5 (Oct. 2011): 1007-17.

Great Cities Innovate to Adapt to Possible Global Warming Floods

(p. C3) Spurred by long histories of disastrous storms, the urban engineers of Venice, Tokyo and the Netherlands have been among the pioneers of modern flood control, building storm surge barriers and sea walls on the scale of the pyramids. Such structures could well be models for New York City in the wake of superstorm Sandy.
The cities most experienced in building bulwarks against flood tides and storm surges are at a turning point, however, in their struggle for control of nature. The land upon which they are built continues to sink, population grows and the seas around them rise. As city planners reach the limits of conventional flood control measures, they are experimenting with ways to re-engineer low-lying urban waterfronts.
In Rotterdam, architects are building houses that float on floods. Beneath Tokyo, engineers have tunneled to create miles of emergency floodwater reservoirs. And in St. Petersburg, where storm tides have flooded the city about once a year since its founding in 1703, engineers last year completed a storm-surge barrier more than 15 miles long.

For the full commentary, see:
ROBERT LEE HOTZ. “Keeping Our Heads Above Water; What can New York learn from other great cities battling rising tides and sinking land?” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., December 1, 2012): C3.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date November 30, 2012.)

Energy-Efficient Buildings Increase Indoor CO2 Pollution and Impair Decision-Making

(p. C4) Carbon dioxide at levels normally found indoors is usually considered benign, especially compared with carbon monoxide. But a study finds that even modestly elevated CO2 can impair decision-making.
. . .
Given the emphasis on energy-efficient buildings, which are often more airtight, the study suggests that carbon dioxide might be an indoor pollutant to worry about–especially in conference rooms, where important decisions are hashed out.

For the full story, see:
Daniel Akst. “WEEK IN IDEAS; Week in Ideas: Daniel Akst; POLLUTANTS; Blame It on the Air.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., October 27, 2012): C4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date October 26, 2012.)

The study summarized is:
Satish, Usha, Mark J. Mendell, Krishnamurthy Shekhar, Toshifumi Hotchi, Douglas Sullivan, Siegfried Streufert, and William J. Fisk. “Is Co2 an Indoor Pollutant? Direct Effects of Low-to-Moderate Co2 Concentrations on Human Decision-Making Performance.” Environmental Health Perspectives (Sept. 20, 2012): 1-35.
(Note: it is not clear to me if Environmental Health Perspectives is an online journal or an online working paper series. Whatever it is, it is affiliated with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.)

Scientist Sees Benefits in Plan to Increase Global Warming

(p. D2) Plants are . . . part of one theoretical plan for turning Mars into a suitable environment for human beings, a process called terraforming.
. . .
Chris McKay, a Mars expert at the NASA Ames Research Center, theorizes that engineers would first have to encourage the kind of global warming they want to avoid on Earth. This could be done by releasing greenhouse gases, like chlorofluorocarbons or perfluorocarbons, into the atmosphere. The goal would be to increase the surface temperature of Mars by a total of about 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit.
. . .
With the rise in temperature, heat-trapping carbon dioxide would eventually be released from the planet’s south polar ice cap, producing a further average temperature rise of even greater magnitude, perhaps as much as 70 degrees Celsius, or 126 degrees Fahrenheit.
These high temperatures would melt ice to produce the water needed for living things.

For the full story, see:
C. CLAIBORNE RAY. “Q & A; At Home on Mars.” The New York Times (Tues., December 11, 2012): D2.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date December 10, 2012.)

McKay wrote up some of his ideas in:
McKay, Christopher P. “Bringing Life to Mars.” Scientific American Presents: The Future of Space Exploration (1999): 52-57.

NYT Climate Blogger Sees Evidence “Trending” Toward Less Global Warming

“Worse than we thought” has been one of the most durable phrases lately among those pushing for urgent action to stem the buildup of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
But on one critically important metric — how hot the planet will get from a doubling of the pre-industrial concentration of greenhouse gases, a k a “climate sensitivity” — some climate researchers with substantial publication records are shifting toward the lower end of the warming spectrum.
There’s still plenty of global warming and centuries of coastal retreats in the pipeline, so this is hardly a “benign” situation, as some have cast it.
But while plenty of other climate scientists hold firm to the idea that the full range of possible outcomes, including a disruptively dangerous warming of more than 4.5 degrees C. (8 degrees F.), remain in play, it’s getting harder to see why the high-end projections are given much weight.
. . .
In fact, there is an accumulating body of reviewed, published research shaving away the high end of the range of possible warming estimates from doubled carbon dioxide levels.
. . .
(. . . recent work is trending toward the published low sensitivity findings from a decade ago from climate scientists best known for their relationships with libertarian groups.)
Nonetheless, the science is what the science is.

Revkin, Andrew C. “CLIMATE CHANGE; A Closer Look at Moderating Views of Climate Sensitivity.” Dot Earth: New York Times Opinion Pages Climate Blog. (posted February 4, 2013).
(Note: ellipses added.)

Antarctica Has 595,000 Emperor Penguins–Double Previous Count

“Using satellites, researchers counted Antarctica’s emperor penguins at 46 colonies like this one near the Halley Research Station, finding numbers twice as high as previously thought.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A2) Antarctica has twice as many emperor penguins as scientists had thought, according to a new study using satellite imagery in the first comprehensive survey of one of the world’s most iconic birds.

British and U.S. geospatial mapping experts reported Friday in the journal PLoS One that they had counted 595,000 emperor penguins living in 46 colonies along the coast of Antarctica, compared with previous estimates of 270,000 to 350,000 penguins based on surveys of just five colonies. The researchers also discovered four previously unknown emperor-penguin colonies and confirmed the location of three others.
“It is good news from a conservation point of view,” said geographer Peter Fretwell at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England, who led the penguin satellite census. “This is the first comprehensive census of a species taken from space.”
Although all of Antarctica’s wildlife is protected by international treaty, the emperor penguins are not an officially endangered species. But they are considered a bellwether of any future climate changes in Antarctica because their icy habitat is so sensitive to rising temperatures.

For the full story, see:
ROBERT LEE HOTZ. “Emperor Penguins Are Teeming in Antarctica.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., April 14, 2012): A2.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 13, 2012.)