Six Degrees - Four Degrees of Warming

In this chapter of Six Degrees, Lynas focuses on the affects of a global temperature rise of four degrees Celsius. These include sea level rise due to melting ice sheets and the substantial flooding the displaced peoples this would cause, loss of crop production due to warmer temperatures and the foods shortages related to this, increased drought and heatwaves, the destruction of soil due to desertification and increased precipitation as rainfall rather than snowfall due to higher temperatures, and carbon released into the atmosphere through the melting of permafrost, causing a positive feedback loop contributing further to climate change.

The five main points of this chapter are as follows.

Flooding in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

1. The Antarctic Ice Sheets are vulnerable to collapse which would cause a dramatic rise in sea level. The West Ice Sheet is anchored below sea level, and warming could cause total collapse of this ice sheet, which would quickly overwhelm the world's coastlines. The East Ice Sheet contains enough ice to raise sea levels by 50 meters (approximately 165 feet), making the coastlines unrecognizable. Sea levels are predicted to rise at least half a meter (or one and a half feet) through four degrees of warming. Lynas uses the coastal city of Alexandria as a jumping off point, describing that 1.5 million people would be displaced and $35 billion would have to be spent on repairs to just this one city. Places like Bangladesh, Boston, New Jersey, and Shanghai would all be at risk for major flooding and displaced peoples. New York, London, Venice, and other large cities would have to build fortification against flooding, but as we've seen from New Orleans, these do not always work and require huge amounts of money.

2. Agricultural breadbaskets all over the world will be unable to produce a sufficient amount of food. Lynas points to China to illustrate this, projecting that staple crops like rice and corn will drop in production by 40% due to a decrease in river water and an increase in desertification. Western North America, southern Africa, and western South America will face similar problems under a four degree warming. Increased rainfall in the winters will lead to destruction of top soil, which will compound this issue even further.

3. Heatwaves will increase, leading to human casualty and a drastic change in many ecosystems. Large parts of Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Greece, and Turkey will experience an increase in dangerously hot days, similar to the 2003 heat wave in Europe that killed more 70,000 people. Additionally, Switzerland will have an increase in wildfires and droughts.

4. Weather will change all over the world. The Alps will experience a climate similar to North Africa, with less snowfall and increased glacial melt, causing drought. Snowfall will decrease all over Russia, and as precipitation will come in the form of rain, this will cause major flooding all over the country. Super storms will increase in places like Scotland and Germany, causing damage costs and forcing relocation for millions of people.

5. Melting permafrost and ice will increase the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. As ice melts in the Arctic, Siberia, Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, it not only causes the destruction of infrastructure and the population decrease of animals, but also releases the approximately 500 billion tons of carbon that is currently permanently frozen underneath. This creates a positive feedback loop, as the increase in greenhouse gases from this melting will only increase the rate of melting and release more greenhouse gases.

Lynas proposes that the changes brought about by four degree warming will likely inevitably lead to five degree warming, which in turn may lead to six degrees all by itself.

That's all for now.

Write to you later.

Danielle K.

Hot, Sour and Breathless: Ocean Under Stress

As part of our project, Joe and I are focusing on the human impact on the planet's oceans. To this end, I found this pdf document through the organization Biological Impacts of Ocean Acidification (BIOACID), sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. It describes the three major anthropogenic stressors the oceans face, which I thought would be right on track with the topic of our project. The document itself is a six page brochure outlining these stressors, including ocean warming, ocean acidification, ocean deoxygenation, and the combined effects of these.

A graphic showing the change in sea temperature
from 1901 to 2014.

Beginning with ocean warming, the document ties this to the increase in greenhouse gases in our atmosphere caused by human activities. The increased temperature of the oceans causes less mixing of nutrient rich and nutrient poor water in the warmer ocean, putting the ecosystems there at risk of starvation. Ocean warming also has an effect on the geographic placement of species, forcing cold water fish near to the point of extinction with enough warming, and putting warm water fish where they've never been before, causing an incredible amount of stress for these fish. Warming also harms calcium based organisms, specifically coral, by stressing them to the point of bleaching, which we've spoken about earlier.

Moving to with ocean acidification. The document explains that this is directly caused by increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. When carbon dioxide is absorbed into the ocean, it goes through a series of chemical reactions (which I won't explain here because I don't think I could do the science justice) that increase the acidity of the surface seawater. This will cause problems not only for sea creatures and plants, but for humans as well. Decreased pH in the oceans can harm shellfish, like oysters and mussels, by interfering with their young's ability to develop shells, and even dissolve the shells of adult shellfish. This is bad news for the oceans, as it decreases biodiversity, making it even harder for ecosystems to bounce back from disasters. This also directly affects the approximately 3 billion people worldwide who rely on seafood as their primary source of protein, putting their way of life in jeopardy.

Moving on now to ocean deoxygenation. This area is the least studied of the three, being a relatively new discovery on the part of scientists. Deoxygenation is essentially a reduction in the levels of dissolved oxygen in seawater. This is caused by a few things, but it is mainly related to ocean warming, which decreases the ability of the oceans to absorb oxygen and decreases ocean mixing, which limits oxygen to the deep ocean. Deoxygenation can also be caused by nutrient run-off from fertilizers and pesticides. These products contain chemicals that increase the production of algae beyond the point that a body of water can handle. The algae float on top of the water and absorb any oxygen they can in order to survive, essentially suffocating the life below. Many ocean species are very specialized in terms of the oxygen levels they can tolerate, and a drop in oxygen levels can lead to the decrease or even extinction of many ocean dwelling organisms.  

All three of these effects have yet to be truly studied in tandem, but suffice to say that the combination of these would be, and is now, disastrous to the oceans.

That's all for now.

Write to you soon.

Danielle K.

Gasland

This weekend I watched a documentary by the name of Gasland. It follows one man, Josh Fox, who lives in Pennsylvania, after he is contacted by a natural gas company to lease his land for drilling and fracking. He knows very little about what he would be getting into, and decides to do some research. He drives cross-country, from his small town in Pennsylvania to Colorado and even Louisiana, and shares the stories of individuals and families affected by fracking.

A visualization of fracking

For those of you that don't know, fracking is the process of injecting fluid deep into the ground (typically around 8,000 feet down) in order to create fissures to release natural gas. One of the problems this creates is that these gas wells often leak into a nearby aquifer or water table, contaminating the local water with natural gas as well as with the chemicals used in fracking fluid. Many of these chemicals are known carcinogens, and many of the others have never been disclosed due to laws that protect a fracking company's proprietary material, which, in this case, includes the mixture of chemicals used in fracking. These chemicals can cause health problems for the residents. Fox also interviewed many residents of towns near fracking sites whose water was so contaminated with gas, they could light it on fire. Not only this, but the natural gas, mainly methane, is incredibly prone to explode via a spark from a well pump, or really any spark.

Proponents of fracking say that using gas is better, environmentally, than using coal or other fossil fuels, but this simply is not true. In addition to leaking methane into the water table, fracking can also leak methane into the air, contributing to the greenhouse effect and completely outweighing any benefit fracking may have for the environment. Additionally, the fracking process in highly dependent on water. Each time a well is fracked, it can use up eight million gallons of water, sometimes more. This water has to be transported in tanker trucks, increasing the carbon footprint of this process even more. The water that is not used up in the fracking process comes back up through the well as what is called "produced water", which is contaminated with chemicals and natural gas. This produced water is temporarily kept in large pits, where it is either allowed to evaporate back into the air (chemicals and all), transported to a treatment plant, or injected back into the ground. All of these options have tremendous environmental impact.

I learned all of this from Gasland, and I highly recommend watching it. I will say Fox's voice is a little monotone at times, but the interviews he has are highly informative and really interesting. If you want to learn more, Fox has set up a website for his film, which has in incredible amount of information on fracking.

Thats's all for now.

Write to you soon.

Danielle K.

Cigarette Butts: Tiny Trash that Piles Up

Joe and I have decided to do our project on littering and pollution and its affect on our environment, especially the oceans. Regarding this, I've found this awesome article from the New York Times that really illustrates the severity of this issue by focusing on one of the main culprits of individual pollution: cigar, cigarettes, and cigarette butts.

The problem begins psychologically. For some reason cigarette butts, unlike other forms of litter,  are different in a smoker's mind. Throwing a cigarette to the ground and crushing it under your heel seems to make more sense in the moment and be more permissible than throwing a plastic bag or a candy wrapper on the ground. The article outlines that this could be remedied if more receptacles for cigarettes were created or if littering laws were better enforced.

Wildlife often ingest discarded cigarette butts,
causing illness and sometimes death.

Besides being a huge eyesore and adding the city maintenance costs, cigarette butt littering is a massive environmental problem. According to the article, cigarette butts make up 28% of all litter that washes up on beaches worldwide. That's huge. Cigarettes contain many chemicals, including nicotine, that are extremely harmful to wildlife. A standard test of a substances' toxicity is to measure how many fish the substance kills within a liter of water. The article cites a study that found one cigarette butt had enough toxins to kill half the minnows in a litter of water in only 96 hours. That's only one cigarette butt. Imagine what the consequences are for the actual amount of cigarette litter that pollute the oceans.

There are some companies trying to combat this, by creating biodegradable cigarette filters. So far, these are not widely distributed if they're even available at all. Stricter laws are being put in place to ban cigarette smoking on beaches and near water, which is a good sign.

Hopefully we'll be able to find some more research on prevenative measures, but that's all for now.

Write to you soon.

Danielle K.

Ishmael - The End

Final post about Ishmael folks! It is a bittersweet ending for me. On the one hand, I'm sad to be ending this book that we've spent so long on. On the other hand, I'm glad to be moving onto new material. I honestly don't think that I could get through this class if then entire semester was spent on Ishmael.

Anyways, this book begins its ending chapters by interrupting its normal pace of Ishmael talking at the narrator to bring us some plot. Ishmael has vanished and the narrator spends the better part of a chapter hunting him down, finally finding him at a circus. And then, strangely enough, the pair just continue their lessons as usual. Personally, I feel that, as we reach the end of this book, a change is pace was bound to happen. I think it was Quinn's way of making sure we were still paying attention.

Don't be this guy.

Ishmael continues with his lesson, further emphasizing the differences between the Leavers and the Takers.  Quinn writes that "the Takers accumulate knowledge about what works well for things. The Leavers accumulate knowledge about what work well for people." Regarding this, Leavers, Ishmael argues, value the past and evolve from it, figuring out what works well for their people, taking into account where they live and their outlook on the world. Takers, on the other hand, arbitrarily decide what works well for them without a basis in the past, and think this applies to how everyone ought to live. There is no right way to live, as Quinn very clearly illustrates. But, he also argues that living as we do now, putting ourselves above the laws of nature, treating other animals as if they're below us for simply not being human, destroying the Earth through our behaviors and doing little to nothing to fix it is not the right way to go about things. (Side note, if you're interested in the ways we treat animals, check out the documentary Earthlings. It's a bit graphic at times, but I think really worth the watch. Watch the whole thing on YouTube here.)

So, what do we take away from the journey of mind and spirit? Ultimately, I believe we are left with the same fate of the narrator. We have been tasked to teach others what we have learned, just as the narrator has been. And, by time of Ishmael's death, I think the narrator is almost forced to continue teaching, as it is what Ishmael would have wanted. Perhaps this is a bit too optimistic for the overall tone of this book, but I'd like to think that, in the world of this novel, the narrator continues Ishmael's legacy and tells his story.

That's all for now.

Danielle K.

Ishmael - Chapter 9

This is a chapter that revolves heavily around mythology. Ishmael begins the chapter by creating a timeline for the Leavers and then modifying it to fit the Takers. He explains that the agricultural revolution, while it does have a clear beginning, doesn't have an ending point. In fact, it's still going. It's now called the second green revolution. Read more about how that and rice production in Asia here.

The Fall of Man depicted by Jan Brueghel the Elder and
Peter Paul Rubens

Anyways, Ishmael begins to connect the biblical ideas of the origin of man with our mythological ideas. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Ishmael argues, was forbidden from Adam because they feared he would consume the world thinking it was in his rights to do so. Herein lies one of the major problems in our culture. We assume what we're doing is the right things to do. We are deluded, and we think that agriculture and what's come of it is the only correct way to do things, and that this is the only way anyone should do things. With the Takers, there is no preference on how to live; there is one way and that is our way.

Following the Fall of Man, Ishmael states that those who were people representing Abel (the Semites) saw the people representing Cain taking over the land. This became the story of brother killing brother, told now by Takers to Takers, while it was originally told by Leavers for Leavers. We even take dominion over stories, that's how egocentric the Taker culture is. (Side note, I find it really interesting the Quinn chose Ishmael to be the name of his teacher, considering Ishmael was Abraham's first son in the bible who was banished along with his mother. Makes you think about the connections there. Ishmael is still part of Taker culture, he was raised by them, but he is inherently apart from that culture, understanding more of the Leavers.)

Write to you soon.

Danielle K. 

Ishmael - Chapters 5 - 8

Shakespeare is especially fond of fatal flaws. Next time you enjoy
a Shakespearean tragedy, try playing this game of bingo.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming with Ishmael. These few chapters expand on the mythology of "how things came to be this way". Ishmael speaks to the narrator about the idea that humans are fundamentally flawed and therefore incapable of living in harmony with the world. This idea is all over the place, fatal flaws are a key point in most tragedies of antiquity, as well as a lot of modern media. Oedipus is too headstrong and doesn't know when to stop, Macbeth is blinded by his lust for power, Anakin Skywalker is too arrogant an unable to let go of things he cares about, Voldemort is too prideful, incapable of love, and terrified of death, even Elsa from Frozen is frightened of her own powers and therefore herself.

But, as Ishmael argues, there is, in fact, nothing inherently wrong with people. The problem lies in the story we've chosen to enact. It's put us in conflict with the world, made the world our enemy, and now we're heralding victory over the enemy while the world dies in front of us. Speaking of enemies, this is a very human way of looking at things. We are not at war with the planet, we are not embroiled in a feud with the planet, there are no Montagues and Capulets in this story. 

Come on folks, take responsibility.

We live on this planet, just like everything else here. We don't exist above other species, nor do other species exist above one another. For some reason we project the human characteristics of violence onto other animals, calling the owl and the snake enemies when they're just living as they're meant to. For humans, anything that isn't useful to us is completely useless. If we can't eat it, or if it doesn't feed what we eat, we get rid of it. How can we be so presumptuous to define what things on Earth matter and which don't? How completely awful of us. We've made this mess, we need to fix it.

On the bright side, Ishmael is pointing to some solutions. Limiting population growth by evenly distributing resources for example. We produce way more food than we need, but people still go hungry. Read more about that here. 

That's all for now.

Write to you soon.

Danielle K.