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.