Climate Change and the Media
Last month CBS aired a ‘special’ on global warming. The program featured Dr. James Hanson, Director of the Goddard Space institute and a leading climate scientist. If you’ve been reading this column you will recognize the name – we refer to him frequently. The problem was, CBS published an interview which was very distinctly dated. Once upon a time perhaps Jim Hanson thought we had a fair amount of time to get our ducks in a row. The last thing I reported on him – about a month ago, was that Hanson said he now thought the trigger point for irreversible climate change might be as low as 350 ppm carbon dioxide. The level is now 380; if true, we’d have to fly back in time to do any good.
CBS did portray the administration’s political commissar sitting in a nearby chair, glowering at the camera and Jim Hanson. CBS stated that her presence was required for any interview with Jim. The administration doesn’t like it when Jim Hanson shoots off his mouth, and clearly she was there to prevent just that.
Let me note a couple of other matters on which I think CBS misrepresented. Temperature rises – they said the ICPP report gave a one degree Fahrenheit increase by the end of the century. That is not what the ICPP report does say. Same goes for the rise in sea levels. CBS quoted projected increases of a few inches, ICPP suggest sea level increases in terms of feet (actually in metric form, but conversion is easy. 25 mm is closely equivalent to an inch.). You can call up and read the ICPP summary any time you wish on the internet and read it for yourself. You can also believe CBS is you prefer. What might have happened was an interview conducted some years ago was dusted off and presented as a special report – without saying that was the case. So much for what was once a thoroughly admirable news team. What would Edward R. Morrow have thought of this? What does Walter Kronkite think about it? Even Dan Rather who lost his job when he revealed damaging evidence against the president; the information was correct but he hadn’t guaranteed the authenticity of his document. CBS has been going downhill since Watergate – the right wing doesn’t like to be contradicted by facts, and I believe they’ve bought the network.

The Drying of Lake Mead and Lake Powell
A new report says Lake Mead may go dry by 2021 –that’s thirteen years from now. They noted that Lakes Mead and Powell supply the water for eight million people.

Oregon and Dead Zones
On February 15th, The Oregonian and the Register-Guard both published stories on a study reported in Science Magazine, based on reports delivered to the Association for the Advancement of Science. The report looked at ‘dead zones’ all over the world, and included studies by Oregon State University on the coastal waters off the Oregon coast. The report concludes that it is human activity that is having a significant effect on the seas worldwide, but they cannot at this time state positively that global warming is the cause. The headline in the Register-Guard article declared that “Ocean dead zones may be permanent,” referring to the Oregon coast. Researchers from OSU, who have been keeping an eye on coastal water for at least half a century, noted that the situation is recently growing much worse, with the oxygen levels in sea water off the coast the lowest ever recorded.
Both articles point to increased wind activity increasing surface currents, and causing nutrient rich waters to well up from the depths and invade the continental shelf areas, causing rapid increases in growth of algae, which, dying, tries to decompose and thus depletes oxygen in sea water. The term for the process was termed ‘hypoxia’ in these articles. I’ve been using the term ‘anoxia’ to describe much the same thing, but anoxia is hypoxia carried to the extreme..
In anoxic areas, oxygen based life cannot exist, causing despair in fishermen. A form of bacteria does exist that cannot tolerate oxygen. Instead of producing carbon dioxide as a byproduct, these bacteria produce sulfides, which form a noxious gas – hydrogen sulfide, “stink gas” to individuals like my young self who was fascinated by the possibilities (a couple drops in the school’s ventilating system produced satisfying results). But hydrogen sulfide is toxic, and land-based life anywhere near the sea is no longer possible, at least for oxygen based organisms. If the dead zones become the rule worldwide, an ‘anoxic event’ occurs, in which a very large number of species, both marine and land-based, become extinct. The possibility does not exclude humans.
Of note, prior anoxic events are largely responsible for producing the petroleum which is a prime contributor to our problems today – nature placed the hydrocarbons in storage, we dig them out and return their constituent parts to an active role in our environments. Please note that previous anoxic events were long-lived affairs, lasting tens of millions of years. And that there hasn’t been an anoxic event for hundreds of millions of years.
Note also that the Gulf of Mexico supports a large anoxic area, off the mouth of the Mississippi River. Seems agriculture is equally adept at providing rivers, therefore the sea, with a rich diet of nutrients. Note also that urban lawns are agricultural in nature, and probably provide even more nutrients in their runoff than the wheat farmers upriver.
Note also that the health of the seas depends in large part on pole-to-pole deep sea currents. The currents travel first one in direction then the other. They warm when crossing equatorial regions, rising up as a result, reach the polar regions, give up heat and in so doing enlarging their ability to absorb both oxygen and carbon dioxide. When they’ve given up sufficient heat the waters sink, forcing what was beneath to begin the journey in the other direction. What causes the cooling is ice – no different than when you cool your beverage on a warm day. If polar sea ice disappears, forget the generation of those currents, the ones that carry oxygen to places like Oregon’s coast. And threatens an anoxic event. Arctic sea ice is rapidly disappearing, which will perhaps disrupt the deep sea currents. Oregon’s dead zones are troublesome, seriously so. It’s almost certainly too late to prevent the complete summer exhaustion of Arctic sea ice. But we can try to choke off some of the other nasty consequences of climate change.

Mea Culpa
Sort of. Only sort of. We picked up the piece a couple weeks ago on the price of coal tripling to $300 a ton (spelled tonne in the original Australian source). I’m pretty sure that $300 does not refer to U.S. currency. In this country coal experienced only a fifty percent increase in price over the past year. Only? Glad I’m not a power plant manager trying to cover the bills. Note: most of Oregon gets some portion of their electricity from the Boardman coal-fired plant. Solar conversion, anyone?

This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 9:01 am and is filed under Energy Future, Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.