Snow

Finally, it is snowing. Not a lot. Not blusterly. But gently and confidently and happily snowing. While the meteorologists tell us there will be no accumulation, I will take what I can get. Snow is, after all, welcome on two accounts: for the moments it is falling and for the ground cover it brings. One out of two is better than none at all, and at least for the moment we can enjoy this fleeting aerial ballet

I have turned off my radio, my dryer has stopped, as, blessedly, has the motor that runs my refrigerator, which seems to get louder and louder as the years pass. So I am sitting in almost-silence watching this parade of flakes rushing groundward as if they are all eager lyheaded to a high school reunion.

Our lack of snow became even more disheartening when I recalled that rain begins as snow. Up in the atmospheric range where the clouds form, it is below freezing. So when vapor rises, it eventually freezes, forming snowflakes. When it returns to earth, it will either melt or stay frozen depending on the temperature of the air in between the clouds and the ground. So we are so close, never more than a few miles, from snow.

When I was young, it seemed to me that we had several good, wet snowstorms every year. I remember my red plastic galoshes would fill with snow and my socks would be encrusted with refrozen snow when I finally had my fill and, fully sated with winter's wonders, went inside to towels, dry clothes and a hot cup of cocoa. Today, my children, who grew up in New York, are wondering if they will have to move back to New England to relive the snow memories of their childhood.

We can still hope. February is supposed to be the snowiest month of the year around here. Which is doubly good because it is also the shortest, so that means either one big snowstorm or several smaller ones. Either way, given how late it is in the month of January, I am looking forward to February with even greater expectation, and not a little bit of worry. For my children's sake.

curioser and curioser

In case we needed a reminder that there is so much about our earth we don't yet know: Scientists in England, in conjunction with the United Nations, report the following:

"Melting icebergs, so long the iconic image of global warming, are triggering a natural process that could delay or even end climate change, British scientists have found.

A team working on board the Royal Navy’s HMS Endurance off the coast of Antarctica have discovered tiny particles of iron are released into the sea as the ice melts.

The iron feeds algae, which blooms and sucks up damaging carbon dioxide (CO2), then sinks, locking away the harmful greenhouse gas for hundreds of years."

This is both good news and bad news. It is good news because it might be a new source of carbon capture and sequestration. It is bad news because (1) we don't know what collateral damage the additional iron, algae and ice melt might do to the eco-system and (2) this news may reduce the sense of urgency to reduce co2 emissions. For even at its height, scientists say, this ice melt will only absorb 1/8th of the earth's co2 emissions. There are still thousands and thousands of tons of co2 that we need to avoid producing. And we need to remember not just the toll in emissions, but the cost - both financial and environmental that we pay in extracting and transporting the fossil fuels.

Still and all, the news is intriguing.

For more of the story and a colorful graphic describing the process, can be found at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1104772/Amazing-discovery-green-algae-save-world-global-warming.html?ITO=1490

hide and secrete?

The on-line version of Scientific American posted this fascinating news item July 14:

Volcanic rocks deep beneath the sea off the coast of California, Oregon and Washington State might prove one of the best places to store the carbon dioxide emissions that are causing global warming, a new study finds. In fact, the very instability that causes earthquakes and eruptions adds an extra layer of protection to keep the CO₂ from ever escaping.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other experts, including the G8 (Group of Eight) leaders of the world's richest nations, have called carbon capture and storage a critical tool in the fight against climate change. In essence, such technology catches the CO₂ and other pollutants emitted when coal or other fossil fuels are burned. It is then compressed into a liquid and, theoretically, pumped deep beneath the surface to be permanently trapped.

Such technologies have been demonstrated on a small scale to enhance the recovery of oil from tapped out fields; pumping down the CO₂ pushes up more of the black gold. But geophysicist David Goldberg of Columbia University's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., and his colleagues found that pumping such CO₂ into basalt rock beneath the ocean floor might be a better solution.

Specifically, liquid CO₂ is heavier than the water above it at 8,850 feet (2,700 meters) or more under the surface, meaning any leaks would never bubble back into the atmosphere. Further, the CO₂ mixes with the volcanically warmed water below the surface and undergoes chemical reactions within the basalt (the black rock created from rapidly cooling lava) to form carbonate compounds—otherwise known as chalk—effectively locking up the greenhouse gas in mineral form. The 650-foot (200-meter) layer of marine sediment on top of the basalt rock acts as yet another barrier. "You have three superimposed trapping mechanisms to keep your CO₂ below the sea bottom and out of the atmosphere," Goldberg says. "It's insurance on insurance on insurance."

This is a great solution IF we want to keep mining, digging and burning fossil fuels. The question is, do we? Why spend all this money on the excavation of fossil fuels, the degradation of the environment (especially with the extraction of coal) and then the cost of sequestration, all for a time-limited and volume-limited commodity when we could put that creative energy, money and public support behind renewable energies?

Clearly, no one technology is going to be the be-all-and-end-all solution, so sequestration might be one part of the solution. But we have to keep the other renewable options on the table, moving forward and well-funded and publicly supported.

Enjoy this fabulous summer weather!

Hitting close to home

The climate change crisis just came home to roost. There I was, buying my regular dozen bagels from Goldberg's on Monday when boom, the cashier says $9.xx. I can't even remember the exact price because the first number was so astonishing. The price of a dozen bagels (12 plus 1) at Goldberg's had been $8 for years. A small jump would be reasonable, even expected. But 15%! And then I remembered the sign on the refrigerator at the Giant the previous week, apologizing for the uncontrollable rise in prices for eggs and milk. (Paraphrased, the sign said: it's not our fault.) The reasons for these disparate price increases seem to be one and the same: what's happening to our land.

Droughts and floods, not just in one place, but around the world, have reduced wheat production over the past two years and raised wheat prices (futures at least) 100%. Add to these lower yielding harvests the additional impact of fewer fields growing wheat, replaced instead with acreage devoted to growing subsidized corn to meet ethanol marketplace demands, and you get an even smaller wheat, and food, harvest. Add a minus to a minus and you have to get more minus.

Yet if we would raise miles-per-gallon standards quickly enough, conserve meaningfully enough, and invest in alternative fuels (cellulosic biofuels) energetically enough, we could have our corn and eat it too. Meanwhile, we are instead tragically making it more expensive for people around the world to feed themselves and their families on these basic food crops. With wheat and corn getting more expensive, so do the foods that rely on them: eggs, milk and meat.

Even worse, studies coming out show that burning corn ethanol may be even more damaging to the environment than burning traditional oil, and if not worse, than no better either. So we may be creating world-wide food shortages without any environmental gain.

This is a complex issue that is coming home to roost. And we must be diligent consumers and continue to read and learn and advise our politicians. But if we thought climate change wouldn't hit us for decades, we must think again. The future has already begun.

The Global Warming Solutions Act

The Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA; Senate Bill 309/House Bill 712), championed by Governor O’Malley, is now before our state legislature. This legislation would put Maryland in the forefront of our national efforts to reduce global warming pollution by adopting state-wide, science-based greenhouse gas reduction targets of 25% by 2020 and 90% by 2050 below 2006 levels.

While many of our delegates and state senators are supporting this bill, it is also attracting much opposition. The truth is, we have no choice but to reduce our emissions and to change our production and consumption habits. The only choice is how, when and with what positive or negative impacts. We either will be able to develop controlled, affordable and just ways to change over our technologies and grow a green economy and marketplace, or we will slam into shortages, rising prices, increased health problems, and an environment seriously ill. Wisdom tells us we should get on top of this problem. That is what this bill does.

Yet, as mentioned, there is opposition. Your support of this bill is essential. Write to the Governor, your delegates and senators, mayors and county executives. The more support, the more we can offset the opposition. Much of the opposition is coming from the Sparrows Point steel plant . We understand that. This bill seeks to protect those who will be affected by its regulations and requirements. Here are some points that explain how, with the changes this bill recommends, it nonetheless seeks to undertake them with justice and care for everyone affected.

1. A great deal of flexibility is included in the GWSA. It contains a provision to revisit the goals every four years and to modify them as circumstances require. For example, if we do not achieve the new technology that would enable us to get to 90% pollution reduction, then the goals will be adjusted.

2. In no way does the bill require each individual entity to reduce emissions by a specified amount. Rather, the goal is an overall reduction, with flexibility for individual entities depending on what is determined to be practical and feasible. Policies that affect particular economic sectors will continue to be shaped by stakeholders in an open, public process.

3. A study funded by Maryland’s Department of Business and Economic Development and carried out by the Baltimore-based International Center for Sustainable Development found that clean energy industries could generate between 144,000 and 326,000 jobs over the next 20 years, contributing $5.7 billion in wages and salaries to Maryland citizens and boosting state and local tax revenues by $973 million. A policy that encourages innovation is an opportunity for the creation of large numbers of well-paying new jobs in the green economy of the future. This point has been emphasized by both Democratic presidential candidates. Maryland businesses can become leaders in developing these new technologies.

4. In a recent interview published in Mckinsey Quarterly, national leaders in the steel industry said that “innovation will be important to make our steel making processes more energy efficient and environmentally sound and to improve our product capabilities: lighter, stronger steels can meet the evolving needs of our customers, for example.”

We are in a green revolution. Things will change. We cannot stop that. The question remains: do we try to hold the reins of change so that it can be done in an equitable manner, before additional, potentially irreversible, environmental degradation occurs, while assisting in the development of new technologies and helping those who need to be retrained in the new green economy? Or do we resist this for a misguided short-term non-action that in the long run will hurt everyone, even those purportedly helped by doing nothing?

The High Price of Doing Nothing

I am sitting in my kitchen, with my favorite, toasty sweater on, a cup of warm tea, listening to the rain come steadily down.

Ordinarily, this is not remarkable for a mid-October day (except maybe for the fact that I am at home!). But this year has been anything but ordinary. As the fires rage in California, we have been experiencing 70 and 80 degree days here, our reservoirs dangerously low, our lawns dry as a bone. Blue skies, green leafy canopies, low humidity, short-sleeve comfort, evening cricket serenades and outdoor jogging weather should not be reasons to complain. But they are when they occur in mid-October. This time should be about vibrant foliage, damp piles of browned and oranged leaves, people cuddling in jackets and sweaters and maybe even scarves.

Whereas once we might have thought of this year as an anomaly, it is more likely we should name it the beginning of a new climate for the mid-Altantic states. Already the growing season is lengthening a bit, bird migration patterns are changing, ocean temperatures are warming.

Tomorrow is here.

Ten years or so ago, we might have been able to speak of averting climate change. Today, our rhetoric must change. We have two different goals:

1) limiting climate change, and
2) adapting to climate change.

Even as we continue to fight for lower CO2 emissions, simpler lifestyles, and less consumerism, we must also put our energies into planning for adapting to the changes we cannot stop.

The lesson to be learned is this: the more we act now, even with present-day costs and expenses, the less it will cost us overall. Let us build efficient buildings now - to make them viable, affordable and livable in the future. And let us begin to put a price tag on accommodating those displaced and disoriented due to climate change. As we respond, compassionately, let's do the math. Then we will see how unaffordable doing nothing really is.