575 Gigatons

Five-hundred-seventy-five gigatons is how much carbon dioxide we can put into the atmosphere without the Earth’s temperature going over 2º C (3.6ºF). The total carbon stored in the ground is about five times that much. In other words, 80% of known reserves of fossil energy has to stay in the ground if we’re not to exceed that number.

Australia has recently sweltered in a heat wave so intense its weather service had to add two colors to its temperature map to represent temperatures over 50ºC (122ºF). High temperatures and brisk winds have spawned vast wildfires there. Hurricane Sandy brought the lowest barometric readings ever recorded in the Northeast and had hurricane force winds that stretched for about 950 miles. Sixty percent of the contiguous US is experiencing drought; about half of that is categorized severe, extreme or exceptional.

The extreme weather we are now experiencing is the result of ‘only’ 0.8ºC so the impact of a 2ºC increase has to be daunting if not almost incomprehensible. And yet we are not only headed in that direction but our emissions are actually accelerating. Whereas we, the world, need to reduce our emissions by 5% a year to save ourselves, emissions rose by 3% last year, the fastest rise ever!

China is opening a new coal-fired power plant every week. By 2020 it will double its coal consumption. (This is not without its immediate environmental consequences – Beijing of late experienced extreme pollution levels.) It’s also damming every river in the country and is the world’s largest producer and consumer of solar installations, but that doesn’t change the fact that its emissions are rising very fast as a result of its high growth rates. It’s not the only culprit, new coal plants are opening all over the world, including here in Cambodia. And in total contradiction to common sense, the consensus in the financial community is that China needs to wean itself from exports and encourage its people to consume more. The elite who run the world are living in a 20^th century bubble and are completely divorced from reality.

The US media has been gushing uncontrollably of late about how fracking is opening up large new reserves of oil and gas and the country may be self-sufficient in ten years. That is mostly hype since yields from fracking wells fall precipitously after the first year – 60 to 90% in most wells, but regardless, that fossil fuel needs to stay in the ground to save the world, and that would be true even if fracking didn’t cause permanent groundwater contamination. The idea that permanent loss of groundwater is a worthy tradeoff for 5 or 10 years of cheap fossil fuel is ludicrous, stupid and insane, but that’s exactly what’s happening.

To make it clear where the US stands on climate change, at the recent Doha climate conference it worked its damnedest to scupper, stymie, put a spanner in the works to prevent any meaningful global action on climate change. (It was also beyond ironic - but telling of the political world’s real attitude towards climate change - that the conference was held in Doha which has the highest per capita emissions in the world.) Obama has made clear that doing anything serious about global warming is less important than dealing with unemployment, etc. And yet… the economic conversion necessary to tackle the climate problem would be the best way to put people to work. Mr. Compromise doesn’t understand that the climate is not negotiable, that it cannot be fixed with a political compromise. It’s a real-world engineering problem which portends certain catastrophe if not dealt with immediately and is not at all like making sausage.

I greatly admire those activists who’re putting their life into trying to make a difference, and I guess, by writing this, I’m doing it too in my own limited way, but still it’s hard not to feel pessimistic. Regardless, we need to be apprised of what’s happening, active in trying to change the paradigm and aware of the consequences of continuing on our present path… even if we can’t do anything about it. In this case we are, by being active, working for our own personal salvation even if the world, as we know it, is doomed.

And a short comment on packaging…

100% Ain’t What it Used to Be

I always liked V-8 juice; good taste, 100% vegetable juice. There are juice companies here in Asia that do veggie juice but they always add fruit to the mix. Orange juice is added to carrot, Apple juice added to green veggies, etc.  So occasionally (because it’s relatively expensive) I’d buy a can of V-8… until I discovered 100% ain’t what it used to be. Underneath the easy-to-read words, 100% vegetable juice, in script that is partially obscured, that you might not notice right off, it says, with added ingredients. How ingenious to create something that’s 100% and not 100% at the same time!

I recently bought a container of grated parmesan cheese made in America. On the front it says 100% real cheese in one place and 100% grated parmesan cheese in another. On the list of ingredients, however, it says powdered cellulose added to prevent caking. Somehow the powdered cellulose (most likely ground up wood) doesn’t count as part of the 100%. All the more reasons why I try to avoid any type of packaged food produced in America… not that I trust foodstuffs produced in Asia (honesty in packaging from China?) but when it comes from the US, it’s almost certain to be tainted.

Food labeled organic is usually a good bet, but now that major corporations have taken over the larger organic food producers they’ve started pestering the FDA to loosen organic standards so they can legally adulterate their ‘organic’ products. Since Obama recently appointed a Monsanto hack to head an important FDA office, that loosening is very likely to happen.

Extreme Weather

Extreme Weather

Last time I was in the states I splurged and picked up a $200 weather station. It measures temperature and humidity for two locations, barometer, wind, rain and UV. I’ve always been fascinated by the weather and it’s been fun to have even though the weather doesn’t change much here in Cambodia. Right now I can pretty much guarantee it’ll be 77 to 80 at night, around 82 for the high if it’s a very rainy day, 86 or 87 if it’s partly rainy and 90 to 92 if the skies are clear. The humidity will be around 80%: pretty boring in all.

We did, however, have an extreme event here in Kampot last February: almost 5 inches – 12 cm – of rain fell in about 2 hours. (I don’t know what the figures are for Kampot but Phnom Penh, which is about 100 miles distant, gets 12 inches – 30cm – in each of September and October, the wettest months.) Even for a tropical place where precipitation typically comes hard and heavy in short bursts, that was exceptional. What was special about it was not so much the event itself, that probably happens once every four or five years, but rather the timing in the middle of dry season. It might not rain once in two or three months during that time.

For comparison, Portland, noted as being a rainy place, gets about 6 inches of rain each in December and January, its wettest months, but only a trace in July. Imagine getting nearly a whole winter month’s rain in 2 hours in July!

The authorities here were puzzled by the ensuing flood, since floods generally come with an overflowing river. Kampot is on an estuary, a tidal river, and sits right at sea level so the right combination of heavy rain coming down from the nearby mountains and high tide coming in from the sea will cause the river to overflow its banks and that happens every couple of years. With a simple rain gauge they would’ve realized that with that much precipitation in such a short time, there’s no drainage system they could ever imagine that could handle that flow without flooding.

Meanwhile, Pakistan is experiencing its worst flooding in living memory. About 20% of the country is under water. That’s about equivalent to all of Cambodia or Wisconsin. Part of the problem in a developing country like Pakistan is that its mountains have been denuded of trees by people seeking firewood so the slopes no longer hold much water. In any case floods still would’ve been severe with the amount of rain coming down.

When you hear of landslides in China, they’re also largely caused by hillsides that have been deforested. When you’re living on the edge of existence and that last tree is your only source of fuel for cooking, you take it down and worry later about tomorrow. Some landslides will happen naturally regardless of the circumstances, but 90% of what you hear about is directly the result of environmental degradation.

Meanwhile, the heat wave in Russia has broken all records and destroyed millions of hectares (1 hc = 2.4 acres) of crops in the process, which has resulted in a near doubling of the world price of wheat. Moscow, which is at the same latitude as Juneau Alaska, has an average high temperature in summer of 72F – 22C. It gets an average of 5 days a year over 86F – 30C. Last year produced not one day over 86. This year it had 34 consecutive days over that temperature with several over 100 – 38C. Russia was one of 17 countries that have broken national high temperature records so far this year.

Russia has been reluctant to get behind the global warming problem, thinking, So what if it warms up a bit in Siberia, what’s the big deal for us? Problem is the 1.5 degree Celsius rise in global temperature since the industrial revolution doesn’t spread evenly. It’ll be around average, maybe a little warmer, for a time while it’s accumulating heat in one special place or another until the excess heat, when it’s released, bears down all at once.

I’ve got lots of ornamental plants in my place in Kampot, one of the reasons I love being here. I generally keep philodendrons in the shade, it just seems more appropriate for them. Every time I’ve taken one that’s been in the shade and put it in direct sun, several of its leaves are burned in an hour or two. Meanwhile, bicycling around town, I came across one that’s doing fine in direct sunlight. I’m always kind of baffled when I look at it.

You take a place like Russia where it’s almost always cool and blast it with unnatural heat that its land is unaccustomed to and it just burns up. Same with the tendency to flood: The air today holds 5% more moisture than in the past. The excess moisture accumulates in the atmosphere until when it does come down, it comes down in buckets.

Meanwhile, new coal-fired power plants are opening up somewhere in the world every day. China, probably the biggest offender, believes it has the right to reach developed status before it’s required to cut back on coal use, which is all very fine in theory, especially since America, the worst offender on the CO2 front, seems to have no will whatever to curb its excessively gluttonous and destructive lifestyle, but if everybody waits for the other guy to act, there’ll be nothing left of the planet to worry about.

China, to its credit, has also been powering ahead on solar and wind and is now the world’s biggest producer and consumer. Meanwhile the US gives far more in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry - the world’s richest, most profitable and powerful corporations - than it does to boost the alternatives. America should be embarking on a $200 billion per year crash program to convert to sustainable energy and if it takes taxing the wealthy and upper middle class to pay for it then all the better. (Geez, am I supposed to sympathize with the plight of people making $100,000 per year so much that I think it’s a great idea to give them a tax break? Should I applaud feeding the well-off while the whole edifice of government seems to be disintegrating? When so many good, solid, hardworking people in America are being kicked out of their houses, downsized out of their jobs and just generally dumped on, should I approve of throwing money at those people who are already living the good life?)

Sorry, I didn’t mean to get you all depressed and distraught over the matter of global warming but I’m a writer, what else am I supposed to do but lay it all out in words? Unfortunately, we all know the improbability, if not impossibility of any real change coming in America’s direction or the world’s for that matter. We are locked into lemming mode, hoping, once we’ve stepped over the edge, we’ll find a magic means for not crashing ourselves to pieces on the rocks below. LOL

Oil Be Damned

It now looks like the oil gushing out into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico from the ill-fated oil drilling platform will probably equal in environmental devastation that of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Details are a bit murky, similar to the waters one mile down where the oil is leaking from, but it seems the pipe is leaking in three places and dumping about 5000 barrels or 210,000 gallons a day – 1 barrel equals 42 gallons – into the Gulf. British Petroleum, owner of the oil, has sent down remote controlled submersibles to try to activate the shut off valve to no avail. It’s not easy working down there under the extreme pressure of a mile of water.

Too bad the oil giants, including BP, were just recently successful in preventing new regulations that would’ve strengthened fail-safe mechanisms designed to prevent such disaster scenarios. As for Obama, egg on his face for only one month ago opening up large areas of America’s coastline to drilling, saying the technology is now so advanced there’s little chance of environmental catastrophe.

I imagine everything, all the machinery and piping, is a bit twisted and askew as a result of the rig blowing up and sinking, so it may not be possible to turn off the well. If so the only alternative is to drill another well beside the existing one and use it to block off the one that’s gushing. That, unfortunately, will take at least 3 months at which time about 450,000 barrels of oil will have been fouling the sea and coast.

Meanwhile strong winds are currently hampering efforts to stem the flow of oil toward land and that area is entering storm season.

Barring a miracle a one billion dollar seafood industry is about to go down the tubes. The Exxon spill killed 3/4 of all sea life in the spill area, and many parts have still not fully recovered. The Exxon spill, in fact, was probably easier to handle since it all came at once. This is likely to go on for a long time.

All of the oil that’s still to be found and tapped in the world is in similarly difficult geology. The well in question actually goes down 3 miles below the sea floor. These oil spills will almost certainly become more frequent as drilling goes into more and more difficult circumstances.

One thing you can bet on is that mega-corpses like BP will go to great lengths to mold the rules to their profit margin no matter the potential harm to society or the environment. They’ll take big gambles - play the odds - in order to increase their profits. If they lose the bet, we, and our environment, pay.