A wonderful video animation and public service announcement from the Monterey Bay Aquarium about climate change, our changing ocean, and some quick things you can do about it.

Most Americans think that they can save energy (and help the planet) by making small changes to their behavior that don’t  offer much savings in reality, according to a new study in PNAS. Nearly 20% of participants named activities such as turning off lights, which don’t actually result in very much energy savings. People neglected to mention much more important actions, such as buying energy efficient appliances or weatherizing their homes.

“Switching to efficient technologies generally allows you to maintain your behavior, and save a great deal more energy,” according to lead author Shahzeen Attari. She said switching to high-efficiency light bulbs, which can be kept on all the time, will save more energy than minimizing the use of low-efficiency ones.

The study, Public Perceptions of Energy Consumption and Savings is available for free from PNAS.

A new report from scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution confirms what many have suspected, an enormous oil plume in the water column “that is at least 22 miles long and more than 3,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico”.

A satellite image of oil visible on the surface in late June (the oil appears as silvery ribbons). Leading researchers and scientists now believe a significant amount of oil remains below the surface in enormous plumes.

]]> http://projectgroundswell.com/2010/08/19/scientists-confirm-there-is-more-than-meets-the-eye/feed/ 0 http://projectgroundswell.com/2010/08/18/a-systems-view-of-pollution-from-the-russian-fires/ http://projectgroundswell.com/2010/08/18/a-systems-view-of-pollution-from-the-russian-fires/#comments Wed, 18 Aug 2010 18:10:16 +0000 Scott MacKenzie http://projectgroundswell.com/?p=1924 This short animated video from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech offers a powerful view of how carbon monoxide pollution spreads throughout the atmosphere.]]>

Sometimes our perspectives, well, lack perspective. This short animated video from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech offers a powerful view of how carbon monoxide pollution spreads throughout the atmosphere. The satellite readings that produced these videos were taken over a period of three weeks, from mid-July to early August. The Russian fires have led many in the country to rethink their stance on climate change.

Embedded video from: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology

If you have been feeling like this summer has been hotter-than-the-dickens, then you are right. July was the second hottest on record, and 2010 is on path to become the hottest year on record.

Second hottest July on record, and the warmest year to date EVER.

Do You Know How Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Will Impact YOU?

A SLAP stick on the Boardwalk

As a surfer, I often think about how my local surf spots—as well as the world’s most famous surf breaks—may change completely in the future due to sea level rise. Last week, though, as I got out of the water at Surfer’s Point in Ventura, CA, climate change was the last thing on my mind—until I saw my first SLAP stick.

SLAP stands for the Sea Level Awareness Project, and it is one of a number of initiatives from the group Kids versus Global Warming, founded by 15 year old Alec Loorv. Alec and volunteers constructed and installed SLAP sticks all along Ventura’s Boardwalk back in 2008 to mark the point to which sea level is expected to rise with climate change. Alec and SLAP used projections for sea level rise (SLR) of 23 feet. There’s a lot of information out there about SLR, so I wanted to clarify some facts.

23 feet of sea-level rise may seem like a lot—it is. It is one of the “worse case” scenarios, and the projections you most often hear about, including the “official line” of the IPCC, is that the sea-level will rise 7.2 to 23.6 inches by 2100.  2 feet may seem manageable, but its not the whole story.

In 2007, when the IPCC worked towards consensus on its Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), scientists were not able to reach consensus around the issue of melting ice-sheets.  Though AR4 discusses the likelihood of ice-melt, because of the lack of consensus, numbers associated with melting ice sheets were not factored into projections of sea level rise. The number Alec’s SLAP sticks use, 23 feet of sea level rise represents the SLR predicted if the already melting ice-sheet that covers most of Greenland, which contains 8% of the world’s fresh water resources, melts completely. Melting of the West Antarctica ice-sheet could add another 17-20 feet (See the US EPA’s website for some additional information).

A SLAP stick up close

There are other ice sheets in East Antarctica and glaciers all over the world, and the continued melting of these ice sheets will further add to sea level rise as temperatures continue to increase. Scientists continue to debate how high the sea-level will actually rise, and work on the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, due out in 2014, is already underway, with many hoping that the issues of sea level rise and ice melt will be more completely addressed.

Regardless of the exact level expected of sea-level rise, the SLAP sticks don’t just raise awareness about climate change impacts locally, however. They are also filled with information to educate the community about ways to reduce your carbon footprint and how to get more involved in other local efforts to be green. Alec’s group is hoping to install many more SLAP sticks in the future, with hopes to cover the coasts of California, New York, and nearby to Washington, D.C. The organization I work for, Paso Pacifico (discussed in Neil’s earlier post: Nicaragua’s Land, Trees, and People), is hoping to work with Alec to install SLAP sticks in coastal Nicaragua. If you are interested in getting more involved in Alec’s project, you can email him.

With many climate change impacts not expected for years into the future, I’m sure sea-level rise is the last thing on most people’s minds.  But as Scott reflected on in an earlier post, A Drive Through Water, Weather, Erosion in Southern California, it is important to start thinking about these things.

Malibu beach houses ON the water

Just the other day, when I was hanging out at a friend’s Malibu beach house, I realized that it was only a few steps away from the water at high tide. I wondered how soon it might get washed away due to rising sea levels. Or even how soon home  insurance firms will stop offering insurance to these multi-million dollar homes. Last year, State Farm threatened to stop offering home insurance in Florida, claiming that it was too difficult to turn a profit in the hurricane-prone state. Though State Farm was ultimately convinced to stay by state insurance regulators, as climate change increases the severity and frequency of hurricanes and other such extreme storm events, I would imagine that insurance firms will begin trying harder to maintain their shrinking profit margins.

I was excited to see the Sea Level Awareness project educating beachgoers in Ventura , even though envisioning Ventura’s boardwalk underwater was incredibly depressing. Perhaps if more of us understand, and understand better, how climate change will impact each of our daily lives, experiencing a little bit of that depression I felt the other day, each of us will try a little harder to reduce our own carbon footprints.

The Malibu waterfront

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of traveling to London to help give a presentation at the Zoological Society of London for the symposium: Linking Biodiversity Conservation and Poverty Reduction: What, Why, and How?

Since December, I have been working with Craig Leisher at The Nature Conservancy on drafting a knowledge review that was commissioned specifically for the symposium. We presented our report, “Biodiveristy as a Mechanism for Poverty Reduction: A State of Knowledge Review,” identifying 9 conservation mechanisms (such as agroforestry, forest tourism, and spillover from marine protected areas) where there is evidence that the conservation activity led to an improvement in livelihoods.

A couple of press articles were written specifically about our presentation and published in SciDev Net: “Poor want biomass, not biodiversity, finds study” and “Study pinpoints whether conservation can fight poverty”

As well as one article in Science News: “Conservation’s poverty reduction claims questioned”

Overall the symposium was very informative, and covered a lot of ground (links to the presentations). This specific field – the nexus between biodiversity conservation and the improvements in livelihoods of people who live in or near these wild places is still very nebulous to me. Wild places and the important flora and fauna that reside there should be conserved, but is focusing on reducing poverty a central component of this? I think the general answer is “yes.” It is defining the details where things get tricky.

One of the more compelling presentations in my opinion was by Bill Adams of Cambridge University. He talked about the larger sustainability concerns in the context of conservation: consumption, growth, fertilizer use, water use, climate change, etc. – in other words the mega-challenges that face our planet. He said something to the effect of “Are we, and should we be, bringing people onto the ocean liner that is heading for the iceberg?” – which I took to mean that is it wise to bring the poor into the global economic system (the ocean liner), when that system is not sustainable (heading for the iceberg)?

My concern is that modest conservation successes are going to be dwarfed by the problem of running out of carrying capacity for the 9 billion humans that will be on our planet by 2050.What happens when the Amazon rainforest becomes much more dry due to climate change, and millions of plants and animals go extinct?

That isn’t to say that conservation doesn’t have a very important role to play in helping to conserve the natural systems of the planet, places that can help bolster the resilience of ecosystems and the services that they provide humanity. I just think that in many cases, addressing the fundamental problem of why a place is threatened can do more to save that place rather than trying to save it directly. This is all open to debate of course, and I welcome comments on my thoughts.

Update – the knowledge review: “Does Conserving Biodiversity Work to Reduce Poverty? A State of Knowledge Review” has now been published. Click to download the file Biodiversity as a Mechanism for Poverty Reduction from Conserve Online.

Too often we forget that humanity is fundamentally at the whim of nature. Someone must have angered Vulcan, because the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull ground Europe to a halt last week. I was following the eruption quite closely as I was set to fly to London for a conference. I was relieved last week when I heard that airspace was being opened – just in time for my flight.

Source: NASA Earth Observatory

What I found most interesting about the eruption was how the closure of European airspace illustrated how dependent western civilization is on air travel and transport. Fresh produce and flowers grown in Kenya could not be flown to markets in Europe. Thousands of travelers, grown used to being able to get from one end of the globe to the other in a matter of hours, were suddenly stranded. (I met a English gentlemen last night who was stuck on vacation in Italy for an extra week – the horror!)

I had a few people ask me about the environmental effects of the eruption. So I did a bit of research. As far as I can tell, the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull has the potential to influence the climate in two direct and one indirect way:

1) Volcanoes blow stuff up into the air. Eyjafjallajokull shot a vast quantity of particulate matter up into the high atmosphere. A significant component of this “stuff” is sulfur dioxide, which in sufficient quantities, can increase the albedo (light reflectivity) of the upper atmosphere. Think of this as akin putting one of those shiny silver car shades in your windshield to keep your car from heating up in the parking lot of JC Penny.

This phenomenon can be significant, as evidenced by the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991. That eruption shot so much aerosol matter into the stratosphere that it reduced the amount of sunlight coming in through the atmosphere by 10%. You can see on the global temperature record (below) that there was a dip in temperatures after 1991.

Source: NASA-GISS

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) Eyjafjallajokull is a vastly smaller eruption compared with Mt. Pinatubo, and did not shoot particulates as high up into the atmosphere, so the aerosol cooling effect is expected to be insignificant.

2) Volcanoes also directly release a large amount of CO2 into the atmosphere. It was estimated that Eyjafjallajokull was emitting between 150,000 and 300,000 tons of CO2 per day.

3) The closure of European airspace led to the cancelation of over 100,000 flights. Roughly 60% of the flights in European airspace were cancelled during the closure. Estimates on the amount of CO2 that was avoided due to all of these planes being grounded ranges from 200,000 – 340,000 tons.

What does all this add up to? Even given the large uncertainties in these estimations, it is likely that the volcano actually caused a net decrease in CO2 emissions.

Unfortunately, this is just a drop in the bucket. Global emissions in 2006 were 28 gigatons (or 28 billion tons). Potentially, the Eyjafjallajokull volcano reduced CO2 emissions by 0.0007%.

In other news, the weather in London is quite nice.

"Oh the places you'll go..."

I met a man in Buenos Aires a number of years ago who shared with me a bicycle tale of epic proportions. Alec, as the English gentleman was called, had been a young man during England’s post World War II reconstruction, and as soon as he was able, had joined the service. Once enlisted, Alec met another young soldier who he soon discovered shared his affinity for bicycles, and the men became fast friends. They talked at great lengths of all the wondrous places and rides that awaited them, through France, Italy, all around the Mediterranean and then through the Middle East. They made grand plans to see the world on their bicycles.

Unfortunately, both men completed their service at different times, and in the time before Alec’s was finished, his mate had been swept along by a domestic life. Their epic ride was delayed and uncertain. As the years went by they kept in touch, always discussing what was possible… and bicycles… but over time their correspondences grew thinner, their bodies older, their lives more complicated.

And then many years later, Alec found himself on business travel to the small town north of London where he knew his friend to last reside. He planned to pay him a visit.

Upon reaching the house Alec was greeted by his friend’s wife, and the news that he had passed away barely a year prior. The moment stung. It was not only the loss of a dear friend, but of a quest unfulfilled.

His sympathies imparted upon his friend’s widow, Alec left an even older man unto himself, and one still short a great quest. Life had moved quickly. That walk alone back to his motel he was somber. His eyes stayed affixed to the short space ahead of his steps. Until he stopped.

There was Alec’s bicycle, with travel saddle bags and repair kit to boot, on display in a bicycle shop he had missed on his way there, ready for him. He walked in and bought it.

Once back in London, he quit his job, tied up loose ends, called his children to share his plans with them, and set off for the north of France, where his ride was to begin. He was in his mid sixties.

Alec and his bicycle made it through France and Italy, and the rest of southern Europe and the Slavic countries. He kept riding down around through Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, until Egypt, where he broke his ride to rest his legs and fill in as deck hand on a boat that worked the Nile. The journey would continue, with Alec eventually making his way to India, and then Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

When Alec and I met he had since biked through over 100 countries on every continent save Antarctica. All along his way he was able to find abiding people to direct him to what he needed, if not offer him to share both food and home with them.

“I stayed off the highways best I could, you see,” he said with wisdom. “And I found that the ride offered me more that way.”

Bike Traveler

“Most people were interested, and since I was on my bike, I just kept pedaling if they were loony. Never really needed to be afraid for much. Besides keeping an eye on the bike.” Many times people offered him a space to camp so they could share in his travels. A man on his bicycle was no unnatural thing, but indeed an enviable way to see the world.

“Truth is America was where I felt least welcomed, and most unsafe. There were many parts where my riding seemed more to annoy than please. Everyone moves too bloody fast in oversized vehicles, distracted and fat. Not everywhere, course, but many parts.”

It has been a number of years since Alec rode through the US, so I am sure he would be happy to know that things are improving.

At least in terms of how many of us, including the US Secretary of Transportation, regard riding one’s bike as a legitimate and indeed honorable way to travel.

Ride your bike, it’s good for you. It’s good for the planet.

Moray Eel (photo: Ian MacKenzie)

We all want to visit beautiful places, but it is easy to overlook just how many other people do as well. Giving our money to businesses and organizations that account for the impacts of our visits when offering us their services is not only a good way to help mitigate our impact, it supports those who are working to ensure that the experience is one that endures into the future. Due to the fact that so many of us flock to where land meets sea for our retreats, it is especially important to account for responsible ocean stewardship in selecting an ecotourism outfitter in these locations. I have a recommendation for you.

As I mentioned previously, I was fortunate enough to visit the big island of Hawaii not long ago. In addition to being the site of the Iron Man world championship, Kona, Hawaii, is also renowned for its diving, and we are a family of divers. The volcanic island’s beautiful reefs and vibrant marine ecosystems support a great diversity of life that delights the senses. Some of the experiences I’ve had beneath the surface of the sea there are quite simply without comparison. But for all their magnificence, and in spite of the ocean’s sheer scale and size, these underwater ecosystems are more fragile than people realize.

Squid Close-Up (photo: Scott MacKenzie)

Having been diving in Kona several times now, with each trip I have gained more and more respect for the outfitter that we arrange our dives through. Jack’s Diving Locker has been leading diving expeditions in Kona for almost thirty years, and if their practices and appreciation for the value of the places they bring divers to visit were shared across the industry and beyond, it is a good bet that divers would benefit from the beauty of these underwater treasures for generations more to come. They are a great example of eco-tourism and green business in practice, and also just a class outfit in what can be a dangerous hobby.

So what does responsible stewardship look like? There are a number of ways in which Jack’s has embedded these values into their core business mission. One example would be taking proactive measures to protect the reefs and coral that offer habitat for underwater life and an attraction for visiting divers. With a growing number of visitors and dive outfits, inevitably more boats are dropping anchor, and that is highly destructive to the coral, which is highly sensitive to “touch from above.”

To counter this trend, Jack’s Diving owners, Jeff and Teri Leicher, spearheaded a mooring buoy project for the State of Hawaii and continue working to establish new mooring buoy sites, as well as to keep existing buoys maintained. By using mooring buoys, dive boats are prevented from dropping anchor down to the reef. An added benefit is that these buoys can only support a specific number of boats in any given area, and as a result, the number of people visiting (and potentially impacting) the underwater ecosystem can be controlled and managed. If you didn’t ask, you may not have even known such measures were in place, or what it took to put them there.

Don't forget to breathe... (photo: Scott MacKenzie)

Another example would be the way in which conservation and protection of underwater species and habitat plays a part in the diving experience with Jack’s. My last dive before departing was a night dive with Manta Rays. This has become a huge tourist attraction in the area in recent years, and Jack’s has gone to considerable lengths to put the best interest of the Manta Rays at the forefront. Some of their members have helped found the Manta Pacific Research Foundation, and work tirelessly to expand conservation efforts for Manta Rays, and other vulnerable species, in the Hawaiian Islands and beyond.

Before descending, our dive masters took the time to adequately prepare us for the experience, and not just the diving, but also the care and reverence that was expected from us in appreciating these extraordinary creatures. Their thoroughness added that much more to the experience. My caution and respect only heightened my sense of awe, and left me with something I will never forget.

There are lots and lots of eco-tourism options sprouting up all over the place. Some merely offer a “branded” experience, and some are the real deal, like Jack’s Diving Locker. If you dive, and make it to Kona, check them out, trust me it is worth it, you will feel good about where your money goes. And when I say the “real deal”, I mean you might just leave a bit humbled.