A U.S. Geological Survey ecologist says the park’s glaciers will be gone by 2020 – about ten years ahead of schedule.

A 2003 USGS study, using 1992 temperature predictions by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), had estimated that the park’s glaciers would disappear by 2030. But the temperature rise in the area has been twice as great as assumed in the 1992 model.

Nonpolar ice is disappearing all over the globe. Major glaciers have entirely disappeared from the Andes, and the Himalayas have lost a third of their snow.

The glaciers of Glacier National Park have shrunk by 67% in the past hundred years.

A lot of sensitive and rare plants are associated with the edges of glaciers. Reduced water is expected to cause drying and die-offs, especially for aquatic species.

We’re now experiencing the extreme effects of economic bad “weather” in the wake of the near collapse of the global financial system. Tom Engelhardt at TomDispatch asks, what if we wake up after a “lost decade” only to meet an environmental crisis involving extreme weather? What he doesn’t ask is just as important: what if we wake up to find a world desperately short of energy, especially oil?

Engelhardt points out that nobody seems to be noticing the extreme and even record-breaking droughts that are presently affecting large and disparate parts of world:

• Southeastern Australia has been burning up, its already dry climate growing ever hotter. Its wheat crops have been hurt in recent years by continued drought.
• Central China is experiencing the worst drought in half a century. Temperatures have been unseasonably high and rainfall, in some areas, 80% below normal; more than half the country’s provinces have been affected by drought, leaving millions of Chinese and their livestock without adequate access to water. In the region which raises 95% of the country’s winter wheat, crop production has already been impaired and is in further danger without imminent rain.
• Iraq is another country in severe drought. The lands between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the “fertile crescent,” are the homeland of agriculture, not to speak of human civilization.
• Serious drought conditions extend across the Middle East, threatening to exacerbate local conflicts from Cyprus and Lebanon to Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel.
• In Latin America, Argentina is experiencing the most intense, prolonged and expensive drought in the past 50 years. Soybeans and corn crops are withering away, and cattle are dying.
• Much of the state of Texas is now gripped by drought, and parts of it by the worst drought in almost a century. Winter wheat crops have failed. Ponds have dried up. Cattle herds may be slaughtered come summer.
• The American southwest could fall into “a possibly permanent state of drought.” A December 2008 U.S. Geological Survey report warns: “In the Southwest, for example, the models project a permanent drying by the mid-21st century that reaches the level of aridity seen in historical droughts, and a quarter of the projections may reach this level of aridity much earlier.”
• Northern California – which produces 50% of the nation’s fruits, nuts and vegetables and a majority of [U.S.] salad, strawberries and premium wine grapes, is in the third year of an already monumental drought.  Water deliveries to farms have been cut by up to 85%. New Secretary of Energy Steven Chu has warned that “California’s farms and vineyards could vanish by the end of the century.”
• East Africa and the Horn of Africa are experiencing rising temperatures, prolonged drought, and crop failures.

The U.N. concurs that global warming is already contributing to rising food prices and food shortages. A new Rapid Response Assessment released by the U.N. Environment Program reports grain production has leveled off and fisheries are declining. It warns global food production could fall 25% short of demand by 2050 due to the combined impacts of climate change, land degradation, cropland losses, water scarcity, and species infestation.  The report is seeing through rose-colored glasses, as it projects food production will need to increase by 50% by 2050. It gives no clue how this feat is to be accomplished, only by unspecified “new ways to increase food production.”  Good luck with that.

Scientists agree that climate change will accelerate throughout this century – and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. At best, we can slow down the rate of increase and eventually (hopefully) avoid passing an irreversible “tipping point.” Extreme weather of every sort – which has already arrived – will become ever more the planetary norm.

We’re going to wake up in 2010, or maybe 2012, after a few years of inexorable depletion and cutbacks of investment in additional capacity, to find that we don’t have enough oil to maintain life as we know it, dependent on auto and truck transportation. Maybe we’ll find ourselves short of electricity generating capacity, as well.

The world as we have known it has already changed. Any economic recovery will find us in an unfamiliar and increasingly unfriendly new world.

A new study by scientists from the US Geological Survey and USDA finds that tree mortality in western U.S. forests has doubled since 1955 due to stresses induced by warming temperatures.

The team’s long-term monitoring shows that tree mortality has been climbing, while the establishment of replacement trees has not. In their surveys, the scientists found that a wide range of tree species were dying including pines, firs and hemlocks and at a variety of altitudes.

The article, “Widespread Increase of Tree Mortality Rates in the Western United States” is unfortunately behind a paywall. Here’s the abstract:

Persistent changes in tree mortality rates can alter forest structure, composition, and ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration. Our analyses of longitudinal data from unmanaged old forests in the western United States showed that background (noncatastrophic) mortality rates have increased rapidly in recent decades, with doubling periods ranging from 17 to 29 years among regions.  Increases were also pervasive across elevations, tree sizes, dominant genera, and past fire histories. Forest density and basal area declined slightly, which suggests that increasing mortality was not caused by endogenous increases in competition. Because mortality increased in small trees, the overall increase in mortality rates cannot be attributed solely to aging of large trees. Regional warming and consequent increases in water deficits are likely contributors to the increases in tree mortality rates.

Co-author Mark Harmon from Oregon State University told the BBC that he feared the die-back was the first sign of a “feedback loop” developing:

“We may only be talking about an annual tree mortality rate changing from 1% a year to 2%, but over time a lot of small numbers add up.

Increased mortality due to global warming sets off a positive feedback loop. As warming causes an increased number of trees to die, there would be fewer living trees to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. At the same time, the increased proportion of dead trees would be releasing carbon as the wood decays, inducing more warming.

Another member of the team, Dr. Nate Stephenson, said increasing tree deaths could indicate a forest that was vulnerable to sudden, widespread die-back:

That may be our biggest concern – is the trend we’re seeing a prelude to bigger, more abrupt changes to our forests?

Joseph Romm at Climate Progress warns this is just the beginning of the bad news:

the planet is on an emissions path to warm 10 times as much in the coming century as we warmed during the period examined in this study.

Barack Obama has only four years to save the world.

This stark warning from James Hansen leads off an article in Sunday’s The Observer (UK). The article contains this quote from Hansen:

“We cannot afford to put off change any longer. We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead.”

Hansen says current carbon levels in the atmosphere are already too high to prevent runaway greenhouse warming, yet the levels are still rising. Soaring carbon emissions are already causing ice-cap melting and rising sea levels and threatening further widespread species loss and major disruptions of weather patterns.

Cap-and-trade schemes – the best of the efforts so far seen from politicians and scientists – have so far proved feeble and futile. Too little, too late. What are needed are a stiff carbon tax and, most crucially, a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants, with a phase-out of existing plants to follow.

So how do the prospects look for action from the Obama administration? Not good, judging from these quotes compiled by Kate Shepard at Gristmill from testimony at the confirmation hearings of Obama’s nominees to head up crucial energy and environment agencies.

Steven Chu, nominee for secretary of energy:

I am optimistic we can figure out how to use those resources in a clean way. I’m very hopeful that this will occur and I think that we will be using that great natural resource.

Lisa Jackson, nominee for EPA administrator:

Coal is a vital resource in this country. It is right now the source of generation of about 50 percent of our power. And I think that it is also important for us to say in the same sentence that it is – the emissions from coal-fired power plants are – the largest contributor to global warming emissions. So we have to face square-shouldered the future and the issues of coal and then move American ingenuity towards addressing them.

Ken Salazar, nominee for secretary of the interior:

Coal is a controversial subject. The fact of the matter is it powers today much of America, and there are lots of jobs it creates . . .  The challenge is how we create clean coal . . .  I believe that we will move forward with the funding of some of those demonstration projects so we can find ways to burn coal that don’t contribute to climate change. I will certainly be an advocate of making that happen.

In Oregon, environmentalist were (embarrassingly) agog over Kulongoski’s “jobs and transportation” plan, which threw them a few crumbs while continuing our “war against space.” Now even those crumbs are being retracted. Concerned about economic damage, Kulongoski’s office is signaling the governor is ready to accept a less restrictive cap than the state’s greenhouse gas reduction goal would require. Brian Shipley – Kulongoski’s deputy chief of staff for energy, climate change and natural resources – is quoted in an article in the Saturday Oregonian as flatly stating that the economy comes first, the environment and climate be hanged:

The governor is not going to approve a proposal that’s going to damage the Oregon economy.

The myriad forces of the status quo are girding for battle under the Orwellian umbrella “Oregonians for Balanced Climate Policy.” Represented are realtors, paper mills, loggers, industry, cattlemen, dairy owners, farmers, metals industries, food processors and builders. Even labor, Kulongoski’s staunch ally, wants more protections for affected workers.

The Interior Department announced a controversial decision last Wednesday (December 31, 2008) to double the allowable rate of logging on 2.6 million acres of federally owned forests in southwestern Oregon.

While estimated annual timber harvest was reduced from 727 million board feet (mmbf) in the draft to 502 mmbf, this harvest level is an increase over the allowable cut of 268 mmbf under the NW Forest Plan and an actual harvest of 80 to 130 mmbf in recent years.

The Bush administration consistently ignored highly critical scientific reviews, including one by its own EPA, that found the WOPR was based on insufficient study, incomplete modeling, and would likely not comply with laws safeguarding fish and wildlife habitat. The EPA objected that the plan represents a significant reduction in the level of aquatic protection currently provided on BLM lands and reduced protection for riparian areas, landslide prone areas, and key watersheds with implications for water quality and sensitive beneficial uses including municipal water supplies and salmonid spawning and rearing.

Governor Kulongoski submitted a letter attacking the plan. Among other reasons, Kulongoski said the plan would interfere with any future wilderness designations in the areas around the Rogue River and had failed to consider the role of forest management in adapting to and mitigating global warming. Kulongoski also noted the new administration was unlikely to be committed to supporting or carrying out the plan.

Environmental groups condemned the decision and promised they would challenge the plan in federal court. Earthjustice described the decision a last minute Bush giveaway “to the timber industry at the expense of salmon spawning streams, healthy old-growth forests and habitat for rare birds such as the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet.”

The proposals for bailouts, regulations and government spending sprees – and, indeed, James Hansen’s recommendations for addressing climate change – all share one tragic flaw: they assume no physical or biological limits to human growth.

Rex Wyler at The Tyee writes that most of today’s economists cling to an 18th century mechanical universe governed by an “invisible hand” of God that magically converts private greed into public utopia. But look at the empirical results of this economic experiment:

Indeed, a few got rich, but the meek inherit an earth featuring child slavery, sweatshops, a billion starving people, toxic garbage heaps, dead rivers, exhausted aquifers, disappearing forests, depleted energy stores, lopped-off mountain tops, acid seas, melting glaciers and an atmosphere heating up like a flambé.

We need an economics that accepts the limits and laws of nature. Dr. Albert Bartlett reminds us that you can’t have exponential growth (at least not for long) within a finite, closed system:

“Growth in population or rates of consumption cannot be sustained. Smart growth is better than dumb growth – but both destroy the environment.”

Economist Herman Daly points out that the economy is but a subset of a larger system:

“The larger system is the biosphere, and the subsystem is the human economy. We can develop qualitatively, but we cannot grow beyond the biosphere’s limits.”

Tyler warns that technology will not save us. Every technical efficiency in history has resulted in more consumption of energy and resources, not less. Technology costs energy. Even advanced energy technology – such as the 4th generation nuclear and CCS that James Hansen thinks is necessary to bail us out of our predicament – requires huge investments capital and material to put in place.

The energy requirements to mine, process, and transport the raw materials that go into the plants; manufacture the components and build, maintain, and eventually decommission the plants; mine, process, transport, and store the fuel; and handle, transport, store, and dispose of the wastes;  make it questionable whether such energy sources will ever yield net energy.

It’s net energy that’s important – and the depletion of high-quality energy is what makes our situation intractable to business-as-usual type solutions. Oil in its early days had an EROEI of more than 100:1 but is now probably in the 18:1 range. Even so, that’s still enormously profitable (in energy terms) compared to other sources.

Before gambling our future on massive, speculative roles of the dice like CCS or nuclear, we need to do a rigorous and thorough life-cycle energy analysis. A life-cycle EROEI analysis is a necessary analytical tool before we jump onto any energy bandwagon. But I’m willing to bet: concentrated solar power (CSP) technology will prove to be far simpler, cheaper and more efficient than either CCS or nuclear, 4th generation or whatever. Not to mention safer and “cleaner” in more ways than just carbon emissions.

Bill Rees, who developed “ecological footprint” analysis at the University of British Columbia, set out the challenge for economists:

“We must account for the environment, reduce total consumption, and then address equitable distribution.”

The New York Times reports that the coal ash spill in eastern Tennessee – already the largest environmental disaster of its kind in the United States – is more than three times as large as initially estimated:

Officials at the authority initially said that about 1.7 million cubic yards of wet coal ash had spilled when the earthen retaining wall of an ash pond at the Kingston Fossil Plant, about 40 miles west of Knoxville, gave way on Monday. But on Thursday they released the results of an aerial survey that showed the actual amount was 5.4 million cubic yards, or enough to flood more than 3,000 acres one foot deep.

The amount now said to have been spilled is larger than the amount the authority initially said was in the pond, 2.6 million cubic yards.

clean coal

The ash contains potentially dangerous levels of heavy metals including arsenic, cadmium, mercury and lead, as well as radioactive elements such as uranium and thorium.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in its Regulatory Determination on Wastes from the Combustion of Fossil Fuels published in 2000 that federal standards for disposal of coal combustion waste were needed to protect public health and the environment. But the U.S. government has failed to take action.

The National Research Council calls for immediate government action to reduce urban and Midwest farmland runoff blamed for feeding an 8,000-square-mile oxygen-depleted “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico. The report released Thursday says nitrogen and phosphorus loads must be reduced by at least 45% if the dead zone is to be reduced in size.

The report, requested by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency which sought the advice of the NRC in implementing the Clean Water Act, recommends that a load reduction allocation scheme be implemented. In exemplary bureaucratese, the report identifies five principles to be followed to allocate and achieve cap load reductions for the Mississippi River basin:

• Select an interim goal for nutrient load reductions as the first stage of an adaptive, incremental process toward subsequent reduction goals;
• Target watersheds to which load reductions are to be allocated;
• Adopt an allocation formula for distributing interim load reductions to targeted watersheds within the basin that balances equity and cost-effectiveness considerations;
• Allow credit for past progress; and
• Encourage the use of market-based approaches to allow jurisdictional flexibility in achieving allocated load reductions. It bears keeping in mind, however, that such markets do not automatically lead to satisfactory outcomes. Such markets require some regulatory caps on nutrient losses in order to operate.

The full report along with other material is available here.

A new study conducted in the Pacific Ocean at Tatoosh Island off the coast of Washington finds that ocean acidity has increased more than 10 times faster than had been predicted by climate change models and other studies. The new study is based on 24,519 measurements of ocean pH spanning eight years, which represents the first detailed dataset on variations of coastal pH at temperate latitudes where the world’s most productive fisheries are found.

This increase will have a severe impact on marine food webs and suggests that ocean acidification may be a more urgent issue than previously thought. Many sea creatures have shells or skeletons made of calcium carbonate, which is dissolved by acid. The increased acidity of the ocean could interfere with many critical ocean processes such as coral reef building or shellfish harvesting. The study documented that the number of mussels and stalked barnacles fell as acidity increased. At the same time, populations of smaller, shelled species and noncalcareous algae increased.

The ocean plays a significant role in global carbon cycles. When atmospheric carbon dioxide dissolves in water it forms carbonic acid, increasing the acidity of the ocean. During the day, carbon dioxide levels in the ocean fall because photosynthesis takes it out of the water, but at night, levels increase again. The study documented this daily pattern, as well as a steady increase in acidity over time.

The study, “Dynamical Patterns and Ecological Impacts of Declining Ocean pH in a High-Resolution Multi-Year Dataset,” will be published in the Dec. 2 issue of PNAS.

Herman Daly, one of the founders of the field of ecological economics, writes at NewScientist that traditional economists have a blind spot: they fail to recognize that our economy is part of a larger system – the ecosystem.

“[E]conomists have not grasped a simple fact that to scientists is obvious: the size of the Earth as a whole is fixed. Neither the surface nor the mass of the planet is growing or shrinking. The same is true for energy budgets: the amount absorbed by the Earth is equal to the amount it radiates. The overall size of the system – the amount of water, land, air, minerals and other resources present on the planet we live on – is fixed.

“The most important change on Earth in recent times has been the enormous growth of the economy, which has taken over an ever greater share of the planet’s resources. In my lifetime, world population has tripled, while the numbers of livestock, cars, houses and refrigerators have increased by vastly more. In fact, our economy is now reaching the point where it is outstripping Earth’s ability to sustain it. Resources are running out and waste sinks are becoming full. The remaining natural world can no longer support the existing economy, much less one that continues to expand.”

The sources of the resources consumed and the sinks into which wastes are deposited are ignored. Effectively, economists are assuming they are infinite. Consequently, economists recognize no limits on the capacity for economic growth.

Now we are seeing the warnings uttered in the 1972 book Limits to Growth come true: exponential growth is resulting in economic and environmental collapse.

Daly says to avoid environmental and economic disaster we must transition to a “steady-state” economy – one where the value of goods produced can still increase, but the physical scale of our economy is kept at a level the planet is able to sustain.

The idea of moving to a steady-state economy may at this moment appear radical and politically unimaginable. But the alternative – an economy that grows in scale beyond the biophysical limits of the Earth – is an absurdity impossible to sustain.