Scientists from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the United States Geological Survey have provided Dot Earth with a closeup view of the remarkable rate of erosion along parts of Alaska’s thawing Arctic Ocean coast. The video clip below is one month of crumbling, from late June through late July this year, at a point east of Barrow, the northernmost community in the United States. It’s clear that simple thawing is much more of an influence than wave action at this spot.
Several influences are speeding the land loss, according to Cameron Wobus, a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the university’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. He answers a few questions below: Read more…
The new China Central Television headquarters building in the Beijing haze on Thursday. (Greg Baker/Associated Press)
Beijing Fog/Smog- Juliet Macur has a report on our Rings blog noting how International Olympic Committee officials were bending over backward to avoid offending China despite the extraordinary soup of haze and pollution in Beijing on Thursday. Just have a look at this news conference statement by the committee president, Jacques Rogge: “The fog you see is based on the basis of humidity and heat. It does not mean to say that this fog is the same as pollution. It can be pollution, but the fog doesn’t mean necessarily that it is pollution.”
A large polar bear, stuck ashore, approached biologists studying coastal erosion related to sea-ice retreats. (Credit: Mark Maftei, Wildlife Conservation Society)
Severe flooding in Yagloo, Somalia, 2006. (Joao Silva for The New York Times)
Researchers Flee Stranded Bear- Scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society had their field research on ecological impacts of eroding Arctic coasts near Prudhoe Bay interrupted by a polar bear that was stuck ashore because the sea ice in that part of Alaska was far offshore. Their bush pilot advised them to decamp, and they did. Polar bears in Alaska appear to be having a harder time than in some other parts of the Arctic, according to federal wildlife officials.
Tropics: Heat = Deluge- Finally, I’ve written a story for Friday’s paper on a study in Science Express clearly linking warmer stretches in the tropics to more frequent extreme downpours, the kind that can swamp a city with poor drainage, causing economic havoc and spreading waterborne illness. The study, by British and American scientists, found that the observed peaks in extreme rain events are about twice as high as what global climate simulations produce. This means that a) the models need work (a lot of scientists agree that they don’t do well with precipitation, b) the satellite measurements are wrong (less likely), or c) some of both. Over all, the authors and other climatologists told me, the link strongly implies that a warming world will be a more downpour-prone world. That means trouble because of rising populations in vulnerable regions. Go to the international Flood Resilience Network and the Asia-Pacific Water Forum for what this means on the ground.
Here are some notable news threads from the great daily digest compiled by Joe Davis of the Society of Environmental Journalists and the latest list of papers of note from the journals of the American Geophysical Union. Keep in mind the whiplash effect. Links to the news stories are at the SEJ site.
From Environmental Journalism Today:
Urban Gas Drilling Causes Backlash In Boomtown
The Barnett Shale, a natural gas-bearing formation underneath 21 counties in north Texas, is a wildcatter’s dream: Wherever energy companies poke a hole, there’s gas. Now they’re scrambling to drill anywhere there’s vacant land — at country clubs, parking lots, city parks, school grounds and airports. But a vocal and growing minority is not getting behind the Barnett Shale, even though Texas-born actor Tommy Lee Jones urges them to on recent billboards and in newspaper and television ads. Jones is a corporate spokesman for Chesapeake Energy, the nation’s largest independent producer of natural gas and the biggest player in the Barnett Shale. – John Burnett reports for NPR’s All Things Considered August 5, 2008.
Gurus Call for Cleanup of Holy Ganges
A coalition of gurus has issued an ultimatum to India’s fragile Government: purify the chronically polluted Ganges, the river revered by Hindus, or face protests and political ruin…. The movement, which holds sway over countless devotees’ votes, is being led by Baba Ramdev, a yoga teacher and spiritual leader who has won tens of millions of followers through his combination of anti-Western diatribe and a cable television show. – Rhys Blakely reports from Bombay for the London Times August 6, 2008.
From Geophysical Research Letters, a journal published by the American Geophysical Union: Read more…
Expect more northward trips by drilling ships like this one, the West Polaris. Demand is so high for drilling ships that builders have raised prices up to $100 million per vessel since 2007. (Woohae Cho/Penta Press for The New York Times)
[UPDATE 7/25: More on Arctic oil and the environment.] The U.S. Geological Survey has released the first Arctic-wide estimate of undiscovered natural gas and oil deposits and come up with huge numbers for both, at least on first glance. The region north of the Arctic Circle, the agency said, probably has a third of the world’s remaining uncharted gas and 20 percent of the remaining oil.
But as Jad Mouawad notes in The Times, if that amount of oil were extractable, it would still add up to less than three years’ worth of gasoline, heating oil and other petroleum needs at today’s consumption rate of 86 million barrels a day — and the demand for oil is rising. The gas is a much bigger deal, with Arctic-wide estimates equaling the known reserves for Russia, the world’s largest largest gas source.
The Arctic energy report, then, perhaps supports the assertions of those saying that the world will not be able to drill its way out of the oil crunch in the long run, Read more…
Crude oil from the Exxon Valdez swirls on the surface of Alaska’s Prince William Sound on April 9, 1989. (Credit: John Gaps III, Associated Press
Time heals all wounds, and reduces most lawsuit payouts.
The Supreme Court today was the final step in a 14-year legal fight by ExxonMobil to reduce the punitive damages it would have to pay about 33,000 Alaskans who claimed they were harmed by the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. The justices began mulling the case in February.
The company argued that it had paid out about $3.4 billion already to clean up Prince William Sound and provide other assistance. The ruling went 5-3 in favor of reducing the punitive damages to $500 million. (Justice Samuel Alito recused himself because he owns Exxon stock.) Here’s a pdf of the decision.
ExxonMobil based its argument on precedents set in two old cases of maritime law holding that “punitive damages are not available against a shipowner for a shipmaster’s recklessness” (language from today’s decision). One case was a suit in 1818 against the owners of The Scourge, a privateer whose officers and crew boarded and plundered a neutral ship, the Amiable Nancy.
This is all yet more proof that I would have been better off, at least financially, going to law school than journalism school. But then again, Osborn Elliott, the dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism when I was there in 1981-2, told us, “You don’t go into journalism to get rich.”