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When Tipping Points Collide: On Oil Spills, Dead Zones, Superweeds, Dead Birds, Dead Bees and Not-So-Funny Laughing Gas

Posted on June 8, 2010 by J.A. Ginsburg

Graphic justice: from the Greenpeace BP logo competition

If only there were a rewind button.

From the first, almost cheerfully do-able estimate of 1,000 barrels of oil spewing daily into the Gulf of Mexico to a…

jaw-dropping 5,000 barrel revision

horrifying 19,000 barrel update

are-you-kidding-me? 25,000 barrel recalculation

and an it’s way-way-way-more-than-the-Exxon-Valdez admission

…the bad news on the BP catastrophe has gone so far off the dial, it has zoomed past “worst case scenario” to “pretty much the worst case ever.”

ABC News: Sam Champion & Philippe Cousteau don Hazmat suits to dive into the muck: "This is...what BP does not want you to see."

Dispersants that present environmental issues of their own have only made the situation more complex. “We’re dealing with an aggregation of hundreds of thousands of patches of oil,” according to Admiral Thad W. Allen, the Coast Guard commander in charge of the clean-up. It will takes months to scrub the surface. Years at least to scrub the wetlands.

The situation beneath the waves is even murkier, with massive underwater plumes comprised of tiny oil droplets hundreds of feet thick, stretching for dozens of square miles. They cannot evaporate or be burned off and concerns run high that they are death traps for almost anything that swims by.

Specialized oil-loving microbes – either naturally occurring or lab-concocted – work slowly, especially in cold or low-oxygen waters. They also give off CO2 in the process, adding their microbial 2 cents to ocean acidification, and soak of oxygen, potentially to the point where nothing can survive: a Silent Spring beneath the waves.

THE DEAD ZONE

The BP geyser isn’t the biggest (at least for now) or even the longest-running oil-driven disaster in the Gulf. For over 60 years, chemical fertilizer-laced farm run-off has flowed into the Mississippi, then down to the Gulf where it annually triggers massive algal blooms, followed by equally massive algal die-offs. Microbes on decomposition duty soak up so much oxygen over an area averaging 6,000 square miles, the water turns into a lethal “dead zone.” (the size of the zone depends on a variety of factors, including which way the wind blows).

Crime Scene: Watersheds contributing to Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone"

America’s famous bumper corn crops are in large part thanks to chemical fertilizers. Since fossil fuel is a key ingredient in the manufacture of artificial fertilizers, it is a key ingredient in the production of corn-based ethanol. Oil’s would-be replacement requires…oil.

Writer Michael Pollan has spent a career tallying the costs of an agricultural system tipped so far out balance, there is almost nothing natural about it. Short term gains, measured in bountiful harvests and weed-free fields, have collectively blinded us to the full costs, unsustainability and sheer craziness of it all:

From the standpoint of industrial efficiency, it’s too bad we can’t simply drink petroleum directly, because there’s a lot less energy in a bushel of corn (measured in calories) than there is in the half-gallon of oil required to produce it. Ecologically, this is a fabulously expensive way to produce food–but “ecologically” is no longer the operative standard. In the factory, time is money, and yield is everything.

- What’s Eating America

SUPERWEEDS: NATURE BATS LAST…AGAIN

But the end of the era of easy bushel-busting gains may be over. All around us, the “ag bubble” is deflating. Fertilizer isn’t the only thing coursing down the nation’s waterways. So is topsoil. By the ton. And the more topsoil that’s lost, the more dependent crops become on fertilizer, which means the more dependent they become on…oil.

NYT: Spread of Roundup resistant weeds. “It is the single largest threat to production agriculture that we have ever seen.”

Monsanto’s Roundup Ready seeds were sold, in part, as a way to reduce topsoil erosion. The genetically modified seeds were designed (and patented, but that’s another story) to be impervious to the company’s proprietary herbicide, Roundup. Farmers could stop tilling the soil – reducing erosion – and simply spray their weed-troubles away. Man-engineered genetic selection, however, turned out to be no match for the old-fashioned natural kind. Roundup-defiant “superweeds” have now invaded millions of acres in the U.S. and they are just warming up.

ABC News: Hardy pigweed defies chemical assault."There is no rhyme or reason how we can control it"

Like a rural touring company of “The Little Shop of Horrors,” giant pigweed plants dot farmers’ fields, growing as much as three inches per day, sucking up water and nutrients, threatening tractors and devouring livelihoods. Not only must farmers till the soil once again, but also apply a witch’s brew of poisons in an escalating battle for control of the fields.

Since petrochemicals are ingredients in herbicides and pesticides, the more crops need to be treated, the more dependent they become on…oil.

ENGULFED

NYT: Oil disaster timeline, updated regularly

Back in the Gulf, the magnitude of the devastation caused by a hole in the sea floor roughly the size of sewer cover goes beyond words, and even beyond maps. The now iconic New York Times infographic, updated regularly and viewable as a disturbingly long, mesmerizing time animation, only shows the story on the surface. Data are harder to come by for the deeper story, and what little is known isn’t encouraging.

While waves of oil and “mousse” wash up on beaches, ooze into marshes, and devour sea-life and shorebirds, deep-sea droplet-plumes flirt with Altlantic-bound currents, threatening to spread the disaster straight up the Eastern seaboard. Although progress is finally being made toward diverting the oil, if not stopping the flow, the devastation continues to cascade. Entire food chains are on the line. From micro to macro, wildlife face either direct annihilation or a slower, equally grim fate marked by illness and starvation. The biochemistry of the Gulf itself could be forever altered. What was once may never be again.

The damage isn’t confined to water and wetlands, or even to a region. Migrating birds, including those currently nesting in blissful ignorance in my Chicago neighborhood and as far away as the Canadian arctic, will find themselves in harm’s way when they fly south again for the winter.

The entire planet could feel the effects. New research suggests that marine dead zones can trigger an an increase in the amount of nitrous oxide filtering into the atmosphere. That might be kind of funny – it’s laughing gas – except that N2O, per unit weight, is nearly 300 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2. It also contributes to the development of the ozone hole, increasing the planet’s exposure to UV light. So, more climate change and skin cancer. Great. Just great…

WHATEVER IT TAKES – WHATEVER THAT IS

Skimming, burning, setting booms around hundreds of miles of coastline, dredging insti-sand berm islands, collecting the hairy/furry leftovers from nation’s hair-cuts and pet trims to make oil-absorbant materials, spreading hay across the water’s surface – in the face of such overwhelming disaster, the only right answer is “all of the above.” (And if all else fails, there is always “Stephen Colbert’s Oil Containment Solution Randomizer.”)

But only microbes have what it takes to break apart oil and get things back on ecological track.

Communities of naturally-occurring microbes, evolved to dine on oil burbling up from natural seeps (of which there are many across the world’s oceans), have, so far, proven more effective than any microbes developed in the lab. “A superbug fails because it competes with this community that is adapted to the environment,” notes Ron Atlas, a microbiologist who worked on the Exxon-Valdez spill and has co-written one of the definitive books on the subject, Bioremediation.

That hasn’t stopped researchers from trying, yet even GMO bugs need a dollop of nitrogen and phosphorous – the same ingredients found in the fertilized run-off behind the Gulf’s dead zone – to pick up their naturally slow pace. Getting it to them in the middle of the open ocean isn’t so easy.

Enter NASA.

In 1992, a failed attempt to create liquid crystals in zero gravity led to the discovery of microspheres, bubbles of gas trapped in tiny crystalline structures. NASA Tech Hall of Famer, Petroleum Remediation Product (PRP) is based on this technology and designed to soak up oil spills. The sphere-lettes, less than 100 microns across, are made of beeswax, which is naturally full of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. Beeswax is also oleophilic, which means it binds with oil. PRP has been used to clean up everything from boat bilges to driveway stains. Once the oil is gone, PRP biodegrades and that’s that.

But wait a minute. Bees are dying from Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). For the fourth year in a row, more than a third of the hives in the U.S. failed to survive the winter. No one has been able to pinpoint a single cause, though suspicions run high on a perfect storm of pathogens and chemical exposures. Dozens of pesticides have been identified in samples of bees, wax and pollen. Herbicides are another concern – and petrochemicals are in both. Could bees be yet another species doomed by oil? And since bee pollination is essential for so many crops, what does this mean for us?

THE NETWORK

Although humans may not be able to plug into the planet Earth as literally as the Na’vi on Pandora in Avatar, we are as inextricably linked to greater whole. The oil spill in the Gulf brings this into sharp focus. There is no escape: what goes around, comes around.

Have we reached a point where the resilience of the planet’s network of elegantly interlaced ecosystems has been stretched to the limit? In a few short centuries, we have taken a good deal of the “bounce” out of the system And once tipping points start to collide, there is no predicting what could happen next.

Perhaps – finally – this is the “teachable moment” where something actually gets learned. In one form or another, fossil fuel plays a part in every one of these grim scenarios. There are alternatives. Yet somehow those greener, smarter, environmentally-friendlier, job-creating technologies only seem to get hauled out for display on Earth Day, World Environment Day, or during political campaigns to give us all a rosy glow about the promise of brighter tomorrow.

Even BP had hung its corporate hat (top hat?) on a greener, cleaner future, spending millions of dollars on a sunny logo and a “beyond petroleum” ad campaign.

Well, yes, now that you mention it, I would like a world beyond petroleum.

As soon as possible.

Boston.com "Big Picture" slideshow

The Farm Next Door: Urban Agriculture, Biomimicry, Aquaponics, Why Worms are Priceless & How Will Allen Aims to Fix the World

Posted on September 26, 2009 by J.A. Ginsburg

Growing Power, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Healthier food, better access for poor, landfill relief, reduced carbon footprint, off-the-shelf set up, replicable, scalable, jobs bonanza, includes fish; Can a “small food” paradigm succeed where Big Food has failed?

The next agricultural revolution will not be patented. It will not depend on genetically modified seeds or petrochemical fertilizers. It will not poison or deplete aquifers. It will not erode topsoil that took millennia to form. Nor will distance between “farm and fork” be measured in thousands of gas-guzzling miles.

The next agricultural revolution won’t even take place on the farm – at least as we know it.

It will be potted and stacked, set up in hoop houses and warehouses, sprout from rooftops, vacant lots and lawns. Worms will be celebrated, bacteria will flourish and grubs nurtured. It will be drought and flood resistant and productive all year long.

The next agricultural revolution will be street-smart and urban, yet mimic nature far more closely than agro-giant operations sprawled over hundreds or even thousands of monotonous monoculture acres.

Best of all, the next agricultural revolution is well underway, just 5 blocks from Milwaukee’s largest public housing project, off a busy street, behind an unassuming farm-stand surrounded by sunflowers basking in the brilliant light of a mid-September afternoon. Welcome to Growing Power.

BIG FOOD GONE BAD

“The Big Food system hasn’t fed the world,” says Will Allen, urban farmer, MacArthur genius, share-cropper’s son, former basketball star, former corporate marketer, vermicompost evangelist and CEO of Growing Power. He is speaking to a group of environmental lawyers who have spent an hour digging a ditch after 2 hours touring Growing Power’s flagship 3-acre farm. They are flushed and sweaty and hang on every word. Here at last is a genuine answer that could just turn things around, no legal briefs required.

According to UN statistics, over a billion people do not have enough to eat, with tens of millions more added to the tally each year. Even in the U.S., an estimated 1 in 6 children – more than 12 million – are “food insecure.” A global recession, a series of increasingly severe droughts and floods (at least some likely driven or amplified by climate change), and competition for land between food and fuel crops have sent those living near the edge straight over it. Every 6 seconds, a child somewhere in the world dies from hunger or related causes.

Micronutrient malnutrition affects an estimated 2 billion people. One third of children in the developing world are vitamin A deficient, putting them at risk for blindness. Anemia from iron deficiency during pregnancy is linked to over 100,000 maternal deaths.

In the developed world, malnutrition is often masked by obesity. A diet of high-calorie, high-fat, fast food laced with high fructose corn syrup is not only a nutritional catastrophe, but also ups the odds for developing diabetes, heart disease and other assorted ills. Cheap food comes at a high cost that the poor, more than anyone else, have had to pay.

Fast food joints and liquor stores dot the neighborhood around Growing Power, but the nearest full-service grocery is several miles away. For all practical purposes, the neighborhood is a healthy food desert. American cities are rife with them.

Allen’s mission is to fill the gap: to bring fresh, healthy, affordable food to the urban poor, to green food deserts with greens…and eggs, honey, chickens, turkeys, ducks and fish. Lots of fish.

SMALL FOOD, BIG DIFFERENCE

The Growing Power greenhouse - intensive all-season farming generates between $5 and $30 per square foot (photo: Growing Power)

Walk through the door of the small shabby-neat one-room store – where a video of Allen extolling the wonders of worms plays on an old television perched on some equally vintage coolers stocked with a few cartons of eggs and miscellaneous produce – into the Growing Power greenhouses and you enter a world that makes such sense, the relief is palpable. It fairly hums with purpose.

Bounty beyond imagining bursts from a substrate of plywood, 2 x 4s, waterproof liners, pumps (some solar powered), pvc pipe, fluorescent grow lights and tens of thousands of plastic pots and seed trays. There is an order to the chaos, a rhythm and logic to the intertwining series of elegantly balanced ecosystems that together support over 150 varieties of vegetables, edible plants, poultry, a few goats and tens of thousands of fish.

So intensively is space used, each square foot generates between $5 and $30. That translates per acre between roughly $218,000 and a little more than $1.3 million, which is astonishing. By contrast, corn currently sells for about $3 per bushel. If you figure 200 bushels per acre – a bumper crop – that ‘s only $600. Comparing commodity grain crops to vegetables isn’t entirely fair: corn and wheat aren’t greenhouse-friendly. Still, this gives you some idea just how distorted and subsidy-addled the Big Food system has become. Factor in the cost of seed, fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides, machinery, land and labor and what’s really being raised is a bumper crop of debt.

Allen’s harvest is also healthier because it is fresher, with fewer nutrients literally lost in transit. Tomatoes, produced year-round at Growing Power, sell when naturally ripe. Supermarket tomatoes, however, are often picked green, then exposed to ethylene gas to make them ripen in time for delivery, which usually involves a long-haul truck or an international flight.

In a rather poetic twist, fewer greenhouse gases are emitted from Allen’s greenhouse food because delivery is local. (more…)

Filed under: agriculture, air pollution, climate change, drought, energy, food, soil health, water | Tagged: aquaponics, Big Food, carbon footprint, climate change, coir, compost, food insecurity, GMO, greenhouse food, greenhouse gases, Growing Power, hunger, jobs creation, Milwaukee, perch, small food, Sweet Water Organics, tilapia, urban agriculture, vermicompost, Will Allen, worm bins | 12 Comments »

The Carbon NEGATIVE Option: Why Tim Flannery & James Lovelock Love Biochar

Posted on February 17, 2009 by J.A. Ginsburg

climatefriendlysoil “Sustainable” isn’t sustainable. It isn’t even achievable, according to several researchers presenting at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Global carbon emissions have accelerated so dramatically over the last eight years, we are “now outside the entire envelope of possibilities” reviewed by the IPCC. Sure enough, sea levels are rising and rising faster than predicted. Meanwhile, biofuels, the great green hope of so many, have only made things worse, leading to a increase in slash & burn farming in the tropics. Indeed, we could find ourselves “effectively burning rain forests in our gas tanks,” noted one scientist.

TrackerNews has been full of stories over the last few months painting the same grim picture:

The Sea of Japan absorbs only half has much CO2 as it used to. Scientists suspect warmer water temperatures have changed the pattern of vertical currents known as “ventilation.” The water on top has essentially become saturated with CO2. If it turns out this is happening in other oceans, the ramifications are immense. Oceans absorb about a quarter of human-generated CO2

All this CO2 is making the oceans more acidic, which is destroying coral reefs, along with anything else unfortunate enough to rely on a calcium carbonate shell. That, in turn, is making it more difficult for stressed fisheries to recover, leading to higher food prices and hunger. The circle may be even more vicious. Researchers have just discovered that fish play a key role in marine carbon sequestration. Fish excrete vast quantities of calcium carbonate as a result of drinking seawater. Scientists speculate that climate-warmed seas would speed up fish metabolism leading to increased excretions. But fewer fish means a net decrease and less calcium carbonate in the water to neutralize acidity.

Canadian forests are now carbon emitters. A combination of drought, logging, beetles, milder winters (warm enough to allow beetles to survive) and fire have turned 1.2 million square miles-worth of carbon sink solution into part of the problem.

Clearly, if we are going to make any headway with this disaster, we are going to have to come up with goals considerably bolder than “carbon neutral.” Optimistically, we are thisclose to an irreversible tipping point. According to yet another depressing study, global warming could trigger massive marine “dead zones” persisting for thousands of years.

BIOCHAR, a.k.a. AGRICHAR, a.k.a., TERRA PRETA: OLD TECH TO THE RESCUE

(more…)

Filed under: agriculture, charcoal, climate change, energy, InSTEDD, soil health, TrackerNews | Tagged: agrichar, biochar, carbon dioxide, climate change, CO2, global warming, greenhouse gases, James Lovelock, Johannes Lehmann, nitrous oxide, Terra Preta, Tim Flannery | 12 Comments »

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