Gristmill

Ocean dead zones to expand, 'remain for thousands of years'

I doubt geoengineering will ever be practical as a primary strategy for dealing with climate change (see here and here). That said, I don't consider most of the efforts to pull CO2 out of the air geoengineering -- that is ungeoengineering our self-inflicted climate wound. And those efforts are only plausible with super-aggressive mitigation that keeps concentrations close to 450 ppm.

It's strategies like injecting sulfur into the atmosphere that should worry people the most. Those strategies have many flaws, but among the worst is that they do nothing to stop humanity from turning the oceans into one giant acidic deadzone.

A new study in Nature Geoscience, ($ub. req'd, abstract below) makes crystal clear why very serious mitigation must always be humanity's primary strategy for averting climate catastrophe. As AFP reported on the study:

Global warming may create "dead zones" in the ocean that would be devoid of fish and seafood and endure for up to two millennia ...

Its authors say deep cuts in the world's carbon emissions are needed to brake a trend capable of wrecking the marine ecosystem and depriving future generations of the harvest of the seas.

Precisely. This study makes a matching pair with NOAA stunner: Climate change "largely irreversible for 1000 years," with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe.

Even worse, of course, is that while there are many plausible, albeit expensive and untried on large scale, strategies for removing CO2 from the atmosphere, it is far from clear how one does that from the ocean.

Here is more detail on this important study and on oceanic dead zones:

Memo to Obama: CCS won't make tar sands clean. Memo to all: They ain't 'oil sands.'

Climate Wire ($ub. req'd) reports this morning, "Obama says 'technology' can fix oil sands skirmish":

President Obama said "clean energy mechanisms," like carbon capture and storage, would allow the United States to continue consuming Canadian sand oil, an emission-heavy fuel that often requires strip-mining vast stretches of boreal forest in the province of Alberta.

The assertion yesterday came two days before Obama is scheduled to meet with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Ottawa, and it promises to raise questions among environmental groups, which see the oil sands as a key contributor to climate change.

Uhh, no, no, no, and no. First, the tar sands are a key contributor to climate change -- it is absurd for ClimateWire to hedge (and weaken) this fact by attributing it solely to environmental groups.

Second, the "biggest global warming crime ever seen" (see here) cannot be made green with carbon capture and storage, even in the unlikely event CCS proves practical for the tar sands. If the President wants to understand everything the tar sands would have to do to be "clean," he should start with the pastoral letter of Canadian Bishop Luc Bouchard (see here).

Third, Obama said, "I think that it is possible, for us to create a set of clean energy mechanisms that allow us to use things not just like oil sands, but also coal." Did he really say "oil sands"? I can understand why greenwashing Canadian shills use the phrase rather than the traditional term "tar sands" (see here), but not why the U.S. media does, and certainly not somebody as smart as Obama.

No doubt the phrase makes it seem like, oh, I don't know, maybe up through the sand came a bubblin crude, oil that is, black gold, Texas tea, Athabasca euphemism (see ClimateProgress commenter, Jim Eager, here).

Green groups outline ideal environmental budget for FY ’10

With President Obama expected to release his first federal budget plan on Feb. 26, environmental groups today pitched their ideas about what should be included. The proposed “green” budget, which comes from a coalition of 27 environmental groups, includes more than $72 billion for green projects. The Green Budget 2010 [PDF] proposal seeks multi-billion-dollar investments […]

Will coal fight continue if governor is tapped for Obama Cabinet?

Coal-battling Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) is reportedly the top choice to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. So if Obama taps her for the Cabinet post, what exactly does this means for the coal fight in her home state, since as a few weeks ago we mentioned that Kansas’ coal lovers […]

NYC's Scott Stringer releases a plan for remaking the urban food system

For those of us wondering what it would take to "localize" urban food systems, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer has some answers. In a just-released study called "Food in the Public Interest," Stringer's office analyzes the New York City "foodshed" (a term we'll be hearing a lot of in the future) and comes up with a lengthy set of recommendations. If it does anything, the report emphasizes just how daunting a task it will be to reform food policy in this county.

Much of what Stringer hopes to accomplish (especially in the area of nutrition programs) will be handled at the federal level. Still, the report emphasizes the outsized impact on issues that involve land use and commercial development that the control over zoning and business licensing regulations gives to local authorities. Attempting to eliminate food deserts in low-income areas by creating "Food Enterprise Zones" and reducing red tape in the permitting of food processing companies is exactly the kind of thing that zoning and licensing reforms can address.

Interestingly, the report's conclusions on food deserts align with a recent study by two SUNY-Buffalo researchers. They suggest the solution may lie in thinking small (increase the number of neighborhood grocery stores) rather than big (spending tax money on attracting chain supermarkets). Indeed, the same focus on local regulations applies to the expansion of urban agriculture (first step: overturn New York City's beekeeper ban!) and to the development of a wholesale farmers' market and food storage network (so that industrial and commercial buyers can better take advantage of local agricultural output).

Big Coal's far-out proposal for an economic stimulus

Last week the coal lobbying group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity held a press conference to announce a study of the employment and other economic benefits of building new coal plants with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

The plan, developed by Denver-based BBC Research and Consulting, looks at the effects of building 38, 122, or 188 new coal plants, each with 90 percent CCS.

Since "jobs" and "stimulus" are the watchwords these days in Washington, ACCCE decided to emphasize the "6.9 million total job-years of labor" that would be created by building, fueling, and operating these new coal plants.

Well, maybe. But there's a problem with the time frame. The "stimulus" jobs being trumpeted by the ACCCE would not begin to appear until around 2020, according to what the utility industry's own research institute, EPRI, told Congress in May [PDF].

In short, this is vapor employment, jobs that won't start to materialize for several presidential administrations down the road -- maybe during the second term of Huckabee/Palin.

What's depressing is that ACCCE actually talked leaders of four major unions into being its sock puppets at the press conference. One was Abraham Breeley of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, who said, "This study demonstrates that [coal with carbon capture and storage] has the potential to create literally millions of jobs for workers across the country, in every region -- and I think it's very important to point out that these are jobs that can sustain families."

Message to Breeley and comrades: Stop hanging out with the coal boys. Instead, go down the street to the American Wind Power Association, which just reported that 83,000 people were building and operating wind farms in 2008. Or check out the Solar Energy Industries Association, which just reported that the newly signed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will create 110,000 jobs in the solar industry in the next two years.

Compare those 193,000 solar and wind power jobs to the 174,000 jobs currently provided by coal mining (83,000) + coal transportation (31,000) + coal-fired power generation (60,000).

Not only is combined solar/wind employment beginning to move past total coal-related employment, but the gap is expected to widen.

Farmers take the hit as the CAFO model comes under pressure

In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries.

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The industrial meat giants have entered a crisis phase.

As I've reported before, the world's biggest chicken packer, Pilgrim's Pride, is languishing in bankruptcy, squeezed by high feed costs, its own addiction to cheap capital from Wall Street, now dried up, and ruthless competition from rival Tyson. Facing a similar situation, Smithfield Foods, the globe's biggest pork packer and hog producer, announced it's shuttering six plants and hacking away 1,800 jobs.

Pilgrim's Pride has deftly used its bankruptcy to shunt much if the pain onto the backs of its farmer-suppliers, The Wall Street Journal reports (see extremely interesting related video). The article shows the massive risks required of the farmers who supply the nation with meat. Get this:

Ashley Judd, Silas House rally against mountaintop removal

While ABC-TV maven Diane Sawyer missed the bigger picture this week in her myopic portrait of Appalachian poverty in "Children of the Mountains," hundreds of Kentuckians converged on Frankfort to celebrate their mountains and call for an end to mountaintop removal. Led by actress Ashley Judd and author Silas House, the Kentuckians rallied behind a "stream-saver" bill slowly passing through the state legislature.

Eastern Kentucky native Judd pulled no punches in her speech on the state capitol steps:

"Make no mistake about it: The coal companies are thriving. Even in this bleak economy, they are thriving. What is dying is our mountains. And they are dying so fast, my friends, so shockingly fast."

Watch a video of Judd speaking, from the Kentucky Herald-Leader:

Bestselling novelist House, a native of the eastern Kentucky coalfields, called on Gov. Steve Beshear (D-Ky.) to have the courage to confront the dirty realities of coal:

Bob Geldof takes a big ol' swig of biofuel

Back in the 1980s, Bob Geldof urged Westerners to send food to famine-stricken nations in Africa. Now, evidently, he wants Africans to burn food in their car engines. Get this:

Sir Bob Geldof will be a keynote speaker at the 2009 World Biofuels Markets (WBM) congress and exhibition, to be held in Brussels on the 16-18th March.

Evidently, Sir Bob will make the case for biofuels as panacea for Africa's economic woes. As is often the case, Geldof -- organizer of the 1985 bi-continental blowout Live Aid concert -- will be in exalted company. Only this time, it's not the likes of Jagger and Jacko, rather, it's big-time energy execs and pols.

Sir Bob joins Lord Browne, former CEO of BP, Dr Hermann Scheer, Member of German Parliament and nearly 200 CEO's and expert speakers.

The events list of main speakers includes another exec tied to BP, as well as the head of Brazil's sugarcane ethanol trade group (UNICA) and the chief of struggling U.S. cellulosic ethanol company Verenium.