Something Rotten Leaking in California

The above video is an infrared image of the plume of methane leaking from the Aliso Canyon natural gas leak, which was discovered in late October and has been spewing 110K lbs of methane per hour, making the worst environmental disaster in the US since 2010's BP oil spill.  The leak smells because of mercaptan, which has a rotten-egg odor and can cause nausea and dizziness, causing thousands of people to evacuate the area.  There are apparently several difficulties in capping the leak, which can make it take at least three more months to be resolved.

Methane is a particularly active greenhouse gas, which makes this mess pretty troubling--but you know me, I can always envision something worse. As you all know, California has been having a serious drought, causing aquifers of groundwater to be pumped like mad. What's less discussed is the way this is causing ground subsidence--in other words, California is sinking. This is causing some infrastructure to break down--which can include pipelines.

It's the same kind of infrastructure damage that I wonder about regarding the connection between fracking and earthquakes.  It's not reassuring, the things I think about.

Climate Sunday: The End of Breathable Air?

While the COP21 talks continue, let's take a minute to talk about breathable air. Normally, when I talk about breathable air around here, I'm talking about the kind of air pollution in Beijing that makes simple breathing the equivalent of smoking 40 cigarettes a day. (And wouldn't you know, it's about as bad as it ever was.) This time, however, what I want to talk about is a recent finding that at 6 degrees C increase in oceanic temperature, we could be seeing the end of actually breathable air--not air that is too dirty to safely breathe, but air without enough oxygen to sustain aerobic life. This comes about due to a die-off of the phytoplanktons that produce most of the oxygen in our atmosphere, similar to the die-offs we see in the current mass coral bleaching event.

This is why it's imperative that fossil fuels like coal are quickly phased out in countries like India, which has made the case that as a matter of economic justice, they will continue to use coal due to its price point over other energy sources. Leaving aside that coal has been determined to be irredeemably "dirty" in CO2 terms, and that increasingly severe weather events from climate change, such at the devastating floods occurring just now in the Tamil Nadu region are not without economic impact, they have a point--and my feeling is that economic aid should be gathered in a trust managed by the UN for the purposes of subsidizing the necessary transitions, which needn't be painful, and which may prove to be even more outstandingly effective than low-cost coal use from an economic point of view, once it's off and running. It's necessary to think in these terms, because India's energy needs show no signs of decrease any time soon. (On the other hand, China, which is still using coal hand over fist, should basically just stop because they should, and shouldn't need paying off to do so.)

Climate Sunday: Don Blankenship Edition

Greetings and Happy Sunday to you all, and thanks for tuning in to my semi-regular environmental musings. This week's round-up is brought to us by Don Blankenship, who was recently told by a judge to shut his flapping yap up about how politically persecuted he was. It might very well be true that under the Obama Administration, investigators spent more time inspecting his mines and pointing out the very tragically wrong things that led to the deaths of miners at his mines. But this might have been for a lot of reasons, such as, the pattern emerging that Blankenship was awful, the Obama Administration being less likely to ignore these kinds of abuses, and, I don't know--the deaths of 29 miners in a preventable accident due to Blankenship's pathological management? (Not a big fan of Blankenship, this blogger right here.)

But this individual's beef with the government over what he considers to have been job-killing regulations versus what appear to have been employee-killing violations, sets the tone for this week's rumination on--what about the fossil fuel industries, anyway? For example, it looks like Exxon, who apparently knew enough about global warming science in the 1970s and 1980s to have considerable private information on it, basically "gamed" the Bush Administration to sow doubt and confusion. (Although don't let the big bad oil company take the total blame for that--the Bush Administration was very willing to be had. I mean, leave it to these pricks to have a "Safe Water Drinking Act" that lets frackers screw up drinking water however they want.)

But this conflict in knowing full well climate change was real, and also working to sow doubt, is pretty unnerving. They could only act like that if profits entirely outweighed any sense that they should be responsible corporate and global citizens, and exposes a real weakness of the capitalist system.

Oh, That "Just a Theory" Thing Again!

(Image via Wikimedia Commons--image created by NASA)

I think one of the weakest of all possible arguments against climate change is, "Well, maybe human activity does influence it, but we don't know by how much and anyhow, what are you gonna do?" That's the sort of gambit OH Governor John Kasich has tried on, with my favorite "not-a-scientist" add-on: "It's just a theory."

My stars and garters how that "just a theory" thing does get around! The Big Bang--just a theory. Evolution--just a theory. Oh, and gravity--it's just a theory, too. (That's from Ellery Schempp, a local physicist who has tangled with the idiotarian types before, and whose piece is intended as a send-up of how "just a theory" is used with gravity in the way it has commonly been used with evolution. Or, as I've said before, if the "just a theory" argument persuades you that man doesn't have a common ancestor with apes, maybe the "just a theory" argument regarding gravity should lead you to an appropriate experiment with an upper-story window? )

Climate Round-up: This US/China Deal is A Big Thing!

This supercut of politicians using China as a boogeyman to chase away the specter of doing something about cutting GHG emissions is something to keep in mind as Republicans are spoiling for a fight against the recent US/China deal to cut emissions.  One important thing to know about the deal, though, is that China has pledged a greater curtailment in their activities than we have.  There may be some room to be skeptical of their ability to see it through, but coal is unsustainable for them, and the effects of pollution in China are readily apparent in the sightings of people wearing air quality masks on the street.  The effects of the kind of air quality seen in congested areas of China are an obvious health hazard that nation has every reason to find concerning.

In other news, the Obama Administration is coming to the G20 in Brisbane with a pledge of $3 billion to assist developing nations with adapting to climate change and transitioning to renewable energy. There's a terrible inequality to the issue--the countries most responsible for carbon outputs aren't the ones who will experience the worst of it. This will be the most any developed nation has put in the kitty to help equalize things.

As Congress continues to discuss the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline (the House has already voted to authorize it, the current whip count looks like it might fall short in the Senate), here's a useful backgrounder on what the pipeline is and the arguments for and against. It is true that most Americans kinda-sorta support it, but here's one neat thing--

Public support is dropping for fracking. I'm kind of very anti "shit where one eats", so I look at people being utter NIMBY's over fracking as a terrifically sensible thing. It's good to know that spoiled groundwater and the possibility of earthquakes and sinkholes are enough to make people have second thoughts. So maybe showing people what happens when a dilbit pipeline goes pear-shaped can be useful for people who want to know whether this thing could be very bad for the groundwater in just the area it is very needed.

On the tech horizon, solar cells are getting mighty flexible and car companies are trying to get mileage out of frankenfuels.

I'll probably actually even have more for a Climate Sunday post. We will see.

Climate Sunday: Water, Water Everywhere, nor any Drop to Drink?

One of the things I try to be consistent about regarding my appreciation for the environment and my real desire that we don't completely screw it up is: we need certain things like water, air and food to live--so let's actually not fuck with them so hard. Funny thing about this is, those are the things that are most directly getting screwed up. Prime example--3 billion gallons of oil industry wastewater got dumped into the California aquifer. That water is used for drinking and irrigation. Agriculture is highly important in California because they serve a lot of our food needs. And the sad thing about the timing is--California is experiencing a major drought.

There's some jaw-dropping stupid involved in screwing up the already compromised water supply of a state that provides a hell of a lot of our food. But this is the mentality we've got since somebody decided to push for the "Halliburton loophole", that made contaminating freshwater supplies with whatever crap fossil fuel industry folks thought was okay (thallium? arsenic? you betcha!) completely legal.

If I dropped arsenic in your soda, I'd go to jail. Oil companies can put who the hell knows what in the drinking water of hundreds of thousands of people and it does not mean squat.

Now, there is some push back. In my own state, activists have suggested oil company folks drink their own supply and see what they get from it. But I'm afraid that bubble-headed anti-regulationists (well-funded by the Koch Brothers, and others) are looking to get into office and unleash even more dirty water fuckery.

I sure would like to think we're smart enough as a people to not vote for more dirty water in this country.

Komen for the Cure: Out of their Fracking Minds?

Going back to when Susan G. Komen for the Cure made the phenomenally silly choice to get political regarding support for Planned Parenthood, which provides valuable health resources to the underserved, I've been pretty skeptical about what that organization is all about. Merely painting things pink and "raising awareness" only does so much good, and can even be harmful by trivializing advocacy down to "showing one's colors".

Which is pretty much how I feel about these lovely pink drillbits sported by Baker Hughes, an oil company that is displaying its support of breast cancer-ish positive vibes by sporting the color we've come to associate with titties.

The fossil fuel industry and the cure? Whatever. The fossil fuel industry and prevention? Well, the jury is kind of out on that one. But yeah, there is a reasonable concern about chemicals used by the industry and their impact on health--most likely including breast health.

This really isn't the first time Komen has loaned its pretty pink pose in exchange for a likely good-sized donation. But seriously, should fundraising and awareness-raising be ends unto themselves? Why not take into account that pollution from burning fossil fuels are very likely carcinogenic and sometimes even say "No" to things like this?  It might do far more good to make this planet a less cancer-causing place to live.

Climate Tuesday: Like I was Saying, People are Missing All of the Points

So, the takeaway from Naomi Klein's book, if I just boiled it down to the simplest message is, "For crying out loud, not everything has to come down to the Almighty Buck!"

So here's another example of people who seem to be missing all of the points in the extractivist quest to mine for gold in...the dumbest places.  So here we go--West Virginia.

I like West Virginia, it's a beautiful state. The Ohio River is lovely, and its water serves the thirst requirements and more for over 3 million people. So, of course, oil companies are looking at that stream of liquid life and thinking,

"Hey, could there be natural gas under there?"

Yep. The state that just recently had water services to 300,000 residents interrupted by a chemical spill wants to play River Roulette. Sad to say, the governor there is a Democrat, albeit I guess a pitiful one. Which is a reminder that stupidity in the pursuit of petrodollars is not a partisan issue--it's a problem all over.  Fossil fuel royalties are no way to plug a budget hole if it's a stopgap at best and poses more serious clean-up problems down the road. This is the kind of short-term political thinking that makes things worse.

Climate Sunday: Time for a Revolution

There has been a kind of lazy thinking regarding climate change regarding the cost, and as part of my Climate (mostly) Sunday posts, I've often tried to track how the idea that converting our economy to a more sustainable and egalitarian track was proper and necessary.

Oil isn't the future once you've met peak oil--when tar sands or dilbit or whatever you want to call it means more effort and money is put into extracting more polluting fuels. It isn't even the future when you realize burning it is harming the atmosphere. Coal isn't the future when mountaintop removal dumps arsenic into groundwater, and high-sulfur coal produces sickening levels of particulate pollution. Fracking isn't the answer when groundwater is polluted and local farms and residences experience sickness.

The climate science deniers hedge their bets with the refuge that doing something about climate change will cost a lot anyway, so why be out of pocket just for the sake of trees and polar bears and poor people? The answer is that not addressing climate change will cost plenty in the long run. Denialists are basically screwing themselves. It's possible that addressing climate change could very well be beneficial to growth--if we get serious, creative, and on point.

I don't think we have time to waste--I'm enough of a cynic to believe that tipping points are real, and that we could reach a point of no return--but this can not mean that we don't try.

So I have very little time for people who want to blame climate scientists for "being in it for the money".  Seriously? I mean, seriously? Then you can't say addressing climate change is also communism. Sorry. The future might have to be local action, clean energy, water protection, and sustainable food systems. In other words, getting a better quality of life by not supporting pollution and destructive business practices.

And surprisingly, the only ones really hurt by that would be the people disproportionately benefitting from the current tilted and earth-damaging system.

Something has to give.

Know Your Class War: The Curse of the (Water) Drinking Class

Human bodies are something like 60-70 percent water.  We need it to live. It's a basic component of our survival, and access to proper water and sewerage systems is credited with the expansion of the human lifespan in the 20th century, or in any event, we should understand that poor sanitation and water access are not conducive to life--full stop.

Which is why I see water usage as a definite class war issue--for example, did you know that while Detroit is cutting off water to poorer citizens who can not pay their bills--business that are skating on their water bills are spared?

I find that damn interesting.

Not unlike the ability of Duke Energy to walk away from its responsibility to the people of North Carolina whose water was fouled, or the bloody paltry fine that Freedom Industries paid for fouling the water of West Virginia--it seems like a real double-standard exists when it comes to who we think should have use of water, as if it were a privilege or a luxury, and not a right for the survival of beings that depend upon it.

This is why the draining of aquifers in the mid-and southwest for use in farming and fracking and whatever else even as droughts are raging doesn't really shock me. Water is seen, not as essential to life, but as a commodity having a price tag. And if you can't afford the price, well, you can be thirsty. (Now, I'm not saying food production isn't essential--but let's be honest, there is a lot to be said for smaller-scale sustainable practices and more reliance on local food sourcing. Modern farming processes can spoil and waste tons of water. )

Since water is actually essential to human life, does that mean life is viewed as a privilege, not a right?  I do sorely wonder.

Fracking Company Etiquette: Sorry Edition

Now, I'm not going to go into one of my greenie-meanie enviro-rants about how bad fracking is, and how unconcerned about polluting and generally wrecking the communities in which they drill these energy companies can be, but just think for a moment about what a company might want to say when there has been a fracking well explosion that has left one rig worker missing (presumed dead) and a fire that raged for several days.

"Have a pizza on us" is not one of the answers.

"Free pizza" is how you cheer up the local junior softball team when the big game has been rained out. It's not really how you tell a community "Sorry about the tragedy."


I'm sure they meant well.

Climate Sunday: If it's Sunday, It Must Be Something in the Water

The above haunting image comes to us from North Carolina, where 82,000 tons of coal sludge has been spilled into the Dan River. That's an awful lot of coal sludge, and it is not only chock-full of toxic metals and chemicals (arsenic, anyone?) but damn near impossible to clear out. Happening hard on the heels of the chemical spill in West Virginia (which is still reeling) (Did you know their water bills went up?), this is yet another reminder that coal may be a lot of things, but clean, it isn't.

But let's be blunt--some alternatives are just as bad. Let's take fracking's impact on water.  Although we don't hear that much about fracking spills of contaminated water, there is evidence that people living where fracking occurs are at risk of health concerns, and children born where there is fracking have a greater risk of birth defects. 

But leaving aside whether the practice of fracking leaves hazardous residues in the water, the fact that fracking relies on water at all is problematic, when drought conditions seriously restrict resources, and decisions about prioritization have to be made. Fracking uses water that could be better used in these situations. Take a look at this:

It can take millions of gallons of fresh water to frack a single well, and much of the drilling is tightly concentrated in areas where water is in chronically short supply, or where there have been multi-year droughts. 

Half of the 97bn gallons of water was used to frack wells in Texas, which has experienced severe drought for years – and where production is expected to double over the next five years. 

Farming and cities are still the biggest users of water, the report found. But it warned the added demand for fracking in the Eagle Ford, at the heart of the Texas oil and gas rush, was hitting small, rural communities hard.

We may seriously be making choices about fracking for hard-to-get energy resources versus water to drink, irrigate crops, and water livestock. And our dependence on fossil fuels, after all, like coal and natural gas, are in part responsible for some of our terrible drought situations

We desperately need to make better choices about our resources.

A Startling Reminder that Louisiana is, in Fact, Losing Ground

This video shows an enormous sinkhole (which has recently celebrated its one year anniversary) that literally just sucked down some trees like it was no big thing. The sinkhole is also in the process of basically destroying a town.  It seems awfully likely that Texas Brine, a petrochemical company, is responsible. Apparently, when you hollow out an area to get at the oil or gas or whatever? It does not fill up with good wishes and fairy wings.  (Although what do I know? Some areas are especially prone to sinkholes--like Florida--but in Florida, overdevelopment is pushing the issue.  Oh, and they occur in Pennsylvania too, but I will blame fracking for at least some of them.)

Somewhat less dramatically, however, this reminds me that Louisiana actually is losing ground, about a football field worth of wetlands an hour.  That seems like an awful lot. I kind of blame petrochemical companies for that, too.