Global Warming: It's Not Just the Polar Bears That Are Threatened

For climate change, the poster child is the polar bear. As depicted in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth we see an animation of a tiring bear swimming in the arctic and vainly searching for the sea ice that will be its safe haven. With less and less sea ice, the environment in which the polar bear hunts its prey, the seal, it is going to prove quite difficult for this species to survive.

            The polar bear’s range extends through millions of square miles through North America, Europe, and Asia. That a species with such a large range, with thousands of individuals, could be threatened by climate change is a tragedy.

            The greater tragedy is that the polar bear is only one of the wonderful creatures whose existence is threatened by a warmer world. National Geographic shows us thousands upon thousand of walruses crowded together on an island, a sight that is growing more common as northern sea is reduced by global warming. Because the walrus habitat is literally melting away, their numbers are in decline. Under the Endangered Species Act the species is listed as threatened and soon may be listed as endangered.

            The resulting crowding from the loss of habitat further exacerbates the plight of the Pacific walrus. Animals that get frightened by something like a helicopter could start a stampede, crushing other walruses. Close proximity to other individuals can also lead to diseases being spread more quickly and easily.

            There has also been a die-off of moose in North America, and global warming may be a big piece of the puzzle behind this phenomenon. In New Hampshire a longer fall season and less snow in the winter has lead to an increase in the number of winter ticks. These parasites can seriously affect the health of a moose. Some of the large mammals can be plagued with as many as 100,000 ticks. The moose can loose so much blood that they become anemic. Moose are not adapted to dealing with such heavy tick populations. They scratch the ticks and can tear off large patches of hair. With the hair loss moose can experience hypothermia when it rains in the spring.

            On the other hand, winters are warmer and shorter across the range of the moose. This warmth may be contributing to the moose mortality. Being adapted to the cold, they expend extra energy to stay cool in the warmer weather, which exhausts the animals and can lead to death.

            Scientists are still looking into other factors, such as hunting and the presence of wolves that may be leading to the decline of the moose.

From Appalachian Voices: The Fifth of the Five Worst Political Lies Used to Support of Mountaintop Removal

The 5 Worst Political Lies in Support of Mountaintop Removal « Appalachian Voices

Thom actually posted this a while back. Sorry it took me so long to putting it up here. This is the fifth lie used to support the mountaintop mining industry, that we need to blow up our Appalachian mountains for what is called “energy security.”

            Thom Kay, Legislative Analyst for Appalachian Voices, explains how mountaintop removal provides such a small amount of the fossil fuel used for electricity production and how hollow this argument is. One thing that Thom could have mentioned is that ever since the original OPEC oil embargo the phrase “energy security” has been used by the fossil fuel industry as a rhetorical device anytime that the industry wants to loosen regulations on drilling and mining or when they are trying to pave the way for an additional pipeline.

            Once you couch your argument for more drilling or mining in terms of “security” you’re no longer talking about profits for your company or dividends for your investors, your talking about winning the war, Old Glory, mom, and apple pie. Industry knows how useful this rhetorical device is. Use it and those who oppose your efforts to loosen fracking restrictions, eliminate CO2 regulations, or get in the way of your mountaintop mine wind up looking like unpatriotic tree huggers.

            A brief Proquest search on “energy security” in the New York Times shows the term taking off in 1979, in the wake of the energy crisis, then gaining some currency during the eighties. It began to die off in the nineties but experienced a resurgence after 2000, perhaps due to the rise of more neocon rhetoric floating around during the second Bush administration.

How Can The French Achieve This? Court Rules No Fracking in France

France Cements Fracking Ban is the headline from the Guardian. Because of pressure from environmental groups, the French passed legislation banning fracking in 2011. Today’s headline is in reference to France’s Constitutional Court, their version of a Supreme Court, which ruled that the ban is constitutional; after this court ruling the fracking ban is, without a doubt, the law of the land in France.

How is it that the French can ban fracking, while here there seems to be no question that such a ban would be an impossibility? France seems to do a lot of things right. While that country has one of the best heath care systems in the world, we here in America have a paralyzed government because our Affordable Care Act, a system that, while it is an improvement, is not as good as what French residents enjoy. France didn’t go and invade Iraq with us. They are probably better off for it, too.

More and more, due to increasing evidence (here and here) I’ve grown suspicious of hydrolic fracturing's effects on the environment, people’s health, and even our public policy and politics (here, here, here, here, and here),  and perhaps it should be banned here in the U.S. France has powerful oil companies that can lobby the French Parliamentarians, yet that power was unable to influence this fracking ban. What is different about France that their system of government can, in my opinion, serve the public good? How do they do it?

Increased Risk of Depression for People Living in Coal Mining Areas of Central Appalachia: Calculating the Psychological Costs of Mountaintop Removal

When I ran across this study this morning, I thought, “Well, duh. You needed a scientific study to find this out?” Michael Hendryx, who is at the School of Public Health at Indiana University but spearheaded research into the health effects that mountaintop removal while he was at West Virginia University, and Kestral A. Innes-Wimsatt, a researcher at WVU, looked into the prevalence of depression among those who live among the holocaust of mountaintop mining. Big surprise, removing the mountains for the coal inside leaves folks depressed.

            Overall, around seven percent of the U.S. population suffers some form of depression. Hendryx and Innes-Wimsatt found that around 10 percent of residents in the coalfields of Appalachia suffer from depression and that around 17 percent of folks who live around mountaintop mines have some form of depression. Even after adjusting for other factors that might affect a person’s susceptibility to depression, such as race and poverty, Hendryx and Innes-Wimsatt still found that mountaintop removal coal mining affected the mental well being of the people who live around the mines. From their research the authors conclude:

The odds of a score indicative of risk for major depression were 40% higher in MTR areas compared to non- mining areas after statistical adjustment for other risks. After control for covariates, the risk of major depression was statistically elevated only in the MTR areas and not in the areas where other forms of mining were practiced, compared to the non-mining referent.

Increased Risk of Depression for People Living in Coal Mining Areas of Central Appalachia was published in the online peer-reviewed journal Ecopsychology.  Explaining their findings, the authors suggest that the mountaintop removal depression might be due to solistalgia, a condition of distress during periods of environmental change. This distress is most acute for people who feel particular connections to their environments, as many folks in Appalachia, who can trace their ancestors back for generations, feel.

            Some of the factors associated with depression, such as obesity, binge drinking, smoking, and poverty were adjusted for in this research. In the real world it is difficult to actually separate all this from mountaintop removal. As mountaintop removal reduces the amount of jobs and the economic well being of a community, people feel abandoned by friends and family as they move away. They also feel trapped into an economic system that offers them little chance for secure employment. All of these things depress people, and all of them are caused by mountaintop removal. What I’m suggesting here is that the scientific controls that Hendryx and Innes-Wimsatt imposed on their research, which researchers have to do to maintain scientific integrity, actually winds up underestimating the amount of mental distress caused by the mountaintop mines.

A cemetery left amid the destruction of mountaintop removal. Would you feel good living around this?

            

More Science Reveals Fracking To Be a Bad Deal

It’s looking more and more like fracking is not such a great idea. I’ve avoided seeing Gasland, wanting to take a good look at fracking and see for myself what the process was all about. While visiting in West Virginia I’ve talked to frackers, and a lot of their defense of the drilling practice made some sense to me at the time.

            Well, there’s the stuff folks tell you, and then there’s the stuff that you read about in the news and what the science tells you. And as of right now, from the news and the science, it looks like fracking is a lousy deal.

            A report from Environment America, a federation of environmental advocacy organizations, gives some pretty scary numbers: Last year in the U.S. fracking produced 280 billion gallons of toxic waste water, enough to flood an area the size of Washington D.C. under 22 feet of bad water. Fracking by the Numbers concludes that damage from fracking, “is widespread and occurs on a scale unimagined just a few years ago.”

            Damage from fracking can also be acute. Just this last week a study from Duke University and published in Environmental Science & Technology found that fracking wastewater discharged into a stream in the Pittsburgh area had elevated the levels of radioactivity in the stream. Sediment collected downstream of a fracking operation had radium levels about 200 times greater than sediment collected upstream of the fracking operation. And as I’ve posted earlier, a recent study found that wells close to fracking were more likely to be contaminated with methane.

            It is true that not all the studies have found contamination problems. Is this one of those times when the typical scientific rejoined, “more research needs to be done,” can be heard? Perhaps there might be safe fracking, but I’m beginning to think that it is from a rare combination of certain geologies, very safe drilling practices, and a fair amount of luck.