The San Diego UT Profiles Scientist Ralph Keeling, But Where Is the Science?

I am left feeling that there is something a bit remiss in this story from San Diego’s UT newspaper. The story concerns the work of Ralph Keeling, who is carrying on the work of his father, the late Charles Keeling. The elder Keeling established the measurement of atmospheric carbon dioxide atop Mona Loa in Hawaii back in the 1950s. The continued observations of increasing carbon dioxide are what is known as the Keeling Curve and serve as some of the bedrock research upon which the science of global warming is based.

            As to the science of global warming, Deborah Sullivan Brennan, the writer of the story, gives us the following:

Most, but not all, scientists believe global warming is accelerating and that human activity plays a key role.

Although the curve shows a consistent upward trend, its implications for climate are the topics of ongoing debate. Uncertainties remain about carbon dioxide’s effects on weather, precipitation and other facets of climate.

Maybe I’m being too critical here, but it seems to me that Brennan is placing an emphasis on the uncertainties of global warming. “Most, but not all, scientists believe global warming is accelerating,” just strikes me as a needless way of emphasizing the beliefs of a few contrarians—many of them on the payroll of fossil fuel industries or their allied “think tanks”—who buck the scientific consensus of global warming. Nowhere in the article does Brennan mention that the world’s temperatures have risen in correspondence to the rise in CO2 that the Keeling Curve reveals. Neither is there any mention that it is the burning of fossil fuels that throws CO2 up in the air.

            Most of the article is a very pleasant profile of Ralph Keeling and his relationship with his father, describing their shared interests in music and tinkering. If that is the emphasis of the article, fine. This is from today’s paper, the Sunday paper, which usually features a lot of human interest features. I don’t object to that. But if you’re going to profile a son who is carrying on the scientific work of his father, please, in the two or three paragraphs that describe the research that they share, get the science right.

            And as far as I’m concerned the reporter buried the lead of the story. The money quote at the very end of the profile has Ralph Keeling saying: “Rising carbon dioxide is not a threat to life. No one ever claimed that. It’s just a threat to life as we know it.”

            But then again it wouldn’t have been a very good human interest Sunday paper story if the headline read: Prominent Scientist Says Global Warming Ends Life As We Know It.

The East, A Movie That Keeps the Term "Eco-Terrorism" Alive

Today the movie “The East” makes its premier. If I hear that it’s good, I’ll probably go see it.

            As the trailer to the film suggests, the movie is about an “eco-activist” group. From the rest of the preview I got the impression that this group, whose members refer to as “The East,” participate in anti-corporate sabotage and are possibly involved in activities that pose dangers to others. C’mon, it’s a thriller. There has to be some real danger in there somewhere.

            My problem with this movie is that it helps to keep alive the term “eco-terrorism.” Although a number of reviewers are not using the term when they discuss the film, other television shows and newspapers are quick to label the movie as an “eco-terrorism thriller” or thriller about eco-terrorists.

            The persons who made the movie involved themselves with some pretty fringy folks as research. For two months, writer and director Zal Batmangij and writer and actress Brit Marling went dumpster diving with freeganists, people who,as a matter of principle, find and eat some of the 40 percent of the food that is discarded in this country. Freeganists are like folks who live off the grid, or the people who publish Adbusters, or the followers of the anti-consumerist preacher Reverend Billy. They are people who see themselves as living in opposition to and as a correction to the materialist and prodigal culture that 98 percent of us buy into.

            Now it’s fine that Batmangij and Marling did some dumpster diving for cantaloupes and rutabagas for a couple of months. And I understand that if you want to make a movie that makes a whole bunch of money, you get a star like Ellen Page, throw in some guns and a car chase or two, and make a blockbuster thriller. To do some real research on a group that wants to or actually does go out and commit acts of terrorism would have been extremely unethical, but it’s a long way from urban foraging to blowing up things and threatening people’s lives.

            There are a number of groups who are pretty radical in their efforts to preserve the environment. And there are similar groups allied in anti-consumerism who participate in culture jamming, civil disobedience, and yes, even sometimes vandalism and sabotage. But there is not a group like The East out there, environmentalists who are also terrorists. My fear is that this movie could very well serve to confirm some wrongly held prejudices and further justify the surveillance that these groups receive and was the topic of may last blog.

The term eco-terrorism, a manufactured neologism that was created to smear the environmental movement, is loosely applied to almost any act of civil disobedience in the name of the environment and has even been used to describe people trampling a field of grain. The term had almost completely died out, as it should. But with this Hollywood blockbuster coming out today, this word receives new life that it doesn’t deserve.

Government and Industry Trample On the Rights of Environmentalists: Ho Hum

I just ran across this bit of news, although I have to admit that I fully expected to find a story sooner or later detailing how government and industry are spying on groups who oppose fracking or are otherwise working for a better environment. It was completely unsurprising to me that Monsanto contracted with a subsidiary of Blackwater to spy on environmental groups. I expected that the FBI would investigate organizations opposed to hydraulic fracking, even with no evidence of criminal activity. It is no surprise to me that Americans for Prosperity, a Koch brothers backed organization, would make harassing FOIA requests for the emails of a college professor who had formed a group opposed to fracking.

            And I guess I’ll continue to be unsurprised as Congress holds hearings on Benghazi and the IRS’s handling of 501(c)(3) filings of the tea party and ignores the trampling of the rights of people working for a better environment.

RAMPS Protests Mountaintop Removal at Alpha, But the Local Press Slants the Story to King Coal

Reading some of the posts to United For Coal’s Facebook page, I am sometimes flummoxed by the amount of support that folks in Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky have for the coal companies. Despite the great harm that these companies are doing to the land and people of Appalachia, and despite of the inability or unwillingness of the coal companies to economically benefit the communities of Appalachia where coal is mined, many of the residents voice unwavering support to Arch, Alpha, and other big coal companies.

            True, there are the three important things that the coal companies provide: jobs, jobs, and jobs. But that still doesn’t explain the blind devotion that has Appalachia residents supporting even some of the most egregious mining practices like mountaintop removal.

            Two days ago, five persons associated with the Radical Action for Mountain Peoples' Survival (RAMPS) protested the practice of mountaintop removal coal mining and the building of gargantuan coal slurry impoundments by blocking the entrance driveway to Alpha Natural Resources, a coal company that extracts coal through mountaintop removal. The protesters chained large industrial equipment and themselves to guard railing. They also placed a 250-gallon container of nontoxic black colored water to symbolize the water held in slurry impoundments. All the protesters were freed from the chains by police and arrested. Traffic was restored to the driveway by 10:00 am.

            Now, looking at the reportage of the arrests by a local television station, it’s easy to see the slant that favors the coal companies. Lindsey Price, the journalist for WCYB in Bristol, Virginia, states in her news report:

The five protesters who were strung across the bridge were from a group called Mountain Justice, a group who protests what they refer to as 'mountain top removal' mining.

“What they refer to” designates a word or phrase not used in general parlance but is used by a particular group, such as, “What Catholics refer to as a Holy Day of Obligation.” or “What scientists refer to as a control group.” Some groups will have terms like these to convey a connotation that they want to communicate to the broader populace, such as when the tea party refers to the estate tax as a death tax. Estate tax sounds neutral; death tax sounds bad. You get the idea.

By using this phrase and putting mountain top removal in quotation marks, Price seems to indicate that it is some sort of value-laden bit of rhetoric. This is wrong. The term mountaintop removal has been used by a wide range of folks for years, from those who oppose it to those who favor it, to describe this efficient but destructive mining practice. The term goes back at least to 1997, when Penny Loeb wrote about mountaintop removal in her August 3, 1997 story “Shear Madness” for US News and World Report.

Price failed to mention that the action of civil disobedience by the individuals was additionally to protest the building of coal slurry impoundments. I don’t know why this aspect of the story was left out of her piece of journalism. Slurry impoundments have failed in the past, flooding valleys with toxic slurry to great ecological damage. People have died when coal slurry dams have failed. With that in mind, near the town of Whitesville, federal regulators recently approved the expansion of a slurry dam that would allow it to grow taller than the Hoover Dam. To me, it is a serious omission to her news story.

Also Price limits the narrative of the protest, the bigger picture of the conflict, to one in which a the spokesperson for RAMPS, Emily Keppler makes a statement about the water pollution or the health consequences due to mountaintop mining, only to be answered by the vice president of Alpha, Ted Pile.

"This exact action was to bring, symbolic of course, the impacts of mountain top coal mining to the headquarters to the people who are causing it, but don't have to suffer the consequences of it," said Mountain Justice supporter Emily Keeppler.

Protesters filled a barrel full of concrete, then put a pipe through it and connected themselves all the way across the bridge with chains. When firefighters cut the protesters free it left piles of concrete on the bridge. "They locked themselves to a giant barrel of dirty water to symbolize how Alpha coal is locking Appalachian to dirty water," said Keppler.

Pile told me last year Alpha had a 99.7 percent compliance rate with the water, and they are constantly monitored at the state and federal level. "We're also a highly-regulated industry, probably one of the most regulated industries in the country," said Pile.

The five protesters were arrested, but Keppler says it was worth it because this protest was personal for those who were arrested. "Their health is being compromised, their communities are being compromised, so they're absolutely willing to risk arrest in order to engage in non-violent action to stop this," said Keppler.

Pile tells us they have not received any complaints or science to prove there are health issues. "Out of about 86 million tons of coal we expect to mine this year, only 22, tons come from the type of mining they're objecting to. That'll probably be close to zero next year," said Pile.

This boils the conflict down to a “he said, she said” scenario, in which the truth of the matter—the science being done points to irreparable damage to Appalachian waterways and dire health consequences for those who live in proximity to mountaintop mining— is left out of the picture. Watching the video that was broadcast for this story, the reporter gives a bit of an upper hand to the coal company. After each statement by Keppler, Price begins the retorts by the coal company vice president with “But Price said…” This gives the impression that the vice president is correcting a misstatement or misunderstanding by the RAMPS spokesperson.

So is this why there is so much support for the coal companies in Appalachia? Folks there turn on their televisions and get new reports like this one?

Global Warming Has Slowed: Is This Good News?

This falls under the “This is not good news, but at least it’s not really bad news” category. Some of the latest research finds that global warming has slowed in the last ten years or so. Apparently the ever increasing temperatures of the nineties have leveled off, at least for a while. No one knows the cause of this slow down. The sun’s activity may have changed, or a lot of that heat may have gone into the ocean. It could very well be a combination of factors.

            This seems to be giving us a bit more breathing room to mitigate carbon emissions and make adaptations to warmer weather and higher sea levels. On the other hand, this leveling off could be temporary, and warming could resume to that rate that we experienced in the nineties. Or, in a worse case scenario, the earth could experience a “rubber band” effect, in which the present period of relatively slow warming gives way to accelerated warming as the atmosphere catches up to what has been predicted.

             The link where I found this news is from Scientific American, a publication that understands that science is complex and often comes to conclusions and observations that cannot fit into a simplistic model. It will be interesting to see how this discovery might play out in the popular press and the “think tanks” that do the PR work for energy companies and big business. I imagine that the narratives that these folks will give to this scientific work may vary from “Scientists Find That Global Warming Has Stopped” to “Climate Scientists Still Confused As Ever.”

            And that could be considered part of the “Bad News” of this story.

OK, Temperatures are rising more slowly. It's still hard to argue with the science. graph from NOAA

From New York to Newtok, Global Warming Affects the U.S. But You Wouldn't Know It From the U.S. Press

The Headline in the Tehran Times spells it out, “Alaska town will likely end up swallowed by the Bearing Sea in 2017.” The story ran about a week ago and describes the plight of Newtok, a small coastal town, due to sea level rise. The story also appeared in the Guardian and is part of a series that the British newspaper is publishing on Newtok and other coastal towns in Alaska that are threatened by climate driven sea level rise.

            Besides The Tehran Times and The Guardian, I found the story in a few Alaska newspapers, but otherwise the story of this town and the assault it is receiving from an ever-rising sea did not appear in any other major news outlet, even news outlets of the U.S.

            OK, news editors may have passed on this story because there are fewer that 500 residents in Newtok, and the town is, despite being in the United States, pretty far away from most Americans. Sitting on the Bearing Sea, it is way closer to Russia than it is to any other state of the union. Even still, Tehran and London, which are way, way far away from Newtok, chose to run this story about America’s first climate refugees. And despite the small number of people affected by sea level rise in Newtok, it is a significant story. These are the very first Americans to be affected by global sea level rise. Besides the human interest of their situation, the story of their town is a harbinger for Seattle, San Diego, and any other city that will be affected by the rising oceans.

            In more than one way, New York City is a world away from Newtok. The city of skyscrapers nonetheless shares in the effects of climate change with the small village. According to this story in the Guardian, in the next ten years New York will experience a 22 percent rise in heat related deaths due to global warming. This is a story of people dying in America’s largest city due to climate change, and, so far, no American paper has this story, even the New York Times.

             I understand that the press is hyperventilating over stories such as Benghazi, the IRS scrutiny of tea party organizations, and I would be loath to suggest that there is any type of conspiracy among the press and big business to keep the coverage of global warming to a minimum. But these climate change stories are significant, and it is disquieting to think that I can be better informed about the effects of global warming on Alaska and New York by looking to London and Tehran.

Update on Eradicating Algerian Sea Lavender: Month Two

It’s now two months since we began our trials of differing eradication methods for the Algerian sea lavender in the estuary at the mouth of the San Diego River.

Algerian sea lavender after receiving two months of solarization treatment

Solarization is not having the desired effect on the sea lavender. Perhaps we might have had better results had we begun the solarization later in the year, with longer, hotter days.

Scraping treatment after one month

Scraping treatment after two months 

Hand pulled treatment after one month

Hand pulled treatment after two months

One month ago, the growth of native flora in the plot where the Limonium ramosissimum had been hand-pulled had been about twice that of the plot that had been scraped. Now it looks like the natives in the scraped plot are catching up. Cover of natives in the hand-pulled plot is now about 35 percent, while native cover in the scraped plot is about 25 percent. Regrowth of the sea lavender in both the scraped and hand-pulled plots is about the same, with each plot having about 20 of the invasive plants.

            Considering that the results of treatment are virtually the same and how much more labor intensive hand pulling is than scraping, scraping might prove to be the favored method for removing the sea lavender. Stay tuned for updates on the Sea lavender.