Methane Belching Hydro

Reservoirs and hydropower are often thought of as climate friendly because they don’t burn fossil fuels to produce electricity. But what if reservoirs that store water and produce electricity were among some of the world’s largest contributors of greenhouse gas emissions? 

Scientists are searching for answers to that question, as they study how much methane is emitted into the atmosphere from man-made reservoirs built for hydropower and other purposes. Until recently, it was believed that about 20 percent of all man-made methane emissions come from the surface of reservoirs. 

New research suggests that figure may be much higher than 20 percent, but it’s unclear how much higher because too little data is available to estimate. Methane is about 35 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide over the span of a century.

Read it here:

The world is complex.  Everything you do to the environment sets off a cascade of unintended consequences.  When you create big pools of water, some plants live and other plants die.  When you change the course of rivers, some species will thrive, others will suffer.  When you dam a river, you create the circumstances where silt will collect.

When you change the visible environment, you change the invisible environment.

You can either refuse to do anything, and suffer the consequences or you can do, learn, and understand you'll need to respond to the unintended consequences.

Global warming is probably a reality.  It probably will not bring the apocalypse.  Acting as if we can live in a technologically advanced world without having an impact on the world is a fantasy born of naivety and ideology.

Best we begin to discuss the achievable: responding to the changes we can expect and building the infrastructure which improves economic and social flexibility to respond to what we can not predict. 

What is, has been

and will be again.

Evidence that Earth’s first mass extinction was caused by critters,

In the popular mind, mass extinctions are associated with catastrophic events, like giant meteorite impacts and volcanic super-eruptions. But the world’s first known mass extinction, which took place about 540 million years ago, now appears to have had a more subtle cause: evolution itself.

“People have been slow to recognize that biological organisms can also drive mass extinction,” said Simon Darroch, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at Vanderbilt University. “But our comparative study of several communities of Ediacarans, the world’s first multicellular organisms, strongly supports the hypothesis that it was the appearance of complex animals capable of altering their environments, which we define as ‘ecosystem engineers,’ that resulted in the Ediacaran’s disappearance.”

One creature's poison is another's energy source

The earliest life on Earth consisted of microbes – various types of single-celled microorganisms. They ruled the Earth for more than 3 billion years. Then some of these microorganisms discovered how to capture the energy in sunlight. The photosynthetic process that they developed had a toxic byproduct: oxygen. Oxygen was poisonous to most microbes that had evolved in an oxygen-free environment, making it the world’s first pollutant.

Now I am still a "luke-warmist" when it comes to the whole climate debate but even if I am wrong, I'm thinking we'll leave behind some cooler fossils than those plain Jane Ediacarans.  

The Apocalypse is Postponed

or at least one study suggests it may be.

As climate change accelerates ice melt in the Arctic, polar bears may find caribou and snow geese replacing seals as an important food source, shows a recent study published in the journal PLOS ONE. The research, by Linda Gormezano and Robert Rockwell at the American Museum of Natural History, is based on new computations incorporating caloric energy from terrestrial food sources and indicates that the bears' extended stays on land may not be as grim as previously suggested.

In other words, the polar bears probably won't starve to death.  You're fear and anxiety were so much wasted energy.

Everywhere I look I see contemporary man filled with fear and anxiety.  Hence my reticence to emulate to conform to what makes a man "contemporary."

I'd rather be a dinosaur at peace with himself and the world in it than to walk around on eggshells, always afraid to offend, always thinking what it means to be a classical human is offensive.

I kill to eat.
I am a tribal animal.
I am both an individual and member of a communtiy.

Honey badger don't care.  Polar bear don't care.  Wiscur don't care.

That doesn't mean I do not want to be the best human I am capable of being.  Race horses want to win.  Cats want to kill.  I want to emulate the best of what it is to be "man."  I want to embody the classical virtues: courage, temperence, justice, and prudence.

I don't count catastrophic thinking amongst the human virtues.

I don't care if the woman on TV is quoting Dick Cheny trying to make you afraid of Iraqi nuclear weapons, Barak Obama trying to make you afraid of global warming, or the cashier at Best Buy pushing the extended warrenty, they are using fear to sell you something.

Refuse to be sold.  Refuse to be afraid.

Repeat after me,

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

You should not be surprised when the fear peddled to the masses turns out to be 
overblown.  We should not be surprised when it turns out the world will keep on spinning even if the globe warms.



News Flash: Mass Marketing Lies

We will face obstacles in the future and global warming may well be one of them, but don't buy into the fear.  Yes, we will have to let go of some of the things we love, but who lied to you telling you the universe passed without change or loss?

Danger is real.  Fear is in your head. 

Fear is introduced in order to make you irrational, to make you act quickly so you will accept the choices as they are framed to you, so you will buy what is being sold.  Fear never solved a problem, fear never questioned the two false choices being offered.  Critical thought takes place in the absence of fear.

We are driving change on this planet.  That ship has long left the harbor.  It is time to own this fact rather than lament it, to own and adapt to change rather than fear it.  It is time to realize that while we are a key influence, there is much we can not control. 

Change the things we can.
Accept the things we cannot change. 
Wisdom to know the difference.

Homo Sapien: Tribal, Cosmopolitan, Realist, Unafraid

This is the Anthropocene, let's do it rationally and neither hyped up on fear or asleep in front of the television.

So I am glad it looks as if the polar bears will adapt to changes in their enviroment.  I am not surprised, they are survivors.  Just like their fellow apex predator: Homo sapien.

Edit: Oh yeah, and despite what Al Gore predicted, we are well into a period of low hurricane activity.  Though when it returns to normal or goes above (remember to get average will we have as many years with increased activity as subdued activity), I am sure you will hear about; and you will be told to be afraid.