ARCTIC CLIMATE CHANGE UPDATE, PART II

Winter in Fairbanks is a time of great peace and beauty. The Alaska Progressive Review's head office and research center is fortunate enough to be perched 500 feet atop the first ridge rising on the northern end of the broad valley of the middle reach of the Tanana River. Chena Ridge, it is called, and this is a typical view on an average mid-winter day, from just down the street. A view to the south over the broad valley which encompasses hundreds of miles, from the tip of Denali to the southwest, east 200 and more miles to the distant volcanoes of the Wrangell mountains.

Hard on days like that, often below 0F, to realize just what a predicament humanity is creating, with our carbon emissions from our fossil-fueled ways of living. Yet the signs are there, our declining Arctic summer sea ice, as you read last week, alpine glaciers in the tropics and mid-latitudes in fast recession world-wide (as we saw on Illimani, Bolivia), increasing droughts and wildfire acreages in many areas, and changing weather patterns. So, part II of our Arctic Climate Change Update, will focus on what we can do, on a large, governmental scale, and a small, personal one, to head off looming threats a warming World will deliver.

Yesterday was one of those magical days in Fairbanks when the weather pattern changed from a milder south flow of Pacific air, to a westerly flow, which brings in our colder, Arctic air. We are blocked from northwest and north winds by hills and low mountains in those directions. When this change to colder air occurs, we usually get a few inches of much needed new snow, and a light west wind, gradually cooling. I was able to squeeze in 90 minutes of skate skiing on our University of Alaska trails during this transition, which had been hard-packed and icy before, fast and fun, but requiring focus and concentration, so as not to lose balance on bumps, etc.. But the day's new snow rendered the trails as smooth as goose down, so gliding around felt like sliding along on a down pillow, very forgiving, smooth, and almost effortless. Four-leggeds are not allowed on the ski trails though, even co-editors of prestigious journals, so Mattie had to wait for her run around campus after my skiing ended.

While we were on our campus circumnavigation last evening, enjoying the downy, light snowflakes brushing our faces in the light 0F headwind, and gazing at the rimed and snow-shrouded trees, I fell into thinking, will times like this be much less frequent 20 or 30 years from now? What will it even be like, it seems like things have changed so fast in my lifetime already. As an operational meteorologist in the western lower 48 states and Alaska, since 1986, I have personally seen many changes. Winter arctic air incursions into the northwestern states are much less frequent and weaker now, than they were 20 years ago. Summers have been much drier there, 1994 seemed especially to be a year of transition in the inter-mountain West to a new type of weather regime, with hotter drier summers, and longer, more severe wildfire seasons. Winter snowpacks have been skimpier most years since then as well, later to start and with earlier melt-offs, contributing to the drought and wildfire trends. The health of the forests in the Northern Rockies especially reflects this. Vast areas of this region in Idaho, Montana, and even south into Utah and Colorado have been decimated by insect pests such as pine beetles and spruce budworms that have weakened and killed large swaths of sensitive species. Insect pests that have wreaked havoc because winter temperatures are often no longer cold enough to kill over-wintering larvae, and then more of these pests are available to infest drought-weakened trees in the ensuing summer.

This really sank in to me during the fire seasons of 2003 and 2006, when I worked in Idaho and Montana during those summers, forecasting weather for wildfire suppression teams. It was heart-breaking to me to see vast areas that I remembered as healthy, from the 1980s and early 1990s, with 30-50 percent stand mortality in many of the tree species there such as lodgepole pine, englemann spruce, and sub-alpine fir. Here in Alaska, a huge expanse of the boreal spruce forest on the Kenai peninsula was killed by a spruce budworm infestation in the 1990s, which also occurred in the Southern Yukon territory, to our east. This infestation and spruce mortality is moving north, and west, with each year, and last year, many people had budworm infestations on local trees here in Fairbanks. So, we will likely here, within 10 years or so, begin to see our spruce trees die off in the Interior of Alaska. Amongst other things.

Dr. James Hansen is a physics professor who heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Earth Sciences Division, in New York City, and also works at Columbia University in an adjunct position. He is credited with being one of the first broadly-respected and established scientists to raise the issue of global warming as a looming threat, in his speeches to Congressional committees in 1988. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hansen. His latest research and opinions are even more sobering, and frankly, cause for occasional great pessimism in our darker moments, at the Alaska Progressive Review. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-james-hansen/twenty-years-later-tippin_b_108766.html. And the news just seems to be getting worse. http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/11/30-1. Times when we need to take a run/ski or wilderness break, to remember how fortunate we are to be here and refocus on the present moment.

But we do need to plan for the future. If, as Dr. Hansen and other researchers are saying, is true, that our current atmospheric CO2 concentration of 385 ppm is unsafe, that we are heading to the tipping points mentioned earlier, and must get back to 350 ppm or less, then serious action is needed now. Since we are increasing each year 3-4 ppm, which is also expected to keep increasing, unless changes in global energy production use and generation methods occcur. His proposal for a non-regressive carbon tax, with proceeds used to fund research and manufacturing of alternative energy methods sounds to us like a great large-scale initiative, and one that could be emulated on a global, not just national, scale. Wouldn't it be nice, if our country could take the lead on this important issue, and be a global inspiration, as it was during the space race of the 1960s? Moratoriums on coal-fired power plants are very important as well, besides being one of the dirtiest, greatest contributors of national and global CO2 emmissions, the destruction of entire mountains in Appalachia http://www.ohvec.org/galleries/mountaintop_removal/007/ stands as a testiment to our short-sitedness as a country and culture. What will future generations think, 200 years hence, if they are here, when they gaze upon these areas? We don't really have the time to debate back and forth about what kind of things should be done, ACTION NEEDS TO BE TAKEN NOW, as researchers state. To prevent catastrophic sea level rises and worsening droughts. And on the upper end/worst case scenario, runaway greenhouse warming leading to mass extinctions.

I have many times read a marvelous book, written in 1974, by Ursula K. Leguin, an amazingly progressive and foresightful woman, called "The Dispossessed". Set on a moon, Annares, of a planet, Urras, in the Tau-Ceti star system, 11 light-years from Earth. Anarchists and socialists on Urras, which had a culture like the depression-era U.S., but more technically advanced, rebelled. They were able to colonize and develop their own socialistic-anarchistic culture on it's barely-inhabitable moon of Annares, so long as they kept mining and sending valuable minerals back to the home-planet. One of the many really interesting things in this book, was when the main character, a physicist who develops a theory of faster-than-light travel, meets the ambassador from Earth, taking refuge in the Terran embassy, since he is being pursued for his theory. He doesn't want the near-fascist states on the home planet to use it for their own profit. Only this Earth is as it is hundreds of years in our future. The Terran (Latin for Earth, commonly used in the sci-fi genre)

ambassador tells him that her (our) planet is a burnt out shell, mostly deserts. Runaway global warming decimated the planet and the human race, and the survivors live hard lives under totally regimented circumstances, the only way any kind of technical culture is able to continue. A different race, the Hainish, brought sub-light space-travel to Earth and the neighboring star systems and helped them (us). Remember, this was written in 1974, when very few people had ever even thought of global warming. One of my high-school english teachers in 1980 gave this book to me, and I've always been in awe of it's beauty and foresight. http://www.amazon.com/Dispossessed-Ursula-K-Guin/dp/0061054887/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228117569&sr=1-1. Is this the kind of future we want, and which will occur, if nothing is done? So, for our large-scale efforts, the Alaska Progressive Review, supports and will work for large-scale solutions like those proposed by Dr. Hansen, and encourages everyone to do so as well. Pressure our/your politicians!

But what can and should we do on a personal scale? Ah...there is the dilemma, because what you are about to read, means significant changes to our current ways of living. Changes that even for us here at the A.P.R. will be difficult to implement and continue, but really MUST be done. There are three main categories, and we'll look at each one, and describe what we here at A.P.R. are or plan on doing in the near future. These categories are: 1. Food 2. Transportation 3. Domestic Energy Use

So, let's look at number 1, Food.

This is a picture of Amazonian rain forest in Peru being cleared for cattle grazing. A practice that has been accelerating over the past 25 years, not just in Central and South America, but in tropical areas of Asia and Africa as well. Why? Besides the critical problem of rising population (which also needs to be addressed, and is directly related to climate change), small-scale farmers and multi-national agribusiness conglomerates continue to clear and develop forested tropical areas to grow soy and grain for animal feed, as well as for grazing land. All so we can continue to have our $2.00 Whoppers and Big Macs. As you are probably are aware, the tropical rain forests are the "lungs" of the planet, exchanging vast amounts of CO2 and O2 on a daily and seasonal basis. Their conversion to grazing land exacts a terrible environmental cost, as the soils in these areas are easily eroded, with thin organic top layers. When this thin topsoil layer is lost, the strong tropical sun and hot climate bakes the remaining surface into a brick-like surface in which it becomes very difficult for new growth to resume. On a large scale, this accelarates surface warming and desertification, and if large enough, is another strong positive feedback in the global warming cycle. So, for this reason alone, we all need to consider cutting back on our meat consumption, or eliminate it entirely. Another disturbing aspect of large scale livestock production is this:
http://www.grist.org/news/daily/2006/12/01/6/index.html. It is a tremendous contributor of greenhouse gas emissions.In addition, it has been calculated that to provide all the people on Earth a diet similar to that we in this country or Europe enjoy, would be beyond the resources available. How sane or just is that, that others must go without, so we can enjoy whatever kinds of foods we want?

Another consideration in our diets, is transportation effects. Think of the environmental effects and use of resources that goes into hauling grapes from Chile to Europe, or North America. Even worse, many fish processors ship salmon caught off Alaska and Canada to China for processing, then back to be sold! If that is not a testament to the insanity and unsustainability of our current socio-economic system, I don't know what is! So, when considering our food choices in a sustainable light, and to help mitigate climate change, go local! Farmers markets, local food co-ops (if you're lucky enough to have one!), and natural food stores are the way to go for that. Look at the labels of your food and produce, choose those that are closest to your area, and organic, if possible, since no fossil-fuel based fertilizers and pesticides will have been used in their production.

So what are we doing here at the Alaska Progressive Review? Well, we've eliminated red meat entirely from our diets, though Mattie has had a few beef steaks for very special occasions. Such as birthdays and after running off threatening bull caribou. We eat sustainable Alaska salmon and halibut, but not every day, and very limited amounts of poultry. We buy locally produced eggs from free-range chickens, when possible. The hardest part is reducing our dairy intake, which is just as harmful as red-meat consumption. But we do love our cheese, butter, and ice cream. We have eliminated ice cream though as an un-necessary luxury, and gone over to soy and rice-based desserts, and are searching for an ideal cheese substitute. Milk was easy to eliminate, plenty of soy, rice, and nut-based alternatives there. So are we saying everyone should live a Vegan (non-animal based diet) lifestyle? No, we realize that requires large sacrifices in time and consideration, to live that way, though if more people did, it would be very beneficial on all scales. And we at A.P.R. are not living that way entirely either. If you really feel the requirement for meat in your diets, by all means try and go organic/free range, poultry if possible, and if you are fortunate enough to live in an area that permits, consider subsistence hunting/fishing. Of course, those of us here in Alaska are fortunate enough to be able to do that.

Category 2, Transportation:


Here is one of the latest new passenger jetliners, the Boeing 777 Dreamliner. Using lighter carbon-composite airframe technology, and the most fuel-efficient engines available. One of the most technically advanced jetliners in the World. Unfortunately, jet travel greenhouse gas emissions have increased 83% since 1990, and are forecast to continue that trend, barring unforeseen circumstances, over the next 30 years. Jets to do not just emit CO2 in their exhaust, but also nitrogen oxides (NOx), which are many times more potent of a greenhouse gas, as well as the ice-crystal contrails, which help trap surface heat in. In fact, when the U.S. airspace was shut down on 9/11, 12, and 13, 2001, the effect was noticeable in the temperature record!




The graph to the right shows Carbon emissions per passenger kilometer of travel. Note how aviation fits in to the spectrum there, with short-haul being the most damaging. But, in the fine print for this image, from this report,




http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Climate_Change/What_You_Can_Do/air_travel.asp, upper-air effects of emissions are not shown. If they were, the aviation emissions would be 2.7 times greater! There are research initiatives underway to develop alternatives to kerosene jet fuel, using plant and algae-based material. If this can be done in a way without affecting food supplies, this would be of great benefit. However, there still would be the damaging nitrogen oxide emissions and contrail formation effects. So, what should we do? The article above, describes some useful things. What are we here at the A.P.R. doing? Well, although we love to travel, realizing the effects, we are cutting back. Living in Alaska is especially difficult in that regard, since our family/relatives are in the lower 48, and driving there is so time-consuming. So, we now limit our personal jet travel to one trip per year, combining trips to other countries with that to see family. In addition, if possible, we try and perform some socially useful purpose in doing so, such as information exchanges, or visits to progressive/sustainable research facilities. It sometimes happens in my other career that I have to fly to distant areas, and mixed feelings about this occur, but these trips are usually to provide useful services. Since we here at A.P.R. strive to develop and share ideas about sustainable and "greener" ways and methods of living, how about this? Why can't we in America develop high-speed electric rail networks between our cities, and eventually, even to Alaska? Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to get on a high-speed 200 mph electric train to the lower 48? One that would have tunnels underneath wildlife corridors, to mitigate effects on their travel and habitat. We need to envision things like this to make them happen.

How about local car traveling? Obviously we all need to have more fuel-efficient vehicles, drive less and use mass transit more, if available. But throwing aside our current vehicles for newer ones isn't all that helpful, since the manufacturing and distribution of them exacts a high cost. So, use your current one as little as possible, and when it is time for a newer one, buy used high-efficiency if possible. Our current A.P.R. 2006 Ford Escape with the more efficient 2.3L 4 cylinder engine may last us until 2012 or so, in which case we hope a plug-in hybrid with similar 4WD capabilities will be available. If walking/biking, or mass transit is not an option for many of your in-town trips, consider getting or transforming a bike into an electric cycle. We are going to purchase a bike electrification kit here at A.P.R. soon, for about 450.00. It is a nickel-metal-hydride battery (hopefully soon more efficient lithium-ion batteries will be available) powered front-wheel motor that you just replace the current front wheel with. So you can still pedal it when you want. It is advertised as giving 30 miles per charge, at 20 mph. http://www.werelectrified.com/index.php#overview
We envision this as viable for almost all in-town trips, to work, stores, etc.. Even in our cold winters, with studded tires, traction concerns are not an issue.

Category 3. Domestic Energy Use

Probably the easiest way to effect changes in our current ways of living, to ease our effects on the global climate system and resource depletion. If you are going to build a new house, find a builder who uses green methods and recycled materials. Use a design that will incorporate things like passive solar heating, partial wall burial for insulation, ultra-efficient heating methods, energy/water-efficient appliances, and green landscaping methods for shading, if you live in a warmer environment. For those in established residences, when the time comes for newer appliances and lighting, there are many new high-efficiency alternatives now. Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs (CFL) should always be used in every fixture. Although they do contain mercury unfortunately, they are 3-4 times more efficient than the old incandescent bulbs. LED bulbs are being developed that are even more efficient, but these are a few more years from mass production. Turn off all appliances when not in use, computers, stereos, etc.. It's amazing when calculated, how much energy is wasted by keeping computers and other electronics on, even in a standby mode. Lower your thermostats if at all possible, and use electronic, programmable ones, as they will increase the efficiency of your heating/cooling systems. We here at A.P.R. do all of these things.

If you live in an area where wood-burning is possible for heating, use this as much as you can. At least the CO2 from burning of wood, a renewable resource, will be offset by the growth of new trees that replace the ones harvested. Here in Fairbanks, we have some of the strongest winter temperature inversions in the World. That is, colder air, in still calm weather patterns, settles in the valleys, with warmer air above, keeping a lid on mixing and dispersion of pollutants. When heating oil prices shot up last year, thousands of people in this area began more wood-burning. The result has been a great increase in fine-particulate pollution over our Middle Tanana Valley, which Fairbanks is nestled in, often to unhealthy levels during strong inversion periods. So, while we at A.P.R. try and use our woodstove as often as possible, to use less heating oil, during strong inversion episodes, we voluntarily cut back on this, to limit our contribution to the unhealthy fine particulate loading. Which affects small children, the elderly, and anyone with respiratory problems the greatest. If you live in an area like this, keep that in mind.

This link, http://www.nrdc.org/greenliving/, from one of A.P.R.'s favorite organizations, gives very useful tips, and is highly recommended.

So, to sum this all up, remember, we as a society and a race, don't have the time to continue waffling and deciding if or what should be done to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Action is necessary now. The last eight years in this country especially, have been a global setback, and we need to make up for it. Please think about the way we live, and what can be done, and share that information as much as possible. Future generations are relying on us.