Day 323: Global Warming, Disappearing Coastline, Renewable Resources

Fifteen years ago, if you had brought up the topic of global warming, I’d have laughed at you because we’re going into another Ice Age.  Then, I studied geology and understood the geologic time scale vs. the human one.  With the growing evidence, global warming is now irrefutable.

Last night, I couldn’t take my eyes off “Global Warming: What You Need to Know With Tom Brokaw” on Discovery Channel. 

… the special takes viewers to melting ice fields and glaciers in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres, where rising temperatures are causing dangerous elevations in sea levels around the world, and to tropical rain forests, where heavy logging has begun to tip the planet“s delicate balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide.

… Of the 20 hottest years on record, 19 have occurred since 1980 … If polar ice continues to melt, global sea levels may rise by several feet over the next several decades. To put that into perspective, for every vertical foot the sea level rises along a coastal area, a typical beach loses about 100 feet inland due to submersion and erosion. That erosion could destroy more than a quarter of all structures built within 500 feet of the ocean.

It was difficult to watch current desertification in China and sub-Saharan Africa and the proposed disappearance of plant cover, tigers, seals, insects and, my personal favorites, apes.  One subtle and extremely crucial point was driven home:  Global warming will create microclimates and shifting annual weather patterns.  While the planet will not turn into Waterworld or an arid wasteland, we have to give up our current notions of what is normal weather for any given place, and get used to abrupt climate change within our lifetimes.

Reflections of a Louisianan oil worker:

Participation in the exploration and production of hydrocarbons is not a problem if we collectively promise to be more responsible about their utilization.   I love my job as an oil industry geoscientist and am proud of my work.  However, it pains me to stare at a painstakingly developed oil/gas reservoir on my computer screen, and look out the window to see one person in an H2 driving down St. Charles Avenue.  It’s not life – it’s unnecessary and wasteful.  We’re working our tails off, onshore and off, for that?

According to this nola.com Editorial: Congress and the Coast,

Rep. Bobby Jindal’s ambitious effort to secure a significant share of offshore royalties passed the House this week. Sen. Mary Landrieu, meanwhile, reached an agreement with key Republican leadership in the Senate to create a coastal impact assistance fund with royalties from new drilling in an 8-million acre section of the eastern Gulf of Mexico. 

Do you see the oxymoron in “drilling royalties to assist coastal protection?” Don’t get me wrong – it thrills me that Louisiana is set to get its fair share of royalties from drilling off the coast – it’s about time.  I’m doubly pleased at the efforts by our congresspeople to allow a state’s resources to work for that state.  However, as I pondered on New Orleans Metroblogs: “We’re going to drill more and closer to shore, increasingly utilize pipelines and run more through the wetlands, and use the revenue to save those same wetlands?”

Of course, pipelines aren’t the sole cause of the disappearing coastline.  Other contributing factors include the overcontrol of the Mississippi (which, ideally, would empty into Atchafalaya Bay today), development on reclaimed land and hurricane activity.

Oil and gas.  Coastlines.  Both non-renewable resources.

Thankfully, the decline of Hydrocarbon Man’s era may be upon us in my lifetime.  But, it is increasingly clear that responsible use of oil and gas is not yet a pressing social priority.  According to this great 2004 National Geographic article:

Humanity’s way of life is on a collision course with geology”with the stark fact that the Earth holds a finite supply of oil. The flood of crude from fields around the world will ultimately top out, then dwindle. It could be 5 years from now or 30: No one knows for sure, and geologists and economists are embroiled in debate about just when the “oil peak” will be upon us. But few doubt that it is coming.

We will probably never stop using hydrocarbons to fuel our cars, plastics and economies.  However, the use of this energy source cannot continue in its current vein when it is non-renewable, its byproducts pollute the air and raise global temperatures, and equally non-renewable aspects of nature must perish for it. 

What does this mean for us?  Add it up: rising temperatures –> higher sea level + the continued shunting of the Mississippi + development and industrial activity = COASTAL EROSION.  Despite this threat, Americans continue to move here “from non-coastal states that don’t have a coastal ethic,” as this NOAA document suggests, and add stress to the system.  Of course, they have a right to be here as much as anyone else, but it just makes all of us a burden unless we find a more sustainable way to live here, plastics, motors and all.

And I want to bring children into this world?  I do.  It’s called hope.

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As I wrote this, a video came in from KF with this note attached: “Al Gore wants you to go hungry and not be able to pick up your kids at soccer practice.”  Watch the shorts and tell me how short-sightedness turns you on as well.