Environment News Service (ENS)
ENS logo
AmeriScan: August 5, 2005

* * *

Rise in CO2 Emissions Will Outpace Earth's Absorption Capacity

BERKELEY, California, August 5, 2005 (ENS) - There are limits to the planet's ability to absorb increased emissions of carbon dioxide, according to one model in a new generation of computer climate models that include the effects of Earth's carbon cycle.

If current production of carbon from fossil fuels continues unabated, by the end of the century the land and oceans will be less able to take up carbon than they are today, the model indicates.

s "If we maintain our current course of fossil fuel emissions or accelerate our emissions, the land and oceans will not be able to slow the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere the way they're doing now," said Inez Fung at the University of California, Berkeley.

Fung is director of the Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center, co-director of the new Berkeley Institute of the Environment, and professor of earth and planetary science and of environmental science, policy and management.

Fung is lead author of a paper describing the climate model results that appears this week in the Early Online Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

She was a member of the National Academy of Sciences panel on global climate change that issued a major report for President Bush in 2001 claiming, for the first time, that global warming exists and that humans are contributing to it.

"It's all about rates," Fung said Thursday. "If the rate of fossil fuel emissions is too high, the carbon storage capacity of the land and oceans decreases and climate warming accelerates."

Currently, the land and oceans absorb about half of the carbon dioxide produced by human activity, most of it resulting from the burning of fossil fuels, Fung said. Some scientists have suggested that the land and oceans will continue to absorb more and more CO2 as fossil fuel emissions increase, making plants flourish and the oceans bloom.

Fung's computer model indicates that the "breathing biosphere" can absorb carbon only so fast. Beyond a certain point, the planet will not be able to keep up with carbon dioxide emissions.

"The reason is very simple," Fung said. "Plants are happy growing at a certain rate, and though they can accelerate to a certain extent with more CO2, the rate is limited by metabolic reactions in the plant, by water and nutrient availability, et cetera."

In addition, increasing temperatures and drought frequencies lower plant uptake of CO2 as plants breathe in less to conserve water.

A second study Fung and colleagues published last week in PNAS report evidence for this temperature and drought effect. Since 1982, a greening of the Northern Hemisphere has occurred each spring and summer - except for 1992 and 1993, after Mt. Pinatubo erupted - as the climate has steadily warmed.

As a result, there is a small but steady decline in atmospheric CO2 each growing season due to increasing photosynthesis at temperate latitudes in the northern hemisphere. When Fung and a team of her former and current post-doctoral fellows took a detailed look at this phenomenon, they found that since 1994, enhanced uptake of CO2 as photosynthesis revved up in the warm wet springs was offset by decreasing CO2 uptake during summers, which became increasingly hot and dry - an unsuspected browning in the past 10 years.

"This negative effect of hot, dry summers completely wiped out the benefits of warm, wet springs," Fung said. "A warming climate does not necessarily lead to higher CO2 growing-season uptake, even in temperate areas such as North America."

In the climate modeling study published this week in PNAS, she and colleagues found that similar water stress could slow the uptake of CO2 by terrestrial vegetation, and at some point, the rate of fossil fuel CO2 emissions will outstrip the ability of the vegetation to keep up, leading to a rise in atmospheric CO2, increased greenhouse temperatures and increased frequency of droughts. An amplifying loop leads to ever higher temperatures, more droughts and higher CO2 levels.

The oceans exhibit a similar trend, Fung said, though it is less pronounced.

"This is not a prediction, but a guideline or indication of what could happen," Fung said. "Climate prediction is a work in progress, but this model tells us that, given the increases in greenhouse gases, the Earth will warm up; and given warming, hot places are likely to be drier, and the land and oceans are going to take in carbon at a slower rate; and therefore, we will see an amplification or acceleration of global warming."

The studies were supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the Ocean and Climate Change Institute of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

* * *

EPA Fails Environmental Justice Test

WASHINGTON, DC, August 5, 2005 (ENS) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should devote more attention to environmental justice when developing clean air rules, according to a report issued Thursday by Congressional investigators.

When drafting the three clean air rules, the EPA generally devoted little attention to environmental justice, according to the report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress.

While EPA guidance on rulemaking states that workgroups should consider environmental justice early in this process, GAO found that a lack of guidance and training for workgroup members on identifying environmental justice issues may have limited their ability to identify such issues.

The GAO recommends, among other things, that the environmental agency improve workgroups’ ability to identify environmental justice issues and enhance the ability of its economic reviews to analyze potential environmental justice impacts.

EPA officials disagreed with the recommendations made by the GAO because they believe the agency pays appropriate attention to environmental justice. GAO believes its recommendations are still valid.

EPA officials stated that economic reviews of proposed rules do consider potential environmental justice impacts, but the GAO investigators found that the gasoline and diesel rules did not provide decision makers with environmental justice analyses, and EPA has not identified all the types of data necessary to analyze such impacts.

In finalizing the three clean air rules, EPA considered environmental justice to varying degrees, the GAO said. Public commenters stated that all three rules, as proposed, raised environmental justice issues.

In responding to such comments on the gasoline rule, EPA published its belief that the rule would not create such issues, but did not publish the data and assumptions supporting its belief.

Specifically, EPA did not publish its estimate that potentially harmful air emissions would increase in 26 of the 86 counties with refineries affected by the rule or its assumption that this estimate overstated the eventual increases in refinery emissions.

For the diesel rule, in response to refiners’ concerns that their permits could be delayed if environmental justice issues were raised by citizens, EPA stated that the permits would not be delayed by such issues. Even after reviewing the comments, the EPA did not change its final economic reviews to discuss the gasoline and diesel rules’ potential environmental justice impacts.

Finally, said the GAO, the portions of the ozone implementation rule that prompted the comments about environmental justice were not included in the final rule. Overall, EPA officials said that these rules, as published in final form, did not create an environmental justice issue.

Executive Order 12898 made in 1994 by President Bill Clinton made achieving “environmental justice” part of the mission of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other federal agencies. http://www.hud.gov/offices/fheo/FHLaws/EXO12898.cfm

According to EPA, environmental justice involves fair treatment of people of all races, cultures, and incomes. EPA developed guidance for considering environmental justice during the development of rules under the Clean Air Act and other activities.

GAO was asked to examine how the EPA considered environmental justice during two phases of developing clean air rules: (1) drafting the rule, including activities of the workgroup that considered regulatory options, the economic review of the rule’s costs, and making the proposed rule available for public comment, and (2) finalizing the rule, including addressing public comments and revising the economic review.

* * *

DOE Advised to Use Best Technology to Seal Nuclear Waste Tanks

WASHINGTON, DC, August 5, 2005 (ENS) - Tanks containing radioactive waste at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Savannah River Site, a nuclear weapons facility in South Carolina, should not necessarily be sealed as soon as the bulk of the waste has been removed, says a new congressionally mandated report from the National Research Council.

Postponing closure of tanks with residual wastes for five to 10 years would give the DOE time to overcome obstacles to using emerging technologies that could remove more of the residual waste and better immobilize what is left in the tanks.

This could be done without delaying final closure of the tank farm, said the committee that wrote the interim report. The 20 member committee is chaired by Frank L. Parker, Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Nashville's Vanderbilt University and includes corporate, university and government experts from the United States and Canada.

Once the bulk of the radioactive waste is removed from tanks at the Savannah River Site, the Energy Department plans to fill the tanks with grout to close most of them permanently. But given that the small amount of residual waste left in the tanks has a much lower likelihood of causing significant radioactive contamination of the environment, the department need not rush to grout all the tanks - a step that is practically irreversible.

Instead, the committee urged the DOE and South Carolina to decouple the schedules for cleaning the tanks and sealing them, timelines that appear to be linked under a Federal Facility Agreement. Doing so will allow DOE to use emerging technologies to enhance tank cleanup, improve how the residual waste is immobilized, and better prevent water from seeping into closed tanks, the committee said.

On the other hand, tank closure does not have to be delayed if there is very little residual waste or if special circumstances warrant closure, the committee said.

Revising the closure schedule for tanks with insoluble wastes does not need to affect previously agreed milestones for final closing of the tanks. In fact, the committee advised, if new technologies become available, they may speed up tank cleanup and closure, possibly leaving less waste behind.

The Savannah River Site also faces what DOE calls "a crisis" in the amount of compliant tank space available to store waste from ongoing operations at the site, including tank cleanup itself.

Tanks are considered compliant if they have a secondary containment system, so that they are essentially tanks within tanks; noncompliant tanks have no second wall or only a partial one. A certain amount of compliant space also must be reserved for an emergency, such as a tank leak.

The committee agreed that the lack of compliant space is a major problem, but questioned DOE's plans for freeing up space in existing tanks.

DOE plans to use a physical separation process to remove radioactivity from some salt wastes, and then grout and permanently store those wastes in on-site vaults. But the committee noted that while waste from this process represents only eight percent of the volume of radioactive waste to be generated during salt-waste processing, the waste contains 80 percent to 90 percent of the radioactivity projected to be in the vaults.

Chemical processes that can remove more radioactivity from salt wastes are scheduled to begin in 2007 and 2009. Until then, the committee advised, the DOE should consider other options for preserving or better utilizing its limited compliant tank space, such as setting aside carefully selected nonleaking, noncompliant tanks for emergency storage, or reducing waste streams to compliant tanks.

In a follow-up report expected early next year, the committee will further evaluate environmental risks at the Savannah River Site and examine DOE's plans for managing radioactive tank wastes at sites in Idaho and Washington state.

The study was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. The National Research Council is the principal operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. It is a private, nonprofit institution that provides science and technology advice under a congressional charter.

s The report, "Tank Wastes Planned for On-Site Disposal at Three Department of Energy Sites: The Savannah River Site - Interim Report," is online at: http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11415.html

* * *

Los Angeles Compensated for Winter Storm Damages

LOS ANGELES, California, August 5, 2005 (ENS) - The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has been awarded $1.4 million in Public Assistance program funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for eligible costs incurred by the storms of December 27, 2004 through January 11, 2005.

The funding announcement was made July 29 by California Senator Dianne Feinstein. “There are many areas in California that are still feeling the impacts of this year’s devastating storms,” said the senator.

"FEMA’s decision demonstrates their continued commitment to helping communities recover from the damage caused by the winter storms," she said.

The severe storms, flooding, debris flows and mudslides resulted in 24 deaths, $235 million in damage to public facilities, 1,200 homes damaged or destroyed, 62 businesses damaged or destroyed, and 15,400 storm related insurance claims filed, according to preliminary estimates by the state of California.

On February 4, 2005 President George W. Bush declared Los Angeles County among others eligible for public assistance.

Funds will reimburse LADWP for costs associated with overtime labor and equipment for emergency temporary repairs to electrical distribution facilities damaged during the storms.

The $1.4 million in funding represents 75 percent of the project’s total cost. The state and Los Angeles County will contribute the remaining funds divided at 18.75 percent and 6.25 percent respectively.

The award is allocated from FEMA’s Public Assistance program which dedicates funds for eligible costs that may include debris removal, overtime pay for emergency workers, and the repair of roads and bridges, public buildings and equipment, and public utilities.

* * *

Hole Drilled Two Miles Into San Andreas Fault

PARKFIELD, California, August 5, 2005 (ENS) - Geologists have successfully drilled a hole two miles deep into the San Andreas Fault, an 800-mile-long rift. The entire borehole will be lined with steel and concrete so sensitive instruments can be installed underground. The borehole is near the central California town of Parkfield.

The scientists are affiliated with the EarthScope Project, a project funded by the National Science Foundation and carried out in collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey.

"We now have the first opportunity to measure directly the conditions under which earthquakes begin and grow," said Herman Zimmerman, director of the National Science Foundation's earth sciences division. "This is an unprecedented step forward."

The borehole begins in the Pacific Plate just west of the fault. It passes through the active earthquake zone and ends in the North American Plate east of the fault. These enormous land masses constantly grind against one another in opposite directions, triggering earthquakes of various magnitudes up and down the fault.

A permanent underground observatory known as San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth, or SAFOD, will be installed at the Parkfield, site for long-term monitoring in this earthquake-prone region.

When completed in 2007, SAFOD will be the only observatory with instruments placed directly in an active fault zone where earthquakes form.

"With SAFOD, we will no longer be limited to interpreting earthquakes through layers of thick rock," said EarthScope program director, Kaye Shedlock. "We can now directly measure the conditions under which earthquakes happen."

SAFOD co-principal investigator and Stanford University geophysicist Mark Zoback said the physical and chemical processes that control earthquakes remain a mystery. "The observatory in the earthquake zone will allow us to measure these processes and answer basic questions about earthquake predictability," he said.

SAFOD will give researchers a unique window into the process of strain build-up and release in the fault zone during numerous "microearthquakes."

Seismic instruments will be installed along both plates in a section of the fault where small earthquakes of magnitude 2.0 are frequent. While these microearthquakes usually are not felt at the surface, they offer important clues about the origin of bigger, more destructive quakes.

"Microearthquakes provide scientists with an exciting opportunity to study events that occur about every two years in roughly the same place," said Zoback.

Steve Hickman and William Ellsworth, SAFOD co-principal investigators with the U.S. Geological Survey, said the San Andreas fault is creeping at a rate of about one inch per year near the drill site. Most earthquakes occur in a zone no more than 10 yards wide.

This is the first time "we've been inside the earthquake machine," said Ellsworth. "We've looked at fossil earthquakes, we've made computer models, and we've made earthquakes in the laboratory. We've studied them from afar, but we've never before been where the action is."

Scientists now will be able to recreate the earthquake process in the laboratory using real materials and under real conditions that exist deep within the San Andreas Fault. "You can't do these kinds of in-depth measurements in parts of the fault that only produce big earthquakes, because those usually occur at intervals of 100 to 150 years," Hickman said.

SAFOD: http://www.icdp-online.de/sites/sanandreas/index/index.html

EarthScope: www.earthscope.org

s Stanford University Geophysics Department: http://pangea.stanford.edu/GP

U.S. Geological Survey Parkfield Earthquake Experiment: http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/research/parkfield

* * *

Grounded Vessel Pulled off Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Reef

HONOLULU, Hawaii, August 5, 2005 (ENS) - The 145 foot motor vessel Casitas, which ran aground at Pearl and Hermes Atoll last month, has been extracted from the reef and "entombed" northwest of the atoll in approximately 7,200 feet of water, the Unified Command announced Thursday. The boat was under contract to remove marine debris from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands when it ran aground at 2 am on July 2.

“On behalf of all the parties involved, we are very pleased to see this operation safely completed,” said U.S. Coast Guard Captain Manson Brown, federal on-scene coordinator for the Unified Command.

Pearl and Hermes Atoll, located 86 miles east southeast of Midway, is part of the Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuge and is an important seabird and green sea turtle nesting ground, Hawaiian monk seal pupping site, home to endangered Laysan finches, and the site of more than 183,000 acres of coral reefs in Refuge and State of Hawaii waters.

The Unified Command wanted to remove the vessel from the reef as quickly as possible, saying, "Metallic debris promotes the growth of invasive algae species that can have devastating impacts on the coral reef community."

Some 35 team members worked aboard the tugs American Contender, American Quest, and American Emerald; a 240-foot barge; and the motor vessel Condor to deal with the wreck.

“The Unified Command shared a common commitment to remove the potential pollutants and extract the vessel from the reef with no human injuries and as little damage to the environment as possible. Given the remote location and the significance of the reef ecosystem, it was a challenge – a challenge we can now say we met.”

The Casitas was pulled off the reef at 11:30 Thursday morning. The operation began early in the morning as ballast water was pumped from the Casitas to refloat the vessel. Additional holes in the hull were patched and pumps were kept operating to keep the Casitas afloat until it reached an approved disposal site at approximately 1:35 pm.

Earlier this week, 1,850 gallons of gasoline were transferred from the Casitas to the 240 foot barge serving as the operations base for the extraction. Equipment and personal gear were also removed from the Casitas.

Because of safety concerns, about 15 tons of marine debris and other trash were left on the vessel but stowed in sealed, double-hulled holds. Entombment of this type is not unusual, said Brown.

The successful entombment of the Casitas ends this phase of the operation.

In the near future, a team of representatives from State of Hawaii, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and responsible party will gather at Pearl and Hermes Atoll to begin assessing injuries to the atoll’s natural resources.

* * *

Orca Collision with Whale Watch Boat Hushed Up

SEATTLE, Washington, August 5, 2005 (ENS) - On July 3, 2005 an orca whale was injured in an accident with a whale watching boat in the San Juan Islands of Washington state. Mark Anderson, founder and president of the Orca Relief Citizens' Alliance (ORCA), says the incident has been "kept quiet" by the Whale Watch Operators Association Northwest and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

"No one knows the extent of injury sustained by the orca, no one knows which member of the southern residents it was, or why the orca rammed a whale watching boat," Anderson wrote in Thursday's issue of the "San Juan Islander" newspaper.

"We DO know the whales were feeding at the time, that about 40 boats were surrounding the whales and that the Canadian-based boat that was hit had already been cited once that day by Mark Pakenham of M3, the enforcement division from Fisheries and Oceans Canada," Anderson wrote.

Ander says the accident illustrates the inherent negative consequences of boat/whale interactions and the need for change to protect the Southern Resident orcas of Washington state.

Orca Relief Citizens' Alliance urges that whale watching boats stop "leapfrogging and parking (situating) boats in the whales' path."

Boats should stay a minimum of 400 yards away from the closest whale, says Anderson, and must not position themselves between whales and the shore.

Since 1995, the southern resident population of orcas has declined nearly 20 percent. During that same period, the number of motorized whale-watching boats in the area has soared, reaching up to as many as 140 boats in a single day.

Marine vehicle harassment is among the factors cited last year by the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife as contributing to the whale population decline.

In April 2004, the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission added the Southern Resident orcas to the list of state endangered species.

In December 2004, the National Marine Fisheries Service listed the Southern Resident orca whale population as threatened on the federal Endangered Species List.

Orca Relief began encouraging land-based whale watching in 2002, after commissioning three separate scientific studies that showed motorized whale-watching boats may play a primary role in the decline of the southern resident Orca population.

To Report Marine Mammal Harassment in the United States, call the National Marine Fisheries Service at 1-800-853-1964. In Canada, call Fisheries and Oceans Canada at 1-800-465-4336.

* * *
 

New Air Quality Laws Require One-Third Less Air Pollution in London Within 18 Months Conservation Program Changes Would Help Wyoming Ranchers Improve Wildlife Habitat, Keep Species Off Endangered List OpenSRI to Launch the First Collaborative Web Platform on Socially Responsible Investments Knowledge Leaders to Provide Tools to Increase Capacity, Strengthen Practice and Build Competitive Advantage at the Ethical Sourcing Forum Europe Honda Launches Auto-Max Railcar Fleet: More environmentally-responsible product distribution with industry-first fleet Five Years Later, Rouge Remains Touchstone for 'Green' Projects Around the World GREEN LOG Home & Lifestyle Awards Announces Winners In Web's First Dedicated, Eco-Social Awards Americans Wary of Environmental Consequences of Fossil Fuels Ford, University of Michigan Develop New Mobility and Transportation Options for the Future Armenia Tree Project Micro-Enterprise Program Recognized as National Winner of Energy Globe Award for Sustainability Clearing the Air on Tejon Ranch and the California Condor
WW TRANSMIT
 

License ENS News
for websites and newsletters
Send a news story to ENS editors
Upload environmental news videos
Share ENS stories with the world