Honey, Who Shrunk the Trees?

Once upon a time - long, long ago - there was a government program called NCLAN - the National Crop Loss Assessment Network.  This was an ongoing series of studies and experiments that investigated the impacts of air pollution on vegetation - almost exclusively from absorbing ozone, as that has by far the most impact.  You might think, since the background levels of ozone are inexorably rising, that such information would be even more relevant today.  But the results of the research apparently were so frightening, that the program was abandoned two decades ago, in 1987.  Here's a photograph from one published study, "Determining Crop Yield Losses from Air Pollutants" with its sinister caption:

"Visible signs of pollutant injury to leaves of some crops are not a reliable measure of yield loss, because growth effects may occur in the absence of visible damage."

Jesus H. Christ!  You mean "growth effects" - diminished yield (size) and decreased nutritional quality - can happen BEFORE you can see damage to foliage?  Yikes...ALL foliage looked identically damaged this summer and fall - so for how long have "growth effects" been happening before now?

Amazingly enough, the New York Times reports that research indicates numerous species are literally shrinking, which is something that I have noticed is certainly true for the size of leaves, and flowers:

"...the shrinking among species in general is noticeable, Dr. Sheridan said — at least to scientists studying them. And in the long run, she suggests, changes in species sizes could have major implications for crop production and the availability of protein sources like fish.

Judging from the fossil record, creatures like beetles, spiders and pocket gophers shrank during periods of warming in the past like the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum about 55.8 million years ago, the researchers write. Scientists are increasingly relying on fossils to predict what the planet might anticipate over the next century.

Although climate change is now unfolding at a much faster rate than in past periods of warming, the researchers write, the basic message is the same: warmer temperatures equals smaller animals.

Yet the research community over all has been less than enthusiastic about embracing the idea. 'The scientific community is really hesitant to publish things that are potentially inflammatory,' said David Bickford, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Singapore and a co-author of the paper. 'People don’t want to think that this is a new reality, everything shrinking.'”

Whoooah!  That entire paragraph is worth repeating:

"Yet the research community over all has been less than enthusiastic about embracing the idea. “The scientific community is really hesitant to publish things that are potentially inflammatory,” said David Bickford, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Singapore and a co-author of the paper. “People don’t want to think that this is a new reality, everything shrinking.'"

The article includes this prediction:

“'I don’t think that organisms will shrink to the degree that you’ll walk outside and see that trees are suddenly half the size that they used to be,' said Jennifer Sheridan, a conservation biologist at the University of Alabama and a co-author of a paper describing the phenomenon in Monday’s issue of the journal Nature Climate Change."

Maybe not.  Maybe they'll just be...gone!  Let's return to the USDA webpage that describes the NCLAN, which has been linked to here at Wit's End before, but deserves another visit.  All of the following in this font is taken verbatim from that page, as are the illustrations; my own added comments will be in blue.

Ground-level ozone causes more damage to plants than all other air pollutants combined.  This web page describes the ozone pollution situation, shows classical symptoms of ozone injury and shows how ozone affects yield of several major crops.

Before we go one step further, a few critical points should be kept in mind when reading this.


1.  This long-term study focussed on annual agricultural crops, so when you consider that long-lived trees and other perennials are exposed to cumulative damage from ozone, season after season, you'd have to be an idiot not to understand that eventually, it's going to kill them.


2.  EVERY SINGLE LEAF now shows the symptoms pictured here, to one degree or another...and damage is done to trees BEFORE visual symptoms appear.


3.  What was that quote in the NYTimes?  Oh, yeah:  "The scientific community is really hesitant to publish things that are potentially inflammatory"  THAT is why practically nobody but me, certainly nobody in the "scientific community" is publicly connecting these dots...in case you wondered.

Tropospheric Ozone Pollution 

Ozone is formed in the troposphere when sunlight causes complex photochemical reactions involving oxides of nitrogen (NOx), volatile organic hydrocarbons (VOC) and carbon monoxide that originate chiefly from gasoline engines and burning of other fossil fuels.  Woody vegetation is another major source of VOCs.  NOx and VOCs can be transported long distances by regional weather patterns before they react to create ozone in the atmosphere, where it can persist for several weeks.

Let's be clear.  The VOC from woody vegetation wouldn't be a problem (as Ronald Reagan famously claimed that air pollution is caused by trees), because it wouldn't chemically turn into ozone in the absence of NOx, which is only there because WE PUT IT THERE.  NOx emissions are currently referred to as a CASCADE, because they are out of control and there is no regulation of them whatsoever.

Seasonal exposures at low elevations consist of days when ozone concentrations are relatively low or average, punctuated by days when concentrations are high. Concentrations of ozone are highest during calm, sunny, spring and summer days when primary pollutants from urban areas are present.  Ozone concentrations in rural areas can be higher than in urban areas while ozone levels at high elevations can be relatively constant throughout the day and night.

Notice the map above is dated 2005, so you can be sure the problem is now considerably worse.  The caption says, "Areas shown in brown orange and red [which corresponds to 50 to 65 ppbv] can experience significant crop yield loss and damage to ecosystem function [which refers to dying trees and the consequences therefrom I assume] from ambient ozone.  Keep in mind also, that even at levels lower than 50, plants are damaged, because the natural level of ozone they evolved to absorb is approximately, ZERO.


Also notice the high levels SMACK IN THE MIDDLE of the bark beetle epidemic.  Despite many studies indicating that insects, disease and fungus attacks are exacerbated when trees lose their natural defenses from absorbing ozone, certain foresters continue to deny that ozone is playing any role in the Rockies - even though the aspen are dying too, and bark beetles don't colonize aspen.


Ozone enters leaves through stomata during normal gas exchange.  As a strong oxidant, ozone (or secondary products resulting from oxidation by ozone such as reactive oxygen species) causes several types of symptoms including chlorosis and necrosis. It is almost impossible to tell whether foliar chlorosis or necrosis in the field is caused by ozone or normal senescence. [Unless of course the plant or tree is dying prematurely!] Several additional symptom types are commonly associated with ozone exposure, however.  These include flecks (tiny light-tan irregular spots less than 1 mm diameter), stipples (small darkly pigmented areas approximately 2-4 mm diameter), bronzing, and reddening.

Ozone symptoms usually occur between the veins on the upper leaf surface of older and middle-aged leaves, but may also involve both leaf surfaces (bifacial) for some species. The type and severity of injury is dependent on several factors including duration and concentration of ozone exposure, weather conditions and plant genetics.  One or all of these symptoms can occur on some species under some conditions, and specific symptoms on one species can differ from symptoms on another. With continuing daily ozone exposure, classical symptoms (stippling, flecking, bronzing, and reddening) are gradually obscured by chlorosis and necrosis.  That gradual obscuring by chlorosis and necrosis is what is making leaves turn brown and fall off the trees early this fall, without ever turning glorious autumn colors.

Studies in open-top field chambers have repeatedly verified that flecking,stippling, bronzing and reddening on plant leaves are classical responses to ambient levels of ozone. Plants grown in chambers receiving air filtered with activated charcoal (CF) to reduce ozone concentrations do not develop symptoms that occur on plants grown in nonfiltered air (NF) at ambient ozone concentrations. Foliar symptoms shown on this web site mainly occurred on plants exposed to ambient concentrations of ozone (either in NF chambers or in ambient air).

Yield Loss Caused by Ozone

Field research to measure effects of seasonal exposure to ozone on crop yield has been in progress for more than 40 years. Most of this research utilized open-top field chambers in which growth conditions are similar to outside conditions. The most extensive research on crop loss was performed from 1980 to 1987 at five locations in the USA as part of the National Crop Loss Assessment Network (NCLAN).  At each location, numerous chambers were used to expose plants to ozone treatments spanning the range of concentrations that occur in different areas of the world.  The NCLAN focused on the most important agronomic crops nationally.  If you can stand the tin foil hats plainly in evidence, watch this video about farmers in Hawaii, whose plants are dying with symptoms just as described on this webpage...but they think it is from contrails.The strongest evidence for significant effects of ozone on crop yield comes from NCLAN studies (Heagle 1989).  The results show that dicot species (soybean, cotton and peanut) are more sensitive to yield loss caused by ozone than monocot species (sorghum, field corn and winter wheat).  That chart should be enough to make people really think about what is going to happen to our source of food if we continue to burn fuel, including biomass.

Finally, I will leave you with this link to an excellent exploration of climate change by, of all entities, MSNBC.  Don't miss the fantastic movies at the bottom.  I can't embed the video about trees, unfortunately, because it's fascinating.  The forester talks about how the trees normally can fight off the bark beetles but now can't - because they're old and/or unhealthy!  His exhibit says "Age and Stress take their toll".  What stress?  Of course, older trees have spent more time in polluted air.  Anyway, he doesn't even mention temperature!  Here's a screenshot - if I ever finish editing my film from California, you will be shocked to see that's not far from how it looks there...but the residents, of course, are oblivious.

OccupyGeorge

By circulating dollar bills stamped with fact-based infographics, Occupy George informs the public of America's daunting economic disparity one bill at a time. Because money knowledge is power.

Go to OccupyGeorge.com where you can find links to sources for the statistics,

and download templates to print your own!

"You are all a lost generation."

After the exhaustion of staying up all night Thursday to deter the threatened eviction of Occupy Wall Street early Friday, which to much teary jubilation, was thwarted, I came home for a nap and then returned again today.  My intention was to first join with one of many collaborative demonstrations going on around the city, a protest against mountain top removal coal extraction, which I had been informed was to meet in front of the NYC Library.  I arrived early and nobody else was there yet, so I wandered around back to the park, and came across a statue of Gertrude Stein.

Okay!...so I admit, I put my Anonymous mask on her bronze effigy!  (I like to think she would have approved.)  The rest of this post consists of quotes from her, and my first interview to upload (it takes some time, more will come).  This first young lady, who is utterly charming, sincere, and articulate, presents an unsentimental assessment of the prospects for our industrial society and the inhibited actions of the major environmental groups that is amazingly sophisticated.  I was impressed, and encouraged.

"Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something."

There ain't no answer.
There ain't gonna be any answer.
There never has been an answer.
There's your answer.

You look ridiculous if you dance

You look ridiculous if you don't dance
So you might as well dance.


I do want to get rich but I never want to do what there is to get rich.


You have to know what you want to get it.


There is no reason why a king should be rich or a rich man should be a king, no reason at all.


All of the above are quotes from Gertrude.


As I get more video uploaded, I'll add it...it takes time!


Update:  Snippets from Times Square, where the police barricaded the protesters to allow traffic to continue to flow...

Remember the Bigger Journey

The Onion ran a bracing spoof, "Nation Waiting for Protestesters to Clearly Articulate Demands Before Ignoring Them" which affords readers some chuckles...although, having said that, the debate within OWS about the elusive demands rages on, becoming ever more complex - and there is to be a meeting on Sunday, at Occupy Wall Street, to try to resolve it.

Don't hold your breath!  This is likely to be a long, wild, and convoluted process, and any attempt to streamline it or make it more palatable or comprehensible is likely to implode.



If you  happen to be very bored, lonely, and without recourse for any entertainment, check this out!

A Long Night

Just about everyone stayed up all night last night, sitting in torrential downpours, waiting for the police to move in.  The crowd was cheerful but determined, and tense - being arrested is Not Fun.  Then the announcement came - you can see Moi! in the lower left corner right after it was announced the cleaning has been "postponed".  Everyone was ecstatic!  Then I took the train home for a nap...back tomorrow, to march to Times Square.

Occupy Wall Street Evicted

Mayor Bloomberg has announced that tomorrow, Friday, Zuccotti Park will be "cleaned".  As the letter from Brookfield Properties to Police Commissioner Kelly makes clear, there really is no path for the occupation to continue and be in compliance with their concerns for safety, public access, and sanitation.  So I take this to be a permanent "cleansing", or at least, an attempt at it.  I highly recommend everyone go to this facebook page, BankTransferDay, and join the movement to move your money - that's something the police can't stop.

Update:  Contact Mayor Bloomberg and demand that OWS continue unimpeded - If he's so worried about sanitation he should allow port-a-potties and dumpsters!

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
City Hall
New York, NY 10007
PHONE 311 (or 212-NEW-YORK outside NYC)

FAX (212) 312-0700

E-MAIL:http://www.nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mayor.html

Brookfield's Letter to NYPD asking to "clear" Zuccotti Park of Occupy Wall Street protesters

more photos here

"Everybody, sooner or later, sits down to a banquet of consequences."

- Robert Louis Stevenson


I have been thinking about how consequences, when delayed, eventually become quite a banquet - as will be articulated all the way at the end of this post (after several detours) in Professor Ugo Bardi's models demonstrating various configurations of the Seneca Cliff.  


First, here is a snippet from an essay about the Occupy Wall Street movement, well worth reading in its entirety, called "No Demand is Big Enough" by Charles Eisenstein:


"Occupy Wall Street has been criticized for its lack of clear demands, but how do we issue demands, when what we really want is nothing less than the more beautiful world our hearts tell us is possible? No demand is big enough. We could make lists of demands for new public policies: tax the wealthy, raise the minimum wage, protect the environment, end the wars, regulate the banks. While we know these are positive steps, they aren't quite what motivated people to occupy Wall Street. What needs attention is something deeper: the power structures, ideologies, and institutions that prevented these steps from being taken years ago; indeed, that made these steps even necessary."

The Red Cube, with Zuccotti Park beyond, 1st week of OWS

"If politicians are disconnected from the real world of human suffering and ecosystem collapse, all the more disconnected are the financial wizards of Wall Street. Behind their computer screens, they occupy a world of pure symbol, manipulating numbers and computer bits. Occupy Wall Street punctures their bubble of pretense as well, reconnects them with the human consequences of the god they serve, and perhaps with their own consciences and humanity too. Only in a hallucination could someone imagine that the unsustainable can last forever; in puncturing their bubble, we remind them that the money game is nearing its end. It can be perpetuated for a while longer, perhaps, but only at great and growing cost. We, the 99%, are paying that cost right now, and as the environment and the social fabric decay, the 1% will soon feel it too. We want those who operate and serve the financial system to wake up and see before it is too late."


He concludes:


"The truth is dwindling rain forests, spreading deserts, mass tree die-offs on every continent; looted pensions, groaning burdens of student debt, people working two or three dead end jobs; children eating dirt in Haiti, elders choosing between food and medicine... the list is endless, and we will make it no longer possible to hold it in disconnection from the money system. That is why we converge on Wall Street, and anywhere that finance holds sway. You have lulled us into complacency for long enough with illusions and false hopes. We the people are awakening and we will not go back to sleep."

The Last Nightingale - album cover by Ralph Steadman

Along these lines let me recommend another brilliant rumination, "Rise of the Machines, Why We Keep Coming Back to H.G. Wells' Visions of a Dystopian Future".  It's worth setting aside some time to read the whole fascinating investigation into his life and books, which also has embedded some riveting clips of movie based on his work, and others in the same tradition.  For the purposes of Wit's End though, I'm going to spoil it and just give away the ending:

"By 1946, the year that Wells died, civilization experienced yet another all-nation conflagration — one that included the use of the atomic weapons he had foreseen three decades earlier. Most of us, of course, share few of the aforementioned utopian socialist hopes. What we do take from Wells is the nagging suspicion that we are not in control, that the technologies we so gleefully develop will continuously backfire on us in ever more horrific ways, and that our love of individual freedom is a collective extermination pact.

"In this context, “history,” from now on, is the story of how we as a species repeatedly dodge that mass suicide at the last minute, until at last we don’t. That, not his utopian socialism, is the Wellsian vision of the future that we find so compelling — the version told in his novels and made into movies, to be retold in myriad new forms for as long as we survive."

Hmmm.  "Our love of individual freedom is an extermination pact".  I can read that in the TREE leaves!

This photo supplements a Boston Globe story about tourists who are gratified - oh yeah! - to be distracted from the dismally disappointing display of fall foliage in New England, by the wreckage from the flooding.  The macabre headline reads:

Vermont tourists focus on storm’s aftermath

Leaf-peepers in Vermont enthralled by scenes of deluge’s damage

The leaves, too, are being blamed on Irene - despite the fact that trees far to the west of the path of that hurricane are in the exact same condition!

So I sent the following letter to the reporter and the editor:

Dear Editor and Mr. Abel,

I am writing about the article regarding the aftermath of the flood, and the condition of foliage in Vermont.

Very few people realize that the reason the leaves look drab is actually because of ozone pollution, not Irene.  Leaves are drab where I live in New Jersey, they are drab across the country all the way to California.  They have been exhibiting more symptoms of damage over the past several years, prior to the hurricane.  In fact, trees are dying at a rapidly accelerating rate all over the world, as the background levels of tropospheric ozone are inexorably rising.  Ozone is toxic to all biota.

It's rather ironic that people drive from Texas to look at leaves in New England, since the emissions from their car engine are destroying the beauty they have come to admire...not to mention, that climate change from burning fossil and biofuels is what caused the record-breaking extreme weather events of the past year, including the floods.

Perhaps you could educate your readers on this point.  I publish a blog where there are many links to scientific research about the effects of ozone on vegetation, and photographs of symptoms on leaves, if you are interested in the facts.

Sincerely,

Gail Zawacki

Oldwick, NJ

I can assure you that letter will never be printed.

The Center for Public Integrity published an article titled, "Shelved Ozone Standard Would Have Had Modest Impact on Business, Politics".  So why on earth did Obama tell EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, the mother of an asthmatic, that she couldn't tighten the regulations according to the best available science - a repudiation that reportedly caused her to seriously consider resignation?  The story included this brief description of tropospheric ozone:


"Because of ozone’s adverse impacts on plants and animals, the EPA limits it under the Clean Air Act. Ground-level ozone, commonly known as smog, is expensive to reduce because it comes from a wide variety of sources. Compounds in the emissions from power plants, factories, and automobiles react with sunlight to form ozone."


and described the political debacle:

"The ozone standard EPA actually submitted for interagency review in July, following months of haggling with the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, was the weakest – and cheapest – option approved by the agency’s independent scientific advisors.

The proposed new limit, which would have lowered the allowable concentration of ozone in the air from 84 parts per billion to 70 parts per billion, could have cost $19 billion to $25 billion to implement, according to the EPA’s analysis. But the costs of the proposed 70 parts per billion standard would have been offset, the analysis said, by financial benefits ranging from $11 billion to $31 billion and health benefits that include 4,300 deaths avoided annually.

Opponents of the ozone rule regularly cited a $90 billion price tag, but that figure was only for the most stringent option raised by an EPA advisory board, a standard of 60 parts per billion. That limit was never seriously considered within the agency, said David McKee, a former project manager in the Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, who retired in December."

So, currently the standard is 84...the science advisory board recommended 60...and we couldn't even get 70.  The safe level - the natural level that current living species on this planet have evolved to absorb - is essentially ZERO.  The American Lung Association made this clever ad, but it wasn't nearly as potent as the Chamber of Commerce in this White House, apparently.



This was not the least of the distressing things I have come across recently.  Perhaps the one that is most haunting my dreams - because it adheres so closely to my instinctive suspicion that the trajectory of collapse will be insanely rapid, taking all but the most pessimistic doomers by surprise - is the blog post at Cassandra's Legacy, mentioned at the top.

"It would be some consolation for the feebleness of our selves and our works if all things should perish as slowly as they come into being; but as it is, increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid."  - Lucius Anneaus Seneca

Although that graph speaks volumes, it is of course it is well worth reading the entire analysis...which is quite complex, but here is a sample:

"It seems that, indeed, we are missing an element that, instead, is present in the world models of "The Limits to Growth" study. What we are missing is pollution or, better said, the effects of pollution. In the simple model above, degraded energy is harmlessly dissipated to space; it has no effect on the other elements of the model. But we know that, in the real world, that is not true. Pollution has a cost: money and resources must be spent to fight it; be it water or air poisoning or effects such as global warming."

Lastly, here is another story about the lackluster showing of fall foliage, an MSNBC interview featuring Dr. Reese Halter, a genuine tree hugger who informed the audience that climate change is the primary cause.  I guess not everyone has forgotten that leaves used to turn ecstatically colorful while remaining supple, glossy, and smooth!  Naturally, I wrote him, too - the exchange is below.  (And that will be the last of this post, since I've been chastised by more than one reader for overly long and convoluted entries.  Well, cry me a river!  I can't help it if everything is failing faster and sooner than predicted!  And welcome to my world...)

Dear Dr. Reese,

A friend of mine sent me a clip of your interview on MSNBC about leaves turning fall color late.

From my observation, they are not merely late, they aren't turning normal fall color at all, and this has been an accelerating trend since 2008.  I wonder if you have considered that the main reason leaves are turning brown and shriveling up is that they are being injured by exposure to inexorably rising levels of background tropospheric ozone?

For about a year I thought the underlying issue leaves on trees were wilting, because the damage is so widespread, must be a change in precipitation patterns because of global warming.  However, this explanation turns out to not be satisfactory, because it does not account for the fact that annual tropical plants being watered in pots, and even water plants like lilies and lotus that are always in water, have identically shrunken, singed and stippled foliage.  Thus I eventually concluded that only something about the composition of the atmosphere can fully account for the empirical facts.

Since then (2009) I have been reading everything I can find about the effects of exposure to ozone.  It turns out to have been well researched and demonstrated that air pollution is even more toxic to plantlife than it is to people.  It has also been proven that vegetation that has been compromised by ozone is more likely to succumb to opportunistic attacks from insects, disease and fungus, an extremely interesting fact in regards to bark beetle in the west, as well as the ubiquitous rampages of other species-specific attacks around the world.

This is really quite important and I am writing you because it is critical that someone with authority inform the public that our relentless burning of fuel is going to cause the ecosystem to collapse, which is an existential threat.  It's critical that people understand the only way to survive is to embrace a drastic program of energy conservation.

Another possibly even more urgent issue may be that burning biofuels forms worse and more persistent ozone because of the increase in NOx emissions over fossil fuels.  If this is what underlies the very dramatic and sudden decline in forest health, then it would be much easier to simply stop using biofuels, and return to the slightly slower pace of environmental devastation expected from climate change.

Please contact me if you have any questions or interest in pursuing this topic.  It has been distinctly unpopular with other biologists, foresters, and climate scientists so far.  But I'm hopeful that eventually some professional will be able to think outside the box and see what is actually, rather obvious if you simply examine the evidence.

I've been publishing a blog (Wit's End) where I collect links to scientific research at the top on the "Basic Premise" page, and post photographs of the symptoms of plants damaged by ozone.  I've done two comparative studies of fall foliage over time in the same places - one in northern New Jersey, and one in Central Park.  Here is a post that includes information from the FACE experiments about insects and disease increasing as a result of ozone, which didn't impress Jim Bouldin, the resident forester at Real Climate, in the least.  Whoever has the courage to tackle this "intractable problem" - as somebody ultimately will have to, because it is true - will be known as a visionary maverick.  Perhaps that will be you.

Thank you so much for your attention,

Sincerely,

Gail Zawacki

Oldwick, NJ

Good call Gail. The toxicity we are belching into the biosphere is harming/killing all life.

In fact we are spewing so much sulphuric acid into the stratosphere that it, nitric acid and cfcs (hangin around) caused that MASSIVE hole (in conjunction with global warming) in the Arctic ozone layer (never recorded before) this spring.

Believe me when I say I am working night and day to bring these and so many other awful environmental disasters to the publics attention. Beneath is a recent piece from Huffington.

I've got 2 very cool books out shortly on bees and beetles/climate change.

Keep the faith and keep those observations coming (to me).

Best, Dr Reese

Dear Dr. Reese,

Thanks so much for your response! Can I quote you on that?  I also appreciated the links to your books and article in HuffPo.

I do think that it would be extremely useful if experts such as yourself drew a direct line between what you so accurately describe as the "toxicity we are belching" and the imminent death of trees - and distinguish between that and longer term threats such as climate change, and secondary impacts, such as bark beetle infestations, which is to ozone what pneumonia is to AIDS.  As a friend who is a forestry expert noted last week, the damage - such as yellowing needles on California redwoods, which is what we were looking at - is far too uniform to be attributable to isolated outbreaks of insects, disease or fungus. 

If it were solely, or even mainly, temperature and precipitation differences from climate change caused largely by CO2, then we might as well pretty much just give up, because that is more or less permanently baked in the cake - and the CO2 we have already released is going to persist for up to 1,000 years, continuing to warm and destabilize weather.

On the other hand, and it's a hugely relevant distinction, ozone does not persist very long at all.  We could save what is left of the ecosystem, and vastly improve it - we still have living, if struggling, specimens, after all - if we substantially ceased creating ozone precursors.

It is for this reason I would like to see some leadership on this essential aspect and unique consequence of specific greenhouse gas emissions.

Thank you again for your attention,

Gail Zawacki

Sure quote me.

There is a direct link.

Sulphuric acid comes from burning coal. We are burning more now than ever before. Warmer temps near the Earth have created colder temps in the upper troposphere, hence the Northern Hemisphere ozone hole. It is all connected Gail.

Dr Reese

But, everything I read says that the sulphur dioxide has been reduced by scrubbers.  Maybe not for China, I don't know.  But there is so much blah blah blah saying that acid rain is a problem that has been solved.

Are you saying that isn't true?  Wouldn't surprise me!  But it's NOT the official version.

Yes scrubbers are removing most but clearly not all of it. We are burning an immense amount of coal to the extent that some 3,000 tons of mercury are entering the biosphere every year from it and mostly winding up in the Arctic, which is melting, and mercury is insidiously infiltrating the entire marine ecosystem, worldwide...

Chris Crispy Creme Christie Crawls out of Bed with the Koch Brothers just long enough to fellate the Mittster

Koch Keeps Killing

Bioremediation of Acid Earth - a Farce in Three Acts (Air, Water and Soil)

Remember that word - bioremediation - because it will be encountered towards the end of this post.  It refers to the preposterous notion that Nature can be further exploited to clean itself of the filth that humans have created.  It's reminiscent of the fairytale that plants are good because they absorb ozone, and we should therefore plant more trees...without ever asking, what happens to the leaves that absorb air pollution?  That's about as clever as observing that human lungs are wonderful, because they absorb ozone too!  Never mind that it causes cancer and heart disease...

This study, one of the few I can find that investigates emissions of biofuels (which I suspect is causing the recently accelerating and widespread tree decline), is titled "Fuel Properties and Nitrogen Oxide Levels of Biodiesel Produced from Animal Fats".  Published in 2005 and funded by the USDA, it compares the emissions of NOx from burning soy-based and various animal fat-based biofuels, concluding that animal fats have potential to release less NOx than vegetable-based biofuels.  Why might this matter?

"Experimental data have shown that the addition of biodiesel to diesel fuel reduces particulate and carbon monoxide emissions but increases nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions (7,8). Pure soy biodiesel (B100) increases NOx emissions by approximately 12% when compared with NOx emission data for petroleum diesel. At the more widely used 20% blend level of biodiesel in petrodiesel, however, the increase in NOx emissions is only on the order of 2–4%. With increasingly strict environmental regulations, even this relatively small increase in NOx can negatively impact the use of biodiesel. Therefore, it may be of benefit to identify other feedstocks for producing a biodiesel that could improve NOx emissions when blended with petroleum diesel."

Note, that the two studies upon which that first statement is based were published in 1998 and 1994 - so our government has known - and ignored, while pushing for mandated use - for years that biofuels increase emissions of NOx.  What does "negatively impact the use" mean?  "even this relatively small increase in NOx can negatively impact the use of biodiesel."


I think it means, that biodiesel shouldn't be used because it increases NOx, and even a "relatively small increase" in NOx is enough reason NOT TO USE biodiesel!  Just how bad is NOx?

One study, published in 2005 in the Journal of Geophysical Research by scientists from Harvard, uses satellite data to look at the ozone resulting from burning biomass, and states at the outset, in the introduction:

Nitrogen oxide radicals (NOx = �NO + NO2) originating from combustion, lightning, and soils largely control tropospheric ozone production [Kasibhatla et al., 1991; Penner et al., 1991; Murphy et al., 1993; Jacob et al., 1996]. Tropospheric ozone plays a key role in determining the oxidizing power of the atmosphere, is an important greenhouse gas, and is toxic to biota.

Oh my, toxic to biota??  All the collective living flora and fauna?  So how come I got raked over the coals at Real Climate for saying ozone is toxic to life?

Movie time!




Even the biodiesel industry's own website admits that NOx admissions increase, which they then attempt to hedge with some completely hypothetical technological mitigations that aren't being employed:

"NOx emissions from biodiesel increase or decrease depending on the engine family and testing procedures. NOx emissions (a contributing factor in the localized formation of smog and
ozone) from pure (100%) biodiesel increase on average by 10 percent."

They base their estimates on an EPA document, a "Comprehensive Analysis of Biodiesel Impacts on Exhaust Emissions" which, while predicting a net loss in efficiency (how's that cleaner energy?), also includes the following chart red-lining NOx emissions - and, parenthetically, this comical caveat:

"We were not able to identify an unambiguous difference in exhaust CO2 emissions between biodiesel and conventional diesel.  However, it should be noted that the CO2 benefits commonly attributed to biodiesel are the result of the renewability of the biodiesel itself, not the comparative exhaust CO2 emissions."

But getting back to reactive nitrogen, The Bangor Daily News reports that up in Maine, they already have what shellfish harvesters call "Dead Mud".  Following is the article, which begins with CO2 acidification, and then moves on to NOx - that other, "biggest environmental disaster you've never heard of":

“There may be controversy surrounding global warming, but there’s no debate about the fact that the ocean is becoming more acidic,” said Paul Dobbins, former oyster farmer and co-founder of the Portland-based kelp grower Ocean Approved LLC. “It doesn’t receive all that much coverage, because it’s not controversial, but [the ocean's acidity is] what has all of us who are working with ocean organisms and shellfish worried.”

Casco Baykeeper Joe Payne said the pH of coastal ocean waters has decreased by 0.02 over the past few decades.

“I’ve had people say to me, ‘Well, that’s just .02, that’s tiny,’” Payne said. “Your blood and seawater are 98 percent the same. If your blood pH changed by .02, you’d be comatose. That’s what it does to the ocean.”

What Payne described as a “major problem” in the form of worldwide ocean acidification, though, isn’t the only problem for Maine’s shellfish flats.

The double whammy

There are no limits now on how much nitrogen can be discharged into Maine waterways.

“If you have a very productive ecosystem, which the Gulf of Maine is, and you add a little nitrogen, it gets even more productive,” said Salisbury.

The environmental advocacy group Friends of Casco Bay, to which Payne belongs, has launched a campaign urging Mainers to keep an eye out for “green slime” — thick carpets of algae covering shallow coastal waters. The green slime is a sign of excess nitrogen, Friends of Casco Bay warns, and excess nitrogen carries a host of consequences for an ecosystem aside from bad aesthetics.

The same nitrogen that causes a freakish bloom in algae causes an explosion in the microscopic phytoplankton populations. Those massive numbers of phytoplankton then die, fall to the mud at the base of the water and decompose, releasing more concentrated carbon dioxide to the fragile mud ecosystem and driving the pH further into acidic territory.

“Only now are we considering the effects on shelled organisms,” Salisbury said. “This is a big concern, and it’s only recently been studied. People have always known about the chemistry, but the effects on the organisms [are just being researched].

“There may be adaptations that some organisms can make, but we do know that things are changing probably faster than most organisms can keep up with,” he continued. “It could be that these factors are conspiring to make survival difficult for commercially valuable shellfish, but really the jury is out.”

Controlling nitrogen

A 2008 resolution of the Legislature, promoted by Friends of Casco Bay, directed the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to develop limits for the amount of nitrogen allowable in Maine waters.

Angela DuBois, who works in the department’s Bureau of Land and Water Quality, is in charge of drafting those numeric limits in time to meet a July 2012 deadline, after which the Legislature will review and consider implementing them.

DuBois said setting those limits is “the first step” in a longer process to control nitrogen pollution. When the numbers are set, the DEP will try to maintain them by regulating the amount of nitrogen discharged by identifiable sources, such as sewage treatment plants.

The department also has programs set up to educate the public about controlling “nonpoint sources” of nitrogen pollution, such as residential and farm fertilizers and road runoff. But DuBois acknowledged the nonpoint sources will be “more difficult” to control.

That could leave dischargers such as factories or sewage treatment plants shouldering much of the burden of curbing nitrogen levels.

“Plants our size are looking at [$500,000 to $750,000] to build tertiary treatment chains,” said Christopher Higgins, head of the Boothbay Harbor Sewer District. “That’s going to make an impact on sewer fees, especially when [the cost is spread out] over 1,200 users.”

For his part, Higgins is partnering with Dobbins to experiment using kelp to control nitrogen. The saltwater vegetation absorbs nitrogen from the water, and Higgins has a Department of Marine Resources permit for two kelp beds, one near the the district’s primary treatment plant and another near Bayville.

“A nice benefit of this is that kelp eats nitrogen, and there are places on the Maine coast where there’s excess nitrogen because of runoff and other pollution,” Dobbins said of the sea plant, which is popular in many parts of the world as a food and fuel source. “He’s looking to use nature to take excess nitrogen out of the water — it’s called ‘bioremediation,’ using nature to help clean itself.”

As usual, both of these videos conclude with a token happy "there is a solution" ending, which, whether wedge reductions or bioremediation, is entirely unfounded in reality (since emissions AND population are rising with no reduction in sight) and far out of scale with the scope of the problems they describe.  One paper, newly released by two researchers from the University of Virginia, which assesses the sources and impacts of anthropogenic emissions leading to the global degradation of air, water and soil, calls the results, "Acidification of Earth".  We are starting to understand.

Every now and then it's possible to find a more realistic assessment of how this will be resolved.  Following is background commentary by the creators about their South Park episode "Smug Alert", the full hilarious episode of which can be seen by clicking at that link to South Park Studios.