ONE TOWN SQUARE: at the intersection of peak oil, climate change, and land use

Developed countries are “outsourcing” more than a third of their carbon emissions associated with products and services to other countries, according to a new study by scientists at the Carnegie Institution for Science. To be meaningful, regional climate policy thus needs to take into account emissions embodied in trade, not just domestic emissions.

This map shows the flow of carbon emissions embodied in trade among the major exporting and importing countries. Net exporting countries are in blue and net importers in red. China is by far the largest exporter of carbon dioxide emissions. Arrows indicate direction and magnitude of flow; numbers are megatonnes. (Steven Davis/Carnegie Institution for Science)

The study finds that, per person, about 2.5 tons of carbon dioxide are consumed in the U.S. but produced somewhere else. The United States is both a major importer and a major exporter of emissions embodied in trade. The net result is that the U.S. outsources about 11% of total consumption-based emissions, primarily to the developing world.

Says co-author Ken Caldeira, a researcher in the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology:

Instead of looking at carbon dioxide emissions only in terms of what is released inside our borders, we also looked at the amount of carbon dioxide released during the production of the things that we consume.

Caldeira and lead author Steven Davis, also at Carnegie, used published trade data from 2004 to create a global model of the flow of products across 57 industry sectors and 113 countries or regions. By allocating carbon emissions to particular products and sources, the researchers were able to calculate the net emissions “imported” or “exported” by specific countries.

For Europeans, the figure can exceed four tons per person. In Switzerland and several other small countries, outsourced emissions exceeded the amount of carbon dioxide emitted within national borders. Most of these emissions are outsourced to developing countries, especially China.

Davis explains:

Just like the electricity that you use in your home probably causes CO2 emissions at a coal-burning power plant somewhere else, we found that the products imported by the developed countries of western Europe, Japan, and the United States cause substantial emissions in other countries, especially China. On the flip side, nearly a quarter of the emissions produced in China are ultimately exported.

Where CO2 emissions occur doesn’t matter to the climate system. Effective policy must have global scope. To the extent that constraints on developing countries’ emissions are the major impediment to effective international climate policy, allocating responsibility for some portion of these emissions to final consumers elsewhere may represent an opportunity for compromise.

The report is published online in the March 8, 2010 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The U.S. posted its biggest-ever decline in CO2 emissions from fossil fuels in 2009, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). But the reductions are not expected to continue:

CO2 emissions from fossil fuels fell by an estimated 6.3 percent in 2009. Emissions from coal led the drop in 2009 CO2 emissions, falling by nearly 11 percent. Declines in energy consumption in the industrial sector (a result of the weak economy) and changes in electricity generation sources are the primary reasons for the decline in CO2 emissions (U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions Growth Chart). Looking forward, projected improvements in the economy contribute to an expected 1.5-percent increase in CO2 emissions in 2010. Increased use of coal in the electric-power sector, and continued economic growth, combined with the expansion of travel-related petroleum consumption, lead to a 1.3-percent increase in CO2 emissions in 2011. However, even with increases in 2010 and 2011, projected CO2 emissions in 2011 are lower than annual emissions from 1999 through 2008.

The drop in emissions in 2009 was the biggest since data collection began in 1949. The Great Recession was primarily responsible, as U.S. real gross domestic product dropped 2.4% in 2009, in the biggest decline since 1946. Emissions dropped 5.8% in 2008.

It’s hard enough to imagine the U.S. and other developed nations voluntarily sacrificing economic growth, much less embracing voluntary frugality. Can you even conceive that China and India would voluntarily give up their ambitions to join the developed world? The entire world has joined in a suicide pact.

It’s beginning to look like the only thing that will save humans and other living things from the ravages of global warming is global economic collapse.

Methane is leaking from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf into the atmosphere at an alarming rate, says a press release from the National Science Foundation.

Climate scientists have long worried that global warming could unlock the vast quantities of the greenhouse gas methane that are frozen in the Arctic permafrost, kicking off a feedback loop that could end in catastrophe. Now, an international research team led by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov has found signs that it may already be happening.

The East Siberian Arctic Shelf is shallow, 50 meters (164 feet) or less in depth, which means it has been alternately submerged or terrestrial, depending on sea levels throughout Earth’s history. During the Earth’s coldest periods, it is a frozen arctic coastal plain, and does not release methane. As the Earth warms and sea level rises, it is inundated with seawater, which is 12-15 degrees warmer than the average air temperature.

The press release quotes Shakhova:

It was thought that seawater kept the East Siberian Arctic Shelf permafrost frozen. Nobody considered this huge area.

Top left: Bubble plumes (probably dominated by CH4) rising from the seafloor registered by geophysical instrumentation. Top right: Seismic image showing gas charged sediments and gas release from the bottom. Bottom left: Positions of oceanographic stations with bathymetry lines. Bottom right: Fluxes of CH4 venting to the atmosphere over the ESAS. Source: Shakhova et al.

The study, “Extensive Methane Venting to the Atmosphere from Sediments of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf”, is published in the March 5 edition of the journal Science. It shows that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, long thought to be an impermeable barrier sealing in methane, is perforated and is starting to leak large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming.

A quote from the study in article at Green Car Congress captures the scientific community’s reluctance to sound alarmist:

Although the oceanic CH₄ flux should be revised, the current estimate is not alarmingly altering the contemporary global CH₄ budget. These findings do change our view of the vulnerability of the large sub-sea permafrost carbon reservoir on the ESAS; the permafrost “lid” is clearly perforated, and sedimentary CH₄ is escaping to the atmosphere.

To discern whether this extensive CH₄ venting over the ESAS is a steadily ongoing phenomenon or signals the start of a more massive CH₄ release period, there is an urgent need for expanded multifaceted investigations into these inaccessible but climate-sensitive shelf seas north of Siberia.

In this New York Times article, Dr. Shakhova reiterates the notes of scientific caution:

I would not go so far as to suggest any implications. We are at the very beginning of research.

The permafrost contains 1.5 trillion tons of frozen carbon – about twice as much carbon as contained in the atmosphere – much of which would be released as methane.  As a greenhouse gas, Methane is 25 times more potent than CO2 over a 100 year time horizon but 72 times as potent over 20 years. Atmospheric concentrations of methane have more than doubled since pre-industrial times.

Stuart Staniford at Early Warning mines the data contained in Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States (a U.S. government report we covered here) and concludes that all the work environmentalists have done to protect species and habitats is doomed to be in vain:

All the work that’s been done over the past century to preserve some wild ecosystems in national parks etc, is going to be mostly subverted.  The park may still be there, but what grows in it will, in most cases, be nothing like the thing that we were originally trying to save.

As the impacts of global warming manifest themselves over the coming century, warming temperatures and changing precipitation patterns will result in just about every landscape in the country changing radically.

Staniford’s piece exposes the flaw in the approach environmentalists took in the 70s, the approach (taken by Oregon’s statewide planning Goal 5 , for example): identify a “significant” resource, draw a line around it, and protect it from conflicting uses. Protecting a living resource requires much more than drawing a line around it.  Rather, you have to maintain the health of the ecosystem within which it is embedded.

Within a global climate system wildly disrupted by human greenhouse gas emissions, how could we possibly expect that more local ecosystems could remain unaffected?

Stuart Staniford at Early Warning has posted some revealing graphs showing past carbon emissions – and projected future carbon emissions from China.

First, a history of carbon emissions. Notice emissions didn’t really start to take off until the 1950s.

Next, a closer look at emissions since 1965, broken out by major contributors.

Future Chinese emissions make doubtful any prospect of avoiding dangerous or even catastrophic global warming, whether or not the Chinese economy continues along its current growth path.

Exactly how is the world going to achieve 20% cuts (from 1990 levels) by 2020, much less 80% by 2050? Copenhagen sure doesn’t leave much room for optimism.

New research shows that modern farming – the kind practiced on nearly all farmland in the United States and touted around the world as the “green revolution” – destroys soil carbon. Synthetic nitrogen contributes to climate change and undermines long-term soil productivity because synthetic nitrogen breaks down organic matter faster than plant residue creates it.

In papers published in 2007 and 2009 University of Illinois researchers Richard Mulvaney, Saeed Khan, and Tim Ellsworth argue that the net effect of synthetic nitrogen use is to reduce soil’s organic matter content. They hypothesize that nitrogen fertilizer stimulates soil microbes, which then feast on organic matter. Over time, the impact of this enhanced microbial appetite outweighs the benefits of the additional crop residue left behind as a result of increased fertilization.

Tom Philpot summarizes their findings in a post at Grist:

And their analysis gets more alarming. Synthetic nitrogen use, they argue, creates a kind of treadmill effect. As organic matter dissipates, soil’s ability to store organic nitrogen declines. A large amount of nitrogen then leeches away, fouling ground water in the form of nitrates, and entering the atmosphere as nitrous oxide (N2O), a greenhouse gas with some 300 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide. In turn, with its ability to store organic nitrogen compromised, only one thing can help heavily fertilized farmland keep cranking out monster yields: more additions of synthetic N.

The loss of organic matter has other ill effects, the researchers say. Injured soil becomes prone to compaction, which makes it vulnerable to runoff and erosion and limits the growth of stabilizing plant roots. Worse yet, soil has a harder time holding water, making it ever more reliant on irrigation. As water becomes scarcer, this consequence of widespread synthetic N use will become more and more challenging.

In short, “the soil is bleeding,” Mulvaney told me in an interview.

The idea that synthetic fertilizers destroy soil health is not new. Philpot quotes from the book The Soil and Health by British agronomist Sir Albert Howard, a touchstone of organic farming first published in 1947:

The use of artificial manure, particularly [synthetic nitrogen] … does untold harm. The presence of additional combined nitrogen in an easily assimilable form stimulates the growth of fungi and other organisms which, in the search for organic matter needed for energy and for building up microbial tissue, use up first the reserve of soil hummus and then the more resistant organic matter which cements soil particles.

A recent report by UNEP and the UN Conference on Trade and Development is consistent with the researchers’ results, finding that in Africa yields had more than doubled where organic, or near-organic practices had been used, with yields jumping 128% in east Africa. The study found that organic practices outperformed traditional methods and chemical-intensive conventional farming and produced environmental benefits such as improved soil fertility, better retention of water and resistance to drought.

The Oregon Senate has approved a bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks.

SB 1059, which implements recommendations from 2009 Metropolitan Planning Organization Greenhouse Gas Emissions Task Force, does more than just set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in metro areas. It also directs state agencies to:

• Develop a statewide transportation strategy on greenhouse gases.
• Craft a toolkit to assist local governments and metro areas in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.
• Develop guidelines for scenario planning – used by communities across the country to consider alternative choices of land use patterns and transportation options to reduce emissions.
• Work with the Oregon University System to educate the public about the costs and benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
• Report back to the 2011 Legislature with an estimate of how much it will cost local governments to prepare and select a land use and transportation scenario that reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and potential sources of funding.
• Report back to the 2013 Legislative Assembly with an assessment of how the agencies are doing on these tasks.

The bill passed out of the Senate despite unanimous opposition from Republicans, 17-13 (Sen. Rick Metsger, D-Mount Hood joining the Rs in voting “no”). The bill now goes to the House, where it will most likely come up for a vote Wednesday.

Mary Kyle McCurdy, 1000 Friends of Oregon Policy Director, stated in a press release:

This victory will help create healthier, sustainable communities across Oregon. And it’s a major step for giving Oregonians better transportation choices.

The press release also quotes Chris Hagerbaumer, Deputy Director of the Oregon Environmental Council:

SB 1059 is a win-win for cities and towns across Oregon. The bill will help create the tools and resources local governments need to make cost effective decisions on planning future growth while also improving air quality and reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions. Cities and towns of all sizes will be able to use the tools that the agencies develop.

The Task Force identified a number of additional benefits that would accrue from reducing greenhouse gas emissions, including: saving families money by reducing their transportation costs; lower public infrastructure costs; healthier lifestyles due to more opportunities to walk and bike; and greater energy security by reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.

UPDATE 2/25/2010: SB 1059, which would initiate steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions in transportation, is headed to the governor’s office after passing out of the House 32 to 26 Wednesday. The Rs voted against the bill as a solid block. Two Ds, Terry Beyer of Springfield and Arnie Roblan of Coos Bay, joined the Rs in opposition.

Research by the U.S. Geological Survey documents that every ice front in the southern part of the Antarctic Peninsula has been retreating overall from 1947 to 2009, with the most dramatic changes occurring since 1990.

The report, “Coastal-Change and Glaciological Map of the Palmer Land Area, Antarctica: 1947—2009” and its accompanying map is available online.

The press release explains why the loss of ice shelves is so significant:

The ice shelves are attached to the continent and already floating, holding in place the Antarctic ice sheet that covers about 98 percent of the Antarctic continent. As the ice shelves break off, it is easier for outlet glaciers and ice streams from the ice sheet to flow into the sea. The transition of that ice from land to the ocean is what raises sea level.

The press release also quotes USGS scientist Jane Ferrigno:

The loss of ice shelves is evidence of the effects of global warming. We need to be alert and continually understand and observe how our climate system is changing.

The Antarctic Peninsula’s southern section contains five major ice shelves: Wilkins, George VI, Bach, Stange and the southern portion of Larsen Ice Shelf. The ice lost since 1998 from the Wilkins Ice Shelf alone totals more than 4,000 square kilometers, an area larger than the state of Rhode Island.

Ice-front retreat of the Wilkins Ice Shelf from 1947 to 2009

Last year Post Carbon Oregon had a series of posts documenting the disintegration of the ice bridge connecting the Wilkins ice shelf to Charcot Island, featuring photos from the European Space Agency’s Webcam in Space. Pretty spectacular stuff.

At the Royal Society in London, scientists at a conference  on greenhouse gases  report that levels of methane in the atmosphere, after a decade of near-zero growth, began rising in 2007 when an unprecedented heat wave in the Arctic caused a record shrinking of the sea ice and have continued to rise significantly through 2008 and 2009.

An article in the U.K. Independent includes a quotation from the presentation, titled Global atmospheric methane in 2010: budget, changes and dangers:

[G]lobally averaged atmospheric methane increased by [approximately] 7ppb (parts per billion) per year during 2007 and 2008. . . . During the first half of 2009, globally averaged atmospheric CH4 was [approximately] 7ppb greater than it was in 2008, suggesting that the increase will continue in 2009. There is the potential for increased CH4 emissions from strong positive climate feedbacks in the Arctic where there are unstable stores of carbon in permafrost . . . so the causes of these recent increases must be understood.

Global atmospheric levels of the gas now stand at about 1,790 parts per billion. They began to be measured in 1984, when they stood at about 1,630ppb.

The Independent also quotes Euan Nisbet, one of the study’s authors:

“It may just be a couple of years of high growth, and it may drop back to what it was. But there is a concern that things are beginning to change towards renewed growth from feedbacks.

Over a relatively short period, such as 20 years, methane (CH4) has a global warming potential more than 60 times as powerful as CO2, although it decays more quickly.

Many climate scientists fear that frozen Arctic tundra, like this at Sermermiut in Greenland, could be a ticking time bomb. Over thousands of years the methane has accumulated under the ground at northern latitudes all around the world. But as temperatures rise and the permafrost begins to melt, that methane could be released – with potentially catastrophic results.

Here’s a news flash from NASA: cars contribute to global warming!

Motor vehicles give off only minimal amounts of sulfates and nitrates, both pollutants that cool climate, though they produce significant amounts of pollutants that warm climate such as carbon dioxide, black carbon, and ozone.

In a paper published online on Feb. 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nadine Unger of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and colleagues described how they used a climate model to estimate the impact of 13 sectors of the economy from 2000 to 2100.

In their analysis, motor vehicles emerged as the greatest contributor to atmospheric warming now and in the near term. Cars, buses, and trucks release pollutants and greenhouse gases that promote warming, while emitting few aerosols that counteract it.

Keep in mind that those cooling aerosols from electric power generation and industry (mostly from burning coal) and biomass burning (otherwise known as deforestation) fall out of the atmosphere quickly, leaving the greenhouse gases behind in the atmosphere to do their warming work for centuries to come. Says Unger:

The differences are because the impacts of greenhouse gases accumulate and intensify over time, and because they persist in the atmosphere for such long periods. In contrast, aerosols rain out after a few days and can only have a short-term impact.

Credit: NASA GISS/Unger

Unger’s model finds that in 2020 (left), transportation, household biofuels and animal husbandry will have the greatest warming impact on the climate, while the shipping, biomass burning, and industrial sectors will have a cooling impact. By 2100 (right), the model finds that the power and industrial sector will begin to contribute strongly to warming as carbon dioxide accumulates.

Here’s a simple idea that would go a long way towards saving the planet:

Cap the national driving speed limit at 34 MPH (55 KMH).

Benefits of a national slowdown would include:

• Massive reductions in oil consumption
• Immediate and significant C02 reductions
• Smaller, lighter vehicles = less materials consumption
• Instant surge in demand for high-speed rail and other public transportation
• Large drop in tire-related particulate pollution
• Plunging traffic fatality rates + reduced health industry expenses
• Constriction of suburbs & exurbs, relieving pressure on farm lands and other rural lands
• Shipping diverted from truck to rail & ship
• Demise of the “big box” model, reinvigoration of local economies and communities
• End of our road and bridge building mania

As if that’s likely to happen.

Still, the passion may be fading from our love affair with the automobile. The Federal Highway Administration reports that vehicle miles driven in December were unchanged from December 2008:

Travel on all roads and streets changed by 0.0% (-0.1 billion vehicle miles) for December 2009 as compared with December 2008. . . . Cumulative Travel for 2009 changed by +0.2% (6.6 billion vehicle miles).

Unfortunately, as our passion fades the automobile has taken a new lover: China.

A recent post reported on scientists’ findings that Greenland’s glaciers are melting from the bottom up. Findings from another team of scientists help explain why: subtropical waters from warmer latitudes are reaching Greenland’s glaciers, driving melting and likely triggering an acceleration of ice loss.

Credit: Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

The research team, led by Fiamma Straneo, a physical oceanographer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, found that subtropical waters are reaching Greenland’s glaciers, driving melting and likely triggering an acceleration of ice loss. Melting ice also means more fresh water in the ocean, which could flood into the North Atlantic and disrupt a global system of currents, known as the Ocean Conveyor.

Science Daily quotes Straneo:

This is the first time we’ve seen waters this warm in any of the fjords in Greenland. The subtropical waters are flowing through the fjord very quickly, so they can transport heat and drive melting at the end of the glacier.

The Greenland ice sheet’s contribution to sea level rise over the last decade has doubled due to increased melting and especially to the widespread acceleration of outlet glaciers.

The research teamconducted two extensive surveys during July and September of 2008 in Sermilik Fjord, a 100-kilometer long glacial fjord in East Greenland connecting Helheim Glacier with the Irminger Sea. In 2003 alone, Helheim Glacier retreated several kilometers and almost doubled its flow speed.  Deep inside the fjord, researchers found subtropical water as warm as 39 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius). The team also reconstructed seasonal temperatures on the shelf using data collected by 19 hooded seals tagged with satellite-linked temperature depth-recorders. The data revealed that the shelf waters warm from July to December, and that subtropical waters are present on the shelf year round.

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS ) is considering listing corals as endangered species under the Endangered Species Act.  From the Federal Register:

[W]e initiate status reviews of 82 species of corals to determine if listing under the ESA is warranted.

In October 2009 NMFS received a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity to list 83 species of coral as threatened or endangered under the ESA. The petition asserts that synergistic threats of ocean warming, ocean acidification, and other impacts affect these species and that these global habitat threats are exacerbated by local habitat threats posed by ship traffic, dredging, coastal development, pollution, and agricultural and land use practices that increase sedimentation and nutrient loading. The petition states that immediate action is needed to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations to levels that do not jeopardize these species and requests that critical habitat be designated for these corals concurrent with listing under the ESA.

A species or subspecies is ‘‘endangered’’ if it is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range, and ‘‘threatened’’ if it is likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range.

NMFS will have to “assess conservation measures to determine whether they ameliorate a species’ extinction risk” and, once critical habitat is designated, ensure that Federal agencies do not fund, authorize or carry out any actions that are likely to destroy or adversely modify that habitat.

Any area may be excluded from a critical habitat designation if the benefits of exclusion outweigh the benefits of designation, unless excluding that area “will result” in extinction of the species. So economic and national security considerations could trump the science.

So much for the “immediate action” that is needed to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations.

It’s nothing but Kabuki theater – highly stylized ritual rather than meaningful action or even honest discussion. action.

Republican Governor Jan Brewer has pulled Arizona out of the Western Climate Initiative.

The Western Climate Initiative is made up of seven Western states — Arizona, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington — and four Canadian provinces. Its modest goal is to achieve a 15% reduction from 2005 emissions levels by 2020. The regional cap-and-trade program was to begin in 2012, but California is the only state on schedule.

The New York Times quotes Benjamin Grumbles, the head of the state’s environmental agency:

Green and grow is our approach now.

Fearful that cutting emissions plan will slow the state’s economic recovery, Arizona will focus less on regulations and instead support initiatives to expand the use of solar power, nuclear power and other renewable energy sources. Arizona will look at “growth policies that limit pollution” and “steps to adapt to the changing climate.”

Arizona is also reconsidering the stricter vehicle-emissions rules set to take effect in 2012.

A glimpse at conditions to which Arizona is going to have to adopt to is found in the U.S. Global Change Research Program report, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States (2009):

Recent warming in the Southwest has been among the most rapid in the nation. This is driving declines in spring snowpack and Colorado River flow. Projections of future climate change indicate continued strong warming in the region, with much larger increases under higher emissions scenarios compared to lower. Projected summertime temperature increases are greater than the annual average increases in parts of the region and are likely to be exacerbated by expanding urban heat island effects. Further water cycle changes are projected, which, combined with increasing temperatures, signal a serious water supply challenge in the decades and centuries ahead. The prospect of future droughts becoming more severe due to warming is a significant concern, especially because the Southwest continues to lead the nation in population growth.

The report identifies several key issues for the Southwest as climate rapidly changes:

• Water supplies will become increasingly scarce, calling for tradeoffs among competing uses, and potentially leading to conflict.
• Increasing temperature, drought, wildfire, and invasive species will accelerate transformation of the landscape.
• Increased frequency and altered timing of flooding will increase risks to people, ecosystems, and infrastructure.
• Unique tourism and recreation opportunities are likely to suffer.
• Cities and agriculture face increasing risks from a changing climate.

“Green and grow.” Sigh.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reports that Arctic sea ice extent continues to track way below normal, despite cool temperatures over most of the Arctic Ocean in January.

Reuters quotes NSIDC director Mark Serreze:

It’s not that the ice keeps melting, it’s just not growing very fast.
We’ve grown back ice in the winter, but that ice tends to be thin and that’s the problem. You set yourself up for a world of hurt in summer. The ice that is there is also thinner than it was before and thinner ice simply takes less energy to melt out the next summer.

With thinner, more fragile ice and less cover,

You’ve got a double whammy going on.

If Arctic ice fails to build up sufficiently during the dark, cold winter months, it is likely to melt faster and earlier when spring comes.

A Canadian research project has found that climate change is happening much faster than the most pessimistic models expected.  Models predicted only a few years ago that the Arctic would be ice-free in summer by the year 2100, but the increasing pace of climate change now suggests it could happen between 2013 and 2030. Losing sea ice has impacts on everything else that goes on in the Earth’s systems.

A new study by the Pew Environment Group estimates the financial cost  to the world economy  of a warming and melting Arctic will be at least $2.4 trillion over the next 40 years. The study looks at the “social cost of carbon,” including the cost of climate change on agriculture, energy production, water availability, sea level rise, and flooding.

By the end of January, ice extent had dropped below the extent observed in January 2007. This winter continues the recent trend of slower Arctic ice growth.

The summer Arctic sea ice melt season now lasts nearly a month longer than it did in the 1980s. A later start of freeze-up and an earlier start to the melt season both contribute to the change. A recent paper by Thorsten Markus at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center suggests that the later freeze-up is the dominant factor lengthening the melt season. The analysis shows that, on average, autumn freeze-up starts nearly four days later each decade. Extensive open water at the end of the summer melt season, combined with warmer autumns, delay the autumn freeze-up. The larger expanses of open water absorb more solar energy, and before ice can form again, that heat must be released back to the atmosphere. This trend is most pronounced in the Beaufort, Chukchi and Laptev seas.

Sergio Gabrielli, CEO of Petrobras (a Brazilian multinational energy company headquartered in Rio de Janeiro), says global oil production (including biofuels) will peak in 2010 due to oil capacity additions from new projects being unable to offset world oil decline rates.

Gabrielli points out in his presentation that the world will need to produce oil from new sources equivalent to one Saudi Arabia every two years to offset future world oil decline rates – which he sees at about 5% per year.

Finding and bring to production the needed magnitudes of new oil simply not going to happen. Even managing to maintain historically observes decline rates may prove to be a challenge. Take Nigeria, for example. As the world teeters at the edge of economic and political collapse,  Nigeria seems to be going over the edge. Nigeria, which in 2008 produced over two million barrels of sweet crude a day and today provides 9% of U.S. oil imports, could vanish as an oil exporter, virtually overnight. Despite its enormous reserves, Venezuela is looking none to stable as a producer and exporter, either.

Chris Nelder takes a close look at Mexico, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia and warns the oil export crisis has arrived – we just haven’t felt it yet:

[W]hen oil prices rise again, the pain will be far greater for the U.S. than it is for our top suppliers. Next time, the spear of declining oil exports will puncture a lung.

If the gap between demand and supply shown in the chart above cannot be filled with new supply, the only alternative is for prices to increase to reduce demand to equal supply: “demand destruction.”  That means economic shrinkage rather than growth, and a consequent financial crisis of epic proportions. consequence we are going to find it harder to extract other energy and mineral resources. As George Mobus points out in a post at The Oil Drum, our net energy is already in decline and that is at the root of the global economic problems we are seeing. You cannot have a growing economy when the basis of all economic wealth production is in decline.

The economic tremblings we’ve seen over the last couple of years may prove to be mere foreshocks. No matter how many trillions we throw at the problem, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men won’t be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Rather than try to save the irretrievably lost, we’ll have to accommodate ourselves to the new reality:

We can only start simplifying our societies and giving up the many discretionary expenditures of energy that we currently enjoy without much thought. We can learn to once again live on real-time solar influx via our food raising systems. And even then we are talking about an ability to support only a small fraction of the current population. Ironically the simplification of society involves the increasing complexity of individual lives. What this means in practice is that each individual must start to become more of a generalist in terms of the functions that support life. Everyone will have to become a food grower! Believe it or not that isn’t simple! Knowing how to grow your own nutrients is actually quite complicated and will demand a whole new set of cognitive skills.

For the environment, peak oil and economic collapse offers a glimmer of hope. For example, oil accounts for 43% of our CO2 emissions from energy use. Consequent economic collapse will mean that a lot of coal plants in the works will never get built, and maybe even we’ll see existing plants begin to wither away.

Osama bin Laden in a new tape blames the industrialized states and the U.S. in particular for causing climate change:

This is a message to the whole world about those responsible for climate change and its repercussions – whether intentionally or unintentionally - and about the action we must take.  Speaking about climate change is not a matter of intellectual luxury - the phenomenon is an actual fact.

Bin Laden gives European nations a bit of credit for signing the Kyoto Protocol and agreeing “to curb the emission of harmful gases” but puts the finger on Bush and global corporations:

George Bush junior, preceded by [the US] congress, dismissed the agreement to placate giant corporations. And they are themselves standing behind speculation, monopoly and soaring living costs. They are also behind ‘globalisation and its tragic implications’. And whenever the perpetrators are found guilty, the heads of state rush to rescue them using public money.

Bin Laden calls for targeting the U.S. economy in retribution by boycotting American products and ending dollar hegemony:

They are the true terrorists and therefore we should refrain from dealing in the US dollar and should try to get rid of this currency as early as possible. I am certain that such actions will have grave repercussions and huge impact.

It’s hard to argue with the facts. Here’s a chart of cumulative emissions from 1900 through 2002.

The fact that Chinese emissions are growing fast and have now overtaken U.S. emissions on an annual basis doesn’t do much to relieve the U.S. of its overall responsibility.

New NASA-led research shows that the melt season for Arctic sea ice has lengthened by an average of 20 days over the span of 28 years, or 6.4 days per decade.

The research team discovered that the melt season lengthened the most – more than 10 days per decade – in Hudson Bay, the East Greenland Sea, the Laptev and East Siberian Seas, and the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas.

Earlier melt means more heat can be absorbed by the open water, promoting more melting and later freeze-up dates — more than eight days per decade later in some areas.

Thorsten Markus of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. explains how the feedback loop works:

This feedback process has always been present, yet with more extensive open water this feedback becomes even stronger and further boosts ice loss. Melt is starting earlier, but the trend towards a later freeze-up is even stronger because of this feedback effect.

A new NASA analysis of global surface temperature shows the decade January 2000 to December 2009 was the warmest decade on record.

Temperature changes for the last decade—January 2000 to December 2009—relative to the 1951-1980 mean. Warmer areas are in red, cooler areas in blue. The largest temperature increases occurred in the Arctic and a portion of Antarctica. Credit: NASA

2009 was tied for the second warmest year in the modern record, a fraction of a degree behind 2005. In the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year since modern records began in 1880.

Average global temperatures have increased by about 0.8°C (1.4°F) since 1880. Rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are the key factors causing the rise in temperatures since 1880.

Other factors, including changes in the sun’s irradiance, oscillations of sea surface temperature in the tropics, and changes in aerosol levels, can also cause slight increases or decreases in the planet’s temperature. Aerosols produced by burning fossil fuels have probably counteracted about half of the warming produced by man-made greenhouse gases. In 2009, even the deepest solar minimum in the period of satellite data wasn’t enough to offset global warming.

Scientists have found evidence confirming predictions of climate models that higher atmospheric CO2 levels will lead to acidification of Earth’s oceans.

Scientists from the University of South Florida College of Marine Science measured CO2 levels in the northeastern Pacific Ocean. By comparing pH readings from 1991 and from 2006, they found the first direct evidence of acidification across an entire ocean basin, leaving no doubt that growing CO2 levels in the atmosphere are exerting major impacts on the world’s oceans.

If greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, by the end of the century surface water pH would drop approximately 0.4 pH units and the carbonate ion concentration would decrease almost 50%. This surface ocean pH would be lower than it has been for more than 20 million years. Even if substantial reductions in emissions are made, ocean acidification will continue for hundreds of years to come, which means we are already committed to many centuries of ugly consequences.

The study is published in the American Geophysical Union’s journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Architect and urban planner Andres Duany blames peak oil and global warming on the American lifestyle:

Seth Bauer at the Huffington Post quotes Duany:

It’s where we live, the size of our houses, the distances we drive for work, commerce, play–everything.

And goes on to summarize Duany’s rant:

And it’s all a vicious circle. The reason our houses are so big (and inefficient), he says, is because we have eliminated a healthy civic life. We build homes with giant foyers because we have no public squares. We need media rooms because it’s not easy or pleasant to drive to a multiplex theater, cross a parking lot through an ocean of cars, and pay a fortune for popcorn. We build bars in our basements because there are no neighborhood pubs. We have giant refrigerators and ever-growing storage needs because shopping is both far away and unpleasant (hello, Costco). The result? We heat and air-condition unused rooms in oversized unpleasant houses. And because our home bars and foyers are empty and our media experiences private, we’re lonely, to boot.

But the American lifestyle is really just a symptom of a larger disease – if not industrialization itself, certainly the ideology of growth that it has spawned.

Politicians and economists around the globe are focused on one thing: economic growth. When “the economy” falters, all efforts are towards returning the global economy to a path of growth. As Chris Martenson says in a piece titled Copenhagen & Economic Growth – You Can’t Have Both at the Energy Bulletin:

We need more jobs, we are told; we need economic growth, we need more people consuming more things.  Growth is the ever-constant word on politicians’ lips.  Official actions amounting to tens of trillions of dollars speak to the fact that this is, in fact, our number-one global priority.

Martenson is spot on in pointing out that any solution to global warming requires that carbon emissions be reduced by a vast amount over the next few decades. But economic growth and reduced emissions are mutually exclusive.  You can’t have both.

Even if we can’t muster the moral fortitude do do anything to avert catastrophic global warming, we still may fail in our desperate efforts to maintain economic growth. The primary implication of peak oil is that the era of economic growth is over. The current recession is very much energy-related. The whole concept of recession as a temporary period where growth is briefly interrupted within a long-term trend of economic growth is likely to become irrelevant in a world where oil is becoming ever more expensive to extract and oil supplies are decreasing.

We’re seeing a feedback loop develop with oil eerily similar to the feedback loops operating in the global warming context. The global financial crisis has resulted in oil investment shrinking by 20%, which in turn will result in less oil and more expensive oil in the future, causing more financial turmoil in an ever-worsening downward spiral.

We already are seeing the future beginning to emerge. As the election results in Massachusetts show, that future will hold ugly surprises.