As a child growing up in Lebanon, Ralph Chami would stare out at the ocean, mesmerized by the Mediterranean and the mysteries of the sea. He wanted to be an oceanographer, but there were no marine science careers to pursue in his country. Eventually he and his family fled war-torn Beirut, and he earned his Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University in the United States, ending up as an economist at the International Monetary Fund. But the seas continued to draw Chami, beckoning him like a starfish to coral.
Three years ago, Chami volunteered on a whaling research mission in Baja California, Mexico, with his friends Michael Fishbach and Heather Watrous of the Great Whale Conservancy, a small nonprofit. While having dinner, their conversation turned to the important role that whales play in balancing Earth’s natural carbon and oxygen cycles, scientific phenomena that Chami had never heard of. After that, he says, “Life was never the same again.”
Whales, it turns out, dump critical amounts of nutrients and minerals from their waste streams as they dive and surface during their global migrations. Their iron- and nitrogen-rich poop sustain vast blooms of phytoplankton, the microscopic plant-based building blocks of the sea that supply at least 50 percent of the world’s atmospheric oxygen, while consuming 40 percent of all carbon dioxide produced. Then, when whales die, they sink to the sea floor, sequestering their huge stores of carbon far from the atmosphere, where it no longer contributes to climate change. This carbon-oxygen marine cycle is known as the “whale pump.” Given its importance, Chami began to wonder: What exactly is the value of a whale to global carbon markets?
Click on the link below to read the rest of this article on Undark magazine’s website.
Located on the shores of Lake Superior, Marquette is a thriving city and county facing dramatic environmental changes that will impact the health of local residents.
A warming climate and variable lake levels are contributing to flooding, pollution runoff and infectious diseases that officials say will present increasing challenges to the community. Over the past five years, Marquette officials have worked closely with scientists from federal and state agencies as well as local stakeholders to develop a series of climate and health guidebooks that will allow them to better prepare for the future.
With its stunning natural beauty by the shores of Lake Superior, low cost of living and proximity to good medical facilities and a state university, Marquette, Michigan has made several lists of top U.S. cities in which to retire. Local officials and residents agree. Clean air and water and the towering forests of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula make Marquette a healthy place to live.
But local, state and federal officials say health threats are not far off. Scientists reporthigher temperatures, greater flooding and increased water- and vector-borne illnesses will pose rising threats to residents in Michigan and the Great Lakes area. The Great Lakes and the Midwest could attract more people as southern and western regions of the U.S. are impacted by climate change. That could put even more stress on local resources. “Marquette has a large hospital and a university and has amenities that people are looking for,” says Brad Neumann, a Michigan State extension service expert who is working with the city and county to plan for climate change impacts. “A big part of the conversation is how this place can be more resilient, so we don’t diminish our resources [as more people move here].”
Alaska is facing some of the most imminent threats from climate change in the United States, with fast-rising temperatures, thawing permafrost and massive storms.
The small Inuit village of Napakiak is under immediate threat of flooding from the rising Kuskokwim River, and community leaders are consulting with engineers and scientists to determine how and where to move. Homer, a fishing and tourist center of more than 5,000, adopted one of the state’s first climate action plans and is continuing to try to adapt to a world with more dangerous storms and threatened fisheries.
Each spring and fall, Napakiak City Council member and Alaska Native Walter Nelson watches the Kuskokwim River move closer to his town.
A warming climate has altered the flow of Alaskan rivers, as ice melt speeds up and they are not frozen as long as they once were. Violent storms, also fueled by a warming climate, add to the changing characteristics of the Kuskokwim River as it flows by the tiny Alaskan village of Napakiak before emptying into the Bering Sea. Every year, a rising torrent chews out bigger swaths of riverbank, encroaching upon this small community of about 360 people, mostly of Inuit descent, driving the town into what experts call a “managed retreat.”
In 2019, strong spring storms took out the town boat landing, threatening the only school in town and forcing the community to move its city garage and fire station further away from the river. The town cemetery has already been flooded and relocated, Nelson says, and residents are now investing in metal caskets so they can be moved more easily in the future.
“Every year we have to move some buildings,” Nelson says. “The erosion rate is accelerating, and the funding is hard to get to do anything about it. But we can’t just let the buildings fall into the river.”
Ship Island Excursions has survived hurricanes, global recessions, a world war and a host of economic challenges since the ferry company began taking passengers to the barrier islands that dot coastal Mississippi in the 1920s. But this year, a new threat has emerged: an explosion of blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, that has shut down virtually all of Mississippi’s beaches since July 4.
No one knows when the algae will disappear, and many wonder how many businesses that operate in the region will survive the hit.
“Beach vendors have been wiped out,” said Louis Skrmetta, operations manager for Ship Island Excursions. “I’ve never seen something so dramatic. It’s very similar to the BP oil spill. … People are frightened to just walk in the sand.”
As fishermen deep in the Louisiana bayou, Kindra Arnesen and her family have faced their share of life-altering challenges in recent years.
Dolphin on a Gulfport, MS, beach with fresh water lesions. Courtesy Institute for Marine Mammal Studies
First came Hurricane Katrina, the 2005 monster storm that devastated her small fishing community in Plaquemines Parish before roaring up the Gulf Coast, killing more than 1,800 people and destroying $125 billion in property. Five years later, BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded 40 miles offshore, spewing nearly 200 million gallons of crude. The fisheries have not fully recovered more than nine years later, nor has her family.
But this year may be worse. A historic slow-moving flood of polluted Mississippi River water loaded with chemicals, pesticides and human waste from 31 states and two Canadian provinces is draining straight into the marshes and bayous of the Gulf of Mexico — the nurseries of Arnesen’s fishing grounds — upsetting the delicate balance of salinity and destroying the fragile ecosystem in the process. As the Gulf waters warm this summer, algae feed on the freshwater brew, smothering oxygen-starved marine life.
And as of Wednesday, an advancing storm looks likely to turn into a tropical storm or hurricane by the weekend, with the potential to bring torrential downpours and more freshwater flooding.
Federal officials charged with regulating the use of the toxic chemicals have been dragging their heels.
NINE YEARS AGO, I traveled down to the bustling Louisiana bayou fishing town of Venice, where the road south along the Mississippi River comes to an end. I joined colleagues from the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental policy group, to investigate the blowout of the titanic Deepwater Horizon rig some 40 miles offshore. The bayou area had turned into a veritable war zone as an army of Coast Guard, National Guard, state police, and oil cleanup personnel converged to address the fallout from the massive rig explosion that killed 11 workers and busted a drilling pipe a mile below the surface, allowing 200 million gallons of reddish-brown crude to spew into the sea.
I can remember riding offshore with local fishermen and seeing their expressions turn from curiosity to fear as we found the thick, nauseating slicks floating toward shore. They realized their livelihoods would be turned upside down by the powerful explosion. It was America’s greatest oil spill disaster, a catastrophe that left a tarry trail of toxic oil and dead marine life across four states. And for many people who live in the region, the calamity is still not over.
Jorey Danos is one of them. A construction worker from the Louisiana town of Thibodeaux, Danos worked on the armadas of small boats — the Vessels of Opportunity — paid to help clean up the seemingly unending waves of crude. Above them, transport planes flew, spraying thousands of gallons of Corexit, a chemical oil dispersant designed to break up floating oil patches and sink them into the sea, so they would not pollute the marshes and shorelines. Danos says the planes sometimes flew near his boat, their mist making it hard to breathe. He says he was not issued a respirator. Boils broke out on his neck and he developed headaches. Eventually he suffered from seizures that forced him to stop work.
Danos is one of thousands of workers and residents who reported health complicationsfollowing exposure to dispersants during the Deepwater Horizon cleanup. Yet, in the decade since the oil spill, government agencies have set no major rules governing the use of the toxic chemicals. And with President Trump rolling back drilling safety regulations and pushing for new drilling in areas like the East Coast and the Arctic, the matter has taken on new urgency: The next big oil spill may be just around the corner.
Following climate change science is like tracking a snake, slithering along a rocky path that disappears into the dark crevasses of the unknown. Every once in a while, in the chance of a successful encounter, it lunges towards its prey to bathe in the sunlight of a sudden discovery. Science is like that, full of fits and starts, particularly climate science, which in recent years has been a lot more successful in its hunt for the truth.
I have the utmost respect for the researchers who toil at the forefront of our rapidly changing climate. They are mix of Paul Revere and Jeffrey Wigand, part watchman and part whistleblower. Climate scientists have not had an easy road over the past 30 years. They’ve been attacked and maligned, threatened by political cronies and pseudo-scientists connected to the most powerful industry on earth. Distinguished scientists have been accused of manipulating facts to meet their preconceived notions, forced to defend themselves from theft of personal and intellectual property, and trapped by complicated legal challenges that would drive most people underground.
To top it off, an administration adverse to science and the global threats that climate change represents has added the government’s weight behind the list of abusers, shutting down agency science projects, stripping mentions of climate change in reports, and threatening federal science staff in an atmosphere of intimidation and fear.
Until recently, the mainstream media, particularly the broadcast media, has done climate scientists few favors by keeping them at arms-length in their reporting, off panels of pontificators that are overly concerned about giving two sides to a story that deserves only one: the scientific truth. Fortunately, the media’s freeze-out of real science is starting to thaw. NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd was embarrassed by a conservative policy wonk who claimed that temperatures are cooling and was never challenged on his show; so Todd decided no more climate deniers would be allowed on his program. Small steps, but it’s important for people to know what’s real.
Despite overwhelming adversity, climate scientists have not gone underground. The Michael Mann’s, Jim Hansen’s, and Gavin Schmidt’s of the world have all pressed forward with their research, and just as importantly, voiced their views. Without them, it’s unlikely we would be shaken out of our slumber before the pot called Earth boils over. It’s our duty to report on their work and to include their voices, because if they don’t speak out, we can’t report the whole story. And the public will remain confused and in the dark. I see it time and time again, often in people who I would never expect.
Just last weekend, at a dinner with friends of my daughter’s high school team, I was asked about climate change by one of the parents, a professional lawyer concerned about her daughter’s future. “So, is it true?” she asked, “Do you really think it’s caused by people?” I was taken aback, and I explained that her question showed just how successful the fossil fuel industry has been in muddying the waters. “If more than 97% of oncologists thought you had breast cancer, would you believe them?” She nodded and looked away.
This is the threat we face, the never-ending danger of doubt and false hope that pervades not just our politics but our science. It perverts our professional and social circles to a point that if nothing seems certain, why do anything about it at all? Apathy is the mother of inertia. We really only have ourselves to blame if we don’t take dramatic action to fight this existential threat. It’s not an exaggeration. Just ask the experts.
Yesterday, I read two stories that pounded home just how serious things are. In Scientific American, reporter Laura Poppick wrote a lengthy piece on new research that shockingly shows ocean oxygen levels are rapidly decreasing, in some places by as much as 40% over the past 50 years, threatening ocean life around the world. “We were surprised by the intensity of the changes we saw, how rapidly oxygen is going down in the ocean and how large the effects on marine ecosystems are,” the scientists reported.
As if that wasn’t enough, the same day another bone-chilling account, this time by science writer and editor Natalie Wolchover in Quantamagazine, described how new research shows increasing amounts of CO2 spewed into the atmosphere may lead to fewer clouds, ultimately superheating the planet. “I hope we never get there,” one scientist said about the science points us yet in a new dangerous direction.
Despite the gloomy news, we still have time to act (yes we always say this but it’s true). It will take a Herculean effort to rally the global political and business world to act, but if we care about the future we really don’t have a choice. If scientists know one thing it’s that we will reach catastrophic climate change soon if we don’t cut carbon emissions. And there are increasing concerns that unknown feedback loops will cause faster levels of ice melt, greater natural methane and CO2 releases, bigger forest fires, more dangerous storms and changing ocean and atmospheric currents if we just sit around debating the threats.
Climate scientists are not the solution to everything, but they are the pioneers and the truth-tellers who can help us find solutions. We need their free and open judgement, their honesty and technical genius to push us toward a future our kids are counting on. Don’t believe the politicians who look in our children’s eyes and say; “Trust me, I just got elected and I know what to do.” Instead trust the scientists putting their careers on the line to seek the truth.
On Valentine’s Day I am thinking of love, and I’m worried about consumption. Love because it’s the foundation of existence, what drives us to do what we do. Consumption because it will lead to our demise, an addiction that will alter life as we know it. And it is everywhere in the world around us.
For the past 40 years I’ve worked as a journalist on topics ranging from pesticide poisoning in Mexico to gunrunning in Africa. I’ve revealed pieces of truth lurking in dark corners, and battled the frustrations of dead ends and denial. I have been harassed, fired, accused of exaggeration, and hounded by people who never wanted to see my stories see the light of day. Through the hard times I have sometimes thought about leaving journalism, especially as the modern digital age has devastated and squeezed local reporting to the point that few local voices are heard anymore. The media is being attacked like never before. Why would anyone want to do this?
But this week, the answers came to me from two young aspiring student journalists who contacted me separately, asking about stories I had worked on decades ago. They want to know how have things changed, and how they could get involved in journalism. Stay true to yourself I said, tell a good story, and get out and meet the people you are reporting on. We may live in the millisecond world of Twitter, a digital diaspora seemingly devoid of context. But journalists will always have a market for stories that tell a good tale, a yarn people can relate to. The youth of the world will inherit our environmental mess, a crisis that’s greater than ever. But they are smarter than I was at their age, and we must help them tell the stories in the future. For all of us.
Which gets me back to my thoughts of the day. I love what I do because I believe in it. I work on environmental stories because they matter, to my kids, the people I love, for my hound dog who is my faithful companion. Love really is about truth. Though journalists get dinged for getting things wrong, most really are trying their best to get it right. In a time of fake news and political puffery, I believe even more in the mission of the media. We are the message, and we have an obligation to report the facts as they are.
And consumption? Well that is the driving force of what’s afflicting our future. We live in a nation that consumes a quarter of the world’s resources, with a fraction of the population. At some point in the not-too-distant future, Mother Earth will be unable to sustain it. The science is clear; fisheries are rapidly being depleted, animals and insects are dying off in record amounts, forests are withering, our rivers and groundwater continue to be polluted by chemicals that put us all at risk.
But it is climate change that will push us all over the edge. We are already seeing what’s in store. As our political leaders feed us false hopes of a consumer-driven future, we face a destructive path if we don’t change. We live in the petri dish called Earth. We should learn from Native Americans who understood that long before Europeans came: respect Mother Nature or suffer the consequences. The increasing droughts, floods, fires, melting glaciers and oceans of plastic are stark reminders they are right.
Can we change? Absolutely. We have the solutions, the technology to get us out of the carbon-burning hell we are leaving for future generations. But we won’t change without the political will to get there. At some point, we will have no choice. It will be too late for millions of coastal residents and populations who lack the economic resources to weather the impending disaster.
Call me old school, but the world has proved we were right in our protests of the 60s. Embrace love and consume less on this Valentine’s Day. Find a way to focus on your passions while leaving a lighter footprint on the earth. We owe our kids no less.
In 1987, Sherrill Franklin was pregnant and living in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, when she discovered a rash on her leg as big as a dinner plate. She had been bitten by a tick. She soon began to suffer fatigue, a sore throat, and severe arthritis that made her hands feel “like claws.” It took almost two years, and a three-week course of intravenous antibiotics, for her to get back on her feet.
Two decades later, Franklin got a second tick bite, and this time she developed more extensive neurological symptoms. She lost weight, experienced heart complications, and had to be rushed to the hospital by ambulance. She was eventually diagnosed with Graves’ disease, an immune disorder that her endocrinologist said could have been triggered by Lyme disease. Today, Franklin is still experiencing symptoms. After countless visits to health care experts, she says she’s spent $50,000 of her own money on medical help.
“The best thing about Lyme disease is you usually don’t die,” Franklin says. “The worst thing about it is that you don’t die.”
By Rao M Sajjad Sharif, Erum Shahzadi and Fahad Munir
Human life is dependent on the dynamics of the Earth’s climate system. The interactions of the atmosphere, oceans, terrestrial and marine ecospheres, cryosphere and land surface determine the Earth’s surface climate. The historical meteorological records over the last few decades show a changing global climate due to natural as well as anthropogenic activities.
Climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns that lasts for an extended period of time (i.e., decades to millions of years). It is a global, regional, and national problem connected to exponential population growth, industrialization, globalization and urbanization. It greatly influences natural ecosystems, natural cycles, aquatic systems, terrestrial systems, distribution of species, and human health.
Earth’s temperature has increased to 0.74 C, according to the European Environment Agency (EEA). Pakistan is one among the most vulnerable countries to climatic changes as an autonomous country that occupies a strategic location in south Asia, with a variety of landscapes. By geographical region, Pakistan is most vulnerable to climate change due to global warming in a region where the temperature increases are expected to be higher than the global average temperature.
This region mostly consists of semi-arid and arid landscape. Pakistan is an agriculture country and its agricultural land is more sensitive to climate change. Due to its arid and semi-arid climate, water is the single most constraining factor to Pakistani agriculture. Hence the country faces larger risks of variability in monsoon rains, including large floods and severe droughts. Under these conditions the food water flood energy securities of the country are under serious threat.
From 1997-2016, Pakistan suffered from 141 extreme weather events, losing an average of 523.1 lives per year. The mammoth floods of 2010 and 2011 wiped out the entire agriculture apparatus of Pakistan. The floods have reportedly destroyed 71% of the standing rice crop, 59% of the vegetable crop and 45% of the maize crop across the country. Farmers claimed a 50% decrease in crop yields. In 2010’s heat waves, the hottest temperature recorded in Asia was 53.5oC (128.3F) in Mohenjo-Daro, a city of Sindh in Pakistan. It was the fourth highest temperature ever recorded in the world.
Pakistan is ranked in 7th among countries threatened by the vagaries of climate change and global warming. In short, Pakistan is at a serious risk to a changing climate, one of many lower developed countries threatening by rising carbon emissions from more developed countries around the world.
The authors are involved in scientific studies in Pakistan.
