Geologic time

Autumn leaves

While the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old, all of human civilization has been compressed into a single geological epoch: the Holocene. This has been ongoing for about 11,500 years, predating the first Mesopotamian civilizations for which we have any evidence. Prior to the Holocene was the Pleistocene, which ended with the Younger Dryas cold spell. Actually, the Holocene exists more as a demarcation for the period of geologic time that has included human civilization than as an epoch with an independent definition.

Our best ice core samples extend back 650,000 years: about a third of the way into the Pleistocene, but just a tiny foray into geologic time. Pollen from Lake Tanganyika might take us through the Pliocene (Greek for ‘more new’) and into the Miocene (‘less new’). Perhaps some yet-unanticipated data source will be able to take us further still.

It is amazing what scientists are able to determine from inference and the meticulous collection of data: from the age of the universe to the evolutionary history of the planet.

Heat, bacteria, and evolution

Rusty metal

For those who are unfamiliar, capsaicin is one of the most interesting molecules out there. This is the chemical that makes chili peppers spicy; it is also the active ingredient in pepper spray. Pure capsaicin is rated at about 15 million Scoville heat units: a scale where Tabasco sauce is scored at about 2,500.

Capsaicin is quite an amazing adaptation, actually. Plants developed it to deter animals from eating them. Eventually, animals realized that capsaicin was painful to them, but not actually harmful. By contrast, it is very harmful to some of the species of bacteria that spoil food. As such, spicy foods emerged in hot climates as a defence against nasty prokaryotes. A direct descendent of that realization are the veggie vindaloos I enjoy so much.

Spices have been mentioned here before.

Polymers in the Pacific

In addition to nuclear waste, there are other very long lived forms of human detritus accumulating in the world. Most pervasive among those may be plastics. Virtually non-existent before the Second World War, they are now produced in staggering quantities. So far, none of those artificial polymers have broken down chemically; instead, they just break into smaller and smaller pieces, float down rivers to the sea, and end up in places like the North Pacific Gyre. It is also discussed on MetaFilter.

As with vulcanized rubber, these materials will endure in the world until microorganisms evolve the ability to metabolize them. Apparently, when plants first evolved lignin and cellulose, bacteria were unable to digest them. Until that changed, wood would have been as enduring as the plastic wrap currently swirling and collecting persistent organic pollutants in the world’s oceanic gyres, quite probably for millions of years.

Vancouver ticket booked

My flight is booked and I can now say with certainty that I will be in Vancouver from the 21st of December until the 2nd of January. Hopefully, that span will include a big gathering of friends in North Vancouver, akin to my pre-Oxford departure party. Saturday, December 29th is a plausible date for the event.

Already, nights in Ottawa are developing a chilly edge. By late December, I expect that it will be with the most concentrated of joy that I trade the icy windswept streets of Ontario for the rainy windswept streets of British Columbia.

PS. My planned trip to B.C. was mentioned before.

[Update: 23 October 2007] According to the NativeEnergy carbon calculator, my flights to and from Vancouver will collectively generate 1.761 tonnes of CO2. As with my thesis, I decided to offset the emissions through the capture of methane. While offsets are far from perfect, they are quite probably better than doing nothing.

I was surprised to see that travelling the same distance by train would produce 0.727 tonnes of CO2. While that is 60% lower, we generally think of trains as being really dramatically greener than flying. I suppose the difference is largely that nobody travels very long distances by train.

The true price of nuclear power

Maple leaf

Several times this blog has discussed whether climate change is making nuclear power a more acceptable option (1, 2, 3). One element of the debate that bears consideration is the legacy of contamination at sites that form part of the nuclear fuel cycle: from uranium mines to post-reactor fuel processing facilities. The Rocky Flats Plant in the United States is an especially sobering example.

Insiders at the plant started “tipping” the FBI about the unsafe conditions sometime in 1988. Late that year the FBI started clandestinely flying light aircraft over the area and noticed that the incinerator was apparently being used late into the night. After several months of collecting evidence both from workers and by direct measurement, they informed the DOE on June 6, 1989 that they wanted to meet about a potential terrorist threat. When the DOE officers arrived, they were served with papers. Simultaneously, the FBI raided the facilities and ordered everyone out. They found numerous violations of federal anti-pollution laws including massive contamination of water and soil, though none of the original charges that led to the raid were substantiated.

In 1992, Rockwell was charged with minor environmental crimes and paid an $18.5 million fine.

Accidents and contamination have been a feature of facilities handling nuclear materials worldwide. Of course, this does not suffice to show that nuclear energy is a bad option. Coal mines certainly produce more than their share of industrial accidents and environmental contamination.

The trickiest thing, when it comes to evaluating the viability of nuclear power, is disentangling exactly what sort of governmental subsidies do, have, and will exist. These subsidies are both direct (paid straight to operators) and more indirect (soft loans for construction, funding for research and development). They also include guarantees that the nuclear industry is only responsible for a set amount of money in the result of a catastrophic accident, as well as the implicit cost that any contamination that corporations cannot be legally forced to correct after the fact will either fester or be fixed at taxpayer expense. Plenty of sources claim to have a comprehensive reckoning of these costs and risks, but the various analyses seem to be both contradictory and self-serving.

Before states make comprehensive plans to embrace or reject nuclear power as a climate change mitigation option, some kind of extensive, comprehensive, and impartial study of the caliber of the Stern Review would be wise.

Carbon pricing and local food

Ottawa Hostel Outdoor Club

I have been hearing a lot about food miles lately. While it is good for people to be aware of the productive processes that support them, I also have issues with the shape of the local foods debate. Just because something is produced closer to where you live does not mean it is more ecologically friendly or less climate harming. To take an extreme case: people living in very cold regions may find that it is far more environmentally sound to import food from warmer places than to grow it in greenhouses nearby. My focus here is on greenhouse gas emissions, but similar arguments can be made regarding water use, pesticides, etc.

What this debate really demonstrates is the lack of proper carbon pricing in the market. If CO2 emissions were included in the price of tomatoes or bananas, producers could choose to base production in whichever location is most efficient when carbon emissions (along with other factors) are taken into account. Until proper carbon pricing exists, there is justification for the intelligent application of the food miles concept. That said, I think the energy of environmentally aware people is much better spent advocating carbon taxes or cap-and-trade schemes than on encouraging people to spent their time buying local zucchini, rather than whatever sort is at the supermarket. By all means, attend farmers’ markets if you like them, but I think it is deluded to think they can make a meaningful contribution to reducing human emissions to 5,000 Mt of CO2 equivalent.

I can already feel the dissenting opinions coming on, for this post…

Jeffersonian trivia

Little known facts:

  1. Former American President Thomas Jefferson was an avid amateur palaeontologist.
  2. In an attempt to mock him, his political opponents gave him the nickname “Mr. Mammoth” during the 1808 election.
  3. He is credited with the discovery of an enormous ground sloth, larger than an elephant, that inhabited North America during the late Pleistocene.
  4. The creature now bears his name: Megalonyx jeffersonii.

These and many other entertaining facts come from the marvellous recent book The World Without Us, which has leapt to the top of my reading pile. I will post a full review when I finish it.

Children of Men

When was the idea of the post-apocalyptic future invented? I went to Blockbuster tonight in hopes of renting some clever comedy. Because of the unavailability of certain titles, recommendations from staff, delayed consequences from my trip to Morocco, and random factors, I ended up watching Children of Men instead. It makes for an uncomfortable accompaniment to my ongoing reading of The World Without Us. Then, there is Oryx and Crake and 28 Days Later. Even Half Life 2 had similar nightmare-future police-state fixations.

I wonder if it could be traced back, Oxford English Dictionary style, to the point where the first work of fiction emerged that envisioned the future as a nightmarish place. Furthermore, the first such fiction to envision human activities as the origin of the downfall. I wonder if ancient examples could be found, or whether it would all be in the last hundred years or so.

Vroom vroom

Gatineau Park foliage

The never-ceasing movement of cars along Booth Street, right outside my bedroom window, is far and away the biggest problem with my present dwelling. Whenever I am not wearing earplugs or headphones, it is a constant annoyance. Almost every morning, I wake up around 6:00am with one earplug fallen out (see previous). I catch myself idly wondering about ways to sabotage the road or direct the vehicles to another route.

All told, the flat is quite a good one. The location is good (near work, though a bit far from most interesting parts of town), the apartment itself is nice and of a good size, the inclusion of a private washer and dryer is very convenient, and the landlord is a nice guy. Even so, I suspect that car noise is going to set me apartment hunting as the end of my lease approaches next summer.

Seafood harm reduction

For those who haven’t taken the plunge into vegetarianism or veganism, but who are concerned about the ecological consequences of fish consumption, there are some good resources online. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has printable pocket-sized seafood guides, highlighting which species are harvested in relatively sustainable ways and which should definitely be avoided. The Blue Ocean Institute also has a number of resources, including a website for looking up species and a guide that can be downloaded.

Species that are particularly threatened (as well as often caught in highly unsustainable ways) include:

  • Bluefin tuna
  • Chilean Sea Bass (this is an industry name for Patagonian Toothfish)
  • Groupers
  • Orange Roughy
  • Atlantic Cod
  • Atlantic Halibut
  • Oreos (the fish, not the cookies)
  • Rockfish
  • Sturgeon Caviar
  • Snappers
  • Atlantic Salmon (note, all Atlantic salmon in the U.S. is farmed)
  • Sharks

While it is inadequate to think about marine conservation in terms of single species, such lists do provide a reasonably accessible way for consumers to scrutinize their actions. In the long run, however, marine resources need to be thought about in terms of whole ecosystems that need to be protected from threats including over-exploitation, toxins, and climatic changes.