'This Is An Eye-Opener’: Changes In Global Water Supply Hint At Future Conflicts And Crises

Globe and Mail - Ivan Semeniuk

Dry, cracked Earth that used to be under Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States, illustrates how water resources are shifting due to climate change and human activity. A new analysis using satellite data has identified more than 30 regions on Earth where the amount of stored water on the landscape has increased or decreased by an amount greater than the 32 billion ton storage capacity of Lake Mead. Justin Sullivan/GETTY IMAGES

By combining 14 years’ worth of satellite data, scientists have captured a startling portrait of the world’s water supply undergoing rapid transformation. The new analysis points to areas where there is increasing potential for conflict as a growing demand for water collides with the impacts of climate change. In Canada, the maps shows shifting water supplies that include wetter, more flood-prone regions in many areas of the country but a general drying out in the western sub-Arctic.

“This is an eye-opener,” said Roy Brouwer, an economist and executive director of the University of Waterloo’s Water Institute who was not involved in the analysis. “It raises awareness that things are changing and that in some areas something has to happen to counter and anticipate some of the catastrophes that may be waiting for us in the not-so-far future.”

The analysis is based on data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, a NASA-led mission launched in 2002 that involved two satellites circling the globe in tandem about 220 kilometres apart. A microwave link between the two satellites allowed scientists to precisely monitor minuscule changes in their separation down to a distance of 10 microns, or about one-tenth the width of a human hair.

The setup created a sort of flying weight scale that mean the satellites could be used to measure slight regional variations in Earth’s gravitational pull. Many of those variations are due to geological features, such as mountain ranges, that do not vary over time. But by taking measurements over many years, the satellite also picked up changes that are largely due to the movement of massive amounts of water at or near Earth’s surface.

Researchers have published many results based on GRACE data but the new analysis, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, marks the first time all available observations from the mission, from April, 2002, to March, 2016, have been analyzed and assembled to provide a comprehensive map of water trends around the world. Those trends encompass changes in where water is stored across Earth’s surface, including groundwater, soil moisture, glaciers, snow cover and surface water. The result suggests a water landscape that is changing fast on a global scale, in large part due to human activity and climate change.

“The human fingerprint is all over what we see in the map,” said Jay Famiglietti, a water-resource expert affiliated with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the incoming director of the University of Saskatchewan’s Global Institute for Water Security.

Dr. Famiglietti, a co-author on the Nature study, has played a central role in interpreting data from the GRACE mission over its lifetime. He added that the new analysis pointed to profound changes in the Earth’s water resources that should serve as a wake-up call for policy makers.

“There are implications in that map for food security, for water security and for human security in terms of things like conflict and climate refugees,” he said.

In total, Dr. Famiglietti and his colleagues identified 34 regional trends in water storage observed by GRACE. Some are likely due to natural variations over the time that the observations were taken. For example, the Amazon basin looks like it’s getting wetter because the area has been recovering from a drought. The same is likely the case for a region centred on the Canadian Prairies and parts of the United States. Over the long term, those trends may fade away.

The most obvious changes are clearly due to climate change and relate to ice loss in the polar regions and in some mountainous areas such as Alaska and the southern portions of the Andes in South America. Others show places where humans have directly affected water storage.

One example is a large swatch of diminishing water supply across parts of the Middle East, including Syria and Iraq. The shortage is related to dam building in Turkey and overuse of groundwater, both of which have exacerbated an already complex and volatile political situation in the region.

Similar shortfalls in India reflect the impact of subsidized electricity, which has created a “perverse incentive” that makes it inexpensive to pump out more groundwater than can be replenished, said Dr. Brouwer.

Overall, the map shows how the world’s water is increasingly moving from natural storehouses such as glaciers to human-built reservoirs, a change that comes with plenty of political fallout when that water crosses international boundaries, said Aaron Wolf, an expert in water-related conflict at Oregon State University.

“This kind of data really helps us identify hot spots in advance of real crises,” he said.

Support for the GRACE mission officially ended last fall and the last of the satellites burned up as its orbit decayed in mid-March. A follow-up mission with two new satellites that will continue the gravity measurements is currently set for launch this Tuesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Watching The Water Flow

Satellite data accumulated over a 14-year period reveals dramatic changes in the world’s water supply, partly due to natural variation but also because of human activity and climate change

Global Water Storage Trends

Ivan Semeniuk, John Sopinski And Murat Yükselir/The Globe And Mail

Source: Emerging Trends In Global Freshwater Availability, doi.org

Links

• ‘We have to go to carbon-free electricity’: James Hansen on how world leaders can effectively take on climate change
• Unique salt lakes discovered under Nunavut glacier a ‘jewel’ for researchers
• Studies show Paris targets crucial to maintaining Arctic ice

Extinction vs. Collapse: Does It Matter?

Millennium Alliance for Humanity and Biosphere - Samuel Miller McDonald*

Venus - May 18 2016  Kevin Gill | Flickr | CC BY 2.0

Climate twitter – the most fun twitter – has recently been relitigating the debate between human extinction and mere civilizational collapse, between doom and gloom, despair and (kind of) hope.
It was sparked by an interview in The Guardian with acclaimed scientist Mayer Hillman. He argues that we’re probably doomed, and confronting the likelihood that we’re rushing toward collective death may be necessary to save us.
The headline alone provoked a lot of reactions, many angered by the ostensible defeatism embedded in Hillman’s comments. His stated view represents one defined camp that is mostly convinced of looming human extinction.
It stands in contrast to another group that believes human extinction is highly unlikely, maybe impossible, and certainly will not occur due to climate change in our lifetimes. Collapse maybe, but not extinction.
Who’s more right? Let’s take a closer look.
First, the question of human extinction is totally bounded by uncertainty. There’s uncertainty in climate data, uncertainty in models and projections, and even more uncertainty in the behavior of human systems. We don’t know how we’ll respond to the myriad impacts climate change is beginning to spark, and we don’t know how sensitive industrial civilization will be to those impacts.
We don’t really know if humans are like other apex predators highly sensitive to ecological collapse, or are among the most adaptable mammals to ever walk the earth.
One may be inclined to lean toward the latter given that humans have colonized every ecological niche on the planet except Antarctica. That bands of people can survive in and around deserts as well as the Arctic as well as equatorial rainforests speaks to the resilience of small social groups. It’s why The Road is so disturbingly plausible; there could be a scenario in which basically everything is dead but people, lingering in the last grey waste of the world. On the other hand, we’ve never lived outside of the very favorable conditions of the Holocene, and past civilizational and population collapses suggest humans are in fact quite sensitive to climatic shifts.
Famed climate scientist James Hansen has discussed the possibility of “Venus syndrome,” for instance, which sits at the far end of worst case scenarios. While a frightening thought experiment, it is easily dismissed as it’s based on so many uncertainties and doesn’t carry the weight of anything near consensus.
What’s more frightening than potentially implausible uncertainties are the currently existing certainties.
For example:

Ecology

• The atmosphere has proven more sensitive to GHG emissions than predicted by mainstream science, and we have a high chance of hitting 2°C of warming this century. Could hit 1.5°C in the 2020s. Worst-case warming scenarios are probably the most likely.
• Massive marine death is happening far faster than anyone predicted and we could be on the edge of an anoxic event.
• Ice melt is happening far faster than mainstream predictions. Greenland’s ice sheet is threatening to collapse and already slowing ocean currents, which too could collapse.
• Which also means predictions of sea level rise have doubled for this century.
• Industrial agriculture is driving massive habitat loss and extinction. The insect collapse – population declines of 75% to 80% have been seen in some areas – is something no one predicted would happen so fast, and portends an ecological sensitivity beyond our fears. This is causing an unexpected and unprecedented bird collapse (1/8 of bird species are threatened) in Europe.
•  Forests, vital carbon sinks, are proving sensitive to climate impacts.
• We’re living in the 6th mass extinction event, losing potentially dozens of species per day. We don’t know how this will impact us and our ability to feed ourselves.

Energy

• Energy transition is essential to mitigating 1.5+°C warming. Energy is the single greatest contributor to anthro-GHG. And, by some estimates, transition is happening 400 years too slowly to avoid catastrophic warming.
• Incumbent energy industries (that is, oil & gas) dominate governments all over the world. We live in an oil oligarchy – a petrostate, but for the globe. Every facet of the global economy is dependent on fossil fuels, and every sector – from construction to supply chains to transport to electricity to extraction to agriculture and on and on – is built around FF consumption. There’s good reason to believe FF will remain subsidized by governments beholden to their interests even if they become less economically viable than renewables, and so will maintain their dominance.
• We are living in history’s largest oil and gas boom.
• Kilocalorie to kilocalorie, FF is extremely dense and extremely cheap. Despite reports about solar getting cheaper than FF in some places, non-hydro/-carbon renewables are still a tiny minority (~2%) of global energy consumption and will simply always, by their nature, be less dense kcal to kcal than FF, and so will always be calorically more expensive.
• Energy demand probably has to decrease globally to avoid 1.5°C, and it’s projected to dramatically increase. Getting people to consume less is practically impossible, and efficiency measures have almost always resulted in increased consumption.
• We’re still setting FF emissions records.

Politics

• Conditions today resemble those prior to the 20th century’s world wars: extreme wealth inequality, rampant economic insecurity, growing fascist parties/sentiment, and precarious geopolitical relations, and the Thucydides trap suggests war between Western hegemons and a rising China could be likely. These two factors could disrupt any kind of global cooperation on decarbonization and, to the contrary, will probably mean increased emissions (the US military is one of the world’s single largest consumers/emitters of FF).
• Neoliberal ideology is so thoroughly embedded in our academic, political, and cultural institutions, and so endemic to discourse today, that the idea of degrowth – probably necessary to avoid collapse – and solidarity economics isn’t even close to discussion, much less realization, and, for self-evident reasons, probably never will be.
• Living in a neoliberal culture also means we’ve all been trained not to sacrifice for the common good. But solving climate change, like paying more to achieve energy transition or voluntarily consuming less, will all entail sacrificing for the greater good. Humans sometimes are great at that; but the market fundamentalist ideology that pervades all social, commercial, and even self relations today stands against acting for the common good or in collective action.
• There’s basically no government in the world today taking climate change seriously. There are many governments posturing and pretending to take it seriously, but none have substantially committed to a full decarbonization of their economies. (Iceland may be an exception, but Iceland is about 24 times smaller than NYC, so…)
• Twenty-five years of governments knowing about climate change has resulted in essentially nothing being done about it, no emissions reductions, no substantive moves to decarbonize the economy. Politics have proven too strong for common sense, and there’s no good reason to suspect this will change anytime soon.
• Wealth inequality is embedded in our economy so thoroughly – and so indigenously to FF economies – that it will probably continue either causing perpetual strife, as it has so far, or eventually cement a permanent underclass ruled by a small elite, similar to agrarian serfdom. There is a prominent view in left politics that greater wealth equality, some kind of ecosocialism, is a necessary ingredient in averting the kind of ecological collapse the economy is currently driving, given that global FF capitalism by its nature consumes beyond carrying capacities. At least according to one study [1], the combination of inequality and ecological collapse is a likely cause for civilizational collapse.

Even with this perfect storm of issues, it’s impossible to know how likely extinction is, and it’s impossible to judge how likely or extensive civilizational collapse may be. We just can’t predict how human beings and human systems will respond to the shocks that are already underway.
We can make some good guesses based on history, but they’re no more than guesses. Maybe there’s a miracle energy source lurking in a hangar somewhere waiting to accelerate non-carbon transition. Maybe there’s a swelling political movement brewing under the surface that will soon build a more just, ecologically sane order into the world.
Community energy programs are one reason to retain a shred of optimism; but also they’re still a tiny fraction of energy production and they are not growing fast, but they could accelerate any moment. We just don’t know how fast energy transition can happen, and we just don’t know how fast the world could descend into climate-driven chaos – either by human strife or physical storms.
What we do know is that, given everything above, we are living through a confluence of events that will shake the foundations of civilization, and jeopardize our capacity to sustain large populations of humans. There is enough certainty around these issues to justify being existentially alarmed.
At this point, whether we go extinct or all but a thousand of us go extinct (again), maybe that shouldn’t make much difference. Maybe the destruction of a few billion or 5 billion people is morally equivalent to the destruction of all 7 billion of us, and so should provoke equal degrees of urgency. Maybe this debate about whether we’ll go completely extinct rather than just mostly extinct is absurd. Or maybe not. I don’t know. What I do know is that, regardless of the answer, there’s no excuse to stop fighting for a world that sustains life.

*Samuel Miller McDonald: Born and raised in Northern Michigan, Sam is currently pursuing a PhD at University of Oxford in political geography and energy.

Links

• Economic Growth is not Compatible With Environmental Sustainability
• The Connection Between Environment, Conflict and Security
• Interview with Paul Ehrlich: “Collapse of civilisation is a near certainty within decades”
• Believing in climate change, but not behaving sustainably: Evidence from a one-year longitudinal study
• ‘We’re doomed’: Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will dare mention

More Than 100 Organizations Call On Oil And Gas Industries, Banks To Opt Out Of Arctic Drilling

ThinkProgress -  E.A. Crunden

Indigenous groups and institutional investors representing more than $2 trillion call for industries to keep the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge a "natural wonder."

A young polar bear stands on its hind legs on the barrier island of Bernard Spit, along the eastern arctic coast of Alaska. CREDIT: Steven Kazlowski / Barcroft Medi via Getty Images

Environmental advocates and organizations are calling on major industries to move against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
The groups behind the push to keep oil and gas extraction out of the wildlife refuge include indigenous representatives, national environmental activists, and institutional investors representing more than $2.5 trillion.
In a sweeping effort unveiled Monday, representatives from the Gwich’in Nation joined nearly 120 signatories opposing oil and gas drilling in the nation’s largest national wildlife refuge. Through two separate letters, advocates lobbied oil and gas companies along with major banks with potential interest in ANWR drilling.
Writing from its headquarters in Fairbanks, Alaska, the Gwich’in Steering Committee emphasized that the community opposes “any efforts to develop oil and gas” in the area.
The Gwich’in Nation considers ANWR’s coastal plain sacred and has fought against efforts to open the area up for drilling.
“As the world rapidly shifts towards clean energy sources, we are also gravely concerned about the climate, financial and reputational risks associated with pursuing a speculative fossil fuel source that will likely become uneconomical,” the steering committee wrote.
“It is both deeply unethical and unwise to permanently destroy lands vital to the culture and existence of the Gwich’in to pursue this high-risk gamble.”
In a separate letter, investors representing some $2.52 trillion similarly asserted opposition to any ANWR oil and gas development.
Citing “financial” and “reputational” risks along with “ecological” and “human rights” impacts, the signatories urged banks and industries to “honor their fiduciary duty to investors” and pledge to opt out of drilling.
“We, as investors, encourage expanding support for the wide range of clean energy solutions and sustainable industries in Alaska, instead of helping to destroy this natural wonder,” the letter concludes.
Signatories include BNP Paribas Asset Management and the David Rockefeller Fund.
Drilling in the Arctic has been a source of controversy for years.
Advocates for oil and gas drilling have pushed to allow industries to drill in the area, often referred to as “the last great wilderness” in the United States.
ANWR spans nearly 20 million acres and the refuge is home to many threatened and endangered species, including migratory birds, polar bears, and Porcupine caribou.
As head of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) has increasingly fought to allow drilling in ANWR’s coastal plain, known as the “1002 area”, which encompasses some 1.5 million acres of land.
That site is home to a caribou calving area with deep cultural significance for the Gwich’in people, who also rely on the region for nutritional purposes and food access.
Lawmakers like Murkowski, who has received significant contributions from the oil and gas industry, have used instructions from the Republican-led Senate to the Energy Committee to find $1 billion in order to reconcile the 2018 budget as an excuse to move forward with drilling.
Their efforts have found an ally in the White House: President Trump took an aggressive first step towards opening ANWR up for drilling in April when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued a notice of intent exploring the potential environmental impact of oil exploration in the area.
That announcement sparked a 60-day comment period, set to end mid-June, during which the public can weigh in on the decision.
At the time, Bernadette Dementieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, slammed the move and said the Trump administration’s efforts came “at the expense of human rights”.
Studies have found that pregnant and nursing members of the caribou herds on which the Gwich’in rely for food are prone to avoiding infrastructure like the kind drilling would introduce.
That will mean fewer caribou for the community to hunt, forcing them to look elsewhere for sustenance in a break with cultural norms.
“The administration has made my people a target,” said Dementieff in a statement. “We will not stand down. We will fight to protect the porcupine caribou herd … every step of the way.”
Trump’s support seems to have been motivated more by industry ties than anything else.
In February, the president said that he “didn’t really care” about drilling in ANWR until a friend “who’s in that world and in that [oil and gas] business” asked him to ensure a provision in the upcoming tax bill touched on the issue.
But drilling in the area has been met with some surprising opposition.
In December, a dozen House Republicans penned a letter to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) arguing against opening ANWR up to drilling and calling the area “a symbol of our nation’s strong and enduring national legacy.” The representatives said such efforts would endanger multiple species and were not necessary to national interests.
“The fate of the Arctic Refuge and its sensitive Coastal Plain lies in the hands of Congress and we must ensure robust debate on this highly-controversial issue,” read the letter.
The separate letters sent Monday indicate the issue is likely to remain heated, with repercussions for industries and funders eyeing drilling.
“Any oil company or bank that supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge faces enormous reputational risk and public backlash,” wrote the Gwich’in Steering Committee.
“Their brands would be associated with trampling on human rights, destroying one of the world’s last remaining intact wild places, and contributing to the climate crisis.”

Links

• Trump’s industry friend ‘had a very big impact’ on his decision to open Arctic refuge to drilling
• Melting Arctic sends a message: Climate change is here in a big way
• Arctic warming: scientists alarmed by 'crazy' temperature rises
• Climate change in the Arctic - Wikipedia
• Climate change played a major role in extreme 2016 Arctic heat wave