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Is coastal dead zone global warming alarm?

Something very troubling is happening to the waters off Oregon’s coastline. But while Oregon’s top scientist warns of need for action, it seems business as usual for government and the private sector.

By Shirley Wentworth

Consternation struck when crabbers off Oregon’s central coast weren’t able to find crabs.
Dead crabs. Dead fish. Dead birds. Dead zone.

If that sounds apocolyptic, well, maybe it is. But it won’t be an apocolypse due to a sudden gesture from a wrathful god. It will be a slow apocolypse due to human hubris.

No crabs. No fish. No birds. Not once ... but repeatedly.

There are dozens of dead zones worldwide, including areas in the Gulf of Mexico and Washington state’s Hood Canal, many that are commonly located near a river mouth carrying large amounts of fertilizer runoff, but Oregon’s dead zone is not one of them.

Oregon’s dead zone is hypoxic. Hypoxic as in without oxygen ... can’t breathe ... suffocation.

As world-renowned Oregon State University marine biologist Dr. Jane Lubchenco describes it, the phenomenon is due to an upwelling of cold sub-Arctic water. The colder water carries less oxygen and delivers a surplus of nutrients from the bottom of the ocean that cause an explosion of plant life. As plants decompose, bacteria proliferates and crowds out oxygen, resulting in the chain of death and carcasses.

While there are other coastal system upwellings around the world, Oregon’s may be the most intense.

“This is new enough that we don’t know how this will play out — it’s an ongoing saga,” said Lubchenco, whose research group proved to be the crux in identifying the factors creating Oregon’s dead zone.

Lubchenco not only co-chaired a global warming advisory group making recommendations to Oregon Gov. Ted Kuglionski but was among a group of international scientists contributing to the United Nations’ Millenium Ecosystem Assessment.

For years, credible scientists have issued warnings about global warming only to be counterattacked by scientists in the service of politics, only too willing to deny the overwhelming evidence of a changing world climate. Political prostitution is one thing, and fear of losing a job is quite another — even in our so-called free country. It’s all too common that agency scientists are afraid to speak their true scientific opinions because of the reigning culture of fear. Scientists can distinguish among the lies as can many reporters, but too many members of the public still take this administration on faith. It’s an open secret that science gets politicized under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Even Lubchenco, an advocate of neutral, undistorted information, notes the difference under the Bush administration.

“What has been so disturbing with the current administration is the extreme and egregious misuse and distortion of scientific information in a way that undermines the whole concept of democracy,” she said during a recent interview. “It’s been a whole different game than under any other administration. Many scientists including those who have been leading advisers have stood up and said ‘This is wrong — this is not in our country’s best interest — it’s immoral.’ The misrepresentation of science has been expressed on many different topics ranging from global climate to biomedical research. I am certainly more aware of the environmental issues misrepresented — the high level agency officials changing reports ... the EPA report on climate change was totally rewritten to say it’s not a problem. It’s very serious.”

Lubchenco, though, retains her optimism, as her involvement with both the governor’s advisory board and United Nations Millenium Ecosystem Assessments, indicate. Surprisingly, not much has been written about the MS reports yet.

“I think on the climate front the dialogue has changed significantly. The dialogue is shifting from ‘Is it really happening?’ to ‘What can we do about it?’ she said. “It really needs to continue to shift. The message I think people haven’t heard is there are very real things we can do to combat this. It’s not insurmountable. It’s something we can make meaningful change with.”

While the Bush administration remains wildly off-key with the rest of the world, intransigently opposed to the Kyoto Protocol, hundreds of U.S. scientists, politicians and activists showed up at the early December Montreal climate talks to voice disagreement with administration policies.

“I think the thing that came out of this is that there are ways for groups to come together and negotiate for change even without (official) U.S. participation,” said Christine Lewis, a member of Portland’s Sierra Student Coalition attending the Montreal session. “There were a lot of youth from the U.S. Our message was that this is our future and we want to have a place at the table and it’s important to address these issues now.”

Lewis reported that both U.S. and international youth in attendance signed a youth declaration setting more ambitious goals by calling for a 30 percent reduction by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050. The declaration was presented to various mayors and government officials.

While the tone-deaf Bush gang rampages along, individual states, including Oregon, are taking matters into their own hands. Oregon began working on its own reduction strategy in early 2004, to complement its counterparts in California and Washington, and similar work undertaken by the New England states.

Lubchenco, who co-chaired the governor’s advisory committee, said group members at first had wildly different ideas regarding what needed to be done, but ended up in consensus by the time it came to submit their recommendations to the governor.

What might happen if the dead zone creeps up and down Oregon’s coast creating a chain reaction of death? If crescendoing waves erode the coast and a rising sea level engulfs coastal habitat? There are at least four distinct coastal zones of life, and as one zone dies off, it in turn deprives the next zone of life.

As precipitation increases and temperatures rise, the snow pack melts down prematurely, causing havoc in the schedule of growing things. Mass disorientation. Drought ensues. Fires rage. Crops fail to grow. Alien vegetation appears. Bugs invade. Disease spreads.

That’s not speculation. A consensus of Northwest scientists acknowledged all those possibilities exist as the Northwest terrestrial ecosystem changes, which was a major factor convincing the advisory panel into agreement that global warming is not “just another issue” and that Oregon must get its own plan together to cut down its greenhouse emissions.

According to the advisory group’s report, the relatively small state of Oregon has slightly less CO2 emmissions per capita than the rest of the country, yet it releases 17 metric tons of CO2 per capita vs. the worldwide average of four metric tons. “On this basis, Oregon is producing four times its ‘share,’ “ states the report. To avoid catastrophic climate change, international scientists concluded CO2 emissions need to be cut 60 percent to 80 percent below 1990 levels, worldwide. Oregon hopes to reduce its levels by 75 percent by 2050. The state’s strategy for reducing emissions includes plans for the West Coast states to position themselves as industry leaders in product development for the renewable energy market.

In the ‘90s, Lubchecno along with other scientists, began making the case that human activity is most directly responsible for the causes of global warming, and also began making the case that nature has its own systems of goods and services that can be translated into specific economic values. That stamp is evident in Oregon’s report as well as in the United Nations reports, and may well be the beacon signalling business people that using natural resources more efficiently saves money. It is past the point when industries can pollute and pass the cleanup costs to the taxpayer — when the resources are gone, they are gone.

Business, government and science all bear scrutiny whether it be scrutinizing the politicization of science or the purchase of science as when industry donates to universities and gets to dictate the curriculum. It’s worthwhile remembering that university “experts” taught farmers the use of pesticides and fertilizers.

The U.N. Report Living Beyond Our Means pretty starkly lays out the worldwide account balance as one in which the spendthrift behaviour of running through nature’s bounty has landed us “with much more red than black on the balance sheet.”

Scientific surveys show that of 24 nature-derived services that directly impact human life, 15 are in decline with only four found to be increasing their ability to benefit humans. The other five are in varying stages of growth and decline worldwide.

Ironically, three of those services on the upswing are crop, livestock and aquaculture production; three activities that despite their capacity to feed the world — are not, but whose worst practices contribute to the decline in services such as water and air quality.

“If natural systems were well understood and behaved in a predictable way, it might be possible to calculate what would be a ‘safe amount of pressure to inflict on them without endangering the basic services they provide to humankind.

“Unfortunately, however, the living machinery of Earth has a tendency to move from gradual to catastrophic change with little warning,” the report states. “We are lowering the resilience of natural systems by simultaneously reducing the variety of species and placing them under unprecedented pressures.”

Global warming has many messages. One of them is this: all life is connected.

And one of the less pleasant aspects to consider is that if the human population-and it’s demands of food, water, housing, fuel, transporation and all the rest of the creature comforts that translate into increased pesticide and fertilizer use, chemical use, habitat destruction, waste disposal and vanishing water - continues to grow unabated, it will crowd out the rest of life on which it depends to give it life.

Humans could easily become the bacteria that causes the demise of its host.

Humans do not have dominion over the earth.

There is perhaps no better summary of the folly and hubris of this administration than that of one of its most vicious syncophants:Ann Coulter, who said: God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said: The earth is yours. Take it. Rape it! It’s yours.”

Global warming says otherwise.

Global warming may perhaps have the last word on the old argument regarding whose rights come first: the individual or the community. If individuals do not act for the good of the community and the community does not act for the good of its individuals: everybody goes down.

For more info:
www.milleniumassessment.org
www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/GBKWRM/climhme.shtm