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Follow up – Satellite pictures of the ice-free North West Passage

Ice-free Northwest PassageLast week I wrote about the Northwest Passage, the ocean channel across the top of Canada connecting the Atlantic and Pacific, being free of ice for the first time in modern history. Now thanks to Nasa’s satellite imagery, you can see the ice-less water in all its scary glory. Here is the high definition image. A smaller image and article is here. It really is stunningly beautiful, despite the implications.

[via Daily Kos’ excellent weekly round up of environmental posts, picture via NASA Earth Observatory]

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Melting northlands might mitigate some effects of climate change

There are enough bad peat puns in the article, so I’ll spare you any in the headline here.  Conventional wisdom regarding climate change dictates that as temperatures rise, the frozen lands in the north will release methane that has been locked in the ground.  Methane is regarded as being 23 times stronger than carbon dioxide when it comes to trapping heat, so this phenomenon would likely accelerate global warming.

As bad as it may seem, it may not be quite so.  A five year study done by ecologists at Michigan State University in East Lansing has found that as the frozen peatlands thaw out, they become wetter and provide fertile ground for fast-growing water plants which will suck up carbon dioxide, thus offsetting some of the methane release.

Of course, it won’t be a one-for-one tradeoff.  And as the wetlands fill in, the water plants will be replaced by slower-growing dryland plants and trees.  These new northern forests aren’t nearly as good at reducing global warming as the tropical ones.

So there you go.  We’re still going down the tubes, just not quite as quickly as people thought before.  Well, I’m off for a drink.

(via SciTech Daily Review) (image via brewbooks)

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UK Government announces feasibility study on Severn tidal barrage

how a tidal turbine worksFor 150 years there have been plans to build a barrage across the Severn Estuary, close to where I live in Bristol, England. Yesterday the government revealed a new detailed study into the possibility of such a construction in the near future. The barrier would cross the Bristol Channel from near the Welsh capital of Cardiff across to Weston Super Mare, south of Bristol. The 16km-long barrage could provide as much as 40,000 jobs and provide a rail link between England and Wales.

This is an exciting development. The distance between Bristol and the corresponding coasts on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean causes a resonant frequency in the tides, causing one of the biggest tidal shifts in the world. If this plan were to go ahead it could provide 5% of all of the UK’s electricity demands. There are environmental concerns about wildlife but the formation of a cleanwater lake beyond the barrage may also create new habitats. Another option is a series of tidal pools such as the one being proposed as a test site near my hometown of Swansea.

{image from the bbc article}

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Climate change quick-fixes could actually make things worse

algaesea As Jamais Cascio and others have pointed out, geoengineering – large-scale technological projects aimed at averting the climate change crisis – should only be considered as last-ditch options, because they come with the risk of actually making things worse.

Take for example James "Gaia" Lovelock’s suggestion that we install hundreds of huge pipes in the ocean, with the aim of channeling nutrient-rich deep water to the surface to promote the growth of algae and (hopefully) absorb more atmospheric carbon dioxide. Lovelock himself admits that there’s a risk of the plan backfiring, but he says he’s worried enough that he thinks traditional scientific caution should be left behind. I hope he’s wrong – but even if he is, we could be doing a lot more to solve the problem than we already are. [Via BLDGBLOG] [Image by Jurvetson]

[tags]environment, ocean, geoengineering, climate change[/tags]

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