Arctic troops. (C) US Army Northern Warfare Training Center

Life is a thriller in its own right.

In the latest chapter, Russia is now training a “special motorized infantry brigade” to fight in the Arctic, where it has laid claim to a lion’s share of the billions of tons of untapped oil and gas reserves under the Arctic ocean.

That sounds so “twentieth century,” doesn’t it?

But, considering global events, it’s not.

As laid out in MELTING DOWN’s plot, Russia is poised to be to the world energy industry what the US is to world arms industry, i.e. #1.

If I were Russia, I’d be thrilled at world events.

First, the Arctic continues to lose sea ice. In fact, just a month ago, JPL announced that, according to a new NASA-funded satellite study, “the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating rate.” Translation: it is getting easier to access those oil and gas reserves.

Second, Japan just elevated the Fukushima nuclear disaster to “Chernobyl” status, making those events the only two Level 7 disasters on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

While that is great news for nuclear opponents, it is even better news for oil, coal and natural gas companies. European governments, in particular, are re-thinking whether to build new nuclear plants and/or to extend the life of existing ones. And, in Japan and other countries that limit nuclear, fossil fuels will be the only near-term way to replace most of the demand for electrical power.

Plus, there is the situation in the Middle East and North Africa. The more unstable it is, the more risk there is that minor oil supply disruptions will turn into major oil disruptions, if not catastrophic ones.

Given all these current events, those oil and gas reserves under the Arctic are looming even larger as a future source for transportation, heating and electrical generation.

Russia knows the value of those reserves. And, apparently, it is getting ready to militarily defend its claims.

  shareshare

Three Things

First, The Climate

This is the most obvious one. MELTING DOWN embeds a lot of climate impacts in-between wild snowmobile chases, nuclear attacks and tense Cabinet meetings.

What’s the bottom line: there is more heat in our atmosphere. The heat can’t escape. And neither can we.

Sooner or later, bad things will happen. In terms of the climate, glaciers are already melting, sea levels are rising, storms are stronger, crops are wilting and we’re seeing swarms of beetles that kill pine forests and mosquitoes that carry the West Nile virus.

Over time, all that heat will disrupt, degrade and maybe destroy our quality of life.

Second, National Security

A large chunk of MELTING DOWN is about national security. Why? Because living in an unstable climate is a lot like flying in an unstable plane.

As the climate becomes less stable, our nation becomes less secure.

Now, President Obama doesn’t talk about that. Neither does Congress nor the media. Thank God, the military does.

Case in point:

“You have very real changes in natural systems that are most likely to happen in regions of the world that are already fertile ground for extremism. Droughts, violent weather, ruined agricultural lands—those are the kinds of stresses we’ll see more of under climate change…More poverty, more forced migrations, higher unemployment. Those conditions are ripe for extremists and terrorists.”                                                                                           –Admiral T. Joseph Lopez (USN)

Case in point: Naval Air Station Pensacola, the primary training base for all Navy, Marine and Coast Guard pilots, as well as the Blue Angels precision-flight squadron. In 2004, Hurricane Ivan smashed into Florida and took large sections of the base with it. Given that example and many other climate-exacerbated coastal incidents, the Pentagon’s 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review cited 30 US military bases and facilities as being at risk of rising sea levels.

Third, Triple Bottom Line (TBL) Solutions

Typically, we humans take a “one problem – one solution” approach. In a world as inter-connected as ours, it rarely works. Worse, you can pretty well bet the ranch that there will be unintended consequences.

TBL solutions simultaneously address economic, environmental and social issues. As a result, they are far more likely to reduce costs, frustration and wasted time, while increasing revenues, jobs, clean air and other desirable outcomes. For a discussion of TBL solutions, please visit www.tbltimes.com

  shareshare

Five Major Arctic Basins Identified by US Geological Survey. (CC) USGS map

In 2008, the US Geological Society estimated that 13% of the world’s undiscovered, but technically recoverable, oil was in the Arctic region. For those of you who like numbers, that’s an estimated 900 billion barrels of oil. Since there are 42 gallons in a barrel, that represents a lot of fill-ups: 37,800,000,000,000 (37.8 trillion) gallons.

Plus, there is an estimated 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids.

These real-world facts drove me to build MELTING DOWN’s plot around Russia’s potential to control the world’s energy supplies, especially as 1) the world’s demand for oil continues to increase and 2) the supply of on-shore, Middle Eastern oil continues to decrease in the next few decades.

Now…between Libya, Japan and the NCAA tournament, it’s understandable that oil and gas drilling in the Arctic hasn’t gotten a lot of press recently (not that it would, anyway.) But, fear not: preparations, explorations and actual drilling are moving forward.

Case in point: a month ago, there was a webinar entitled “Meeting the Challenges of Arctic Development.” It featured three experts.

The presentation by one of them indicates the level of research and development being applied to the Arctic. His talk “…will provide an update on industry activities for these regions, including the latest on ship classification; fixed and floating drilling/production unit classification; third- party verification; environmental assessments/risk analysis; and ice/ship interaction.”

Another presenter offers re-assurance about operating in environments where the sun never rises for a long period of time and ice flows could crush a rig. His talk “…will present an overview of practical engineering solutions that will allow oil and gas operators to safely and efficiently work in Arctic offshore environments.” (emphasis added)

I visited the Arctic last June when I researched MELTING DOWN scenes on the Greenland Ice Sheet. The Arctic is far away from most of us. But the impact of drilling up there is getting closer every day.

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Tsunami-flooded Sendai Airport, Japan: (CC) in the public domain, photo by US Air Force Staff Sgt. Samuel Morse

Japanese lives lost. Towns destroyed. Supply chains disrupted. Daily, the list of consequences grows.

Here’s another one: because of the earthquake/tsunami, humanity’s tinkering with the climate will accelerate even faster.

Why?

Before the earthquake/tsunami, Japan imported about 4 million barrels of oil a day, which accounted for about 45% of its energy needs.

But, over the next few years, Japan will boost its oil, coal and natural gas imports substantially for two main reasons:

1)    The amount of nuclear-generated power will drop, because the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station is out of commission, and there may be slow-downs or shutdowns in other stations, as the government mandates inspections. As a result, fossil fuels will be needed to generate electricity

2)    The re-building of Japan will require enormous amounts of construction, which will require enormous amounts of fossil fuels to support it

Furthermore, if the US, Germany, Sweden and other countries reduce their reliance on nuclear because they find too many unreasonable risks, they will turn to fossil fuels as well.

Altogether, the demand for more oil will further drive off-shore drilling from Brazil to Russia. In particular, it will strengthen the economic case for the Arctic drilling that drives MELTING DOWN’s plot. The drilling, shipping and burning of that oil will add greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere.

The demand for more coal and natural gas will also do the same.

Ideally, Japan and other countries should generate that electricity from renewables. Will they? Sure. But not much. Given the political and economic realities, there is no way in the next five to ten years that renewables could largely replace fossil fuels.

It would help greatly if more media outlets and more citizens understood the Great Climate Experiment we’re undergoing. It would be even better, if we incorporated renewables within triple bottom line solutions that address social, economic and environmental issues.

  shareshare

Committee on Energy and Commerce. (cc) Government source. Author not listed.

Some blogs are harder to write than others. This has been one of the hardest.

On the one hand, I feel tremendous sadness for the people of Japan, who will face years of nuclear, economic and personal fallout.

So far, more than three thousand lives ended tragically. Half a million people are homeless. Countless millions will be psychologically scared – just as their towns and coastlines are physically scarred. Their hopes are washed way along with their cars. Worse than the loss of trust in their government may be their loss of trust in life.

On the other hand, I am off-the-charts furious at US politicians who are doing their part to guarantee that the US and other nations suffer the equivalent of 8.9 floods, droughts, heat waves, hurricanes and a lot more.

Case in point: the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, as it “discussed” HR 910 – an attempt to prohibit the EPA from regulating greenhouse gasses.

Here are some low-lights:

–A letter to the Committee from a retired Air Force Lt. General, a Navy Rear Admiral and an Army Major General stated: “America’s dependence on oil constitutes a clear and present danger to the security and welfare of the United States. As former senior military officers, we are concerned about Congressional efforts to undermine the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory authority that is critical to reducing our dependence on oil.” (emphasis in original.) Nevertheless, the Committee voted to undermine the EPA’s regulatory authority.

–A letter from the American Lung Association, American Public Health Association and four other organizations stated: “We the undersigned write to express our strong opposition to H.R. 910. We believe that this legislation would block the Environmental Protection Agency from setting sensible safeguards to protect public health from the effects of air pollution.” Nevertheless, the Committee ignored not only the letter, but also a study cited in the letter: namely, the Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act from 1990 to 2020 “…found that the air quality improvements under the Clean Air Act will save $2 trillion by 2020 and prevent at least 230,000 deaths annually.”

–And, while there are other, similar examples, here is the worst in my opinion: by a strict party line vote, 31 Republicans voted down these three amendments:

1. From Ranking Member Henry Waxman: “Congress accepts the scientific finding of the Environmental Protection Agency that ‘Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.’’

2. From Colorado Congresswoman Diana Degette: “Congress accepts the scientific finding of the Environmental Protection Agency that the ‘scientific evidence is compelling’ and that elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases resulting from anthropogenic emissions ‘are the root cause of recently observed climate change.’’

3. From Washington State Congressman Jay Inslee: “Congress accepts the scientific finding of the Environmental Protection Agency that ‘the public health of current generations is endangered and that the threat to public health for both current and future generations will likely mount over time as greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere and result in ever greater rates of climate change.’

Whether those Members of Congress are ignorant of consensual science or insidiously focused on political power, they are threatening American security and global stability.

The earthquake and tsunami in Japan were natural events. We humans contributed to it because we built homes, businesses and nuclear reactors on the coast of a country that, in recorded history, has experienced more than 150 tsunamis.

The future floods, droughts, storms, heat waves and other extreme weather patterns that will increasingly destroy our crops, coasts and communities will also be natural events. We humans contribute through our refusal to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and our insistence on electing individuals like those 31 Republicans.

In the end, this is truly not a political diatribe about one Party. Ignorance and insidiousness are Party-agnostic. At heart, this blog is about what you, me and the rest of us in economically-advanced democracies  choose to do with our wealth and our freedom.

  shareshare

March 11, 2011 - Tsunami waters flood Japan; Photo: Kyodo News

Along with the rest of the world, I’ve been watching the videos and photos of the 8.9 earthquake that just devastated Japan. I feel sickened by the whole thing. Aside from today’s death and destruction, we know it will be years before infrastructure is rebuilt, businesses rebound and people adjust to the loss of their loved ones, property and sense of security.

I was also shaken, as the 500 mph waters raced towards Hawaii.

My wife and I were on Kauai ten days ago. Just over a year ago, we were on Kauai when the 8.9 Chilean earthquake set off a tsunami. I still remember the shrill Civil Defense sirens. We were evacuated to a hillside, where we waited as the waters roared towards the coastline.

That experience deeply impacted me. It also moved me to write a MELTING DOWN scene in which a major earthquake hits near Hawaii – and then a tsunami storms across the Islands with the level of devastation that it just stormed across Japan.

Both 8.9ers are reminders that, as cuddly as “Mother Nature” sounds, Mother Nature has a ferocious side.

In Hawaiian culture, Mother Nature is sometimes referred to as Pele. In MELTING DOWN, Zavia Jansen, the female protagonist, is a world-class expert in storm surge barriers, who meets with the Hawaiian Governor when the tsunami hits. She says to him. “Pele. It’s Pele.”  Then, in narration, “…Pele was the goddess of fire who was as unmerciful in how she destroyed as she was miraculous in what she created.”

We humans are like Pele. We create such a marvelous human world in so many ways. We also damage the human world in so many ways – through the poisons we put in the soil and the volumes of heat-trapping gasses we put in the atmosphere.

Human activity does not cause earthquakes or volcanoes. But human activity strengthens Acts of Nature like hurricanes and floods.

Unless we mitigate those activities that destabilize our climate, we will see more Events of Mass Destruction that are jointly produced by Mother Nature and one of her species.

  shareshare

F/A-18 Super Hornet testing biofuel made from the camelina plant for naval aviation use. Photo: (CC) U.S. Navy photo by Noel Hepp/Released)

Story #1: The mainstream media report Col. Gadhaffi’s  dual attack on the people trying to bring him down and the oil infrastructure that props him up.

The Chicago Sun Times, for instance, quotes an opposition leader, who says  “government artillery hit a pipeline supplying Sidr from oil fields in the desert. An oil storage depot also was hit, apparently by an air strike.”

Furthermore, fighting has occurred around four eastern ports, where nearly 60% of Libya’s oil is exported.

The net result is that Libya’s oil supply – 17^th largest in the world – has been disrupted. That disruption is a contributing factor to the price of oil now being well past $100 a barrel.

Story #2: In the March 3, 2011 online edition of Scientific American, Secretary of the Navy Mabus announced FY 2012 funding requests. As part of the request, he noted that: “For every dollar the price of a barrel of oil goes up, the Navy spends $31 million more for fuel.”

On January 1, 2011, the per-barrel price of Brent crude was just under $95. Because of the Libyan oil disruption (and other factors), it is today around $105 per barrel.

Assuming the same oil demand, the US Navy is now spending $310 million dollars more of our taxpayer money in fuel costs.

To cut those costs, the Navy has set a goal of “…driving half its energy needs from non-fossil fuel sources by 2020 as well as making half of its bases energy self-sufficient. Already, the Navy has ordered some 150,000 liters of jet fuel derived from camelina – an oil-seed plant like canola – and more than 75,000 liters of diesel-like fuel for ships from algae…”

Story #3: According to the Wall St. Journal, the Gang of Six (US Senators Mark Warner, Saxby Chambliss and four others) “…are seeking to craft a proposal that would shave $4 trillion off the Federal government’s projected budget deficit over 10 years.”

One way to reduce that deficit would be for the US government to invest in renewable energies as a way of supporting the US military in reducing both its cost and its vulnerability to oil supply disruptions.

Think it’ll happen with this Congress?

  shareshare

Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland, April, 2010. Photo: Henrik Thorburn; Creative Commons Attribution 3.0

If I were a corporate executive, I’d be of two distinct minds about American politics.

On the one hand, Democrats and especially Republicans are more than willing to cut my corporate and personal taxes.

On the other hand, they’re playing Russian roulette with my ability to run my business in a world that is so inter-connected and so just-in-time.

Take, for example, the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland last April. When it blew millions of tons of ash into the atmosphere, it also blew away the plans of millions of people and the profits of many, many businesses. As an example:

• More than 100,000 flights were cancelled, the airline industry lost about $200 million a day and more than ten million passengers were stranded worldwide
• Producers of flowers, fruit, pharmaceuticals and other time-sensitive products watched their products and profits wither, unable to ship them into Europe
• BMW shut down three production plants in Germany because suppliers couldn’t get them parts

Volcanoes erupt from time to time. They can affect the climate for days or even years. But they are not impacted by the changing climate, which brings us back to Democrats and Republicans.

2010 was a year in which more extreme weather events occurred than ever before. Munich Re, one of the world’s largest re-insurance companies, reports that (including earthquakes) there were 960 events compared to the ten-year average of 785 events. The overall economic loss was in the $150B ballpark – 2/3 of which was related to storms, floods, droughts, fires and other non-earthquake events.

Of these events, several were well reported, e.g. Russia’s heat wave and fires, Pakistan’s floods and Australia’s floods. Less well reported was the enormous business disruption to industries as diverse as agriculture, tourism and coal – not to mention the impact of these events in lower food supplies that contributed to the uprisings in Arab countries, where surging prices contributed to surging throngs of people into city squares.

In the future, there will be more and more business interruptions and risk. As our climate becomes more volatile, so will businesses that rely on local weather and global supply chains.

In that light, corporate executives, farmers and the rest of us should be yelling out our windows and marching in the streets.

If passed by the Senate and signed by the President, the House budget bill just passed will decimate our ability and the overall world’s ability to track, mitigate against, and adapt to the changing climate. If George Will thinks that Gov. Huckabee is delusional for making up stories about President Obama growing up in Kenya and being influenced by Mau Maus, imagine what he must think about the greater House delusion that says “if we stick our head as far in the sand as it’ll go, we don’t have to see the impacts of the changing climate.”

Case in point, the House bill provides:

• $0 for the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change – the UN organization that most closely documents the changing climate
• $0 for the World Bank’s clean technology fund to prevent deforestation, which leads to less ability to absorb CO2 out of the atmosphere
• A roughly 85% reduction in the budget for the Energy Information Agency, which tracks information on energy production, consumption and pollution
• Amendments to eviscerate the EPA’s greenhouse gas regulatory powers, thereby leaving it up to the large emitting industries to regulate themselves

If we don’t turn things around, Nature will.

  shareshare

The Mosque of Atiq. Photo - Mario 1952. CC-BY-3.0.CC-BY-3.0.

As the crisis in Libya continues to unfold, there are facets of the story that are under-reported or not reported at all. It is critical to understand that 1) there are economic, social and environmental components to what is happening;  2) Libya is deeply inter-connected with global events; and 3) our own personal behavior is also part of the story.

• Libya was colonized by the Ottoman Turks and – from 1911 to 1943 – by the Italians. “Italian colonization altered the patterns of land use in Libya, turning pastoral and rainfed agriculture lands in many parts to cultivated lands followed by deterioration of ecosystem especially in the coastal areas.”
• Libya is one of the many countries where repressive dictators have been tolerated, if not supported, by the US, the EU and other nations. Why? Numerous reasons. One main reason: Libya is the world’s 17^th largest oil producer. It produces 1.7M barrels of oil every day and exports 1.2M (71%) onto the world oil commodity market.
• Oil revenues account for about 95% of export earnings, 25% of GDP, and 80% of government revenue. In other words, as with other petro-dictatorial countries (to use Tom Friedman’s phrase), people, corporations and governments have supported Libya’s repressive government by buying its products.
• Libya could be to solar what Saudi Arabia is to oil. “The July (2007) issue of the Arab Water World magazine reports of a new study commissioned by the German Government showing how Europe can meet its future needs in electricity, cut emissions of carbon dioxide from electricity generation by 70% by 2050 and phase-out nuclear power at the same time – all involving the deserts of the MENA (Middle East & North Africa) region…Libya has an area of almost 1.8 million square kilometers, 90% of which is hot sunny desert.”
• Libya has one of the highest GDP’s in Africa. Its 2010 GDP was $89B – 74^th largest in the world. But little of that wealth trickles down to its people. This is very similar to other repressive regimes around the world. While the US is not Libya, the trend in the US is towards greater concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer individuals and corporations.
• Libya’s unemployment rate is roughly 30%
• Like other protesting Middle Eastern countries, poor Libyans spend a greater portion of their income on food – and food prices are surging due to poor harvests around the world that, in part, are due to extreme weather events linked to the changing climate. Also, in that regard, less than 2% of Libya’s territory receives enough precipitation for settled agriculture
• Slightly larger than Alaska, Libya is the 17^th largest country in the world by area. 95% of Libya is desert, and the desert is spreading.
• In Libya, the amount of water withdrawal is over eight times its renewable water resources. The Great Manmade River Project is being constructed to transport water from aquifers under the Sahara to coastal cities. It is the world’s largest water project. It is estimated that the country’s water deficit will be more than 4 billion cubic meters per year in 2025.
• 1/3 of Libya’s 6.5M people are 14 years old or younger. Half the country is under 24.2 years old.
• Libya spends 2.7% of its GDP on education and ranks 159^th in the world. As a comparison, the US spends 2X as much (5.5%) and ranks 46^th – behind Saudi Arabia (#41), Tanzania (#25) and Cuba (#2)
• The US rescinded Libya’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism in June 2006. In January 2008, Libya assumed a nonpermanent seat on the UN Security Council for the 2008-09 term.
• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will address the UN’s Human Rights Commission today in Geneva, presumably seeking to have Libya removed from the UN’s Human Rights Council. Despite worldwide protests last year, Libya was seated on the Council in May, 2010.

Sources:

• http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/US-Seeks-Libyas-Expulsion-From-UN-Human-Rights-Council-116863508.html
• https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ly.html
• http://www.tripolipost.com/articledetail.asp?c=5&i=1388
• Attia Mahmoud Mohamed El-Tantawi, “Climate Change in Libya and Desertification of Jifara Plain,” 2005

  shareshare

Offshore UK wind turbines. Photo: Steve Fareham (CC) Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license

Weird! What are the odds that four stories would feature ‘$1.3 trillion’ in each of them?

First, according to the US Congressional Budget Office, the US ended fiscal year 2010 with a budget deficit of “just under $1.3 trillion…” (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/10/07/cbo-finished-fiscal-year-trillion-...

Second, a Moody’s Investors Service report claims that non-financial corporations are expected to have a $1.3 trillion “wall of debt” by 2015 (http://distresseddebt.dealflow.com/reports/article.cfm?id=wdgvyvgyovctjyt).

Third, World News reports that “China plans to spend at least $1.3 trillion over the next five years to ease transport and freight bottlenecks…” (http://article.wn.com/view/2011/02/19/China_to_spend_13t_on_new_rail_road_infrastructure/).

Fourth, take a wild guess at what the United Nations Environment Programme estimates it will take to “…trigger greener, smarter growth while fighting poverty.” That’s right: $1.3 trillion – an investment of roughly 2% of the world’s GDP.

From a MELTING DOWN perspective, a key piece of the $1.3 trillion investment would be in projects that simultaneously address social, economic and environmental projects within the same solution. This triple bottom line, systems-based approach is a sub-plot in the novel. I included it, hoping that more people would understand the power of this systems-based approach.

Today, there are a growing number of projects utilizing this approach. To see some of these projects, please go to www.tbltimes.com.

  shareshare