Author: lck5144

Methane is one of the four greenhouse gases, the second largest emitter. Since it is so abundant, it’s a popular and an attractive source of energy, one that can be extracted below ground and under the sea floor. While natural gases, like methane, burn cleaner than other fossil fuels, their environmental impact can and is still detrimental.

Where methane has proven substantially impactful is natural gas leaks, which happen during its production, delivery, and use through fracking and other exploration sights, as well as faulty pipes. It’s more powerful than carbon, and is responsible for about a fifth of human induced climate change. When a methane leak occurs, it traps 80 times the amount of heat carbon dioxide does into the atmosphere. It impacts all ecosystems, as well as human health. Not only does it directly affect these groups, but it indirectly affects them as well through its constant heating of the atmosphere. And we all know about the detriments of the rising global temperature. What I’ve noticed time and time again is that people seem to care more about the environment when it is affecting them. So human health wise:

minor exposure to methane can cause: dizziness, nausea, heavy breathing, and fatigue.

major exposure to methane can cause: suffocation, loss of consciousness, memory problems, lack of                 coordination, and more.

It can also hurt us economically through paying for these large leaks. Also, though a bit of a reach,                     the decrease in wildlife decreases amounts of jobs in hunting and fishing, which hurts consumers like               supermarkets and restaurants, and so on.

Onto the effects on wildlife and ecosystems: they’re mostly affected by leaks, noise and light disturbances, road construction, and networks of pipelines. Species such as bald eagles, prairie dogs, and deer specifically have shown the greatest decline due to this greenhouse gas.

Though there are methane leak detectors present as of now, they aren’t as effective as they could or should be given that that leaks are still a substantial contributor to climate change. So is there a solution? well kind of… we’re still getting there. Scientists and engineers have created a prototype satellite that can detect methane leaks from space way faster than the technology used for it now can.

It is known as the MethaneSAT,  which the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) scheduled for release by 2021. This satellite will scope the entire globe for methane leaks, and if successful, can reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas industries by 50%.

A major problem with our knowledge of methane emissions now is that companies either don’t disclose how much methane they release, or are dishonest about how much of it they release, making it harder to know how much we actually have to reduce our use. Only about 3% of companies involving methane use out out a public quantitative report about their usage. If more companies are transparent about the methane usage, the MethaneSAT will be even more effective in locating and detecting methane leaks.

As of now, it will be able to regularly oversee the 50 major oil and gas stations, accounting for more than 80% of the production. With a little more time and money, we are looking at some monumental changes. And though it is a multimillion dollar project, most of the funds have already been raised considering this satellite is “entirely feasible”.

I just think this is super fascinating. We like in a technological world, and I feel like so much of the time we take advantage of what we can do with technology. There are so many useless things created when the parts and funds can be allocated to life and world changing machinery like the MethaneSAT. Reading about this on the rise product gave me a little bit of hope, and I think reading about something that’s so helpful and so feasible may encourage more people to be on board with it. The more we can find ways to reduce the impacts of climate change while maintaining a similar lifestyle and economy, the more people will support them.

Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/12/new-satellite-to-spot-planet-warming-industrial-methane-leaks

https://www.nwf.org/~/media/PDFs/Misc/Methane%20Fact%20Sheet_updates.pdf

https://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/chemicals-and-contaminants/natural-gas

https://www.edf.org/climate-impacts-methane-emissions

 

My last post was centered around Co2, a major contributor to climate change. I realized it was sounding quite negative… because it is. However, I don’t want the outcome of these posts to just make people feel bad and upset, I want them to give hope and inspiration to what could happen in the future. I’m going to focus these next posts on a problem, but then an innovation or way we can reduce the effects of climate change, not completely, but immensely .

For this one, I’m going to talk about plastic, which we all know is a huge contributor to pollution and global effects on the environment as well as all ecosystems. So why are the effects of plastic so detrimental? First, it’s everywhere; since plastic can take up to 1,000 years to decompose in landfills, it is constantly multiplying in size. It litters streets, natural habitats, and what’s not on land ends up in the oceans, like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, for example.

Since the mass production of plastic, which started around six decades ago, 8.3 billion metric tons of it have been created, 91% of which wasn’t afterwords recycled. The sheer amount of it has affected wildlife everywhere. Plastic is found in the guts of 90% of sea birds, the stomachs of 50% of sea turtles, and is even choking whales to death. If plastic use is not reduced, by 2050, there will be more plastic in certain bodies of water than there are fish inhabiting them.

Another problem with plastic is that it’s the main product for fracking, a method for extracting oil or gas. Fracking pollutes the air, land, and water, creates sinkholes, and  raises pressure in rocks (which makes them more susceptible to earthquakes). The plastic created from fracking is usually made for single use, and both the process and what it creates threaten the effects of climate change.

So what can be done? While we can all try our best to reduce the amount of plastic we use, may it be using less plastic bags, water bottles, straws, etc., it won’t do anything to reduce the amount of plastic already existing in the streets, lands, and oceans. However, thanks to a team of researchers in Japan, a solution may be on the rise.

These researchers have been able to create a plastic eating enzyme made of polyethylene terephthalate, PETase, that can break down plastic in a matter of days. Let me remind you, it can take up to 1,000 years for plastic to degrade, around 450 years for plastic water bottles alone. What’s crazy about this discovery is that it was completely accidental; the enzyme is a mutant of another experiment gone wrong. This is how it works: the enzyme eats away at hard plastics, bottles for example, and breaks it down to its original elements, which can be used to make recycled plastic. While this is all still new discovery, scientists are eager to learn more about how the mutated enzyme came to evolve, and what they can do to possibly improve it to break down all kinds of plastic, and at an even faster and more effective rate.

There is, however, a caveat to this accidental groundbreaking discovery. Because it is able to break down plastic in a matter of days, it may give people incentive to produce more of it because they know it will be able to be broken down. It may also give people less incentive to reduce their own personal use of plastic. This possible solution could be taken advantage of to sustain the way we are living rather than to reverse the damage we’ve done.

That being said, for as many people that try to take advantage of this, I think there will be just as many that use it to its fullest potential. Combine reducing plastic use with increased recycling with reducing littering with an enzyme that’s literally eating plastic, and you can get something of monumental change in plastic’s effect on people, wildlife, and the effects of climate change.

Sources:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscientist/2018/04/23/five-ways-that-plastics-harm-the-environment-and-one-way-they-may-help/#240a2f2467a0

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/plastic-bottle-waste-eating-enzyme-mutant/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180416155619.htm

 

 

I want to talk about the effects of Carbon Dioxide on human health and wildlife. 

Carbon Dioxide- released through various processes like transportation, electricity, industry, and more- poses great threat to human health, and it has recently been discovered that CO2 can contribute to death due to the amount of air pollution it’s responsible for. As told by Liz Kalaugher, an editor for environmentalresearchweb:

“Each degree Celsius rise in temperature caused by increased carbon dioxide levels could cause about 1,000 deaths from air pollution each year in the US”.

I read later in the article that this is because the gas boosts concentrations of surface ozone, particles and carcinogens, which are all detrimental to human health. More evidence proves, and makes logical sense, that the US is a large part of the problem, since it is one of the most industrialized countries. Jacobson, a participant in this research, stated that “More than 30% of these deaths occur in California, which has six of the 10 most polluted cities in the US.” While it’s obvious excess CO2  could not have been good, I didn’t realize just how bad its effects actually are.

Another effect of Co2 is severe smog, which is essentially polluted fog. London, for example, experienced its highest level of smog on January 25th, 2017. I remember I went to London for a school trip during that time, and every morning we woke up to complete fog, some days so bad we’d have to wait until it cleared because the visibility was too bad to drive. I originally thought London is always rainy and this was completely normal, but what I later found out was that it was actually not normal at all. This smog doesn’t just contain harmful particles, it increases number of accidents due to lack of visibility.

There are also many countries which are now facing reduced crop production and major drinking water shortages. Co2 heats up the air, and some crops cannot handle warmer temperatures, leaving them unable to grow and thrive.

According to Renee Cho, the effects of Carbon Dioxide on humans includes health issues, reduced visibility, and less agricultural production, which will lead to a struggling economy. 

 

 

And while not all effects of Co2 emissions are deadly, that doesn’t mean they’re not debilitating. Some of the non life threatening effects, like those listed in the picture on the left, can still be very detrimental to everyday life.

Now to move onto the effects on wildlife; unless carbon emissions are severely reduced, climate change could result in at least a quarter of land animals, birdlife and plants to become extinct. As CO2 continues to pollute and warm the air, birds will lay eggs earlier than usual, plants will bloom earlier, and mammals will come out of hibernation sooner. As told by the Climate and Weather Organization,

”Distribution of animals is affected; with many species moving closer to the poles as a response to the rise in global temperatures. Birds are migrating and arriving at their nesting grounds earlier, and the nesting grounds that they are moving to are not as far away as they used to be and in some countries the birds don’t even leave anymore, as the climate is suitable all year round.”

Animals have begun adapting to what they think is a new living condition.

Another surprising, yet dangerous effect of the emission on the ecosystem is the alteration to plant life. “The Surprising Role of CO2 in Changes on the African Savanna”, Written by Adam Welz, says rising CO2 levels are creating an abundance of trees in the Savanna. This is called the CO2 Fertilization Effect. I was shocked to learn this, and I think it’s extremely important. Usually when I think about climate change, I think about the effects in has on stunting plant growth, not creating an over abundance of it. Originally I thought this extreme rapid growth was good because more trees means more habitats for animals and more oxygen in the air… all good things, right? No. This has actually proved to cause larger wildfires and alter ecosystems. One example of the ecosystem alteration is the Cheetah, which suffers from not having an empty landscape to search and hunt down prey. If cheetahs can’t hunt their prey, their prey start to overpopulate, and then what they feed on becomes extremely limited, and the whole cycle is messed up.

Every little thing Co2 effects has a much bigger impact than we all think it does. All organisms, humans included, are part of a cycle, and when Co2 impacts just one organism in the chain, it affects the whole thing.

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