Climate Change Raises Indigenous Species Quandary For Environmentalist

From "When to welcome ‘invading’ species: Climate refugees challenge environmental distinctions between friend vs foe" by Janet Raloff on ScienceNews:

As climate changes, some environments are becoming hostile to the flora and fauna that long nurtured them. Species that can migrate have begun to move into regions where temperatures and humidity are more hospitable. And that can prove a conundrum for officials charged with halting the invasion of non-native species, says Jon Jarvis, a biologist who for the past year has headed the National Park Service.

One problem: What’s native? Species move at will as conditions change. What’s native in one century may be gone five generations later. Newly arrived species, meanwhile, may be environmental refugees.

“Policies that are currently in place view those [immigrants] as exotics,” Jarvis says — invading homesteaders that should, at all costs, be evicted. But such species may be on the move simply “because this is their last refuge,” he points out.

Read the complete ScienceNews article here.

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Is The Answer To Global Warming The Growing And Storage Of Green Plant Matter?

From "Could the garbage heap help save us from global warming?" by Hugh Price, Washington Post, September 18, 2010:

With an overabundance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it is reasonable to ask, "Where are the plants?" Why hasn't the Earth's vegetation grown larger and faster to absorb the additional CO2? The answer is that it probably has. Some of the 20th century's improvement in crop yields may be due to higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere. Nevertheless, eventually those plants die or are eaten, returning their carbon to the atmosphere. To remove CO2 from the atmosphere, the plant material has to be prevented from decomposing.

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In 2009, the combined U.S. production of corn, wheat and soybeans was 487 million metric tons. That production measures the usable part of the plants. It is reasonable to believe that there is at least as much material in unused stalks and leaves. If just this material were stored rather than burned or plowed under, it could compensate for almost a quarter of the U.S. carbon footprint. The Mountaineer Power Plant could match the captured carbon of its high-tech approach by piling up the plant waste from 12,000 acres of farmland, at a tiny fraction of the cost.

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The biggest problem with this approach may be that it's so low-tech. No green-technology subsidies are required, so there may not be a natural constituency for it. On the other hand, environmentalists should love it. What could be greener than growing plants? And for those concerned about the economy, this approach provides a low-cost method of reducing the country's carbon footprint without increasing the cost of energy. It is also reversible. If current concerns about CO2 concentrations turn out to be unwarranted, the stockpiled material will be readily available for use. What could be simpler?

Read the complete Washington Post article here.

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Updated Atlanta Fed Assessment Of BP Oil Spill Regional Economic Impact

From the Atlanta Fed podcast about the BP oil spill economic impact:

I think it's also important to note that the economic footprint of the affected area is relatively small compared to the overall size of the U.S. economy. So I think it's important that since we haven't seen disruptions in energy and transportation and because of the limited size of the affected area, we do not see the Gulf oil spill as having significant impact on the national economy. And, in fact, to that end, we haven't altered our outlook for the U.S. economy because of the oil spill.
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As far as tourism goes, the amount of cancellations that hotels and rental properties have received over the past couple of months has really accelerated because, well, people had genuine fear that there was going to be oil on the beaches of places they intended to vacation to. So there were a lot of cancellations over the past couple of months, really start[ing] in June and into July and also into August. Even though the oil didn't affect very much of the Gulf Coast, we did see cancellations going all the way down to Southwest Florida.

That said, when we take a step back and think about—again, turning back to your original question about what are the national implications—we saw an increase in tourism activity and bookings and visits to other areas in the Southeast that weren't affected by the spill, especially along the eastern coast of Florida. Even reports from Tennessee and the mountain vacation areas saw an increase in activity. And, anecdotally, they told us that a number of their guests had said that they had planned to go to the Gulf Coast but decided to go elsewhere. So, the overall national effect on tourism, I think, was partially offset by the fact that people simply chose to take vacations elsewhere.
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Another point that the scientist I was speaking with this morning brought up was that the natural system is very resilient. He gives 80 percent of the credit to the natural system and not necessarily the actions that have been taken.
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Census Bureau data tell us that there's roughly an estimated 8,000 people employed in this industry along the affected coastal communities. In addition, the National Marine Fisheries Service reports that roughly the same amount of people—8,000—are employed in fish-processing plants along the states bordering the Gulf. So, it's a small industry when you look at some of the larger national numbers but still very important to some local communities.

The fact that two-thirds of the Gulf remains open to fishing, I think, is a positive sign. Basically, that means that not all of those jobs have been immediately affected. Some waters off the coast of Louisiana have been reopened recently, and some recreational fishing areas previously closed have opened up as well. I think the primary risk factor going forward is the potential destruction or contamination of fish, shrimp, oyster stocks, and the possibility that operations can be limited for several years. And our contacts in the scientific community tell us that this is probably going to be the case, that we're going to see a couple of years until there is full rehabilitation of the stocks that were affected.

Our contacts inform us that the overall impact of a reduced Gulf seafood supply will be felt mainly in restaurants, but not so much in grocery stores, more broadly, as really only about 1 percent or so of the seafood sold nationally through these outlets comes from the Gulf of Mexico.

Michael Chriszt, assistant vice president in the Atlanta Fed's research department responsible for the Regional Economic Information Network, along with Susan Remy, a Regional Economic Information Network analyst from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's Birmingham Branch, discuss (13 minutes) the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and its impact on regional economies.

Read a partial transcript of the podcast interview here.

Click here to listen to the 13 minute podcast about the economic impact of the BP oil spill on the Gulf Coast region.

The previous June 2010, Atlanta Fed podcast about the economic impact of BP Deepwater oil spill is available here.

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BP Oil Spill Is Not A Catastrophic Environmental Disaster: Updated TIME Weblink

From The TIME article, "The BP Spill: Has the Damage Been Exaggerated?" by Michael Grunwald, July 29, 2010:

Marine scientist Ivor Van Heerden, another former LSU prof who's working for a spill response contractor, says "there's just no data to suggest this is an environmental disaster. I have no interest in making BP look good — I think they lied about the size of the spill — but we're not seeing catastrophic impacts,"

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LSU coastal scientist Eugene Turner ... says the BP spill will be a comparative blip; he predicts that the oil will destroy fewer marshes than the airboats deployed to clean up the oil. "We don't want to deny that there's some damage, but nothing like the damage we've seen for years," he says.

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The good news does suggest the folly of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's $350 million plan to build sand berms and rock jetties to protect marshes and barrier islands from oil. Some of the berms are already washing into the Gulf, and scientists agree that oil is the least of the problems facing Louisiana's coast, which had already lost over 2,000 square miles of wetlands before the spill.

Read the complete TIME article here.