From floods and droughts to heat waves and ice melt, NASA says the impact of a warming world is being manifested in many ways that have been clearly documented by its satellite cameras. These images, some of which date back almost a decade, are published with the permission of NASA. You can see a larger image on the NASA site by clicking each picture:

Image taken on April 12, 2009 by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite. (Photo: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team)

The Wilkins Ice Shelf is a thick slab of ice on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula. Since 2008, it has experienced several breakups. NASA says the ice began to rapidly retreat in February and in May another breakup occurred. Fresh cracks appeared on the shelf in late November 2008 and by the beginning of 2009, a narrow ice bridge was all that remained to connect the ice shelf to ice fragments fringing nearby Charcot Island. NASA reports that bridge gave way in early April 2009. This image was taken just days after the ice bridge rupture. “Since ice reflects light from the sun, as polar ice caps melt, less sunlight gets reflected into space,” NASA says. “It is instead absorbed by the ocean and land, increasing surface heat budgets and fueling further melting.”

Photo: Navy.org

With 40 installations in the Chesapeake Bay watershed alone, the United States Navy has an enormous  environmental impact on the region. New construction and regular improvements of existing  facilities pose a major challenge in terms of limiting damage to the local ecosystem.

Development in the region is increasing the number of impervious surfaces (roofs, driveways, parking lots, etc.) at a rate four times greater than population growth. As a result, stormwater runoff has become a major threat in terms of polluting the Bay.

The Navy has developed a low-impact policy aimed at maintaining or restoring pre-development hydrology. Using a combination of vegetation and retention devices, stormwater is managed at the source rather than allowing the water to travel downstream.

The overall goal: No net increase in stormwater volume or sediment and nutrient loading from new projects.

Those low-impact efforts are part of a broader Sustainable Infrastructure Program currently being implemented. The program serves to integrate environmental stewardship into all energy programs, asset management, capital improvements and public works management.

Recently, a parking lot at Naval Station Norfolk capped a waste disposal area and now bio-filters stormwater. Implementation of all major contruction projects will require low-impact techniques by 2011.

Copyright © 2010 Green Right Now | Distributed by GRN Network

You’d think in the era of the Weather Channel and 24-hour-news, Americans would be well informed about the difference between “the weather” and “the climate.”

Magnolia covered in rare Southern snow (Photo: Green Right Now)

And yet, people seem genuinely befuddled. This winter especially, with the Midwest up to its window sashes in snow and Texas through Florida experiencing protracted periods below freezing, people can be heard questioning climate change and global warming.

How can a warming world be so cold? they ask.

“It’s really confusing to a lot of people,” says climate scientist Brenda Eckwurzel. In particular, the term “global warming” seems to “paint a picture that everywhere on the planet should be hotter.”

But the climate changes do not follow consistent patterns. Some parts of the world, like North Africa and the U.S. Southwest stand to get a lot hotter, incrementally. But other places, like the U.S. Midwest, will not warm as noticeably.

And within the broad changes brought by climate change, the weather will continue to fluctuate, every few days or weeks, as it always has, though on a changing Bell Curve in which “we lose” the lows and see more of the highs, Eckwurzel said.

Climate change does not negate weather variations. Cool spells still occur. What climate change does is march steadily in a direction (in this case toward warmer average temps) over a period of decades.

And as the world warms, summer heat waves become longer and more intense, hitting more extreme highs, said Dr. Eckwurzel, who is on staff with the non-profit  Union of Concerned Scientists. The UCS, a 40-year-old group based in Boston, tracks climate change and advocates for solutions. (See the UCS’s Climate Change 101.)

Right now, the nation is in a predicted cooler period, similar to the 1970s, when temperatures dropped for a few seasons – a response to ocean and wind patterns which follow multi-year trends, Eckwurzel said.

But this smaller trend is a blip within the larger one; the world continues to warm, she said. The past decade was the warmest on record since reliable records were kept in the late 1800s, and the oceans are warmer than they’ve ever been. Arctic sea ice is vanishing, as are many glaciers.

Even amidst the chill of winter’s breath, certain effects of climate change can still be seen.

Climate change brings more precipitation to areas that get rain and snow, and less to arid regions. These shifting precipitation patterns that can be seen even against the short-term weather patterns of 2010 and help explain the recent heavy snowfalls across the U.S. Midwest  (as well as the rains that are playing havoc with plans for the Winter Olympics in British Columbia).

Warmer oceans and warmer surface air have “revved up” the water cycle, and all around the globe oceans, lakes and soils are evaporating, Eckwurzel said. The warmer air can hold water vapor for longer, fueling more intense precipitation events.

“The wet places are getting wetter and the dry regions are getting drier,” she said.

Some critics of climate change say that the nation should just go with the flow.

On Monday, American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman, lashed out against climate change-related reform, specifically against a plan to return open land to climate-mitigating forests in several states. Speaking at the group’s national convention in Seattle, he also criticized food experts and “activists” who would “drag agriculture back to the day of 40 acres and a mule.”

His remarks parallel those of some others in agriculture, government and agribusiness who muse that climate change could be a good thing for farmers in the nation’s heartland, bringing a longer growing season and ample rainfall. Bring it, they say.

But Eckwurzel warns that this type of thinking fails to take into account the monetary costs of shifting agriculture. Extended summer heat waves will stress livestock, and confined animals like dairy cows would produce less in a hotter climate. As winters grow milder, the lack of freezes would allow plant pests to proliferate, leading to higher costs to combat crop intruders. ( The UCS has published a series of reports about the expected effects of climate change in the Midwest and all other regions of the U.S.)

In the Southern states, where the soil is drying out as rains become more erratic, flash flooding has already become a bigger threat to agriculture and human welfare.

“To ignore that there might be costs within those changes would be too simplistic,” Eckwurzel said. “Unabated climate change will bring costs.”

Copyright © 2010 Green Right Now | Distributed by GRN Network

In what might seem a no-brainer, the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday pronounced greenhouse gases to be  a verifiable public health threat to all Americans.

The announcement came on the first day of the Copenhagen Climate Conference and after what the EPA describes as a “thorough examination of the scientific evidence” required by government rules as the agency prepares to set standards for “light-duty vehicles.”

Though largely a formality given the EPA’s view of greenhouse gases has been fairly clear, the timing of the announcement sends a signal to negotiators that the EPA is prepared to enforce its clean air mandate, with or without a Congressional climate bill.

Some environmental groups, in fact, seemed to view the announcement as a lob over the net to Congress.

“The danger of global warming pollution is clear and present, the solutions are at hand, and the time for action is now,” said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund. “It’s time for Congress to finish its work on U.S. legislation to cap and reduce the 19 million tons of heat-trapping pollution we emit every day.”

It’s also clearly intended as a message to climate negotiators in Denmark.

“Today’s action also makes clear that the Obama administration is doing its part to combat climate change. That amplifies our voice and strengthens our hand going into Copenhagen,”   said Natural Resources Defense Council President Frances Beinecke.

“This announcement couldn’t come at a more important time,” said Sierra Club president Carl Pope. “The Obama administration has followed through on its pledge to act …President Obama sees the Big Picture—by shifting to clean energy, and cracking down on the corporations that pollute the water we drink and the air we breathe, we can restore our economy to prosperity and reduce our dependence on oil and coal, all while tackling global warming.”

Krupp also noted that a plan to cut greenhouse gases can be good for business, a majority point of contention in political circles, be it Washington or Copenhagen.

“American leadership on climate change will strengthen our security, wean us off of foreign oil, and ensure that America wins the race to clean energy innovation in the global market place,” he said.

At the conference, EPA Adminstrator Lisa P. Jackson said, “These long-overdue findings cement 2009’s place in history as the year when the United States Government began addressing the challenge of greenhouse-gas pollution and seizing the opportunity of clean-energy reform. Business leaders, security experts, government officials, concerned citizens and the United States Supreme Court have called for enduring, pragmatic solutions to reduce the greenhouse gas pollution that is causing climate change.”

As scientists around the world have documented, rising GHGs are causing rapid climate change by trapping gases in the atmosphere, leading to warmer and longer heat waves that are melting the ice caps, causing seas to rise and jeopardizing the world’s inhabitants. The gases also increase ground-level ozone pollution that is linked to asthma and other respiratory illnesses.

EPA’s report covers emissions of the six major greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride, all of which have been the focus of studies by scientists in the US and around the globe.

These studies invariably point out that global warming is the result of human activities, such as carbon emissions from coal-fired plants and cars and trucks.

Aside from recording increases in average global temperatures, scientists have been charting sharp increases in melting ice in the Arctic, the loss of glaciers around the world, rising ocean temperatures and sea levels, changes in precipitation patterns and acidification of oceans — all linked to carbon dioxide pollution.

The EPA said its declaration on Monday is part of its obligation imposed by a 2007 US Supreme Court decision determining that  GHGs fit the definition of air pollution governable by the Clean Air Act.

The ’07 ruling rejected the Bush Administration contention that the EPA did not need to address greenhouse gases under the nation’s clean air laws.

However, the new EPA report does not force the issue of emission reduction,

Instead, the findings allow the EPA to finalize GHG standards that were proposed earlier this year for new light-duty vehicles in conjunction with the Department of Transportation.

The EPA report states that on-road vehicles are responsible for more than 23 percent of total U.S. GHG emissions. EPA’s proposed GHG standards would lessen GHG emissions by almost 950 million metric tons and conserve 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the lifetime of model year 2012-2016 vehicles.

EDF’s Krupp says the EPA announcement is a wakeup call for new policies by the U.S. Senate that enforce carbon emission reductions and expand America’s clean energy economy.

Unfortunately, he says, some climate change deniers are hoping to slow progress by using scare tactics, claiming that the EPA pronouncement will result in a “cow tax,” a reference to the fact that cows are big methane emitters.

EPA’s action is long overdue, says Krupp. Citizens have petitioned EPA since 1999 to deal with global warming pollution. Since that time, the country has emitted nearly 70 billion tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and heat-trapping carbon dioxide concentrations have risen to 387 parts per million. Scientists say that 350 parts per million should be our goal if the planet is to survive as we know it.

Here’s an audio clip on the  EPA on greenhouse gas announcement.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Each year millions of sharks are traded and killed just for their fins. While we may not have much use for them here in the United States, shark fins are held in high regard in China. Shark fin soup is a Chinese delicacy.

Dr. Demian Chapman releases a night shark after genetic testing

However, the sharks are being killed off faster than they can repopulate. Until recently, it was hard to detect where the sharks originated from, making it difficult to determine where they are being killed.

Thanks to work led by the Guy Harvey Research Institute, the Save Our Seas Shark Center at Nova Southeastern University, and the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University, it is now possible to identify the location of the sharks. Using DNA, researchers were able to detect the species and origin of the fins they tested.

The results were disturbing. Fins were found to have come from endangered scalloped hammerhead shark populations thousands of miles away from the Hong Kong market where they were being sold. With this new information, it will make it possible to enforce the illegal international trade laws.

“The premium prices commanded by fins have fueled a global shark hunt of epic proportion,” said Dr. Ellen Pikitch, Executive Director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University in a statement. “Earlier work found that up to 73 million sharks are killed annually to supply the fin markets, and approximately 1-3 million are hammerheads,” Dr. Pikitch said.

A Scalloped Hammerhead Shark

The peer-reviewed findings were published today online in the Endangered Species Research Journal.

The U.S. will recommend that the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) list the scalloped hammerhead and five other shark species under Appendix II next March in Qatar. This would require permitting and monitoring of all trade of these species across international boundaries, potentially helping protect these species from extinction.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

By now you’ve heard the dire predictions for how sea level rise would affect Miami. Basically this city, already imperiled by worsening hurricanes, is in the bulls-eye for rising oceans too.

But did you realize that a one meter sea level increase — now believed by many scientists to be a likely outcome of global warming by 2100 — would put Philadelphia underwater?

Greenland Ice Flow (Photo: NASA)

Yes, the city of Brotherly Love would be among the large family of coastal cities potentially devastated by coastline changes. And not in the too-distance future either.

According to glacier and ice shelf expert Dr. Gordon Hamilton, Philadelphia could experience troubles decades before that 2100 benchmark if storm surges pushed rising oceans inland.

In other words, there is no magic threshold when the seas, warmed by the atmosphere and swelled by melting ice sheets, will spill over their old boundaries. There is a steady creep occurring now. But flooding, hastened by storms, could happen well before the ocean’s reach the 1 meter increase (absent any serious human action to slow the current progression).

Hamilton, a research professor at the University of Maine who studies melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica , and Dr. Asa Rennermalm, a Rutgers University professor who studies Arctic and Greenland ice sheets,  are kicking off a lecture tour today to spread this news about how the oceans are rising even faster than projected just a couple years ago.

The first talk was this morning at the Wagner Free Institute in Philadelphia followed by a demonstration at the Adventure Aquarium in Camden, N.J. Subsequent engagements will take the pair to Miami; Washington, New York City and several other cities. The tour, dubbed the “hip boot tour” to emphasize the reality of the coming floods, is sponsored by Clean Air-Cool Planet, a non-profit dedicated to fighting global warming.

None of these cities where the scientists will be speaking will be spared by rising sea levels. Just as most mega-cities around the globe will be affected, because so many population centers sit on the coast or on rivers that lead directly to the coast. Cities like Paris. And Philadelphia.

Talking to Hamilton is a bit like previewing one of those apocalyptic movies where the world suffers from monster storms, vast floods, temperature changes and incredible destruction of infrastructure.

At a one-meter rise, for instance, the subway entrances in Manhattan would be at the water level, which means the subways would be inundated, permanently, said Dr. Hamilton, whose degree is in geophysics.

One doesn’t need a degree in geophysics to understand the consequences of the nation’s financial capital being underwater. Having St. Louis and Chicago on dry ground would not ameliorate the devastation to humans and world trade.

In Philadelphia, a 1 meter increase would flood the downtown district and areas along the river. Harbor trade would be shut down and on the east side, Camden, N.J., would be inundated. Across New Jersey, aquifers would likely be contaminated with sea water.

Neighborhoods at higher elevations, north and west of Philadelphia would remain dry.

Parts of Florida at 33 feet above sea level and below are shown flooded (Image: NASA.)

In Miami, nothing would be unaffected. A 1 meter sea level rise would put most of the city underwater, and it wouldn’t be alone. “Most of Florida’s big cities would be severely affected,” Hamilton said. Models overlaid on satellite images show Miami, the Keys, St. Petersburg and Tampa under water. The everglades would become a saltwater marsh and aquifers in the state would become brackish or completely salinated.

Hamilton says he shows people how their city’s coastline would change, but also tries to get local audiences to see the global nature of the problem.  “Not only are you flooding downtown DC, but hundreds of millions of people in Southeast Asia like Bangladesh, ” he said.

The key point of the tour is not just to demonstrate impending devastation, but to explain that the threat is more imminent than was predicted by the Interplanetary Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just two years ago.

In 2007, the IPCC warned that the sea levels would rise a little more than half a meter and possibly more. Even at that less drastic increase, the “the impacts are virtually certain to be overwhelmingly negative,” scientists wrote.

That prediction was based on the best available science.

What didn’t make the report, Dr. Hamilton said, was that in 2005, geophysicists studying the freshwater ice sheets in Greenland and changes in Antarctica had witnessed an alarming quickening in the speed of some glaciers as they carried ice toward the ocean.

In Greenland, some of these rivers of ice “were doing these crazy things,” he said. Some were moving 45 meters in a day — about the distance of one half a football field. In glacial terms, they were moving very fast. You could hear the ice cracking, he said.

“Almost over night, in the course of 9 to 10 months, they started moving about three times faster than they had been,” Dr. Hamilton said.

Scientists know the changes were prompted by global warming, and that the ice melts can grow exponentially, with water in crevasses contributing to the problem. But they still don’t understand what it all means. Some glaciers later slowed, but others sped up, Hamilton said. The net effect is likely to be a faster melt, with more water raising the ocean levels worldwide.

“Our talks right now are to emphasize that the picture has changed dramatically. If you were to take a consensus among my colleagues who work in Greenland and Antarctica, everybody is likely to say that it (sea rise) is more likely to be a meter.”

If not more.

“Politicians,” he said, “regardless of their political leanings on climate change need to be aware that they’re ethically bound to consider the upper bounds of sea level change…It’s delinquent for people to say they’re going to plan for the minimum (possible change) and then in 50 years time find that huge amounts of their infrastructure is flooded because they didn’t pay attention.”

• The lecture tour dates and cities are:

• Oct. 20 – Philadelphia

• Oct. 21 -  Portland, Maine

• Oct. 22 – Tampa, Fla.

• Oct. 23 -  Tampa, Fla.

• Oct. 24 – Miami, Fla.

• Oct. 27 -  Wilmington, N.C.

• Oct. 28 – Norfolk, Va.

• Oct. 29 – Hampton, N.H.

For details on those talks see the Clean Air-Cool Planet website. For more information on melting ice and rising ocean levels, as well as other predicted outcomes of global warming, see the US Global Change Research Program 2009 report (East Coasters can see the section on the Northeast) or the  IPCC reports at the United Nation’s website.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Ocean waves near Freeport, Texas (Photo: National Weather Service)

Ocean waves off the coast of Texas may soon provide the first commercial wave power in the US to generate electricity and desalinate water.

Renew Blue Inc. said today that the Texas General Land Office has granted it the first-ever state off-shore wave energy lease. The company said it will use ocean water and waves to produce desalinated water; the first 100 percent fossil-fuel-free bottled water.

Renew Blue, a wholly owned subsidiary of Minneapolis-based Independent Natural Resources Inc., is the first licensing entity of SEADOG Pump, a technology that uses ocean waves to generate electricity. The company plans to operate in the Gulf of Mexico near Freeport, Texas, to produce 3,000 gallons a day of desalinated water and will bottle and distribute it under the brand Renew Blue.

This will be a small demonstration of what SEADOG Pump technology can do in providing electricity and clean water to regions all over the world that lack fresh water and energy but have an abundance of ocean waves along their coastline.

“Texas is proud to be the initial site of this wave-powered energy innovation,” Rene Truan, deputy commissioner for professional services at the Texas General Land Office, said in a statement. “Renewable energy production on the Texas coast means renewable revenue for the school children of Texas. The SEADOG Pump is another great example of the exciting opportunities that exist and that the Texas General Land Office is working hard to take advantage of.”

Renew Blue will place an off-shore modular platform about one mile off the coast of Freeport, in roughly 25 feet of water. The company said it expects the platform, which is currently being manufactured outside of Houston, to be installed in the fourth quarter of 2009 or the first quarter of 2010.

Independent Natural Resources Inc. said it sees major advantages in the SEADOG Pump system, which is powered solely by the wave energy it harnesses. The company says electric power accounts for 40 to 50 percent of the operating costs in the desalination process, meaning the new pump system should provide significant cost savings and minimal environmental impact compared to the large-scale use of power generated by fossil fuels.

“For the past seven years the SEADOG has been fine-tuned to produce this major accomplishment as the first commercial wave power generation in the US,” Mark A. Thomas, CEO of INRI, said in a statement. “We are thrilled to showcase the SEADOG to the world as an innovative yet simple technology illustrating the ability to extract wave energy at low cost, with high levels of efficiency resulting in immeasurable benefit to humankind.”

January Jones, star of the Mad Men TV series and an ocean advocate, went to Washington this week to lobby for the Shark Conservation Act of 2009 and stronger US leadership for saving the ocean’s top predators.

January Jones (Photo: American Movie Classics)

“We should be scared FOR sharks, not of them,” said the Golden Globe nominee. “The survival of sharks and the health of our oceans depend on it.”

Jones met with various members of Congress, including Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.).

The actress, best known for her role as Betty Draper in the critically acclaimed Mad Men series on the American Movie Channel, became a spokesman for Oceana’s Save Sharks campaign earlier this year.

Sharks have survived in the oceans since the age of the dinosaur, but today some species are nearly extinct due to overfishing and killing some sharks just for their fins, Oceana reports. As the ocean’s top predators, they play a critical role in keeping ecosystems healthy; their decline is causing potentially irreversible changes in the make up of the seas.

The Shark Conservation Act would outlaw shark “finning,” in which the animals fin is sheared off at sea with the body discarded. The law would require that all shark brought in to land would be whole.

The Act was introduced by Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) in April. A similar measure introduced by Rep. Madeleine Bordallo (D-Guam), passed the House of Representatives in March.

For more on sharks and why their survival matters see the Oceana website. There you can also find out about Ms. Jones’ recent trip to swim with sharks (no, that’s not the same as the Washington tour).

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Bay City News
SAUSALITO — Three weeks after their return from exploring a vortex of floating plastic garbage 1,000 miles off the Pacific coast, scientists working on Project Kaisei are focused on how to clean up the giant garbage patch. >> Read the full story

By Wayne Freedman
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — Concern over global warming has a lot of people concerned with how they deal the very real possibility of rising sea levels. Who better to give advice than those living right now below sea level? The Dutch have discovered that their experience with bad geography might create healthy profits. >> Read the full story

Barbara Ettinger and Sven Huseby knew their documentary about ocean acidification would have to pass a high test to avoid overwhelming a public already grappling with the many technical facets of climate change.

To sound the alarm about yet another looming global warming catastrophe, the potential destruction of all marine life, their film would have to be engaging, accessible, down-to-earth.

Happily, A Sea Change: Imagine a World Without Fish succeeds on all those levels. Humanizing this critical issue like no previous film or book, it follows the soft-spoken Huseby on an odyssey of discovery as he meets with scientists and activists in Alaska, Seattle, California and Norway trying to understand the phenomenon of ocean acidification.

Gently, the story drives home what’s at stake: A healthy planet for future generations, embodied in this case by Sven and Barbara’s spirited grandson, Elias, age 5. The irrepressible Elias serves as the film’s touchstone, reminding us of the urgency of his grandfather’s mission and of the simple wonders of beach and ocean.

Sven writes “home” about his discoveries to Elias, who lives in California (where in real life, he watches Blue Planet and is known as “a very verbal fellow”). He tells him he’s deeply worried about the oceans, but adds that as a former teacher, “I really believe the power to change begins with knowledge.”

On his travels, Sven considers how he’ll explain to Elias about this problem that should rightly fall outside the scope of childhood — the potential complete destruction of the oceans via acidification, the result of the seas absorbing humankind’s carbon dioxide emissions.

In asking, what are we leaving behind for our kids and grandkids, A Sea Change doesn’t mince words.

But this inter-generational interplay also lends the film a warmth, and keeps it clear of the rocky shoals where more strident, proselytizing documentaries sometimes crash. Sven is on a fact-finding mission, not a soap box. His director and wife, Barbara Ettinger, uses ample footage from expert subjects, but also keeps them off the preaching podium.

A Sea Change deliberately reaches out to people of all ages and political stripes. Kids will enjoy Elias’s viewpoint. Newcomers to the subject will appreciate Sven’s Mr. Rogers-like approach to interviews. The film is paced to allow for periodic reflection, and beautifully filmed along the rocky coasts of the Pacific Northwest and Norway, all the way to the Arctic, where we see and hear the ice dropping into the sea.

Sven ultimately meets a score of scientists and environmentalists who are passionate about their mission to save the oceans (which cover more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface). He also visits with artist Maya Lin to ponder the psychology of why we haven’t been better ocean stewards.

The film, released this spring, is being featured this week at the Downtown Film Festival-Los Angeles on Aug. 20 (Thursday at 7 p.m.) and will have its New York City premiere at the American Museum of Natural History on Sept. 13. It is also playing at cinema festivals around the world. It was conceived of in late 2006 when Sven and Barbara were both struck by the New Yorker article, “The Darkening Sea” by Elizabeth Kolbert. Barbara, a filmmaker, and Sven, a former teacher and headmaster of the Putney School in Vermont, considered themselves enlightened people; Barbara’s last film had even tackled a regional environmental fight. Yet the ocean article was startling.

“We were flabbergasted that we’d never heard of the phenomenon of acidification of the sea,” Sven said last week from his home in upstate New York.

The couple set out to investigate. Sven pursued financing (eventually signing several foundations to back the movie), as Barbara figured out how to turn the story into a film that could reach a wide audience.

“We made a very clear decision. I guess part of it is who we are as people. We didn’t want to make an apocalyptic film. But what we see in this area of ocean acidification are some very big issues,” Sven said in an interview with GreenRightNow.

Much of what the film crew uncovered was disturbing, he said; “I got pretty depressed the first half of this film as we interviewed scientist after scientist.”

As the native Norwegian and former private school headmaster travels from Alaska to the Pacific Northwest US to a scientists’ outpost in Tromsoe, Norway, a dark cloud emerges. Everything out in the deep blue is in jeopardy. The oceans have been absorbing the earth’s mounting CO2 emissions, but now, all life, from the tiniest marine creatures to those at the top of the food chain – to humans – is paying a toll.

“For 20,000 years, we’ve had a relatively stable environment. Now, there are going to be a lot of extinctions,” reports Dr. Jeff Short, then with NOAA, now the Pacific Science director for Oceana.

“Ocean chemistry is being altered on a scale not seen for millions of years,” says marine professor, Dr. Edward L. Miles, ot the University of Washington: “And we don’t know what the consequences will be.”

When the oceans turn acidic, Sven explains in our interview, “it’s like dropping a piece of chalk into vinegar.” That’s an exaggeration, but what happens to the chalk shows how shellfish, coral and the delicate, tiny pterapods at the foundation of the marine food chain are being affected.

Increasing carbon emissions here on land mean more ocean acidity, which is sapping the oceans’ capacity to support life and pushing them to the brink. Fish populations are thinning, coral is dying and the Ph of the water is nearing fatal levels for many species.

We get many visuals. Sven interviews a chemistry teacher who demonstrates with baby teeth what acid (in the form of a soda) can do to a calcium coating, like those on the pterapods. (You’ll understand the oceans better, and reconsider your next Coke.)

Similar mini-tutorials keep us hanging in with Sven as he bikes, hikes and hovers on several coastlines, explaining the threat to our oceans – and during the last part of the film, what can be done to save them.

It’s an enjoyable ride, even under that brooding cloud. Our amazingly robust 65-year-old narrator, his glib grandson, and the fleet of people working to solve things make for an eye-opening tale. There are poignant moments, like when the author of the New Yorker piece Kolbert commiserates with Sven about leaving such an ailing planet for our children.

“I continue to think about that remark and trying to turn this thing around,” Sven says in our interview.

A Sea Change does offer hope, on several coasts. There are the lawyer activist in California, wind engineers in Norway, executives at Google and others, who believe pollution can be stopped and alternative energy harnessed to turn back the carbon clock.

Even in unlikely spots, such as the century-old Solstrand Hotel in Norway, which now operates on renewable energy from the ocean, there’s hope.

How can ordinary people help? “They can think about their carbon footprint,” says Huseby. “They can ask themselves how can they decrease the fossil fuel they use for transportation. They can ask how well have they insulated their homes…through conservation alone we can do the most. It’s not that expensive and it can have a huge impact.”

And, he adds, you should contact your Congressional representative.

“It sounds old-fashioned, even quaint. But it’s really important that people write to their representatives and stress that they want to get off fossil fuels…They all say they need the push. So let’s start pushing.”

Details:

A Sea Change: Imagine a World Without Fish
Director/producer: Barbara Ettinger; co-producer: Sven Huseby; co-producer: Susan Cohn Rockefeller; editing: Toby Shimin; cinematography by Claudia Raschke-Robinson; associate producer: Ben Kalina.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Related video:

Watch the trailer for A Sea Change:

“Don’t let the vacation ruin the destination.”

These words of wisdom hail from environmentalists who have legitimate concerns about ocean pollution due to cruise ship dumping.

Cruise ship vacations have gained in popularity in the last decade, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which states that the industry has grown nearly twice as fast as any other means of travel during that time frame. And, at the same time, the average ship size has been growing at about 90 feet every five years. Ships used to average about 3,000 passengers, but today some carry as many as 8,000.

So with larger ships carrying more passengers, there is mounting concern about how this growth will affect the ocean’s marine life and water quality.

Recently the World Wildlife Federation’s Baltic Sea chapter recommended that area ports upgrade their facilities to cope with contamination from cruise ship sewage. The WWF said that Baltic-area ports are not keeping their facilities up-to-date in terms of disposing of cruise ship waste and suggested that the money being made by cruise ship tourism be spent upgrading the facilities, according to a report in the Environmental News Service.

“We find it unfair that so many ports are profiting from cruise line tourism but are not prepared to take care of their waste,” said Pauli Merriman, director of the WWF Baltic Ecoregion Progamme, in the ENS report.

In one week, a single average size cruise ship can generate about 200,000 gallons of sewage as well as 1 million gallons of gray water (the runoff from showers and kitchens), says Friends of the Earth Clean Vessels Campaign director Marcie Keever.

“That amounts to about 50 swimming pools-worth of polluted water,” she says.

Cleaning up pollution from cruise ships uses technology that separates the solids from the liquids and uses reverse osmosis to get rid of the pollutants. The solids get incinerated with the ashes either being dumped on land or at sea beyond 3 to 12 nautical miles. On land, the human manure can be recycled as nutrients for soil.

In the U.S., says Keever, there are no regulations for dumping sewage from vessels beyond three nautical miles from shore. Beyond three miles, cruise ships are allowed to dump raw, partially treated, or treated sewage.

As for port-side dumping, she says, “the dumping of treated sewage (using 30-year old-technology) is allowed in many ports except for states that have created no-discharge areas or agreements…. California is one of the places with anti-dumping laws, as are Alaska and Maine. Washington and Florida have voluntary agreements with the cruise industry but those agreements don’t go any further that U.S. federal requirements in most cases.”