Environment wins with reduced human activity

There's a silver lining, of sorts, in the reduced human activity related to the coronavirus shutdown. Nice visuals from space and discussion here:

In The Midst Of A Tragic Human Pandemic, The Environment Is Flourishing

https://truththeory.com/2020/03/19/in-the-midst-of-a-tragic-human-pandemic-the-environment-is-flourishing/

Move from lots of pollution to a beautiful clean sky. Very ugly way to get there, but the earth is getting a breather from the humans torturing the land and sky.

Microplastics everywhere... Blow'n in the Wind...

Here is an article in ARS Technica about an article in Nature Geoscience (2019) that talks about microplastics in the French The Pyrenees Mountains, a pristine place, except for, well, plastic!

The researchers made extremely controlled efforts to assure that they were not contaminating the samples gathered. But the plastics are coming in on the wind, and coming down (mainly, it seems) in perpetration. 

If microplastics are everywhere, then our impacts on the planet are far more, and far more prevasive than anyone has predicted. The ARS Technica article by Cathleen O'Grady - 4/22/2019, also talks about the significant amount of plastics produced each year that is unaccounted for in landfills, recycling and oceans. 

When you read the original article, remember the whole biomagnification thing. That's where fish each plants and plankton with plastics, Bigger fish eat those fish, and BIGGER animals like sharks, bears and humans, eat the biggest fish. The heavy metals, plastics and more will build up and up as they go up the food chain. And they tend to be retained at the highest order.

Sources: Nature Geoscience, 2019. DOI: 10.1038/s41561-019-0335-5  (About DOIs).

Biomagnification: Pollutants Found in Deep-Sea Animals

Okay, we all know how biomagnification works. Pollutants including heavy metals such as mercury are absorbed at the bottom of the food chain, and then they are amplified all the way to the top of the food chain. at the top of the chain are such animals as sharks at sea and lions on land.
In terms of mercury biomagnification (wikipedia) works like this. Organisms absorb mercury very efficiently, but it takes far longer to excrete. Algae absorb mercury from seawater readily, so even small amounts in the water are absorbed and retained. Fish eat the algae, bigger fish eat the smaller fish, and so on. At all levels the mercury is retained (in fatty tissues) at a far better rate then it is excreted. Ultimately it accumulates and amplifies in predator fish like swordfish and sharks as well as birds of prey like eagles and osprey.  And, of course, at the apex of the food chain is humans. A mother breast feeding would, of course, pass it on in concentration to her baby.
See fish you should avoid eating (very much of) here.
It turns out that we are building up pollutants at the bottom of the ocean at an ugly and alarming rate. This is emphatically demonstrated by a recent study in Nature. An easier short read is in the WSJ by Kincaid.  Animals at the bottom of the ocean (4 miles deep) had amazingly high concentrations of pollutants, 50 times more than one of the worst polluted rivers in the world (in China). The pollutants included chemicals that don't naturally decay but have not been produced (much) in decades. These POPs should mostly be in landfills; they were largely used in electronics. But they will continue to reek havoc to the environment for centuries to come.
With about 65% of POPs in landfills, there's a huge amount out sloshing around in the environment, all the way from the North Pole to the Mariana Trench. Plus, as the landfills fail, as they always do, eventually, ... That's ugly... so very ugly...
Sorry, no positive spin for this. Not enough lipstick to cover this ugly pig.

Reference

Jamieson, A. J., Malkocs, T., Piertney, S. B., Fujii, T., & Zhang, Z. (2017, February 13). Bioaccumulation of persistent organic pollutants in the deepest ocean fauna. Nature Ecology & Evolution,  1(51). doi:10.1038/s41559-016-0051 Retrieved from: http://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-016-0051

EPA loss in supreme court.

High Court Strikes Down EPA Limits on Mercury Emissions http://www.wsj.com/articles/high-court-strikes-down-epa-limits-on-mercury-emissions-1435590069
The EPA must consider the cost of compliance when coming up with rules. That's what the Supreme Court ruled.
Of course it is hard to estimate the cost of the pollutants, that have been going on for a couple centuries now.
With natural gas being so cheap, and most of the conversions already complete, the whole issue is rather mute point.
But it does set back EPA action on CO2 emissions, where is the coal lobby would like to consider the cost of externalities nonexistent.
Still in the absence of Congress and its inability to do anything, you have the problem of the Fed and the EPA trying to do the heavy lifting.

Sixth mass extinction is here, researcher declares.

Sixth mass extinction is here, researcher declares:

Ouch. It looks like we need to clean up our collective acts. With 41% of amphibians and 26% of mammals on a course for extinction if we don't change our ways.

"To history's steady drumbeat, a human population growing in numbers, per capita consumption and economic inequity has altered or destroyed natural habitats. The long list of impacts includes:

*Land clearing for farming, logging and settlement

*Introduction of invasive species

*Carbon emissions that drive climate change and ocean acidification

*Toxins that alter and poison ecosystems

Now, the specter of extinction hangs over about 41 percent of all amphibian species and 26 percent of all mammals, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which maintains an authoritative list of threatened and extinct species.

"There are examples of species all over the world that are essentially the walking dead," Ehrlich said."

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Can jaw-dropping visuals on CO2. BIG smokes vs. BIG OIL | GreenBiz.com

Can jaw-dropping visuals change the climate conversation? | GreenBiz.com:

This week in the news we wave the merger of BIG tobacco. Lorillard Brands if getting bought out by Reynolds; that is, the Newport brands are getting married to a camel. This will make a formidable competitor to Altria's Marlboro man. (I still love the genius of changing your name from  Philip Morris USA to "Altria", it makes the company sound so Alteristic!:-)

So these are products, when used as directed will either kill you, or cause you to die younger... i.e., kill you.

The big difference between pollution into the atmosphere is that it is generally not the smoker (and their family it seems with 2nd hand-me-downs) that dies, it is everyone in the vicinity, down wind, and down stream.

The problems with burning fossil fuels, in addition to any other pollution that pollute in the traditional science, they create vast amounts more Carbon Dioxide (CO2) for the atmosphere than what the earth systems have become accustomed to dealing with. If 60% goes into the oceans, that causes increased acidification; what remains in the atmosphere, hangs around for about 100 years -- a deadly experiment that we are just beginning to see the effects of.

At least with tobacco, people enter into the deadly agreement under their own free will. The externalities of the well documented costs in life, income and economic product is largely offset by massive taxes. And it is really other countries that have fast increases in smoking while we in the USA have a rapidly dwindling market. (You could say that the market is dying off, if you wanted to add pun to death and sickness.) Although, electronic cigs are growing rapidly.

But, the BIG producers of fossil fuels, have it rather sweet. They tap a natural resource, like an oil reservoir, pump it dry, sell into energy markets and have no responsibility as to the costs of the use of their products. The jaw dropping visuals from the main article here, show the billions (with a B) of tonnes of CO2 created from/by the BIGgest oil producing companies.

The oil company pays some taxes to the country where it permanently depleted a natural resource. That seems only fair. The health costs of burning coal, direct pollution, are huge but generally not covered by the companies the produce and use it. Countries have taxes on transport fuel, to offset some of the costs of the vehicles. But nobody really pays the costs of the CO2 externalities. Or at least very little is done in that directly.

So the two, or three, questions for government: Should government shut down BIG tobacco? Or tax it more? Or allow it to move closer to a duopoly where they can keep raising prices to consumers and have them pay through the nose?

And the questions for government: Should government shut down BIG tobacco? Or tax it more? Or move to cap-n-trade? Or subsidize renewables?

The one that seems to work best, and economists all like best, is a direct tax. The tax increases need to gradually escalate, at least at the rate of inflation. This, of course is political suicide. So the tax is out, and no addressable solution is in.

This is a supply and demand world. In fossil fuels you have the BIG consumers, namely China and the USA, and the BIG producer companies. Both are to blame if what they sell/buy kills people. Right?

The sinful problems associated with the dirty companies go on.. and they keep getting BIGger.

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China Pollution Is Blanketing America's West Coast - Business Insider

China Pollution Is Blanketing America's West Coast - Business Insider:

Oh boy.

We export raw materials and coal to China so they can make finished goods and export them back to us in the West/USA. They don't have the safety worries that we do... Some of the externalities affect only China, but many affect us all, especially those countries and environments closer to the mainland of China.

"Cities like Los Angeles received at least an extra day of smog a year from nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide from China's export-dependent factories, it said.

"We've outsourced our manufacturing and much of our pollution, but some of it is blowing back across the Pacific to haunt us," co-author Steve Davis, a scientist at University of California Irvine, said."

Yuk! :-(

A good economist would argue that  products (say coal, especially the really dirty, high sulfur stuff) that produce negative externalities should be assessed a tax that roughly matches the costs of the externality. Using this logic, we would tax coal (especially high sulfur coal) that goes to a developing country, and tax them even more if they intend to burn the coal without scrubbers and such. This might not stop them from burning coal, but it would make other options more attractive that are cleaner (less negative externalities).

Unfortunately, China has a LOT of coal in the country. They now burn more than half the world's coal each year, so they do have to import it as well.

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How China’s economy is choking on smog | Talking Numbers - Yahoo Finance

How China’s economy is choking on smog | Talking Numbers - Yahoo Finance:

Imagine your favorite city closed down because of the weather, maybe a blizzard... Many of China's cities can have the same problem, but it is because of smog pollution.

This is a country that burns more coal than the rest of the world, combined.

Nice thing is that they share this pollution with their neighbors.

Plus the burning of coal is a gigantic producer of CO2 emissions.

At what point does this pollution start to curb the 7% economic growth that the company continues to experience?  Certainly down from decades of more than 10% growth, but it is hard to grow with the traffic congestion and pollution slowing down ad periodically stopping the economy.

Things that are not sustainable, like rapid growth, have a way of producing their own remedy.

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