Could Oil Pipelines Solve America’s Water Crisis?

By Felicity Bradstock - Sep 25, 2021, 

Big oil could help tackle the water shortage in the western United States by repurposing existing infrastructure to help transport clean water to the areas most in need. Innovations such as this highlight how oil and gas majors, and their infrastructure and knowledge, will always be relevant even in a country continually pushing for decarbonization and renewables.  As severe weather events appear to be happening on a more regular basis, hitting the same areas of the U.S. year after year, flooding and drought is not the only thing that the western United States needs to be concerned about. At present, Louisiana is facing severe water shortages. Groundwater levels in the state are decreasing more rapidly than in other areas across the country and underground aquifers are at an all-time low.  

This is largely due to decades of heavy use, the lack of regulation in water use by the industrial and the agricultural sectors, and little action by legislative bodies to respond to the issue in the past. 

In addition, following the devastating effects of Hurricane Ida, much of Louisiana has been left without power and clean water for weeks. This reflects the poor resilience of the existing utility infrastructure in the wake of a severe weather event, an issue that Louisiana has been facing continually over the last decade. This also adds to the existing scarcity issue, as greater investment is needed to strengthen the West’s water system 

The reason for the current water crisis, following Ida, is largely down to the destruction of power lines needed to provide water systems with the electricity to pump groundwater and run treatment parts. While the state mandates that all water systems must have backup generators, this rule has been largely ignored, and those that do exist have failed due to ongoing power cuts following the storm.  

The infrastructure failures have arisen due to aging water systems and a lack of maintenance. Around 60 percent of Louisiana’s water system is over 50 years old, and most are poorly maintained. Studies from the Louisiana Department of Health suggest that 831 water systems, providing water to 606 communities, had 4,582 violations of water quality standards.

With the local and federal government doing little to respond to the issue of aging utility infrastructure, not just in Louisiana but across the West and the rest of the U.S., an unlikely candidate could provide the resources and infrastructure needed to fix the problem. Oil majors across the U.S. have decades of experience carrying fuel safely across huge distances to communities across the country. In fact, the U.S. is home to an astounding 2.3 million miles of oil and gas pipelines, most of which start or end in oil giants Texas and Louisiana. 

There has already been talk of repurposing disused gas pipelines to transport renewable energy such as hydrogen, as the government and international bodies push for the shift away from fossil fuels. But now, Big Oil could also provide the infrastructure and expertise needed to fix the U.S.’s water scarcity problem. 

Experts responding to water scarcity in the U.S. agree that a federal approach to approving and constructing a major new water pipeline would be lengthy and expensive, likely to take decades to complete by which time the water problem will have worsened. In addition, following recent action taken against the proposed construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, it could be canceled before it was ever finished. Ultimately, drought-prone areas such as Arizona, California, and Nevada are likely to run out of water far before a pipeline can be built if the issue is not tackled.  

Steven Bingler and Martin Pedersen made a compelling argument this month suggesting that as well as repurposing oil and gas infrastructure for the transportation of renewable energy, the infrastructure could be used to capture and transport water to the areas in the U.S. most in need of potable water sources. They suggest that “Utilizing existing infrastructure is the only approach that meets the urgency of the moment.” 

They highlight the successful reuse of existing pipelines for new purposes and the experience that oil majors already have in constructing, setting up, and, where necessary, changing the purpose of their pipeline infrastructure. Therefore, using disused oil and gas pipelines, as renewable alternatives become more prevalent, could be the answer to America’s water scarcity problem. 

Repurposing pipelines would be infinitely cheaper than constructing a new mega-pipeline. The existing expertise of oil and gas firms would support the repurposing projects and could attract federal funding as a sustainable emergency response action. In addition, it would avoid oil and gas pipelines eventually falling into disuse thereby putting the infrastructure to waste. 

Oil and gas pipelines are being repurposed or have the potential to be repurposed for various other energy delivery options. So, could the potential of these huge existing structures win Big Oil the favor of skeptics as well as helping to support the green energy movement without totally disowning fossil fuels? As strategies for hydrogen transportation in old gas lines become more prevalent, so too could alternative uses such as water and other energy transportation.

 By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

Old coal plant is now mining bitcoin for a utility company

Bitcoin is breathing new life into another ailing power plant.

TIM DE CHANT - 9/24/2021

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Aurich Lawson / Getty

Bitcoin’s massive power consumption is the cryptocurrency’s dirty secret. To mine bitcoin, computers across the globe chew through enough electricity to power a medium size country, somewhere on the order of the Netherlands or Poland depending on the estimate.

FURTHER READING Private-equity firm revives zombie fossil-fuel power plant to mine bitcoin

In fact, electricity has become such a significant factor that one private equity firm owns a power plant to mine bitcoin. The company, Greenidge Generation, said at one point that they could mine one bitcoin for less than $3,000. Even today—at $40,000 per bitcoin, some 30 percent off its peak—the potential for profit is real.

Which is why an investor-owned utility has dropped a containerized data center outside a coal-fired power plant 10 miles north of St. Louis. Ameren, the utility, was struggling to keep the 1,099 MW power plant running profitably when wholesale electricity prices dropped. But it wasn’t well suited to running only when demand was high, so-called peaker duty. Instead, they’re experimenting with running it full-time and using the excess electricity to mine bitcoin.

Can’t cope with the load

Ameren executives reportedly blame wind and solar power for the load variability that taxes the 55-year-old power plant. The utility claims that mining bitcoin could reduce its carbon footprint by allowing it to run its plants more consistently rather than ramping them up and down, which they say can increase emissions.

“We have pretty dramatic changes in load minute by minute, second by second at times,” Warren Wood, the utility’s vice president of regulatory and legislative affairs, told E&E News. But when it’s running full-time, they only have to take power away from the mining operations. Wood said it takes about 20 seconds to divert power back to the grid.

Compared with gas peakers, which typically need at least five minutes to ramp up to full capacity, that’s pretty quick. But it’s also incredibly slow when compared with grid-scale batteries, which can respond within milliseconds.

Across the entire grid, cryptocurrency mining operations could “add a lot of value, particularly how fast they can move up and down, Joshua Rhodes, a research associate at the University of Texas at Austin, told E&E News. “It can have a positive emissions impact if it’s run the right way,” he said. “It can also increase emissions if it’s not.”

“Slippery slope”


FURTHER READING   Musk: Bitcoin is bad for climate (and you can’t buy Teslas with it anymore)

Ameren attempted to get rate payers to foot a portion of the bill for its experiment, but Missouri’s consumer advocate pushed back. “If Ameren Missouri wants to enter into speculative commodities, like virtual currencies, then it should do so as a non-regulated service where ratepayers are unexposed to the economics of them,” Geoff Marke, chief economist for the Missouri Office of the Public Counsel, wrote in a filing. “This endeavor is beyond the scope of intended electric utility regulation, and, if allowed, creates a slippery slope where ratepayers could be asked to put up capital for virtually anything.”

The utility says that if its bitcoin experiment pans out, it could attach similar containerized data centers to wind and solar farms to soak up excess electricity profitably in times of high supply or low demand. The coal-fired power plant that's being used in the experiment is scheduled to be shut down in 2028.

Ameren says that so far it’s pleased with the project, which has mined 20 coins and mints a new one at a rate of one every 15 days or so. Whether the math continues to work depends largely on the cost of running the plant and the price of bitcoin, which is highly volatile. Based on today’s prices, the company has made about $800,000 since it switched on the miners in April.

 British Columbia

Immigrant nurses in B.C. say language proficiency tests a barrier to practice

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Anne Ignacio took the IELTS exam 7 times before switching careers

Christina Jung · CBC News · Posted: Sep 26, 2021 8:00 AM PT | Last Updated: 8 hours ago

Anne Ignacio (centre) and her two sisters. Anne said she started studying kinesiology after being unable to pass the IELTS, one of the requirements for working as a registered nurse in B.C. (Anne Ignacio/Submitted)

Some internationally educated nurses in B.C. say the language proficiency requirement to become a registered nurse is an unnecessary barrier forcing them to give up their career and look for other jobs. Amid the strain of the pandemic on other nurses, they say they feel frustrated, unable to help.

Anne Ignacio and her parents, all internationally educated nurses (IENs), immigrated to Canada from the Philippines almost a decade ago with hopes of continuing to work in their profession.

But after multiple attempts at passing the English proficiency exam, she said they had to make the difficult decision to switch careers.

"The required scores for the English exams, I find it ridiculous," Ignacio said. "They require an overall score ... and they also require you to meet a certain score for each category."

Anne Ignacio's parents, Maria and Ramon. She said when they moved to Canada in 2011, her parents — also internationally educated nurses — had to take "survival jobs" to make ends meet. (Anne Ignacio/Submitted)

IENs can take one of two language tests — the Canadian English Language Benchmark Assessment for Nurses (CELBAN), or the International English Language Testing System (IELTS), which cost around $300 to $400 each to take. The results of both tests expire after two years.

Ignacio, who worked as an operating room nurse for two years before coming to Canada, said she would score above the overall minimum in the IELTS, but come up short by half a mark in one of its categories.

After seven attempts, she said she couldn't afford to take any more tests. 

"That's when I decided if nursing is not working out for me here in Canada, then I will just have to pursue another program," she said. "My job at the time, I only made $13 an hour and it wasn't full time work."

'It would be better if we would have ended up where we expected'

Ignacio's dad, Ramon, who has over 20 years of experience as a dentist in addition to a nursing degree, now works for an organization that helps patients with developmental challenges.

Her mom, Maria, who also has degrees in nursing and hospitality management, works in a housekeeping role at a retirement home.

"Still in the health care field-ish, but it would be better if we would have ended up where we expected with our profession," said the younger Ignacio.

She said before they left, they attended an immigration seminar where "they said there's a lot of opportunities for nurses and doctors because Canada is constantly needing professionals in the health care field."

Leilani Leonardo said she immigrated to Canada in 2011 with the same understanding.

When Leilani Leonardo immigrated to Canada with her family in 2011, she said she was hopeful of being able to continue working as a nurse. But the language proficiency exams, and requirements for further education, were expensive. (Leilani Leonardo/Submitted)

Leilani said she worked for four years as a labour and delivery nurse, and an operating room nurse, at one of Manila's top hospitals.

She said she took the language proficiency test twice before learning she also needed to complete four more years of schooling.

"I just gave up," she said. "The whole system is so convoluted and it's really expensive ... and I had bills and expenses."

But after almost 10 years, Leonardo said she has decided to pursue her nursing registration again, now that her children are older and life is a bit easier to manage.

After almost 10 years, Leilani Leonardo said she is pursuing her nursing registration again, now that her children are older and life is a bit easier to manage. (Leilani Leonardo/submitted)

"I'm really excited and I'm hopeful. I managed to save up a little bit and I'm ready to do it again to at least prove that I can do it."

Petition for change

Sara Jackson, who has been teaching English as a second language to internationally educated health care professionals since 2000, said she's seen students try for years to meet the high language requirements and eventually give up to pursue another career.

"It was heartbreaking because they were just stuck," said Jackson, also a registered nurse. "The system is not designed to break people but it does."

In 2019, she said she decided to put out a petition to lower the required IELTS and CELBAN scores for IENs.

"I have sent this petition to every nursing regulatory body across Canada and to the Ministry of Health," she said.

• B.C. health-care workers 'at the end of their ropes' as 1 in 4 consider quitting, union says

In an email statement to CBC, the British Columbia College of Nursing and Midwives said they work with the Ministry of Health and the National Nursing Assessment Service (NNAS) — which evaluates the educational and professional credentials of IENs — to regularly update and streamline the registration process.

"We are working collaboratively with the Ministry of Health, NNAS, and other partners to continuously ensure that our processes protect the public and ensure that nursing standards are met," they said.

B.C.'s Ministry of Health said they are aware of concerns over test accessibility, costs, score requirements and delays, especially for immigrants.

"In response to processing delays due to English Language Testing requirements by National Nursing Assessment Service, effective July 8, 2021, applicants can defer their language assessment until they apply for licensing registration in B.C.," the ministry said in a written statement. 

 

World’s Top Shale Oil Field Is Still Spewing Methane by the Ton

Zachary R. Mider and Rachel Adams-Heard
Thu, 23 September 2021, 


(Bloomberg) -- When researchers flew over an Energy Transfer LP facility in the Permian Basin of West Texas two months ago, a NASA-designed sensor on their airplane detected a colossal plume of methane pouring into the air.

Over the next two weeks, they returned twice and found large amounts of the powerful greenhouse gas each time. It was just one of many persistent methane emitters discovered by an aerial survey conducted by the Environmental Defense Fund over the largest U.S. oil field in July and August.

The invisible leak was later calculated at more than a ton per hour, with a short-term impact on the atmosphere equivalent to about 47,000 idling cars.

Halting methane leaks has become one of the most important fronts in the fight against climate change, and companies across the U.S. energy industry have been pledging to curb their emissions of the gas. But the study released Thursday shows a shocking amount of pollution continues.

Methane is the chief component of natural gas and packs more than 80 times the planet-warming power of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. It often escapes undetected by companies that produce and transport natural gas, and in some cases methane is intentionally vented to prevent equipment failure.

The results of the flyovers don’t appear to show much progress compared to a similar survey conducted in 2019, said David Lyon, a senior scientist at EDF. “Emissions are still very high, so there’s still a lot of opportunities for companies to reduce.”

EDF found emissions at a total of 533 different locations, including 149 persistent ones, where plumes were spotted in the same place on at least two different days. Energy Transfer and Targa Resources Corp., both Texas-based pipeline operators, were among those with the highest numbers of persistent sources at 11 and 16, respectively.

In all, emissions from persistent locations made up about 45% of all methane EDF detected over the course of the survey. EOG Resources Inc. had the highest number of persistent locations among oil and gas producers, with eight sites that had a plume on more than one day during the survey.

An Energy Transfer spokeswoman said she couldn’t speak to the accuracy of the survey data. The company complies with an air permit in place at the compressor station found emitting methane and regularly monitors the facility for emissions, she said.

A representative for EOG said the company believes its methane-emissions performance in the Permian “compares favorably against others in the industry” and that it would review the data for accuracy. Targa didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The EDF survey used an airplane operated by Carbon Mapper, a nonprofit that partners with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It’s able to see only the largest plumes of gas, sometimes referred to as “super-emitters.”

The best way for companies to eliminate these super-emitters is to perform their own regular inspections, Lyon said. Some companies conduct their own aerial surveys to hunt for leaks, while others use stationary monitors at their sites.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules require companies to inspect oil and gas wells regularly for leaks, but those rules apply only to new facilities. The agency is currently drafting rules that would apply to older facilities, but it hasn’t yet said whether those rules would extend to low-producing oil and gas wells. Many industry groups oppose methane regulations on low producers, arguing that inspection costs could make these wells uneconomic.

EDF said its findings bolster the case for including low-producing wells, which made up about one-tenth of the emissions sources it identified.

When it comes to cracking down on methane emissions, oil and gas industry groups said this month that they actually favor direct regulation over a proposed fee that Democrats have introduced as a way to pay for their $3.5 trillion spending plan. A coalition of trade groups and local chambers of commerce called the measure “punitive” and said taxing methane emissions from oil and gas facilities would threaten Americans’ access to cheap energy.

Any impact from such a fee on drillers’ bottom line would depend heavily on how methane emissions are measured, Citigroup Inc. analysts wrote in a note to clients this week. That’s because methane estimates based on satellite images and aerial surveys tend to show far higher counts than what companies self-report to U.S. regulators.

Zeroing in on the Cause of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity

Although trace amounts of chemicals have been blamed for ill health, a new and comprehensive look at the evidence points the finger at anxiety

Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 

| 25 Sep 2021
Health

MCGILL


Sometimes, science doesn’t give you the answer you wanted. You may be certain you know what is causing a mysterious phenomenon, but a well-done scientific experiment denies you that satisfaction and points you in an unexpected direction. Reality can be stranger than hypotheses.

Multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) is one of those mysterious phenomena that science, when applied correctly, has the power to resolve. (As a side note, MCS can also be found under the larger umbrella of idiopathic environmental intolerance or IEI.) Put succinctly, it’s the complaint that some people are harmed by small concentrations of chemicals that the rest of us tolerate. Think perfumes, air fresheners, paints, scented products. It is a syndrome, a group of symptoms that always occur together, but those symptoms, to the great frustration of medical professionals, are often non-specific: they can have dozens and dozens of potential causes. They are commonly things like fatigue, headaches, and a general sense of not being well. The full list of potential symptoms involves every organ system in the body.

When a patient consults a doctor about non-specific symptoms and a battery of tests reveals nothing, it can be irritating. “The symptoms are clearly there,” the patient thinks, “why can’t my doctor find what’s causing them?” Which is why when they are given a diagnosis, even one that turns out to be wrong or fake, it feels reassuring. A diagnosis provides information about the condition and paves the way to meet other people with the diagnosis who can offer moral support and potential solutions.

I bring up MCS in this context because the question of what causes it has been addressed by a massive report that was published earlier this summer (in French only). In fact, to call it a report is to show modesty on behalf of its authors. At over 800 pages and with an emphasis on educating the reader about the many discoveries and technological innovations that helped researchers probe the mystery of MCS, it is a veritable textbook on multiple chemical sensitivity.

This textbook was commissioned by Quebec’s Ministry of Health and Social Services because of the magnitude of the problem in Canada. As the authors remark, the number of medical appointments made by people with MCS in Canada is much higher than that of a similar population. Quebec’s public health agency, the INSPQ, was thus tasked with summarizing the literature on the subject (over 4,000 papers and documents), and my hat’s off to the textbook’s many authors for this colossal work.

MCS was first described in 1956 and in the intervening 65 years, a number of hypotheses have been formulated to explain what its underlying cause may be. Could people with MCS have a genetic predisposition, a change in their DNA, that would trigger this sensitivity? We already know that certain changes can affect the activity of our enzymes tasked with metabolizing foreign substances. We can imagine a similar scenario in which molecules from a perfume end up causing some sort of toxicity because of the impaired function of an important enzyme. Genetic studies of MCS have so far produced contradictory results, in part because determining who belongs to the MCS group is not easy. There is no diagnostic test that can confirm someone has MCS. It is a diagnosis of exclusion, what is left after ruling out a long list of possibilities. So who participates in a genetic study of MCS can be just about anyone who self-identifies as having the syndrome, and this can fudge the data. So far, the INSPQ report concludes, the lack of reliability of these genetic studies means we cannot blame MCS on specific changes in the DNA. As we have seen with handedness, height, asthma and other traits, however, it may be that multiple genes all make small contributions to MCS, but this remains to be proven.

Another hypothesis is that these chemicals would have a neurotoxic effect: they would directly alter the normal functioning of the brain. Various mechanisms were proposed, including one poetically called “limbic kindling” which suggests that small, repeated exposures of the brain to a substance leads to a much-amplified response later on even in the absence of exposure. The idea is that these small, early exposures “kindled” or set fire to the electrical activity of the brain and the metaphorical fire is now self-sustained. While scientists seemingly agree that the limbic system—the parts of our brain involved in emotion, memory, learning, and motivation—indeed plays a role in MCS, they disagree on whether the dreaded chemicals are toxic to it or if the impact on the limbic system is due to the anxiety of anticipating the presence of the chemical. More on that later.

Then there is the immune system. Could MCS be an allergy? Laboratory tests proved negative. Could MCS be a type of immunodeficiency or an autoimmune condition like lupus? The data we have so far seem to disprove these ideas, although high levels of pro-inflammatory molecules seen with MCS (but not unique to it) may contribute to the condition.

The INSPQ textbook goes on to survey the remaining hypotheses—blaming oxidative stress, or inflammation inside the brain or the spinal cord, or the sense of smell itself—but while some of these systems are altered in some way in MCS, nothing could be pinned down as a specific cause. Studies on the sense of smell are particularly revealing, however. People with MCS who enrolled in these studies had no better detection threshold than people without MCS when it came to smells, thus ruling out a hypersensitivity of the nose, but surprisingly enough they were worse at identifying and distinguishing familiar smells. Not better; worse. Moreover, in a 2016 study, participants with MCS would start reporting symptoms before the volatile chemicals were even deployed. Faced with all of this information, the INSPQ report ends with the remaining hypothesis: that multiple chemical sensitivity is an anxiety disorder.

It’s worth highlighting the fact that people who suffer from an anxiety disorder are not “crazy.” Our brain is an organ, like our liver and lungs, and it can malfunction. There is an unfortunate stigma around mental health and a severe underfunding of services meant to address it. But anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder—these are as real as high blood pressure and asthma, and they have genuine and debilitating effects on the body. Summarizing the research on MCS, the INSPQ report proposes that chronic anxiety can explain all of the symptoms associated with MCS. Anxiety is characterized by the anticipation of a perceived danger, which leads the person to always be on the lookout for this supposed threat, thus creating a state of permanent stress. The perception of a threat, in this case, a chemical, arises through a bit of conditioning: if the chemical is originally detected when someone’s symptoms independently manifest themselves, an association is made which leads to a catastrophizing anticipation of the next exposure. Physical consequences, like insomnia, depression, and headaches, trickle down from this state of constant anxiety.

This is a real health issue, and the INSPQ proposes that specialized centres dedicated to MCS be set up to address this significant problem. While it is challenging to know how many people are affected by MCS given the lack of proper diagnostic tools, the scientific literature reveals numbers between 0.5 and 3% of the population when it is diagnosed by a medical doctor, and up to 32% (a third) of the population when it is self-diagnosed, with a higher risk being seen in women and in adults between the ages of 40 and 60. This is not a problem that can be ignored.

But blaming trace amounts of chemicals is simply not supported by the evidence at this point. If you cannot reliably tell when you are being exposed to the chemical; if you start reporting symptoms before the chemical is even released; if your brain is worse at identifying smells than the average person; if it has been shown that these chemicals, present in trace amounts, are not even absorbed by your body; then it is unlikely this chemical is responsible for the debilitating symptoms. This latest summary of the evidence points us in a different direction than the original name of the syndrome did, and while it will not please everyone, it paves the way for more effective treatments of a very real condition.

Take-home message:

-Multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) is a chronic condition, often blamed on exposure to trace amounts of chemicals, that is accompanied by a wide variety of symptoms

-Since it was first described in 1956, scientists have investigated many hypotheses to explain how tiny concentrations of chemicals could affect people with MCS: hypotheses based on genetics, neurology, the immune system, the sense of smell, oxidative stress, and the mind influencing the body

-An 840-page report by Quebec’s public health agency summarizes the state of our knowledge on MCS and comes to the conclusion that trace amounts of chemicals are not to blame and that MCS is a type of anxiety disorder in which anticipation of a danger causes very real and debilitating physical symptoms

@CrackedScience

 The Current·Back to the Land

How BIPOC farmers are working to make rural agriculture more diverse

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Farmers of colour often forced more than white farmers to prove credibility: expert

CBC Radio · Posted: Sep 26, 2021 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: 7 hours ago

Aliyah Fraser started Lucky Bug Farm on a rented plot of land in Erin, Ont., earlier this year. As one of the only Black farmers in her area, she hopes to bring produce such as collard greens and Scotch bonnet peppers to local markets. (Submitted by Aliyah Fraser)

The Current23:36Back to the Land: How a first-generation farmer hopes to make rural agriculture more diverse

On her farm in small-town Ontario, Aminah Haghighi is trying to shake the perception that farmers are typically older white men.

Though she acknowledges she didn't have much of a green thumb when she moved to Hillier, Ont., two hours east of Toronto, last year, the first-generation farmer now sells a cornucopia of produce from her quarter-acre of land.

"I'm not an outdoorsy person, but I really, really felt connected with growing food," she told Back to the Land host Duncan McCue.

"I saw that there weren't a lot of people that looked like me in this. And so I thought, maybe, if I'm not going to do it, then who else is going to look like me in this space," said Haghighi, 31, who is of Iranian and Filipino descent.

Even though some of Haghighi's family in the Philippines are rice farmers, she admits she couldn't picture herself in agriculture

For most people, the childhood nursery rhyme, Old MacDonald Had a Farm, conjures up an image of the typical farmer: a "white guy," says Jacqueline L. Scott, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto who studies the intersection of race and nature.

"Nature is coded as a white space; the city is coded as a multicultural space," she told McCue.

"So when Black people, people of colour show up in nature — whether in the rural areas, on the farms or in the wilderness in outdoor recreation, you're seen as out of place. It's always like, 'Oh, what are you doing here?'"

• What one Ontario farming group is doing to get more racialized farmers into agriculture

Whether selling produce at markets or performing as cowboys at the Calgary Stampede, Black farmers have a long history in Canada, Scott says.

"If you go to Niagara-on-the-Lake, at one point in the 1850s, a huge chunk of the population there were Black farmers," she said. If you visited St. Jacob's, Ont., around the same time, many of the vendors selling at markets would have also been Black farmers.

"But if you don't know the history, and you go today, it's like, 'Oh, Black people weren't here.'"

Jacqueline L. Scott is a Ph.D candidate at the University of Toronto who studies the intersection of race and nature. (Submitted by Jacqueline L. Scott)

From city to country

Young farmers like Haghighi are fighting to upend that assumption.

Spurred by a love of food and the COVID-19 pandemic, Haghighi started Raining Gold Family Growers late last year. She focuses on ecologically minded farming methods — there is no tilling to reduce weeds and efforts are made to reduce water use. This summer, she employed two BIPOC workers.

Raining Gold began with a backyard garden at Haghighi's Toronto home in the midst of the city's first lockdown.

• Meet some of Toronto's food justice advocates championing Black food sovereignty

"I had no idea what I was doing — zero," she said.

With the help of YouTube and books, she had grown a "jungle" of food: tomatoes, peppers and "crazy cucumber plants that would have overtaken my house" by the end of her first summer.

When friends announced they were moving east from Toronto to Prince Edward County, a two-hour drive away, Haghighi and her husband, Bryce, took notice. The pair scraped together their savings for a down payment on land in the county.

Grown at her quarter-acre plot in Prince Edward County, Haghighi sells produce from microgreens to tomatoes in subscription boxes and at local markets.

But marketing herself as a woman of colour farmer in the rural county of about 24,000 residents has been a source of pushback from locals and hateful comments online, she said.

• Documentarian with Sask. roots works to reclaim myth of John Ware, the Black Prairie cowboy

"One of the things that was very difficult was that people would look at us and would assume that we weren't from here or assume that we don't live down the street, and therefore we don't get to receive the same treatment that the other white folks would be getting," she said.

Scott said those perceptions can cause BIPOC farmers to feel as though they "have to prove their credibility, their competence as farmers, because they are not what we are expecting to see."

Changing the food system

When she started Lucky Bug Farm in Erin, Ont., earlier this year, Aliyah Fraser says she wanted to prove there is space in the food system for BIPOC farmers.

"We are the ones who think outside of the normal box of just the way that things are done, and I think if there are more of us in the food system, we can just create greater change," said Fraser, 25.

Scott stands beside a plaque commemorating the history of Black settlement in Ontario's Oro Township. (Submitted by Jacqueline L. Scott)

At the Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont., market where Fraser sells produce such as collard greens and Scotch bonnet peppers, she's one of the only Black growers.

While reception to Fraser's offerings has been largely positive, she says some shoppers visit the stall and "assume that I'm not the grower until I say those words," often believing that her partner, who is white, is the farmer.

"We're [Black farmers] always bumping up against other people's assumptions and expectations for us and having to really set the record straight often. And I mean, that's just a form of racism."

• Afro-Caribbean farmers' market opens in Little Jamaica

Scott notes that the majority of vendors at farmers' markets are white, while Black and brown agriculture workers — many from Latin American and Caribbean countries — are in the background.

"It's sold as this wholesome, healthy, alternative way of producing food. But it is white people who are doing the selling. It's mainly white people who are buying," Scott said. Black and brown people "very rarely get the public face, the public image."

Fraser says as a Black farmer, people often make assumptions about her role in agriculture. (Donalee McIntyre)

Accessing land, resources for BIPOC farmers

An additional barrier is the significant overhead costs associated with starting a farm — and historically low rates of rural land ownership among people of colour, Fraser says.

In fact, 2016 Statistics Canada data found that women are more likely than men to rent or lease land.

Fraser has been renting a quarter-acre of land since February but will move to a new plot where she feels more supported, not only as a Black farmer but as someone new to agriculture.

"I have luckily found a space for next year where the landowners are white, but they understand that it takes time to build a business and they understand that it takes time to build soil, and they understand that farming and food growing for market is really tough," she said.

Resources are top of mind for Haghighi. In addition to starting Raining Gold, purchasing the family's property in Prince Edward County provided an opportunity to set her children up for the future.

"Creating generational wealth for our children is of utmost importance to us because we don't come from any financial privilege at all, and we don't want our kids to have the same issues that we did," she said.

• BACK TO THE LAND
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• BACK TO THE LAND
  Prescribing nature: Research suggests the outdoors are good for your mental health

Given the challenges she's faced — and worries about her kids — Haghighi says she's not sure if she will stay in Prince Edward County for the long term.

But she says it's clear there's interest for the kind of farm she runs.

When Haghighi posted an online ad for two farm crew members that encouraged BIPOC individuals and those who face systemic barriers to traditional farming to apply, she says she received more than 300 responses.

"It's funny when other old, white men farmers say, 'Well, nobody wants to work on my farm,'" Haghighi said. "I think that people really resonated with the job posting and with me as a potential employer.

"People do want to do this ... there's just no opportunity for it."

---

Written by Jason Vermes. Interviews with Aminah Haghighi and Jacqueline L. Scott produced by Zoe Tennant.

Nfld. & Labrador

In the frigid depths of the Labrador Sea, these scientists are studying coral in novel ways

Local researchers on CCGS Amundsen spent 28-day mission in northern waters


Jane Adey · CBC News · Posted: Sep 26, 2021 

Maxime Geoffroy is a research scientist at the Marine Institute in St. John's. He's the chief scientist aboard a research vessel that explored the depths of the Labrador Sea this summer. (Maxime Geoffroy/Twitter

Two heads are better than one at solving a problem, as the old saying goes.

Well, imagine the strides in ocean science when 36 researchers come together on a month-long deep-sea mission.

That's exactly what happened this past summer on board the Canadian research icebreaker CCGS Amundsen, as part of its annual science program.

The trip eyed the deep-water corals of the northern Labrador Sea and Baffin Bay, seeking to reveal answers to mysteries about how ecosystems far, far below the surface actually operate.

This is a type of coral called a sea pen, taken from an area called the Hatton Sill at a depth of 698 m. Sea pens live on soft areas of the ocean floor, anchoring themselves in the sediment with what's called a peduncle. 

(Submitted by Barbara Neves)

Maxime Geoffroy, a fish specialist with the Marine Institute in St. John's and chief scientist for the mission, describes the 28-day journey as a holistic approach to science. He says having such a wide variety of scientists on board one vessel — from geologists to people analyzing water nutrients — can bring researchers a new understanding of the complexity of the ocean.

"If I'm looking at fish and I don't really look at the habitat where they could spawn near the bottom, then I lose a whole perspective of their lifecycle," he said.

"But if I can sit at lunch with a specialist of the bottom habitat, and have a discussion about why these fish are there ... then it brings a whole new perspective about what we could expect in the future, in terms of reaction to the environment."
Deep water corals

Barbara Neves, a research scientist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in St. John's, studies corals.

While trees on land act as a habitat for birds, insects and mammals, on the sea floor, corals have the same important function, she explains.

"So you might see shrimp or fish or little bivalves or little worms that live in association with them, because they want them to as a place to rest or to feed or to hide," said Neves.

Research scientist Barbara Neves on board the CCGS Amundsen.

 (Submitted by DFO)

Researchers hope to be able to confirm basic ecological questions about whether or not deep-sea corals feed on the same kind of food as corals closer to shore.

Neves says this expedition was also critical for widening their knowledge base about the distribution and variety of corals, as well as answering questions about the depth limits of corals and how quickly the tree-like animals grow.

"We've seen sites that we had never visited before, and we saw a lot of very amazing biodiversity on the sea floor. And we did some experiments that we had never conducted before," she said.


A remotely operated vehicle allowed coral researchers to see, up close, deep-sea corals living on the sea floor. (Submitted by DFO)

One experiment involved what Neves calls a staining chamber.

The arm of a remotely operated vehicle places a round chamber over the top of a coral, covering the animal. A deflated balloon, filled with dye, sits inside the chamber.

An external handle triggers a needle to puncture the balloon and then the dye is released, staining the coral.

"We left it there for a few hours. Then, we recovered the chamber later and we plan on going back to that site in about two years to recover that coral, and then examine the skeleton that now will have a stain mark," said Neves.

Watch scientists in action aboard the CCGS Amundsen:

Watch deep-sea experiments in the Labrador Sea
A team of scientists are studying coral in new ways in the frigid waters off Labrador. 4:10

According to Memorial University researcher Evan Edinger, deep sea corals are oceanographic recorders. Edinger studies corals and other organisms that make their skeletons from calcium carbonate.

"We bring back these coral skeletons, we can look at both how fast they're growing and how long the corals live, but also what the corals can record in terms of oceanographic change," said Edinger.

Trees on land have growth rings, and those rings can help reconstruct change in climate over time. Edinger says corals have growth rings, too.

He says their experiments will hopefully give further clarity on how often deep-sea coral growth rings are formed.

"To figure out whether the growth lines are formed annually, which is what we think, or if there are some annual growth rate for more than one ring per year, that actually matters quite a lot," said Edinger.

"We want to be able to understand what the growth rings mean and exactly how old these species are, so that we can understand just how vulnerable are the ecosystems that they're built around."
Ocean acidification

As the climate changes, the ocean absorbs more carbon dioxide. This means the ocean environment becomes more acidic.

The more acidic the water becomes, the more difficult it is for corals to form their skeletons.

"Think of osteoporosis, but apply it to coral skeletons that are under conditions of ocean acidification," Edinger said.

Memorial University researcher Evan Edinger studies corals.

 (Submitted by Barbara Neves)

"They can make a skeleton, but their skeleton isn't going to last very long in terms of actually building a habitat. So how does that change affect the organisms that build habitat for other organisms? Well, we don't know. We're trying to figure that out."

Because of the collaborative nature of this deep-sea voyage, coral scientists have a better chance of answering those kinds of questions.

While some scientists focused on corals, there were other scientists collecting water samples to measure the dissolved calcium carbonate that corals depend on for growth.

While the at-sea time for scientists aboard the CCGS Amundsen was lengthy, the work of poring over the collected material will be even lengthier.

Geoffroy says the data analysis could take one to two years before it's complete.

Researchers watch the mission from inside a control room. (Submitted by Barbara Neves)

An remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, places a staining chamber on top of a deep-sea coral. (Amundsen Science)

Deep storage: UVic leads plan to pump carbon into rock under sea floor off Island

Darron Kloster / Times Colonist
SEPTEMBER 26, 2021 

Kate Moran, president of Ocean Networks Canada and lead on the Solid Carbon Project, says many of the systems that will be used in the demonstration already exist, such as the drilling technology, pipelines and injection wells and carbon-capture technology. “The potential is enormous,” she says. ADRIAN LAM, TIMES COLONIST

Scientists warn that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are driving the Earth toward a point of no return when it comes to the dire consequences of climate change.

But what if you could pump those gases into rock deep below the ocean floor?

The University of Victoria and its Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions and Ocean Networks Canada divisions are preparing a demonstration project off the coast of Vancouver Island to do just that. The demo, which could be ready for the Cascadia Basin by 2024, could eventually lead to sequestering gigatonnes of emissions around the globe that are driving climate change.

Technology is now being refined to outfit a floating drilling platform with turbines that would gather carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and push it through a pipe to holes bored into the basalt formation. There, scientists say, CO2 would react with minerals and crystallize into rock over time, with hundreds of metres of sediment acting as a sealant.

Since about 90% of the ocean crust is basaltic rock — a porous formation from cooling volcanic lava — researchers say locking up carbon this way could put a ­“serious dent” in the billions of tonnes of emissions caused by humans each year. It’s currently estimated that human activity adds about 51 gigatons (51 billion tons) of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere each year.

“The potential is enormous,” says Kate Moran, president of Ocean Networks Canada and lead on the Solid Carbon Project. She said many of the systems that will be used in the demonstration already exist, such as the drilling technology, pipelines and injection wells and carbon-capture technology — not to mention human resources in the oil and gas industry.

“Several of those companies see it as a transfer of their business and workers into green businesses,” said Moran, adding a Japanese company has already offered a ship for the demonstration.

It’s estimated a demonstration project would cost between $30 million and $60 million, with private companies stepping up and governments likely to follow, said Moran.

The Cascadia Basin, an area more than 100 kilometres off the coast of the Island on the Juan de Fuca Plate, is one of the most studied ocean floors in the world, said Moran.

The centre of the basin is about 2,600 metres deep and a sub-sea platform by Ocean Networks Canada shows a crust of volcanic rocks under a 200-metre-thick blanket of sediment.

She said decades of government surveys for seismic studies have left existing bore holes that can be used in the demonstration.

Science used in Iceland

The science of turning CO2 into rock is already being used in Iceland, but on a much smaller scale. CO2 is injected in a dissolved state and it mineralizes rapidly, within two years, at shallow depths.

Geo-chemical simulations conducted by scientists at the University of Calgary, a research partner with UVic’s Pacific Institute of Climate Change, have demonstrated that “gigaton-scale” carbon dioxide storage is possible when plumes of captured CO2 are directly injected into deep ocean basalt. There, the CO2 reacts with minerals, and over time, forms a solid carbonate rock.

The results have been published in the Environmental Science & Technology journal.

University of Calgary associate professor Ben Tutolo said the Iceland method of rapid mineralization using dissolved CO2 is water-intensive, costly and difficult to scale up.

“The reaction doesn’t have to be completed in days or even months, as long as the CO2 doesn’t escape before the process is complete, even if it takes centuries,” Tutolo said.

He noted that aquifers beneath the ocean floor are typically topped with more than 300 metres of “very impermeable” sediment, and tests using tracers have shown the water in these aquifers has lasted for thousands of years and is not interfering with the sea water.

“Even if it did, two and a half kilometres of sea pressure [depth] give its lots of chances to dissolve.”

Tutolo said human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are driving the Earth toward “tipping points at which dire consequences of climate change will be inevitable.”

He said scaling up the technology could help make a “significant dent” in atmospheric concentrations of CO2 through utilizing the vast quantity of global sub-seafloor basalts, with the capacity to store up to 250,000 gigatons.

Emissions reductions still needed

Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions executive director Sybil Seitzinger said the findings could be “game-changing” in climate action.

But technologies like this won’t replace the need for urgent emission reductions if we are to limit average global temperature increase to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels, said Seitzinger.

Earlier this year, the United Nations warned climate change is happening so rapidly that soon there will be “no place to run, no place to hide” on the planet.

And Moran said the spectre of climate change is hitting close to home, especially as people experience flooding , heat domes and wildfires. “That will only accelerate,” she said.

There is also ongoing work on the social, regulatory and investor acceptance of the plan.

The next steps for the Solid Carbon Project will include further investigation of the mineralization processes, efficient well injection strategies and ocean system architectures — all leading up to a planned pilot-scale injection into the Cascadia Basin by the middle of the decade.

dkloster@timescolonist.com