It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, December 26, 2021
Kawasaki Heavy says liquefied hydrogen carrier departs Japan for Australia
TOKYO : The world’s first liquefied hydrogen carrier left Japan on Friday to pick up its first cargo in Australia, with a return to Japan expected around late February, Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd said.
The AUS$500 million (US$362 million) pilot project, led by Japan’s Kawasaki and backed by the Japanese and Australian governments, was originally scheduled to ship its first cargo of hydrogen extracted from brown coal in Australia in the spring.
But it was delayed to the second half of Kawasaki’s financial year, which runs from October to March, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It depends on the weather, but the hydrogen carrier ‘Suiso Frontier’ is due to arrive in Australia in mid-January and is expected to return to Japan in around late February,” a spokesperson said.
A one-way trip takes about 16 days.
Kawasaki Heavy aims to replicate its success as a major liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker producer with hydrogen, a key element that may help decarbonise industries and aid the global energy transition.
In March this year, the Japanese-Australian venture started producing hydrogen from brown coal in the test project that aims to show liquefied hydrogen can be produced and exported safely to Japan.
Partners on the Australian side of the project include Japan’s Electric Power Development Co (J-Power), Iwatani Corp, Marubeni Corp, Sumitomo Corp and Australia’s AGL Energy Ltd, whose mine is supplying the brown coal.
(US$1 = 1.3816 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Yuka Obayashi; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
Kawasaki Heavy says liquefied hydrogen carrier departs Japan for Australia Source link Kawasaki Heavy says liquefied hydrogen carrier departs Japan for Australia
Hong Kong researchers say COVID masks could pollute over 54,000 Olympic pools worth of oceans Posted : 2021-12-25 An employee sorts used masks at the Greenwishes waste sorting center in Gennevilliers near Paris, in this April 19 file photo. AFP-Yonhap
Discarded surgical masks which fall into the sea could be releasing microplastics as they degrade, polluting an amount of water equal to 54,800 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Dr He Yuhe at City University's State Key Laboratory of Marine Pollution made the discovery after spotting discarded masks at local beaches, which have seen an influx of local visitors looking for weekend haunts amid the coronavirus pandemic.
"The COVID-19 pandemic is still ongoing, and naturally if people are wearing surgical masks, then people are also dropping them," He said.
"We really urge residents to be alert when they are out in the countryside and properly dispose of their used surgical masks to prevent them from being swept into the sea by wind or rain," the doctor added.
Surgical masks have become a necessity to prevent the spread of COVID-19, with an estimated 129 billion used worldwide each month in 2020.
As the masks are made from woven plastic fibers, any discarded face coverings could take anywhere from 100 to 1,000 years to fully decompose.
The United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration defines microplastics as any type of plastic fragment less than 5mm in diameter.
Once in the sea, the ocean currents and ultraviolet rays from the sun break masks down into tiny fragments or fibers. He was able to replicate the movement of waves in a lab by placing them in bottles of man-made seawater and shaking them.
His lab study found that one mask, weighing between 3 to 4 grams, could fully break down into 880,000 to 1.17 million microplastic pieces after nine days, while already damaged ones could break down faster.
He said the figure could be an underestimate as they could not mimic sunlight.
A report by the Hong Kong-based OceansAsia last year estimated that about 1.56 billion single-use surgical masks would have entered the sea in 2020. He estimated that this could lead to the release of 1,370 trillion pieces of microplastic.
Face masks and plastic containers wash up on the shoreline after the APL England cargo ship lost about 40 shipping containers in rough seas off the New South Wales (NSW) coast, near Port Botany, Sydney, Australia, in this May 2020 file photo. EPA-Yonhap
At a concentration of 10 microplastics per ml of water, the CityU professor said the total amount would pollute a volume of seawater equal to 54,800 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
He found about one-third of the pieces were less than 10mm in size, while another 25 per cent of the fragments were bigger than 50mm.
These minuscule pieces of plastic can be eaten by microscopic crustaceans called "copepods," which are found in almost every saltwater and freshwater habitat, providing food for larger animals including fish and even whales.
He tested the impact on one species, Tigriopus japonicus, and found their reproductive abilities were reduced by 22 per cent, while their nutrient intake and growth rate had also slowed.
The researchers said they were worried it could produce a domino effect on marine ecosystems, especially as masks were not the only source of microplastics in the ocean.
Microplastics from other waste, which can include drink bottles, cosmetics, clothing and fishing nets, are already extremely difficult to remove from the environment.
If the copepods were full from eating microplastics, they would end up eating fewer algae, leading to red tides, large blooms of aquatic plants which choke off oxygen in the water and kill other animals.
A reduction in the numbers of copepods because of slower reproduction could also spell decreased food sources for other species, He warned.
"Since the masks are a disease prevention tool, what we really need is stronger enforcement to prevent littering of the masks," said Kenneth Leung Mei-yee, a professor who was also involved in the study.
In a response to the SCMP, the Environmental Protection Department said residents should not leave used face masks and "any other handy items" unattended when out in the countryside.
The department added it was using unmanned aircraft systems to monitor the city's 1,200 meter seashore, which shortened the time required to survey 65 coastal sites in the Northern, Tai Po, Sai Kung, Sha Tin, Tuen Mun, Southern and Islands districts.
When did scientists first warn humanity about climate change?
Scientists first began to worry about climate change toward the end of the 1950s, Spencer Weart, a historian and retired director of the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics in College Park, Maryland, told Live Science in an email. "It was just a possibility for the 21st century which seemed very far away, but seen as a danger that should be prepared for."
The scientific community began to unite for action on climate change in the 1980s, and the warnings have only escalated since. However, these recent warnings are just the tip of the melting iceberg; people's interest in how our activities affect the climate actually dates back thousands of years.
As far back as ancient Greece (1200 B.C. to A.D. 323), people debated whether draining swamps or cutting down forests might bring more or less rainfall to the region, according to Weart's Discovery of Global Warming website, which is hosted by the American Institute of Physics and shares the name with his book "The Discovery of Global Warming" (Harvard University Press, 2008).
The ancient Greek debates were among the first documented climate change discussions, but they focused only on local regions. It wasn't until a few millennia later, in 1896, that Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) became the first person to imagine that humanity could change the climate on a global scale, according to Weart. That's when Arrhenius published calculations in The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science showing that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere could warm the planet.
This work built on the research of other 19th-century scientists, such as Joseph Fourier (1768-1830), who hypothesized that Earth would be far cooler without an atmosphere, and John Tyndall (1820-1893) and Eunice Newton Foote (1819-1888), who separately demonstrated that carbon dioxide and water vapor trapped heat and suggested that an atmosphere could do the same, JSTOR Daily reported.
Arrhenius' climate change predictions were largely spot on. Human activities release carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases that trap radiation from the sun and hold them in the atmosphere to increase temperature like a warming greenhouse, hence the term "greenhouse effect." However, Arrhenius' work was not widely read or accepted at the time, nor was it even intended to serve as a warning to humanity; it can be viewed as such only in hindsight. At the time, his work simply recognized the possibility of humans influencing the global climate and for a long time, people viewed warming as beneficial, according to Weart.
There was some coverage of fossil fuels affecting climate in the general media, according to a now-viral 1912 article first published in the magazine Popular Mechanics, USA Today reported. The article, which ran in a few newspapers in New Zealand and Australia later that year, recognized burning coal and releasing carbon dioxide could increase Earth's temperature, noting that "the effect may be considerable in a few centuries."
Why the 1950s?
The scientific opinion on climate change wouldn't begin to shift until two significant experiments some 60 years after Arrhenius' realization. The first, led by scientist Roger Revelle (1909-1991) in 1957 and published in the journal Tellus, found that the ocean will not absorb all of the carbon dioxide released in humanity's industrial fuel emissions and that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere could, therefore, rise significantly. Three years later, Charles Keeling (1928-2005) published a separate study in Tellus that detected an annual rise in carbon dioxide levels in Earth's atmosphere. With carbon dioxide levels known to affect the climate, scientists began to raise concerns about the impact human-related emissions could have on the world. From there, more studies began highlighting climate change as a potential threat to species and ecosystems around the world. "Scientists first began in 1988 to insist that real action should be taken," Weart said. This occurred at the Toronto Conference on the Changing Atmosphere, where scientists and politicians from around the world gathered to address what was framed as a global threat to Earth's atmosphere, with calls to reduce emissions and knock-on effects such as acid rain.
"By the 1990s, most scientists thought action was necessary, but opposition from fossil fuel companies and ideologists opposed to any government action were effective in obscuring the facts and blocking action," Weart said. "Plus, normal human inertia and unwillingness to do anything without immediate benefits for oneself."
Originally published on Live Science.
Interview
End trade barriers to help tackle climate crisis, says WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala calls for changes to ensure developing nations are resilient to affects of extreme weather
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala: ‘If you can mobilise $26tn [in response to Covid-19], it beggars belief that you can’t mobilise $100bn [for climate finance].’
Removing trade barriers around the world would help to tackle the climate crisis, enable a “just transition” away from fossil fuels and make developing countries more resilient to the impacts of global heating, the head of the World Trade Organization has said.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who took over as director general of the global watchdog last March, said: “Trade is part of the solution, not part of the problem … We need a global effort to climate-proof the supply chains and infrastructure of the most vulnerable economies or risk undoing hard-won economic progress and development.”
She told the Guardian trade would be essential to helping developing countries cope with the effects of extreme weather, which are already being felt. “We need to put in place trade policies to cushion against the negative impacts of climate change, to ensure food security in the face of climate threats [and] provide access to adaptation technologies,” she said.
Developing countries have long been wary of international trade talks, fearing that wealthy countries were using them to protect their own economies while enabling them to export goods to poor countries, and in some cases criticising the WTO for being biased in favour of the rich. Many have also been sceptical of including climate issues, and fear that “environmental” standards insisted on by some developed countries would be used as a cover for raising barriers to cheap imports from the developing world. Green campaigners have also claimed the WTO has encouraged high-carbon trade.
Okonjo-Iweala, a former finance minister of Nigeria and World Bank economist, who is the first African and first woman to head the WTO, moved to reassure doubters. “Trade helps to build resilience. People don’t recognise it but the fact [is] that in times of great difficulty, trade can help move services and goods to where they are needed. Food for instance: trade helps to move food from one area that is not drought-stricken or flood-prone to another.”
Environmental rules could be compatible with trade, she said: “The WTO rules do not preclude people from putting in environmental standards [but] if you’re designing your environmental policies you have to do it in such a way that it’s transparent, and you are not discriminating against like products.”
The WTO last week embarked on an initiative to incorporate environmental concerns into trade, with roadmaps for the reform of fossil fuel subsidies, encouraging sustainability in international trade, and controlling plastic pollution.
Okonjo-Iweala believes that, in the wake of the Cop26 summit, trade will become a vital tool in achieving the drastic cuts necessary in greenhouse gas emissions, helping to shift the global economy to a low-carbon footing. She said: “What is clear is that climate negotiations have shifted from technical discussions to actual implementation … This makes the role of trade and trade policy even more urgent in ensuring a just and effective green transition for all.”
Agreements were signed in Glasgow last month to cut methane around the world, protect forests, and institute a global system of carbon trading under the 2015 Paris agreement, all of which she said the WTO could help with.
But she said developing countries also needed assistance from the rich world, especially in the form of climate finance, which comes from public and private sources in the rich world to help poor countries cut emissions and cope with the effects of extreme weather. Rich countries have so far failed to produce the $100bn in climate finance promised each year to developing countries from 2020, though they are likely to hit the target by 2023.
Okonjo-Iweala said this was not good enough: “If you can mobilise $26tn [in response to Covid-19], it beggars belief from the part of developing countries that you can’t mobilise $100bn [for climate finance]. That’s what’s causing a huge trust deficit.”
The UK should also restore its recent cuts to overseas aid, she added. “We all want the UK to go back to 0.7% [of GDP going to overseas aid, the previous target which was slashed to 0.5% by the chancellor of the exchequer, Rishi Sunak]. It’s been a leader in overseas aid and should continue to lead. So we don’t want to see this cut back.”
Over the next year, countries will be asked to reconsider their national targets on cutting emissions and how to meet them, before the next UN climate meeting, Cop27 in Egypt in November. Okonjo-Iweala said: “We saw promising outcomes from Cop26, but I would not be alone in saying that the world is not yet on track to giving the most vulnerable countries and communities a fighting chance in the face of climate change. The WTO has a vital role to play in harnessing trade as a tool to get us closer to climate targets.”
The question of Free Trade or Protection moves entirely within the bounds of the present system of capitalist production, and has, therefore, no direct interest for us socialists who want to do away with that system.
Indirectly, however, it interests us inasmuch as we must desire as the present system of production to develop and expand as freely and as quickly as possible: because along with it will develop also those economic phenomena which are its necessary consequences, and which must destroy the whole system: misery of the great mass of the people, in consequence of overproduction. This overproduction engendering either periodical gluts and revulsions, accompanied by panic, or else a chronic stagnation of trade; division of society into a small class of large capitalist, and a large one of practically hereditary wage-slaves, proletarians, who, while their numbers increase constantly, are at the same time constantly being superseded by new labor-saving machinery; in short, society brought to a deadlock, out of which there is no escaping but by a complete remodeling of the economic structure which forms it basis.
From this point of view, 40 years ago Marx pronounced, in principle, in favor of Free Trade as the more progressive plan, and therefore the plan which would soonest bring capitalist society to that deadlock. But if Marx declared in favor of Free Trade on that ground, is that not a reason for every supporter of the present order of society to declare against Free Trade? If Free Trade is stated to be revolutionary, must not all good citizens vote for Protection as a conservative plan?
If a country nowadays accepts Free Trade, it will certainly not do so to please the socialists. It will do so because Free trade has become a necessity for the industrial capitalists. But if it should reject Free Trade and stick to Protection, in order to cheat the socialists out of the expected social catastrophe, that will not hurt the prospects of socialism in the least. Protection is a plan for artificially manufacturing manufacturers, and therefore also a plan for artificially manufacturing wage laborers. You cannot breed the one without breeding the other.
The wage laborer everywhere follows in the footsteps of the manufacturer; he is like the "gloomy care" of Horace, that sits behind the rider, and that he cannot shake off wherever he go. You cannot escape fate; in other words, you cannot escape the necessary consequences of your own actions. A system of production based upon the exploitation of wage labor, in which wealth increases in proportion to the number of laborers employed and exploited, such a system is bound to increase the class of wage laborers, that is to say, the class which is fated one day to destroy the system itself. In the meantime, there is no help for it: you must go on developing the capitalist system, you must accelerate the production, accumulation, and centralization of capitalist wealth, and, along with it, the production of a revolutionary class of laborers. Whether you try the Protectionist or the Free Trade will make no difference in the end, and hardly any in the length of the respite left to you until the day when that end will come. For long before that day will protection have become an unbearable shackle to any country aspiring, with a chance of success, to hold its own in the world market.
WAIT, WHAT?!
China Enters into Largest and Longest LNG Import Deal with U.S.
Venture Global will supply the LNG from two facilities in Louisiana (Venture Global)
China has entered into the largest, long-term deal for the importation of U.S. LNG which will be supplied from two sites in Louisiana operated by Venture Global. According to the company, this marks the first LNG supply agreement signed by a U.S. exporter with a division of state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), China’s largest importer of LNG.
The deal, which was first rumored in October, was confirmed with a statement from Venture Global and reported on the Department of Energy’s website. Venture Global LNG and CNOOC Gas & Power Group Co. entered into a 20-year Sales and Purchase Agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, Venture Global will supply two million tons per annum of LNG from its Plaquemines LNG export facility, in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. In addition, CNOOC Gas & Power will purchase an additional 1.5 million tons (MT) of LNG from Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass LNG facility for “a shorter duration.:
“Venture Global is pleased to announce the expansion of our footprint in Asia through two new deals to supply the Chinese market with clean, low-cost US LNG,” said Mike Sabel, Chief Executive Officer of Venture Global LNG. “China is critical to global climate efforts, and LNG supplied by Venture Global will serve as an important addition to their low carbon energy mix for decades. This new long-term partnership with CNOOC builds on our company’s continued momentum in a very active 2021.”
Chinese state media also highlighted the agreement calling it a “move that clearly shows that the phase one trade agreement between China and the US, which covers China's increased purchase of US energy products, are moving forward.” They highlighted that under phase one of the trade deal, China agreed to increase energy imports from the U.S., including LNG, crude oil, refined products and coal, by $52.4 billion over two years above the 2017 baseline. Analysts had accused China to be slow in fulfilling its commitments under the Trump administration trade deal but in announcing this deal used it as an opportunity to call on the U.S. to “create a more favorable environment - both from the political and supply perspectives - for bilateral trade to further expand.” China is citing the LNG deal as it pushes for the U,S, to drop some of the tariffs imposed on its products during the recent trade war.
“As China’s largest LNG importer, CNOOC is committed deeply not only to the mission of securing China’s gas supply, but also to the climate goals of building a carbon-neutral China by 2060,” said Shi Chenggang, Chairman of CNOOC Gas & Power commenting on today’s press release detailing the agreement. “We are pleased to announce our long-term LNG cooperation with Venture Global. By signing the SPAs with Venture Global, CNOOC will be able to further improve its ability to meet China’s increasing gas demand, whilst providing solid support for China’s energy transition pathway to build a more ‘beautiful China’.”
This deal is one of several that multiple Chinese companies entered into with the U.S. to help build the country’s LNG supply. Last year, Chinese utility Foran Energy Group agreed to buy LNG cargoes from Cheniere Energy between 2021 and 2025. Last month, they entered to further agreement for 20-years starting in January 2023. Cheniere also reported a deal last month with China’s Sinochem Group Co. to supply LNG beginning in July 2022.
A South Korean Company Said a Natural Gas Project Was ‘CO2-Free.’ It’s Being Accused of ‘Greenwashing’
South Korea’s largest private gas provider SK E&S Co. is facing legal action from a climate activist group alleging that it falsely advertised the green credentials of a project in Australia.
Solutions for Our Climate said it’s bringing a claim against SK for labeling liquefied natural gas from its Barossa project off the northern coast of Australia as “CO2-free.” While SK claims to capture greenhouse gases produced while making LNG, it’s only partially removing emissions from the process and not doing anything about CO2 released when the gas is burned, which is where the vast majority of emissions come from, the group said.
SK will use carbon capture and sequestration to eliminate 60% of its share of the emissions from the project, which amounts to 4 million tons a year, and will grow forests to offset the rest, Kim Hyejin, communications executive officer at SK E&S, said by phone.
“As a major LNG supplier in South Korea, we’re trying our best to stay responsible by actively investing in clean technology such as CCS to help reduce emissions and be part of the transition toward net zero,” Kim said.
As environmentalists all over the globe increasingly resort to legal remedies against fossil fuel providers, this is the first South Korean claim against any company regarding its emission. Earlier this year, Royal Dutch Shell Plc was ordered to cut emissions faster than planned, while Australia’s Santos Ltd. was challenged by an activist group for making a misleading net-zero pledge.
“There is no such thing as ‘CO2-free LNG,’” Oh Dongjae, a researcher at SFOC, said in the statement. “SK E&S has oversold its CCS technology as a silver bullet.”
Seoul-based SFOC said it’s taking the case to the Korea Fair Trade Commission and the Ministry of Environment, which will decide whether to go forward with an investigation.
SK will spend $1.4B to develop the Barossa Caldita gas fields, where it holds a 37.5% interest. According to SK, it plans to make 1.3 Million Tons of LNG each year for the next 20 years starting in 2025. The company also stated that carbon-capture technology will be used to extract CO2 from its LNG plants and inject it into an adjacent marine waste gas field.
The technology will reduce emissions by about 2.1million tons per year if it works. It said that 11.4 million tonnes more of carbon dioxide will be released each year, mostly due to the burning and transporting fuel across oceans.
2021 Arctic Report Card: Warming, Disruption and Extreme Weather
[By Matthew Druckenmiller, Rick Thoman and Twila Moon]
The Arctic has long been portrayed as a distant end-of-the-Earth place, disconnected from everyday common experience. But as the planet rapidly warms, what happens in this icy region, where temperatures are rising twice as fast as the rest of the globe, increasingly affects lives around the world.
On Dec. 14, 2021, a team of 111 scientists from 12 countries released the 16th annual Arctic Report Card, a yearly update on the state of the Arctic system. We are Arctic scientists and the editors of this peer-reviewed assessment. In the report, we take a diverse look across the region’s interconnected physical, ecological and human components.
Like an annual checkup with a physician, the report assesses the Arctic’s vital signs – including surface air temperatures, sea surface temperatures, sea ice, snow cover, the Greenland ice sheet, greening of the tundra, and photosynthesis rates by ocean algae – while inquiring into other indicators of health and emerging factors that shed light on the trajectory of Arctic changes.
As the report describes, rapid and pronounced human-caused warming continues to drive most of the changes, and ultimately is paving the way for disruptions that affect ecosystems and communities far and wide.
Continued loss of ice
Arctic Sea ice – a central vital sign and one of the most iconic indicators of global climate change – is continuing to shrink under warming temperatures.
Including data from 2021, 15 of the lowest summer sea ice extents – the point when the ice is at its minimum reach for the year – have all occurred in the last 15 years, within a record dating back to 1979 when satellites began regularly monitoring the region.
The sea ice is also thinning at an alarming rate as the Arctic’s oldest and thickest multi-year ice disappears. This loss of sea ice diminishes the Arctic’s ability to cool the global climate. It can also alter lower latitude weather systems to an extent that makes previously rare and impactful weather events, like droughts, heat waves and extreme winter storms, more likely.
Similarly, the persistent melting of the Greenland ice sheet and other land-based ice is raising seas worldwide, exacerbating the severity and exposure to coastal flooding, disruptions to drinking and waste water systems, and coastal erosion for more communities around the planet.
NOAA Climate.gov/NSIDC
A warmer, wetter Arctic
This transition from ice to water and its effects are evident across the Arctic system.
The eight major Arctic rivers are discharging more freshwater into the Arctic Ocean, reflecting an Arctic-wide increase in water coming from land as a result of precipitation, permafrost thaw and ice melt. Remarkably, the summit of the Greenland ice sheet – over 10,000 feet above sea level – experienced its first-ever observed rainfall during summer 2021.
These developments point to a changed and more variable Arctic today. They also give credence to new modeling studies that show the potential for the Arctic to transition from a snow-dominated to rain-dominated system in summer and autumn by the time global temperatures rise to only 1.5 degrees Celisus (2.7 F) above pre-industrial times. The world has already warmed by 1.2 C (2.2 F).
Such a shift to more rain and less snow would further transform landscapes, fueling faster glacier retreat and permafrost loss. The thaw of permafrost not only affects ecosystems but also further adds to climate warming by allowing previously once-frozen plant and animal remains to decompose, releasing additional greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
This year’s report highlights how retreating glaciers and deteriorating permafrost are also posing growing threats to human life through abrupt and localized flooding and landslides. It urges coordinated international efforts to identify these hazards. More rain in the Arctic will further multiply these threats.
NOAA Climate.gov/CS ERA5
Rising human impact
Observed changes and disruptions in the Arctic have bearing on everyday lives and actions worldwide, either directly or as stark reminders of a range of human-caused harm to climate and ecosystems.
An Arctic Report Card essay on beavers expanding northward into Arctic tundra to exploit newly favorable conditions is a case study for how species around the world are on the move as habitats respond to climate shifts, and the need for new forms of collaborative monitoring to assess the scale of the resulting ecological transformations.
An essay on marine garbage from shipping washing ashore on the Bering Sea coast, posing an immediate threat to food security in the region, reminds us that the threat of both micro- and macro-plastics in our oceans is a preeminent challenge of our time.
A report on shipping noise increasingly infiltrating the Arctic’s underwater marine soundscape, to the detriment of marine mammals, is a call to conserve the integrity of natural soundscapes worldwide. For example, a recent unrelated study found that noise caused by human activities and biodiversity loss are deteriorating the spring songbird soundscapes in North America and Europe.
Yet, an Arctic Report Card essay from members of the Indigenous Foods Knowledges Network highlights how, despite the continued climate threats to Arctic food systems, Alaska Indigenous communities weathered early pandemic disruptions to food security through their cultural values for sharing and “community-first” approaches.
Their cooperation and ability to adapt offer an important lesson for similarly struggling communities worldwide, while reminding everyone that the Arctic itself is a homeland; a place where large-scale disruptions are not new to its over 1 million Indigenous Peoples, and where solutions have long been found in practices of reciprocity.
An Arctic connected to the rest of the world
The Arctic Report Card compiles observations from across the circumpolar North, analyzing them within a polar projection of our planet. This puts the Arctic at the center, with all meridians extending outward to the rest of the world.
In this view, the Arctic is tethered to societies worldwide through a myriad of exchanges – the natural circulation of air, ocean and contaminants, the migration of animals and invasive species, as well as human-driven transport of people, pollution, goods and natural resources. The warming of the Arctic is also allowing for greater marine access as sea ice loss permits ships to move deeper into Arctic waters and for longer periods of time.
These realities illuminate the importance for increased international cooperation in conservation, hazard mitigation and scientific research.
The Arctic has already undergone unprecedented rapid environmental and social changes. A warmer and more accessible Arctic results in a world only tethered more tightly together.
Matthew Druckenmiller is a Research Scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado Boulder.
Rick Thoman is an Alaska Climate Specialist at University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Twila Moon is a Deputy Lead Scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado Boulder.
This article appears courtesy of The Conversation and may be found in its original form here.
Russia's Northern Sea Route Posts Record Year for Traffic Volume
Despite an early freeze-up that briefly trapped multiple merchant vessels, Russia's Northern Sea Route posted its busiest navigation season ever in 2021.
Total traffic reached 33.5 million tonnes as of mid-December, compared to 33.0 million tonnes in all of 2020. The figure for the full year is expected to exceed 34 million tonnes - an increase of 350 percent over the past five years. This is one of the many signs of economic growth in Russia's Arctic, particularly in the oil and gas industry. Liquefied natural gas and oil tankers make up the majority of total traffic on the route.
Transit traffic (passing through the region) came to more than two million tonnes by mid-December, compared to 1.3 million tonnes in 2020. This marks the third year in a row of through-traffic growth on the NSR, which has seen its popularity as a through route increase by more than 300 percent since 2018.
"In 2021, 79 of the 92 vessels that transited the NSR were non-Russian, demonstrating how international partners are increasingly viewing the NSR as a viable transport corridor," said Maxim Kulinko, the deputy director of Rosatom's Northern Sea Route Directorate. "As we expand seaport capacity along the route, we expect this growth trajectory to continue for many years to come."
Russia's ambitious goal is to achieve total yearly traffic of 80 million tonnes by 2024 and 110 million tonnes by 2030. A warming Arctic is opening up new economic opportunities for the region, as the extent of average ice cover retreats and the average ice thickness declines. However, the high latitudes still hold unique risks for shipping, as shown by the sudden ice-up along the NSR in late November. Multiple ships became stuck in earlier-than-expected ice along the route, prompting Atomflot to dispatch several icebreakers to conduct a record-setting escort operation.
Chinese Companies Are Combining Offshore Wind With Fish Farms
As offshore wind booms in China, could combined wind and fish farms support more sustainable aquaculture?
Last year, China installed more offshore wind capacity than any other nation for the third year running. This year it is set to overtake the UK as the largest offshore wind market. With the sector booming, some are looking at opportunities beneath the turbines. Could their bases be turned into aquaculture farms or “marine ranches” – habitats where marine life can live, breed and be harvested for human consumption?
So far, no mixed wind power and marine ranching projects have been completed in China. Projects are being built in provinces including Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. If successful, they could enable more efficient use of limited space at sea, help develop fishery resources, and support more sustainable development.
But it is too soon to talk of a large-scale roll-out. There are currently no China-specific research findings on how the wind and seafood elements affect each other, and many questions remain to be answered. How, for example, will the noise of building and operating a wind farm affect marine life?
The advantages
Most of China’s offshore wind power potential is concentrated around the southeastern coast and nearby islands, where the water is between 5 and 50 meters deep, according to the 2019 China Renewable Energy Development Report. Some of this area is suitable for marine ranching.
Aquaculture operations that need to leave the coast for environmental reasons have been moving offshore, freeing up coastal areas for restoration or sustainable development (Image: Liu Yuyang/China Dialogue)
China’s marine aquaculture is already relocating from coasts and shallow waters out into deeper waters. Aquaculture takes up large expanses of shallows and wetlands, and intensive operations pollute the ocean. Central government has therefore ordered a clean-up, meaning aquaculture will be pushed further offshore, into wind power territory.
‘Aquaculture’ vs ‘ranching’
Marine aquaculture involves farming sea life in enclosures, and relies on continued input of materials such as feed and fingerlings. Marine ranching, by contrast, involves creating environments suitable for life, allowing it to grow naturally and then harvesting the resulting seafood. Some marine ranching projects involve rehabilitating damaged habitats using artificial reefs.
Marine ranching is being seen as way to upgrade the sector and even help restore the ocean environment. Wang Songlin, president and founder of the Qingdao Marine Conservation Society, told China Dialogue that most aquaculture farms and marine ranches are found near the coast, in waters up to 20 meters deep. There are some ranches in waters 40 meters deep near islands, but none deeper than 55 meters.
Combining wind power with aquaculture or ranching could benefit companies on both sides. Aquaculture firms can use the turbine bases to anchor fish cages or rope-and-raft systems for growing shellfish and kelp. The base itself could be turned into an artificial reef for fish, oysters or kelp, and any power needed to run the aquaculture farm or marine ranch could be drawn directly from the turbines.
For the wind power firms, making fuller use of the site would reduce maintenance costs and they could sell some of the power they generate to the aquaculture firms.
The combination could also help China make better use of its ocean. He Guangshun, director of the National Marine Data and Information Service, wrote in a 2019 research paper that “the ocean is three-dimensional, with differing geographical and environmental conditions across the air, water and seabed. A single site can be suitable for energy, shipping and fishing.” Combining these activities would allow for more intensive use of space.
Global and domestic practice
Bidding for the chance to construct China’s first purpose-built offshore wind and marine ranching project began in 2019, with a 300-megawatt (MW) project in Shandong’s Laizhou Bay. In 2020, construction started on a pilot project in Yangxi county, Guangdong. Meanwhile, in the city of Dongfang, Hainan bids were solicited to do feasibility studies for a similar 500 MW project. Of these three, construction of the first two is expected to finish in 2024. It is not yet known when the third will be done.
Graphic: Ed Harrison / China Dialogue
Currently, the only completed project claiming to combine offshore wind with marine ranching is in Pingtan, Fujian province. It was initiated by CGN New Energy, with participation from the Fujian Fisheries Research Institute and a local aquaculture firm. That firm placed metal cages containing 1,500 juvenile fish near the base of one of the turbines, 28 meters down. The fish are regularly fed and checked up on. Mussels and abalone are also raised on the concrete base the cages are attached to.
But an expert familiar with aquaculture and ranching says marine ranches are about creating or restoring good underwater environments for aquatic life to prosper, with the primary aim of sustainable production without the need for inputs. “The term ‘marine ranch’ is a stretch if you are using cages and providing feed.”
The mixed wind power and aquaculture model is more common overseas. European countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway started trialling it in 2000, fixing fish cages and shellfish and kelp rafts to turbine bases, as Yang Hongsheng, deputy head of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Oceanology, explained in a 2019 article. Asian countries, such as South Korea, got started in 2016, finding that valuable seafoods such as kelp, mussels and scallops increased around offshore wind farms.
Increases in marine organisms like kelp can be one of the benefits of projects like these. “Kelp fixes carbon and provides a habitat for small fish and shrimp,” said the aquaculture expert. That could mean it is possible to use aquaculture as a basis for promoting the development of more eco-friendly marine ranches.
Hopes and concerns
Turbine bases attract fish, much like artificial reefs, said Yue Weizhong, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Oceanology, in an interview with the journal Fishing and Fisheries. When ocean currents meet turbine bases and semi-submerged platforms, water is diverted upwards, taking seabed nutrients with it. That encourages growth of phytoplankton, or microalgae, which attracts other ocean life. On the other side of the base, eddies form where water flows more slowly, which suits certain fish. The eddies can also bring together phytoplankton and crustaceans with fish.
An example in the Netherlands has demonstrated the potential of offshore turbines to attract marine life. Biodiversity has increased at the Egmond aan Zee offshore wind farm, with new or larger populations of oysters, sea anemones and crabs appearing at the turbine base and nearby rocks, according to a two-year study.
The key factor in those changes may in fact be the lack of human activity, coupled with changes to the seabed. On the busy Dutch coast, a wind farm is a relative oasis of peace and quiet, free from commercial fishing, oil extraction and shipping. The turbine bases also offer the kind of solid habitat shellfish prefer attaching to, when compared to the softer seabed found locally.
But with little research or practice to refer to, many questions still hang over the offshore wind and marine ranching model. In his 2019 paper, Yang Hongsheng raised several issues: Do turbine bases really attract marine life in the same way artificial reefs do? How should the management of the ranch and the wind farm be coordinated? What effect will the noise, vibration and electromagnetic fields produced during construction and operation of the wind farm have on marine life? According to his paper, wind farm noise can be sensed by cod and herring four kilometers away, and by flounder and salmon a kilometer away, and those noises may affect fish behavior and biology.
The government is not currently pushing ahead with integrated offshore wind and marine ranching development. In a response to a comment from a National People’s Representative, the Ministry of Agriculture said academics are studying how the two operations could work together, but there are no findings yet. “Establishing the impact of wind farms on the fishery resources in marine ranches will require long-term monitoring and evaluation. It is too early for the state to put the necessary policies and plans in place,” its statement said.
It may come down to the success of the local trials. The ministry is to continue monitoring these and will, in partnership with the National Energy Administration, carry out research into how the turbines and ranches interact. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Natural Resources is looking into managing usage rights at different ocean levels, to allow for more precise management of marine resources.
Gao Baiyu is a researcher on China Dialogue's Beijing editorial team. She has a master’s degree in computational journalism from Syracuse University.
This article appears courtesy of China Dialogue Ocean and may be found in its original form here.
First power was achieved at the Hornsea 2 wind farm, located approximately 55 miles east of the U.K.’s coast south of Newcastle, is slated to become the world’s largest operating offshore wind farm with a capability of generating 1.32 GW of electricity. The project which is being led by Orsted, completed the installation of its offshore substation and reactive compensation station as it works to commission and energize the wind farm in preparation for its anticipated operational date next year.
Construction on Hornsea 2 began in 2020, with the first of the turbines going into place in May 2021. When fully operational, Hornsea 2’s will consist of 165 8 MW Siemens Gamesa wind turbines. It takes the title of the largest operating wind farm from the first phase of the project which was completed in 2020 and has a capacity to generate 1.2 GW.
“Achieving first power is an important milestone for the project and a proud moment for the whole team. Constructing a project of this size and scale is only possible through strong collaboration, hard work, and dedication,” said Patrick Harnett, Programme Director for Hornsea 2. “From here, we have the finishing line in sight as we install the remaining turbines and continue testing, commissioning, and energizing our wind farm into the new year.”
Hornsea 2’s title as the world’s largest wind farm however is likely to be short-lived as the industry continues its rapid growth. Two further phases for the Hornsea Zone are also moving forward with Hornsea 3 having received a Development Consent Order in December 2020 for a project designed to generate 2.4 GW and Hornsea 4 is currently going through the planning process.
While other projects currently having reached the construction phase are all smaller than the massive Hornsea phases, longer-term proposals and project in earlier development phases promise to eclipse both Hornsea 2 and later 3. There are UK projects that call for capacity of 3.1 and 4.1 GW while in South Korea a project has been proposed for 8.2 GW that could be operating by 2030.
© Provided by Space This NASA supercomputer model shows how greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide fluctuate in Earth’s atmosphere throughout the year. Higher concentrations are shown in red.
NOAA Climate.gov/NSIDC
Aquaculture operations that need to leave the coast for environmental reasons have been moving offshore, freeing up coastal areas for restoration or sustainable development (Image: Liu Yuyang/China Dialogue)
Graphic: Ed Harrison / China Dialogue
