Thomas Fraser
University of Tennessee climate panel: Scientists say don’t despair. Yet.
Scientists discuss climate challenges and solutions during 2021 One Health Day
As climate experts and scientists huddled in Glasgow in an international effort to stem potentially disastrous global environmental changes, a panel of doctors representing multiple disciplines at the University of Tennessee and beyond offered their assessments of climate challenges and solutions.
Their take on climate change? We have problems, but we also have solutions. Hopelessness will drive you crazy. Stay healthy, stay informed and do your part to mitigate the long-term environmental consequences of a changing Earth.
Above all: Don’t despair and don’t lose hope.
The panel, held Nov. 3 at the UT Student Union and presented by the UT One Health Initiative, consisted of the following experts:
— Dr. Gus Engman, Department of Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries, University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture
— Dr. Kate Evans, Computational Sciences and Engineering Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
— Dr. Joshua Fu, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Tennesse
— Dr. Sindhu Jagadamma, Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science, University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture
— Dr. Kristina Kintziger, Department of Public Health, University of Tennessee
Answers have been edited for clarity and brevity and don’t include the full response. Questions were submitted ahead of time or during the panel discussion.
What do you see as the largest threats of climate change, especially related to your individual research interests?
Engman: Changing precipitation patterns are something I think about a lot.
Pretty much all the rivers in the world are expected to have changes to their flow regime.
These changes in droughts and floods are a really large issue.
I think a lot about aquatic communities. If we are scarce on drinking water, we are always going to prioritize people having that water, over the fish or the bugs in the streams.
There are all kinds of impacts to life histories and interactions with communities in streams.
When animals are stressed because of these changes in precipitation patterns and changes in flow patterns, they might become more susceptible to other stressors, like disease.
Changes in algal community composition can impact the entire water quality of a stream, and that might happen because of these changes in precipitation patterns.
These places that are experiencing these extreme droughts really worry me. The Colorado River already doesn’t even flow all the way to the ocean anymore. That’s a huge change. Because we take up so much water for agriculture.
If a stream runs out of water, it’s not a stream anymore.
Evans: From a meteorological perspective, the biggest event that hurts people's health is actually heat waves. A lot of press goes to tornadoes and hurricanes and storms but in fact these large domes of hot air (are deadly), which happen because of changes in the large-scale weather patterns.
The greenhouse effect insulates the earth, it makes it more uniform in temperature and so that changes the flow patterns that go around the earth. That changes those big weather systems that come in and how long they stick around.
When you talk about these long droughts, we know that’s what's we have to understand: Will they last longer, be more humid, less humid, and that has huge impacts for human health as well as the food they eat and the plants that grow.
Kintziger: Heat also has a bigger impact on a more indirect pathway to human health. Not just heat-related illness but also cardiovascular impacts, renal impacts and even mental health impacts.
Heat is the one that keeps me up at night. We are seeing increasing temperatures globally and we also have this urban heat island affect.
Our vulnerable populations in the cities — inner cities with lower-income housing, homeless populations — they are going to experience heat very differently than people who live in newer buildings with better cooling and infrastructure and have better capabilities for adapting to heat.
From climate change to water quality, UT One Health Day examines the challenges of our time
Charles Henry Turner
The University of Tennessee One Health Initiative will host an impressive array of climate-related discussions, presentations and museum tours Wednesday, Nov. 3, at the UT Student Union on Cumberland Avenue in Knoxville. A virtual option is also available for the day-long event, which is affiliated with the 6th Annual World One Health Day.
The day will feature a “One Health and Climate Change” expert panel discussion, which is set for noon and includes perspectives ranging from the UT Institute of Agriculture to Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
A kayak outing and trash cleanup along the Tennessee River and its tributaries are also planned, as is a tour of UT Gardens, and the herbarium. McClung Museum at Circle Park will offer up its freshwater mussel collection for closer inspection and host a tour examining archaeology findings related to the indigenous inhabitants of Tennessee.
Check out University of Tennessee One Health Day for a full schedule and more information.
(Remember this?) Report: Sen. Joe Manchin, a holdout Democrat on climate-change legislation, is a “coal baron”
The Guardian: Manchin monkey-wrenches climate change legislation because he’s made millions off fossil fuels
West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, the Democratic linchpin for game-changing climate legislation proposed in a budget bill as part of the Biden administration’s plan to provide aid to families as well as give a boost to efforts to reduce global warming, has thrown a now-infamous wrench in the works.
He has vigorously opposed key parts of the climate legislation included in the 2022 budget bill. Per the Guardian, it’s simply because he and his family have made a fortune off coal extraction in the relatively impoverished state of West Virginia and elsewhere.
“Financial records detailed by reporter Alex Kotch for the Center for Media and Democracy and published in the Guardian show that Manchin makes roughly half a million dollars a year in dividends from millions of dollars of coal company stock he owns. The stock is held in Enersystems, Inc, a company Manchin started in 1988 and later gave to his son, Joseph, to run,” according to the Guardian.
“He has already effectively succeeded in stripping the bill of its most powerful climate change provision, a program that would have rapidly shut down coal and gas-fired power plants and replaced them with wind and solar power,” according to the New York Times.
Big South Fork seeking information on vehicles dumped in Blue Hole
The National Park Service and officials with Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area are still looking for those responsible for dumping derelict vehicles in a remote part of the park known as Blue Hole.
Park staff found two vehicles and a boat illegally discarded in a section of the park closed to traffic. The junk was discovered Aug. 26 and staff and rangers had to pulled from other projects to clean up the mess.
Park staff recovered an abandoned vehicle, UTV, and boat from the Blue Hole section of the park that appeared to have been dumped in separate incidents.
“The resulting cleanup pulled staff away from planned trail work and public safety duties. Additionally, illegally dumping trash and other items create a negative visitor experience for those hoping to enjoy the serene natural beauty of Big South Fork NRRA,” said Superintendent Niki Stephanie Nicholas in a press release.
“Visitors are reminded that abandoning property in the park is prohibited by federal law.”
Anyone with information concerning these incidents is encouraged to contact the NPS at 423-223-4489 or leave a confidential message on the Resource Protection Tip Line at 423-569-7301.
The 24-hour tip line allows callers to remain anonymous.
You are invited to Friday’s Great Smokies African American Experience Project Townhall meeting
Oak Ridge National Laboratory helps keep our cool as refrigerant restrictions begin
Brian Fricke, group leader for Building Equipment Research, conducts testing in his refrigeration system research lab at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Jason Richards/ORNL
ORNL pursues refrigerant efficiencies and alternatives as we warm the Earth to keep things cold
You can flick it off; it’s cool.
Finally there’s a window, literally, for the annual retirement of your air conditioner. But the freezer aisles at your favorite supermarket aren’t going anywhere.As summer slowly slips into autumn and we aspire to warm ourselves through winter, let’s consider the cost, economically and environmentally, of keeping ourselves under blankets in August or loading up on frozen burritos on a broiling day inside the deliciously cool air of a grocery store freezer aisle.Let’s cast a cold eye toward Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where engineers are developing improved storage and transmission techniques to limit the harrowing climate-change effects of coolants and refrigerants, even as new pollution restrictions come into effect.Coolants have played a role in environmental change and global warming since the very advent of the crudest cooling devices.Refrigerants have even driven human-settlement patterns and development of areas with harsh, hot climates such as the American South and Southwest. They’ve been rough on the Earth’s atmosphere and played an oversized role in climate change.It’s kind of complicated:Chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) used in 20th-century cooling and refrigeration systems thinned the ozone layer.Then the hydrofluorocarbons (HFC) that replaced them turned out to be greenhouse gases that in some cases were 4,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide, itself a powerful driver of climate change.The recent federal climate change directive requires an 85-percent phaseout of HFCs over the next 15 years.So what will replace those coolants as heat waves associated with climate change only increase, in the near-term at least, the use of refrigerators and air conditioners across the world?Scientists and engineers at ORNL are working on the next generation of coolants — and the efficiency and safety of their delivery systems — as HFCs are phased out.Published in NewsPublished in NewsTagged under
Anti-nuke nun jailed after Y-12 protest dies at 91
News Sentinel: Nun who served time after Oak Ridge weapons protest dies in Pennsylvania
Sister Megan Rice, who along with two others were prosecuted by the federal government after breaking into the Y-12 nuclear weapons complex in Oak Ridge, died of congestive heart failure Oct. 10 in Rosemont, Pennsylvania.
Rice, a member of the order of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, penetrated the secure perimeter of Y-12 in July 2012 along with two other Catholic activists for prayers and protests outside a bunker containing uranium, according to the Associated Press via the News Sentinel. The incident prompted numerous inquiries about the security of Y-12 and put the inherent danger of nuclear armament in the media spotlight.
The trio was charged with felony sabotage but served only two years of their federal prison terms.
“While testifying during her jury trial, Rice defended her decision to break into the Oak Ridge uranium facility as an attempt to stop “manufacturing that...can only cause death,” according to a trial transcript.'
“I had to do it,” she said of her decision to break the law.
“My guilt is that I waited 70 years to be able to speak what I knew in my conscience.”
Requiem for the Lord God Bird
The ivory-billed woodpecker is officially extinct, and it strikes a chord in Knoxville
Clinging to a maple in the bayou, Jim Tanner finally had the rare nestling in his grasp.
He fitted it with a numbered leg band and placed the bird back in its hole high off the ground.
But true to its seldom-seen self, the juvenile ivory-billed woodpecker squirmed free and fluttered to the base of a giant maple tree in a southern Louisiana swamp owned at the time by the Singer Sewing Machine Co.
The year was 1936, and Jim Tanner was in the midst of doctorate research at Cornell University funded by the Audubon Society as part of a push to prevent the pending extinctions of multiple bird species, including the California condor, roseate spoonbill, whooping crane and ivory-billed woodpecker. Eighty-five years later, the regal woodpecker would be the only one grounded for eternity.
In the heat and rain of mucky, gassy bayous, Tanner compiled data on the range, population, habitat and prevalence of ivory-billed woodpeckers. He camped for weeks at a time in the swamps of the birds’ original range.
On this day, his only goal was to band the bird but he rushed down the tree and picked up the agitated but uninjured woodpecker.
He also wanted photographs.
Tanner took advantage of the moment.
He placed the bird upon the shoulder of an accompanying and accommodating game warden for 14 shots from his Leica.
They were probably the first, and perhaps the last, photographs of a juvenile ivory-billed woodpecker photographed by Tanner in its natural habitat. He named the bird Sonny, and he was the only known member of the species to be banded with a number.
The regal, smart, athletic bird, which peaceably flew over its small slice of Earth for some 10,000 years, was declared extinct last month by the Fish and Wildlife Service. Twenty-two other species also qualified for removal from the Endangered Species List — in the worst possible way.
The ivory bill inhabited the swamps of the Deep South, far removed from Rocky Top, but old visages of the departed were found in Little Switzerland in South Knoxville. The work of Tanner, who would go on to complete a rich ecological research career at the University of Tennessee, has been memorialized by a talented East Tennessee science writer.
And the Southern Appalachian region has other long-gone kinships with species that vanished from the Earth a long time ago.
Permafrost is a ticking methane bomb
Smithsonian: In Russia, even rocks emit greenhouse gases
The melting Siberian tundra north of the Arctic Circle released millions of tons of methane last year as regional temperatures rose to 11 degrees (°F) above average.
Methane has a shorter effect than carbon dioxide on global atmospheric change but is still 70 times more potent than CO2 in its overall global-warming potential. Its accelerated release on such a vast scale represents an immediate challenge to restricting overall global warming to less than 3 degrees (°F) by the end of the century, which scientists agree is necessary to prevent dramatic climate change. Methane’s potent global warming potential is why many conservationists oppose the use of natural gas as an energy source.
But in Siberia, even the rocks are emitting methane. Scientists were surprised to find that limestone exposed by disappearing permafrost itself generated high levels of methane. Tundra fires have also accelerated the release of methane and other gases, and have come at great cost to the Russian government and the rural inhabitants of the vast region.
That means economical and practical means must be developed elsewhere, at least, for methane management.
But according to the United Nations Economic Council for Europe:
“Despite methane’s short residence time, the fact that it has a much higher warming potential than CO2 and that its atmospheric volumes are continuously replenished make effective methane management a potentially important element in countries’ climate change mitigation strategies. As of today, however, there is neither a common technological approach to monitoring and recording methane emissions, nor a standard method for reporting them.“
ORNL’s comprehensive mapping of built environments aids disaster response
Compass: ORNL mapping effort will aid rescue, risk assessment
Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists spent five years mapping virtually every structure in the U.S. and the data is bearing early fruit as it is used for response to disasters such as hurricanes and severe floods.
Mark Tuttle and Melanie Lavardiere, the team leaders of the project, have mapped “virtually every single structure in the United States and its territories,” Compass reports.
The information is used by disaster responders from the FEMA level and down. During a hurricane, for example, authorities can focus response efforts on the most vulnerable areas using the building-mapping database.
The database can also be used by insurers to charge rates more according to risk, and for structures covered under the National Flood Insurance Program, as is already happening.
But the data is most valuable for saving lives and determining the most likely location those lives will have to be saved.
“After disaster strikes, the data can give a rapid indication of the scope of the damage and point responders in the right direction to assist in the recovery. Using the powerful computers available at ORNL, the team can process data quickly — producing in a matter of hours work that used to take months — and get it into FEMA’s hands for analysis,” Compass reports.