The environment in the news friday, 2 November, 2012

SEATTLE — The Kulluk drilling rig was in the process of dismantling in the Beaufort Sea off the coast of Alaska on Wednesday, concluding Shell Alaska’s troubled debut season of offshore drilling in the U.S. Arctic.

Company officials said the Noble Discoverer rig was already headed south out of the Chukchi Sea, and operations in the Beaufort were coming to a close on the last day allowed under federal permits for drilling, prohibited after the onset of winter ice.

“Given the challenges we faced from the perspective of sea ice and logistics in deploying assets and employees to the Arctic for the first time in two decades, we’re very pleased with the work we accomplished,” Shell spokesman Curtis Smith told the Los Angeles Times.

Shell engineers said they completed drilling of “top holes” in two wells, one in the Beaufort and one in the Chukchi, which have established wells in the area just below the seafloor, above the oil deposits. By leaving anchors installed at those locations, they will quickly be able to begin plumbing hydrocarbon reservoirs when drilling resumes next summer.

The company is permitted to drill up to 10 exploratory wells under its federal offshore permits.

The debut drilling season in a rarely explored corner of the world has been watched closely, both by advocates who see it as a promising new avenue to reach one of the world’s largest remaining oil deposits, and by conservationists who fear the delicate and hazardous nature of the Arctic is not suited for oil and gas production.

Shell’s opening endeavor ran into more than its share of obstacles.

First, the Discoverer drillship went adrift and nearly hit the beach in July on its way up to the Arctic, near Dutch Harbor. Then an unseasonable fortress of ice blocked access to drilling sites until much later in the season than normal, delaying the onset of drilling. There were repeated delays in obtaining U.S. Coast Guard certification for the oil spill containment vessel, the Arctic Challenger, which didn’t win final approval until Oct. 11 — meaning no actual drilling into hydrocarbon reservoirs could take place this year.

The high-tech containment dome for gathering any oil spilled during a blowout was damaged during testing. New high-tech air emissions control equipment proved better than anything else ever devised, but not quite as good as envisioned in Shell's original Environmental Protection Agency permit, forcing the company to apply for a permit amendment.

And even once “top hole” drilling got under way in the Chukchi Sea, engineers had to back off after the first day for a brief time when yet another massive block of ice loomed within 10 miles of the drilling site.

“Shell’s efforts this past year should serve as a cautionary tale for the future. We learned that even one of the world’s biggest oil companies clearly is not prepared to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean,” Michael Levine, Pacific senior counsel for the conservation group Oceana said in an interview.

“We all want healthy oceans and affordable energy, but drilling in the Arctic without the necessary scientific information or demonstrated response capability will get us neither,” he said.

Once the fits and starts of getting the endeavor launched were out of the way, there were no reports of problems in the drilling operations.

“As we witnessed, it takes time to get the assets in place, and of course Mother Nature proved again this year that we’re not always in charge of our own destiny,” Smith said. “But every day we spent drilling this summer will be a day that puts us that much closer to the objective in 2013.”

Lawsuits over the Arctic operations will likely proceed over the winter months, even while the drilling is on hiatus.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to decide early next year on an environmental challenge to the federal lease sale that authorized drilling in the Chukchi Sea. Litigation over Shell’s oil spill response plan has been consolidated before the U.S. District Court in Anchorage, and the 9thCircuit has been asked to decide how to proceed with several pre-emptive lawsuits Shell filed against environmental organizations seeking early court approval of the company’s various federal permits.

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LA Times: Sandy: Act of God of act of man? (editorial)

Is global warming to blame for Sandy the "Frankenstorm"? Pundits and politicians were arguing about that even before the massive storm struck the Atlantic coast; now that it has moved on, after killing 50, flooding the New York subway system, ripping away chunks of New Jersey's coastline and causing myriad other damage that will place Sandy among the most expensive natural disasters in U.S. history, it's a more pressing question. After all, if the storm were an act of man rather than an act of God, we might be able to prevent such disasters from recurring.

Unfortunately, though, there's no easy answer. Climate change is measured in terms of observed changes in temperatures and weather patterns across broad swaths of territory over long periods of time. Scientists are reluctant to attribute any single weather event to man-made global warming. So how come such experts as Al Gore are telling us that Sandy was "strengthened by the climate crisis"?

In part, it's because Sandy involved a highly unusual confluence of weather events, some of which may have resulted from a widely documented rise in global ocean and surface temperatures. Waters in the mid-Atlantic, for example, are unseasonably warm, which may have made the storm stronger. It might have headed harmlessly out to sea if not for a rare blocking pattern caused by a high-pressure system near Greenland, which may have arisen because Arctic temperatures are going up.

But more important than the exact causes of Sandy's fury is the fact that it was so predictable. Climate scientists have warned for years that we can expect more extreme weather events such as storms, cyclones, droughts and floods as the greenhouse effect takes hold. They have predicted that rising sea levels would cause severe flooding in low-lying areas such as Manhattan and erode coastlines in such places as Florida and New Jersey. These predictions aren't just theoretical worries about the future; they appear to be happening now. "Anyone who says there is not a change in weather patterns is denying reality," said New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday.

Opponents of efforts to curb greenhouse gases complain that weaning ourselves off fossil fuels would cost too much. But property damage from Sandy is estimated at $20 billion, and it's just one storm; climate change will ravage infrastructure along the coasts, burn up forests and homes, and wreck crops, just for starters. The cost of adapting to a warmer world — building sea walls and levees, constructing dams, moving homes and businesses to safe ground — will be breathtaking. The question isn't whether we can afford to clean up our energy sources, it's whether we can afford not to.

In my somewhat whimsical post of February 9, 2011, I speculated about what life would be like during the year 2076, our tercentennial, both weatherwise and otherwise. I alluded to concerns over the threat of major storm surge flooding in New York City from a hurricane in an age of rising sea levels. (Also, see Part I of the same story.)

My predictions were drawn from a variety of sources and were all predicated on a continuation—and even acceleration — of global climate change.

 In the aftermath of Hurricane/Nor’easter Sandy and the devastation it has caused in the New York City and coastal New Jersey areas, let’s revisit a forward looking report by the 2009 New York City Climate Change Panel that I discussed in that 2076 futuristic outlook.

As brought out in my 2011 post, that panel expressed “great concern about the city’s hurricane vulnerability, given that most of the critical infrastructure was less than 10 feet above sea level.”

In particular, the panel mentioned LaGuardia Airport and the city entrance to the Holland Tunnel, which are only 9.5 feet and 7.8 feet above sea level, respectively. (See Part I of this video, which, in 2005, depicted NYC with an 18-inch rise in sea levels. Courtesy of the PEW Foundation.)

Now, two days after the recent storm, the Holland Tunnel, after a temporary shut-down, has managed to reopen. But with a storm surge in lower Manhattan of more than 13 feet, we do know that the 12’ 8” Hugh L. Carey Tunnel [formerly the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel], was flooded from end to end, [with] the water rushing in only hours after it was closed to traffic. Also, seven subway tunnels under the East River were at least partially submerged. In addition, with blocked roads and bridges, Manhattan was, for a time, essentially cut-off.

An MH-65T Dolphin helicopter aircrew from Coast Guard Air Station Atlantic City looks over LaGuardia Airport while it conducts an over flight assessment of New York Boroughs impacted by Hurricane Sandy, October 30, 2012. New York's LaGuardia Airport, the third of the airports that serve the nation's busiest airspace, was flooded and remained closed. (HANDOUT - REUTERS) In addition, as predicted by the 2009 NYC Climate Change Panel, LaGuardia Airport experienced some of its worst flooding ever and its re-opening date is therefore unclear. This is because, aside from the receding waters themselves, the massive amount of residual salt debris will require a careful and time-consuming inspection to make sure that sensitive runway electronics have not been compromised.

The 2009 NYC report, and others over the years, are among many which have focused on the coming dangers facing America’s coastlines.

Employees from MTA New York City Transit work to restore the South Ferry subway station after it was flooded by seawater during superstorm Sandy on Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012. (Patrick Cashin - AP) A strong believer in these dangers is author John Englander, of the blog “A Clear Voice on Climate Change & Ocean Impacts,” who says in his October 30, 2012 post that about one week ago he sent his new book, “High Tide On Main Street: Rising Sea Level and the Coming Coastal Crisis”, to his publisher. He notes, of course, that he had no idea what devastation the newly named Sandy would bring.

To lend support to his beliefs, Englander refers to a prophetic 1999 N.Y. Times op-ed piece entitled “Hurricanes on the Hudson,” in which that author quotes a previous study about “what could occur if a category 4 hurricane approached New York City from a particular direction.” Although, fortunately, Sandy was not this strong and did not meet all criteria in the study, nevertheless, it should serve as fair warning…….:

When researchers with the National Weather Service, working with the Army Corps [of Engineers], applied [their] model to New York City they discovered, to their great surprise, that the slope of the seabed and the shape of the New York Bight, where the coasts of New York and New Jersey meet, could amplify a surge to a depth far greater than if the same surge had occurred elsewhere. The studies showed that a category 4 hurricane moving north-northwest at 40 to 60 miles an hour, and making landfall near Atlantic City—which would drive the storm’s most powerful right flank into Manhattan—could create a storm surge of nearly 30 feet at the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. The water could rise as rapidly as 17 feet in one hour.

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CNN: Experts warn of superstorm era to come

(CNN) -- Superstorm Sandy was no freak, say experts, but rather a hint of a coming era when millions of Americans will struggle to survive killer weather.

They're telling us we shouldn't be surprised that this 900-mile-wide monster marched up the East Coast this week paralyzing cities and claiming scores of lives.

"It's a foretaste of things to come," Princeton University professor Michael Oppenheimer told CNN. "Bigger storms and higher sea levels" will pile on to create a "growing threat" in the coming decades.

And New York, he warned, "is highly vulnerable."

How can cities defend themselves against such powerful enemies? Some of the ideas out there may surprise you.

They range from building higher sea walls and barrier islands to restoring oyster beds and installing massive gates across estuaries.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been strategizing. His goal: mitigate future storm surges and flooding along the city's 500 miles of coastline.

That's a huge challenge. The densely populated city is dominated by some of the nation's most expensive real estate and is surrounded by a complex web of estuaries, tides and ocean.

Should New York think of its coastline as a threat? Is it the new Amsterdam? Maybe, say experts. But even a city as inventive as the Big Apple can only do so much.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted in 2007 that the global average sea level would rise between 7 and 23 inches by the end of this century. More recent projections suggest that the melting of Arctic sea ice could mean a rise in excess of 30 inches. The New York State Sea Level Rise Task Force translated that into a local projection of 2 to 5 inches by the 2020s, and with rapid ice melt, the rise could be as much as 5 to 10 inches over the next 15 years.

New York dodged a bullet by inches last year as the remnants of Hurricane Irene bore down.

As Ben Orlove, director of the master's program in climate and society at Columbia University, wrote on CNN.com: "Irene also arrived at a time of especially high tides, and its storm surge came within inches of flooding the sea wall. Storms and tides are natural, but sea level rise is not. As it continues, New York grows more vulnerable."

Princeton's Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences, recently modeled the effect of climate change on storm surges for the New York area.

In a paper published by Nature in February, he and three colleagues concluded that the "storm of the century" would become the storm of "every twenty years or less."

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo agrees.

"After what happened, what has been happening in the last few years, I don't think anyone can sit back anymore and say 'Well, I'm shocked at that weather pattern,' " Cuomo said Tuesday.

The conclusion of Oppenheimer and his colleagues is that storms will become larger and more powerful.

"Climate change will probably increase storm intensity and size simultaneously, resulting in a significant intensification of storm surges," they wrote. Sandy's diameter measured much larger than most storms.

A study of the New York area in 2010 led by Guy Nordenson, an architect and structural engineer whose offices are in Lower Manhattan, concluded: "There is a prevalent risk that the city will be severely paralyzed due to the predicted inundation and wave action associated with storm surge."

If that's not bad enough, future superstorms may threaten drinking water, too.

Ocean saltwater could compromise the quality of drinking water and weaken ecosystems, Nordenson and others concluded in their book "On the Water: Palisade Bay."

But the answer, they argue, is not solely in engineering. "Cities fortify their coasts to protect real estate at the expense of nature ... (T)he hard engineering habit has proven costly, unreliable and ineffective."

Nordenson is helping Bloomberg study ways of turning New York's waterfront into more of a fortified castle to protect against invading superstorms.

The region needs a combination of strategies that includes more "soft infrastructure."

New York is losing tidal marshes at a rapid pace, partly because of the rise in sea level but also because of development.

Among the big ideas in "On the Water: Palisade Bay": Create an archipelago of islands and reefs in the New York-New Jersey Upper Bay to dampen powerful storm currents, the islands being "fingered" (with many inlets) and combining tidal marshes and parks.

Nordenson points to the example of the Netherlands and cities such as Hamburg, Germany, that incorporate flood plains into their planning. Similarly Hurricane Katrina showed the importance of preserving Gulf coastal swamps. He hopes a project with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to begin using dredged material for natural barriers will get under way soon.

Nordenson and his team of engineers, architects and designers showed some of their ideas at the Museum of Modern Art for an exhibition called "Rising Currents."

At the local level, the Nature Conservancy is working with communities in Long Island to identify the risks from rising sea levels and protect wetlands. Sarene Marshall, who leads the conservancy's Global Climate Change Team, estimates that every dollar spent in preventive measures saves $5 in disaster recovery, and that long-term investment in natural infrastructure is more effective than hard engineering. She points to the value of the humble oyster reef, nature's version of the sea wall.

Paul Greenberg, writing in The New York Times on Tuesday, echoes her point, saying that during past centuries oysters in the trillions "played a critical role in stabilizing the shoreline from Washington to Boston."

The Nature Conservancy estimates such reefs can reduce the storm risks for 7 million Americans living on the shore.

But islands, oysters and other measures to mitigate storm surges can't isolate New York from trends thousands of miles away in the Arctic. A growing body of evidence links the disappearance of summer ice cover in the Arctic with changing weather patterns.

Over three decades, about 1.3 million square miles of Arctic sea ice has disappeared, equivalent to 42% of the area of the lower 48 states.

Climate models previously projected that the Arctic might lose almost all of its summer ice cover by 2100, but some scientists said they believe the trend is accelerating and that it will be gone long before then.

"In addition to the extent of sea ice, what remains is thinner than it used to be," said Walter Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Here's how it works: Less sea ice means warmer water. Sea surface temperatures off the coast of the Northeast United States are now the highest ever recorded.

"It's like leaving the fridge door open," Meier said. The only way to restrain the process would be to moderate temperature increases, which in turn would depend on lowering carbon dioxide emissions.

Jennifer Francis at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University has shown that a warmer Arctic tends to slow the jet stream, causing it to meander and in turn prolong weather patterns. It's called Arctic amplification, and it may be helping entrench drought in the northwest United States and lead to warmer summers in the Northern Hemisphere.

But there may be another effect.

"Larger swings in the jet stream allow frigid air from the Arctic to plunge farther south, as well as warm, moist tropical air to penetrate northward," Francis wrote in Yale University's Environment 360 blog. That's pretty much what happened this week, a spectacular collision of Arctic and tropical weather fronts.

A recent article in the journal Oceanography shed more light on the consequences of Arctic ice melt. Charles Greene at Cornell University and others wrote that fundamental changes in the behavior of the jet stream will "stack the deck in favor of severe winter weather outbreaks in the United States and Europe into the foreseeable future."

Urgent remedial action

There needs to be urgent remedial action to mitigate the effects, said Oppenheimer, such as raising subway entrances and reinforcing the lower floors of buildings. At the moment, Oppenheimer said, there's a lot of evaluation of hazards and too little action to address them.

After a sudden deluge in 2007 that closed part of the subway system, the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority committed more than $30 million to raise ventilation grates and redesign the entrances to some subway stations. It's also spent heavily on pumps, but a substantial surge would soon overcome such remedial measures. And beside the subway lines, power transformers and fiber-optic networks are vulnerable to flooding.

More ambitious actions would have far-reaching political and economic consequences. New York State's Sea Level Rise Task Force was created in 2007 and delivered its report to the Legislature on the last day of 2010. Among its key recommendations was greater reliance on natural protection such as marshland and a tightening of zoning laws to prevent the loss of such features.

New York City disagreed with the panel's more critical recommendations, saying it did "not recognize the differences between undeveloped areas and densely populated cities." The city's task force rejected the idea of limiting development as prohibitively expensive.

Other ideas aimed at protecting New York include:

Douglas Hill of the Storm Surge Research Group at Stony Brook University has proposed a chain of massive sea barriers in Long Island Sound that could be closed to prevent flooding whenever a storm surge threatens.

One would be close to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. (The Thames Barrier in London performs such a role in a more modest way.) But the cost would probably exceed $10 billion; a barrier in Venice cost $7 billion.

Regulations

-- Another recommendation would be tougher regulations on where industrial and chemical plants can be situated, improving the design of buildings to make lower levels flood-proof (known as freeboard in the insurance industry) and "soft edges" that better break wave action.

-- Stronger and maybe higher sea walls around more vulnerable parts of Manhattan might also help.

The current sea walls are about 4 to 5 feet above the average sea level. Many were built at the beginning of the last century. A New York Times article from August 1901 marveled at "The Massive Sea Wall Which Will Encompass Manhattan."

"It will be many generations, perhaps centuries, before the wall ... will have to be rebuilt or will even require any extensive repairs," the Times reported then. That was before climate change became part of the lexicon. New York City's "Vision 2020" plan warned that sea walls and other shoreline structures are likely to need more frequent repair because of more damaging storms.

Will Sandy drive political debate about climate change?

Doubtful.According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, 67% of Americans believe the Earth is warming.

That number is up slightly since 2010, but it's 10 percentage points less than in 2006. Among both Democrats and Republicans, the percentage has declined, as has the number (now 64%) who say it's a serious problem.

The lack of debate about climate change in the presidential election campaign has been "unfortunate," said the Nature Conservancy's Marshall.

But Marshall said she believes Americans are getting to the point of recognizing what they see for what it is.