The Weekly Anthropocene, October 2 2024
Grizzly bears swim to Vancouver Island, a giant two-headed floating offshore wind turbine, community gharial conservation, Guam kingfishers to Palmyra Atoll, U.S. solar factories, and more!
Canada
In summer 2024, a female grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) and her two cubs swam from mainland British Columbia to the vast wildlands of Vancouver Island. Vancouver Island hasn’t had a resident grizzly population since the end of the last ice age, and she’s the first female grizzly bear ever reported there by humans. Male grizzlies have swum across fairly often, but they tend to swim back after finding no potential mates. The presence of a female could change the game; if this she-bear and her cubs survive and stick around, her family may someday end up as the ancestors of a genetically distinct brown bear population like the Kodiak bears on a similar large Pacific island. Grand evolutionary sagas can begin with individual adventure!
In Nova Scotia, startup CarbonRun is building a machine to grind up limestone and release the powder to dissolve in the West River Pictou. This “river liming” is an emerging form of carbon removal related to ocean alkalinity enhancement; both practices work as effectively the reverse of ocean acidification, making waterbodies less acidic and more alkaline1 so that they can absorb more carbon dioxide form the atmosphere. CarbonRun’s early-stage project is funded by Frontier, a pioneering carbon removal investment fund backed by tech titans like Stripe and Alphabet, so if it works out the resources to scale up quickly could be forthcoming. Good work!
China
As China’s gigantic renewables buildout continues, August saw the deployment of the OceanX giant two-headed offshore wind turbine at the Qingzhou IV wind farm off Guangdong. OceanX is the largest floating wind turbine ever constructed, with a power generation capacity of 16.6 MW, enough to power 30,000 households all by itself, and is reportedly built to withstand even extreme typhoon conditions. Wow!
Democratic Republic of the Congo
A recent American/Congolese scientific expedition to the remote Itombwe Mountains area of the Democratic Republic of Congo has rediscovered the yellow-crested helmetshrike (Prionops alberti), last seen in 2007. Another example of the hidden wonders of our fascinating biosphere!
Cyprus
Cyprus is now leading the European Union — and the world — in solar water heater installations, with an estimated 93.5% of Cypriot households and close to 100% of hotels using solar water heaters thanks to a combination of local early adopters, ongoing EU subsidies, and abundant Mediterranean sunshine. This is a great example of how there’s really no “ceiling” for many of the great technologies making up the global cleantech revolution; good ideas can spread until they’re effectively omnipresent. Great work!
India
The gharial (Gavialis gangeticus) is a critically endangered crocodile relative native to India and Nepal. The species’ population was devastated by hunting and habitat loss during the 20th century, but robust community conservation efforts are now starting to pay off. With the Gandak Gharial Recovery Project, founded in 2014, fishermen and farmers from 35 villages along the Gandak River are proactively monitoring gharial nests on sandbanks, watching out for illegal fishing methods, and even moving the nests if they’re at risk of washing away. The gharial population has reportedly risen from less than 250 adults in 2006 to over 650 adult gharial today. Excellent work!
The state of Maharashtra is planning to build 505 MW of floating solar farms and 8.1 GW (8,100 MW) of pumped hydro energy storage. An upcoming solar factory in Haryana will build 2 GW worth of solar capacity per year. And the titanic 30 GW Khavda project, the world’s largest solar farm, is still under construction in Gujarat!
Lebanon
From June through September 2024, over 2,500 green sea turtle and loggerhead sea turtle hatchlings reached the sea from nests on Al-Mansouri Beach, near the ancient city of Tyre, Lebanon. They were helped by a local volunteer group who worked to protect 51 nests from predators even as the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel escalates, with southern Lebanon caught in the crossfire. Amazing work.
United States
On September 23, 2024, six Guam kingfishers (Todiramphus cinnamominus, aka “sihek”) were released into the wild on Palmyra Atoll, a remote U.S. possession in the Pacific. Guam kingfishers became extinct in the wild in 1986 after to the introduction of the voracious bird-eating brown tree snake, and the species has survived thanks to a captive breeding program. This is their first free flight in decades!
What’s particularly interesting about this project is that it marks one of the first times in modern history where the U.S. government is supporting a project to introduce a species in the wild outside of its “native” range.
Guam kingfishers are native to - you guessed it - Guam, but they can’t be safely reintroduced there (at least not yet) as the brown tree snake is too well established. Palmyra Atoll is thousands of miles away from Guam, and Guam kingfishers have never lived on Palmyra Atoll before 2024. This isn’t a reintroduction, but a first-time-ever conservation introduction, made legally possible by the new regulations based on Section 10(j) of the Endangered Species Act. There are many future opportunities for more projects like this, including one idea to help the Key deer of Florida move to new habitat less vulnerable to sea level rise.
We’re quietly seeing the dawn of a bold new proactive and open-minded “immigrant species” future for conservation efforts in America! Projects like this one will likely be vital in helping many species survive the turmoil of Anthropocene Earth. Spectacular news!
On September 24, 2024, the Fix Our Forests Act and the GEO Act both passed the U.S. House of Representatives. They now go to the U.S. Senate, which will determine whether these much-needed reforms head to President Biden’s desk. For more background, here’s the Your Daily Dose of Climate Hope post from July asking legislators to support the Fix Our Forests Act, and here’s the other Your Daily Dose of Climate Hope post from July asking legislators to support the GEO Act!
Both of these bills are related to the broader permitting reform issue in that they work to clear away the accumulated “red tape” holding back positive environmental reforms. The Fix Our Forests Act makes it easier for the U.S. Forest Service to prevent wildfires with prescribed burns, and the GEO Act makes it easier to produce clean geothermal power, overcoming bureaucratic hold-ups to speed a solarpunk future. Permitting reform is also becoming a central plank of Vice President Harris’ proposed economic agenda - great to see!
The superb climate reporters at Heatmap have published a new special report called “Decarbonize Your Life” that aims to highlight and quantify the most effective ways that individuals can make a difference on climate issues. Notably, they eschew the traditional negative framing of “what not to do,” and focus on ways to help contribute to ongoing positive trends in decarbonization.
The National Football League (NFL) is partnering with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to equip American football stadiums as emergency community shelters to protect people from climate disasters. The first four venues to be part of the program are reportedly the Giants/Mets stadium near New York City, the Steelers stadium in Pittsburgh, the Buccaneers stadium in Tampa, and the Rams/Chargers stadium in Los Angeles.
The Energy Department has finalized the loan to reopen the Palisades nuclear plant!
Utah just completed its first floating solar project, on a water treatment plant’s pond.
U.S. champion First Solar has opened a new solar panel factory in Alabama, capable of building 3.5 GW of solar per year! It’s completely vertically integrated, with First Solar’s thin-film solar manufacturing process reportedly able to “transform a sheet of glass into a fully formed solar panel in approximately four hours all under one roof.” Furthermore, a twin factory in Louisiana is under construction.
This is one of many such wins from the Biden-Harris Boom! U.S. solar manufacturing capacity has nearly quadrupled since the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law in 2022. As economist Noah Smith recently wrote, “Solar manufacturers are ramping up production, and the U.S. is getting the ability to build the pieces of the solar supply chain that it had previously outsourced entirely to China and other countries. This is still small potatoes compared to what China can make, but it means that if a war breaks out, U.S. deployment of solar power won’t be cut off.” Vital work!
Quick chemistry review: “alkaline” is another word for “basic,” as opposed to “acidic.” A pH less than 7 is acidic, a pH more than 7 is basic (see the EPA explainer). What does this have to do with carbon in the atmosphere? Wikipedia’s “Ocean acidification” opening paragraph covers it very well:
“Ocean acidification is the ongoing decrease in the pH of the Earth's ocean. Between 1950 and 2020, the average pH of the ocean surface fell from approximately 8.15 to 8.05.[2] Carbon dioxide emissions from human activities are the primary cause of ocean acidification, with atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels exceeding 422 ppm (as of 2024).[3] CO2 from the atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans. This chemical reaction produces carbonic acid (H2CO3) which dissociates into a bicarbonate ion (HCO−3) and a hydrogen ion (H+). The presence of free hydrogen ions (H+) lowers the pH of the ocean, increasing acidity (this does not mean that seawater is acidic yet; it is still alkaline, with a pH higher than 8). Marine calcifying organisms, such as mollusks and corals, are especially vulnerable because they rely on calcium carbonate to build shells and skeletons.”
Adding alkaline materials like limestone powder raises the pH of waterbodies a little bit, binding up free hydrogen ions and allowing that carbonic acid-producing chemical reaction to move forward again, resulting in more CO2 being absorbed.
You can probably expect to hear a lot more about alkalinity enhancement for carbon removal in the upcoming years and decades - it’s one of the most promisingly scalable atmospheric carbon removal techniques out there!
What a list. On a sour note, i👎 grizzlies! NGIMBY! China's OceanX wind turbine is amazing as is Gujarat's Khavda solar project. Kudos to Cypress and their solar water heaters. Ingenious idea in Utah- ultimate home the GSL?
I was curious about the Decarbonize Guide, but was quite disappointed, when I found a long-winded explanation of what it is supposedly not doing. But then again explained why it still might do it in some places... I read on and all I got to know, is that you should start with insulation and EVs!?! It would be great if they just would start with listing, what people can or should be doing for the biggest impact!