WiLD Blog

We are continuously seeing global warming becoming a more pressing issue and sea levels are rising which is believed by many to be in direct correlation with global warming. Recent reports from the U.S. government are warning planners that they should be rethinking threatened roads, rail lines, airports and other infrastructure along the U.S. coasts.
The greatest and most immediate impact of the increased heat, sea levels and precipitation rates is coastal flooding. The EPA has done similar studies that also found natural features such as beaches, wetlands and freshwater supplies also being at risk of destruction.
The new reports note that coastal areas are “thickly populated, economically important and gaining people and investment by the day, even as scientific knowledge of the risks they face increases.” The use of such knowledge by policy makers and planners is clearly insufficient. Planners need to now begin to come up with plans that will reinforce, move or replace on safer ground. “We need to think about it now,” said Dr. Schwartz, a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

The multiagency reports, draft assessments are intended to help policy makers start thinking and planning now. The report offers three different estimates for sea level rise by 2100: about 16 inches a century, a rate it said had already been exceeded about two feet.
As a first step for policy makers, the report said that transportation officials need to realize that climate patterns that prevailed in the past “may no longer be reliable guide for future plans.” Instead they should “incorporate climate change into their plans for capital improvements, maintenance schedules, emergency preparedness and so on.”

Despite this report being developed by the U.S. government, it still provides additional evidence as to why further coastal development throughout the Baja California Peninsula needs to be prevented or at least regulated. Our coastal region and ecosystem is completely connected and will face similar if not the same repercussions if major coastal flooding was to occur. The majority of growth and infrastructure throughout Baja’s coastal regions is very unplanned and developers are able to avoid regulation building standards that they would face in the U.S. If the U.S. government is suggesting the reinforcement or even the relocation of infrastructure that was professionally and comprehensively planned, what is the fate of present and future coastal development throughout the B.C. Peninsula?

Cory Keen

Google Earth is a virtual globe program that maps the Earth by superimposing images. All images are taken from satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS 3D globe. Google Earth is available on a personal computer as long as it meets system requirements and because it is downloadable via the Internet anyone can use it. Google offers three different licenses: Google Earth, a free version with limited functionality; Google Earth Plus, which includes a few more features; and Google Earth Pro, intended for commercial use.

Image of Baja California produced using Google Earth

One practical application of the program is for realtors selling property over the Internet. With Google Earth one can look at a plot of land and its surroundings anywhere in the world with resolution from 45 ft. to views as precise as 6 inches. Many people are adding their own data on images to highlight specific locations and sites of interest. In addition, one can view an area, such as mountain ranges, in 3D and not just directly from the top.

Recently, Google has launched an outreach campaign to benefit the public and non-profit organizations. Through their Earth Pro license grant program Google is offering free use of their new photographic software to any U.S. based non-profit which aims to benefit the public. The only other requirement in applying for the grant is that there is a working employee who has experience with HTML and Google Earth/KML.

The Commission for Environmental Cooperation is a tri-lingual non-profit created by Canada, Mexico and the United States under the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation. They have utilized Google’s generous offer and today use Google Earth Pro to map industrial pollutants from over 30,000 industrial facilities. Anyone can now see a current map of pollution sources and accumulation anywhere in North America. The Commission for Environmental Cooperation has created an interactive map by including what pollutants are generated and how each of the facilities handles them.

Google Earth updates images so that none remain more then three years old and most are undated annually. Many public organizations are using them to create a visual tracking method of changes in our environment. For example, WWF now provides a virtual tour of the Amazon in order to enhance awareness of deforestation and to better describe the projects in the region. Once baseline images are created each consecutive year can be compared to the previous and members as well as web surfers are able to track progress or, in a more depressive case, observe environmental destruction as it happens today.

At WiLDCOAST we are working to raise money to preserve land in rural Mexico at risk of turning into resortland Mexico. Along with site-specific scenic photos, it is incredibly beneficial to be able to show people aerial views of these unique areas found nowhere else in the world.

Just as Al Gore states in his presentation of An Inconvenient Truth, satellite photographs of the Earth were the single most influential images in the environmental movement. Today we continue to view our world from new perspectives in order to understand it better. Images of glaciers five years ago as compared to today are prime example of an argument that needs no words. I applaud Google for providing such a valuable service at no charge and hope everyone takes the time to take a step back and look at the earth every now and then.

If you’re a working on conservation in a non-profit visit the Google Earth Outreach program website.
Corina Marks

U.S. Army, Nay and Coast Guard are beginning the process of removing an artificial tire reef from the coast of Fort Lauderdale. The tires were put in 40 years ago to help promote tourism and to help bolster the local fish population. Officials had hoped that the artificial reef would be a success in helping restore the natural environment and disposing of unwanted trash but instead have been causing more problems than initially anticipated.

The tires were originally bound together using nylon straps or steel cables, but in the ocean environment the tires have broken free. After hurricanes, tires would litter the beach, and in the Fort Lauderdale area, the tires have run into a living reef, destroying whatever was along their path.

Divers explore the underwater tire reef which comprises approximately 34 acres (photo South Florida Sun-Sentinel)

While using our old trash to create new environments seems like a great idea, it should have been researched more extensively and thought out more thoroughly. This latest case is another example of good intentions gone wrong. That isn’t to say that efforts like these should be stopped or anything. Innovation is crucial to helping save the environment, but at the same time innovation has to be properly thought out.

Tire waste in the coast of Florida (photo South Florida Sun-Sentinel)

The most unfortunate part of this story is the fact that while people meant well; they actually ended up doing more harm than good. This is a common theme throughout world’s history. One blatant example would be introduced species which are meant to provide a means of biological control but can quickly get out of hand. Cane toads in Australia were meant to control pests that were destroying the cane crop, but ended up as a nightmare killing domestic pets and destroying native wildlife.

I think the lesson here is that we simply don’t know enough about the natural world to be making such large changes to the ecosystem. Recently, I was discussing with an elderly gentlemen about how some scientists believed by dumping huge amounts of iron into the nutrient deprived waters off South America they could cause huge algal blooms that would absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and thus helping to solve global warming. The gentleman seemed very much sold on the idea, even as I explained that such large scale algal blooms could radically change the ocean ecosystem and that the consequences were unknown. I don’t think he fully understood the idea.

To me, stories like these serve as a caution sign to the part we play in trying to the save the environment. In my opinion, sometimes it’s just best to leave the environment alone, to have it unaltered and in its true natural state and not imposing what we believe is natural for it. That’s why it’s important to support efforts to protect and preserve land, especially in areas like Baja California, where development has been steadily accelerating. If one day those lands are gone, and we realize what we have lost, efforts to restore it could be as futile as these efforts in Florida.
Calvin Lee

This week the New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert continues her groundbreaking analysis of global climate change with a look at how human related carbon emissions are turning the ocean acidic in “The Darkening Sea: What Carbon emissions are doing to the ocean.” Kolbert’s original work in The New Yorker is spelled out in her book, Field Notes from a Catastrophe. The article is an excellent summary of the reams of scientific research that has been published widely. Kolbert’s article should be required reading for anyone who believes that San Diego’s coast will be or has been immune from the impacts of climate change and that a small population of harbor seals represents a significant threat to our coastline.

Some of Kolbert’s observations include the following:

• “The concentration of carbon dioxide in the aid today—three hundred and eight parts per million—is higher than it has been at any point inn the past six hundred and fifty thousand years, and probably much longer.

• “At the current rate of emissions growth, carbon dioxide concentration will top five hundred parts per million—roughly double pre-industrial levels—by the middle of this century.”

• Increases in carbon dioxide levels “will produce an eventual global temperature rise of between three and half and seven degrees Fahrenheit, and that this in turn, will prompt a string of disasters, including fiercer hurricanes…and the inundation of many of the world’s major coastal cities.”

• “Already, humans have pumped enough carbon into the oceans—some hundred and twenty billion tons—to produce a .1 decline in surface pH…a .1 drop represents a rise in acidity of about thirty percent.”

• “Because of the slow pace of deep-ocean circulation and the long life of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it is impossible to reverse the acidification that has taken place.”

Kolbert, as did Ken Weiss did in his brilliant Alerted Oceans series in the Los Angeles Times, argues that this drop in pH levels will give way to an increase in ocean slime and jellyfish that will occupy ecological niches now filled by, well, fish and the rest of the ocean food chain.

The irony here, is that while Jerry Sanders, Scott Peters and the Stepford Wife public servants at the City’s Recreation Department squander public monies on dredging projects for Children’s Pool, continue to defend the bizarre rope barrier at La Jolla Shores, and oversee San Diego’s wasteful kelp eradication program, Mother Ocean will soon be taking its revenge on San Diego. The years of defending the dumping millions of gallons of sewage into the ocean, failure to clean up Mission Bay, criminal contempt for warnings about the antiquated sewage treatment system, spending millions on sand replenishment projects, and ignoring the corruption of the Bajagua project’s blocking efforts to reduce border pollution, are now coming home to roost.

If a small population of harbor seals freaks out the anti-seal brigade in La Jolla, imagine the response to beaches filled with slime and jelly fish. It is rumored that Jerry Sanders, like President Bush believes that global climate change is a hoax. Sorry, Jerry. Let’s see you finally, for once, take some leadership on the issue that will matter most to the future of San Diego.

Environmental organizations face the hard task of bringing to people the bad news: life in this planet is dissapearing at an alarming rate, global warming is causing glaciers to melt and ocean levels to rise, fisheries are in the brink of collapsing, and so on. And people have to decide to take the blue pill or the red pill.

In the film The Matrix, Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) offers to Neo (Keanu Reeves) two pills. The red pill will answer the question “what is the Matrix” (by removing him form it) and the blue pill will mean simply for life to carry on as before. As Neo reaches for the red pill Morpheus warns Neo “Remember, all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.”

If you take the blue pill you can continue your same energy consumption patterns, continue believing that scientists confirming global warming are wrong and pessimistic, continue thinking that fisheries are plentiful and that species are not dissapearing. Living a comfortable life. Essentially, if the truth is unknown, or you believe that you know the truth, what is there to question or worry about? Ignorance is a bliss.

Are you ready to take the red pill, to be unplugged, or you are so hopelessly dependent on the system that you will fight to protect it?

Saul