Open fires following drought conditions are more common & increasing ...

From an Article by Harry Cockburn, The Independent (UK), May 30, 2019

Warming world and commercial pressures are putting country at risk of severe degradation, Scottish Natural Heritage warns.

Scotland faces numerous catastrophic impacts from the climate crisis which could leave the country with polluted waters, abandoned villages, dying forests and few remaining birds, the head of the country’s environment agency is to warn.

Outlining the apocalyptic scenario the country could face within the next decade, Francesca Osowska, head of Scottish Natural Heritage, will call for urgent action to tackle the environmental degradation already taking a heavy toll on Scotland.

Some of the biggest impacts include enormous wildfires which burned across swathes of the country in April and May, with one in Moray described as one of the largest wildfires seen in the UK in recent years.

Firefighters said lack of rain meant fires have quickly spread through peat and heather.

The country also faces the twin perils of both lack of water, and heightened risks of flooding, due to less rainfall, but rising sea levels which threaten low-lying coastal regions.

Warming temperatures have already changed the timings of spring events such as leaf unfolding, bird migration and egg-laying, as well as fish abundance and spawning locations, according to the Scottish government.

The country is failing to meet its own target to plant more trees with more land being given over to agriculture, while the salmon industry is already dealing with the impact of algal blooms due to climate change and pesticide use, and a surge in oil and gas exploration in the North Sea is expected to soon be under way which will further compound the problem.

“Let me paint you a picture of what we could have in Scotland in 2030,” Ms Osowska will say in her address at the Royal Society of Edinburgh this evening, according to The Times.

“Imagine an apocalypse – polluted waters; drained and eroding peatlands; coastal towns and villages deserted in the wake of rising sea level and coastal erosion; massive areas of forestry afflicted by disease; a dearth of people in rural areas and no birdsong.

“All of this is possible, and there are parts of the world we can point to where inaction has given rise to one or more of these nightmare landscapes.”

Ms Osowska will cite the UN report released earlier this month which paints a devastating picture of the planet’s biodiversity loss, with up to a million species facing extinction in the world’s sixth mass die-off.

She will describe it as “the most significant environmental report ever”, and say it is not too late to act. She will praise the Scottish government for declaring a “climate emergency” at the end of April, which pledges to cut net carbon emissions to zero by 2045.

Ms Osowska became chief executive of Scottish Natural Heritage in October 2017 and was previously director of the Scotland Office in Westminster, and also served as principal private secretary to Alex Salmond during his tenure as first minister of Scotland.

The Scottish government told The Times: “We agree that there is an urgent need to respond to the global climate emergency, on which Scotland is already demonstrating world-leading ambition.

“And we are also committed to doing all we can to ensure that Scotland’s environment is protected so that landscapes, wildlife and communities can continue to co-exist and flourish.”

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See Also: Midwest floods linked to climate change are devastating US farms, Quartz News, Michael J. Coren, May 30, 2019

Virtually no regulations to protect the public !!!

From an Article by Sharon Kelly, DeSmog Blog, April 12, 2019

This week, at an industry conference focused on wooing petrochemical producers to West Virginia, officials from the state and federal government made clear their support for continuing fracked shale gas extraction and petrochemical industry development near the natural gas-rich Marcellus Shale.

Why should petrochemical companies build in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio? For one thing, don’t expect regulation of shale gas drilling, Michael Graney, executive director of the West Virginia Development Office, predicted in his presentation.

“Contrasted to other U.S. regions, Tri-State region is industry-supportive and industry-friendly,” read a slide that Graney, who was appointed by West Virginia Governor Jim Justice in September 2018, presented to the conference. “Virtually no risk of drilling restrictions.”

Graney also elicited “hallelujahs” from the crowd after describing West Virginia’s low worker turnover rates. “We have earned an A from the Cato Institute in fiscal policies,” he told representatives from fossil fuel and petrochemical companies, referring to a libertarian think tank that Sourcewatch describes as “founded by Charles G. Koch and funded by the Koch brothers.”

‘Everything within the government’s power’

Shell is already building a massive plastic manufacturing plant reliant on fracked-gas feedstocks known as an “ethane cracker,” in Pennsylvania. Credit: Sharon Kelly, DeSmog

At the ninth annual West Virginia Manufacturers Association’s Marcellus and Manufacturing Development Conference, officials from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) offered the petrochemical industry the services of the federal government.

“And what we’re going to do is everything within the government’s power to shine a bright light on this and help get this over the finish line,” Steven Winberg, the Department of Energy’s Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy, told the conference. “With regard to DOE, there’s a couple of things that we can do. One is, private sector investors can take advantage of the DOE’s loan guarantee program.”

“We can walk you through that process, the loan guarantee process that the DOE has,” he continued.

Second, the Department of Energy hired a full-time staffer to push for petrochemical projects, according to Winberg, a former vice president for the coal and natural gas producer CONSOL Energy. “Secretary Perry gave me instructions to get somebody on board full time to work on behalf of the federal government to make this happen. And that somebody is Ken Humphreys.”

“I want to put a name with a face — so this is your guy here,” Winberg said, asking Humphreys to stand. “It is his job to do whatever the federal government can to help make this a reality.”

Humphreys served from 2010 to 2016 as the CEO of the FutureGen Industrial Alliance, which represented a group of nine coal and power companies, including CONSOL Energy, which were seeking Department of Energy funding for a carbon capture project, according to SourceWatch.

That project left behind a troubled history before its ultimate cancellation. In 2005, the DOE predicted FutureGen would be a “prototype of the fossil-fueled power plant of the future.” In 2008, the DOE announced the project would be re-structured amid cost over-runs.

In 2009, a House of Representatives subcommittee report examined the project’s viability. “DOE was extremely reluctant to produce documents to the Committee so that it could determine exactly how decisions were made concerning FutureGen,” that report found. “In retrospect, FutureGen appears to have been nothing more than a public relations ploy for Bush Administration officials to make it appear to the public and the world that the United States was doing something to address global warming despite its refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.”

However, the project was modified and revived, with $1 billion in federal stimulus funding promised — then canceled entirely in 2015, after remaining behind schedule and over-budget.

National Energy Technology Laboratory Chief — With a Petrochemical Past

Winberg was not the only DOE official offering the services of the federal government to the industry at this conference. Brian Anderson was appointed in November to run the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), part of the Energy Department.

Anderson, as DeSmog previously reported, had been “listed as one of the principals” by Appalachia Development Group, which has sought to develop an underground storage site for natural gas liquids, the raw materials from gas wells that can be used by petrochemical manufacturers.

“Since he became the director at NETL, which falls under the Department of Energy umbrella, Anderson said he’s severed all connections with Appalachia Development Group,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported on November 27, 2018.

In January, Anderson had been slated to speak at the West Virginia Energy Infrastructure Summit. DeSmog reporter Steve Horn raised questions about potential conflicts of interest, given Anderson’s role at Appalachia Development Group.

“The Department follows all federal laws and ethics requirements regarding onboarding new employees,” a DOE spokesperson told DeSmog. “The employee in question has been counseled regarding recusal from matters relating to past employers.” Anderson never spoke at that conference.

At this week’s conference, Anderson’s presentation focused on the support that his new federal office could provide for the fossil fuel industry — and for the region’s petrochemical industry in particular.

“Effectively the question is, what is the Marcellus going to do for us in manufacturing in this region?” Anderson told the audience of industry representatives. “And so, within that big question is what can NETL do within this region, as a partner in manufacturing?”

“We manage a $6.6 billion research portfolio across the U.S. and globe,” he added, describing various NETL “research projects to ensure that fossil energy can stay competitive as well as meet some of those emissions goals of our country and the globe.”

Anderson emphasized that even though petrochemical projects produce goods, not energy, supporting the industry through research fell within NETL’s Congressional mandate. “And so, the Department of Energy, one of our missions — within our mission — is to use our natural resources, our energy natural resources responsibly,” Anderson told the conference. “And it’s a responsible use of the natural gas liquids resource not to burn it, but to use it for building and manufacturing.”

A slide from Anderson’s presentation for NETL, titled “Energizing Regional Innovation Through Partnerships,” displayed logos from the Appalachia Storage and Trading Hub, a project planned by Appalachia Development Group, and from MATRIC, an owner of the Appalachian Development Group.

Taking the Federal Government’s Help

Appalachia Development Group — Anderson’s former firm — has been making strides toward obtaining loan guarantees from the DOE, Joe Bozada, a company executive, told the conference, including a loan guarantee roughly twice the size of the $1 billion DOE support offered to the FutureGen project.

“So, that’s a $1.9 billion loan guarantee,” Bozada told the conference. “We successfully completed that part one, and we’ve been invited to participate in part two,” of the DOE’s process.

“In the past 18 months, we’ve actually completed a lot of work,” he said. “One was getting the application to the loan permit office, that was very, very tough to do. And many folks in the room were actually part of that, so thank you for that.”

While company representatives spoke of the importance of federal assistance, the state’s political representatives expressed their support — and also decried the notion that the government should play favorites.

“We can’t allow the federal government to pick winners and losers when it comes to our energy policy,” Senator Joe Manchin said in a video recorded for the conference, “and we certainly can’t have them demonizing the resources that have powered this nation for decades. Coal and natural gas is a big part of that.”​

Meanwhile, outside the conference, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition Project Coordinator Dustin White spoke to a rally organized in opposition to the petrochemical industry’s plans for the region, The Dominion Post reported. “They scream jobs and like a carrot on a stick, and politicians chase them,” White said.

“The [Appalachian Storage Hub] scheme is an unimaginative regression to 1950s era economic development,” White said in a statement. “Why can’t we have real innovation?”

“It is of upmost importance that people see these current and proposed petrochemical projects in Appalachia for what they are: a scheme that the oil and gas companies are using to bail themselves out of debt,” said Bridgeport, Ohio, resident, Bev Reed, who also attended the rally and lives near the site of a proposed plastic factory. “The tide needs to shift to alternatives to plastic, rather than creating more.”

Main image: A slide from a presentation by West Virginia official Michael Graney, who listed “virtually no risk of drilling restrictions” as a reason to bring fracked-gas reliant petrochemical development to the region. Credit: Sharon Kelly, DeSmog

John Black, VP of Energy Solutions in Clarksburg, July 2018

From an Article of Marcellus Drilling News, WWW Internet, August 2, 2018

For years Energy Solutions Consortium (ESC) has been trying to build several natural gas-fired electric plants in West Virginia, but have been prevented from doing so by Big Coal lawsuits. It’s understandable that coal doesn’t want to give up its virtual monopoly on electric generation in the Mountain State. Some 95% of all electricity produced in the state comes from coal-fired plants.

Last year then-WV Sec. of Commerce Woody Thrasher observed that Ohio has built 19 new gas-fired power plants, and Pennsylvania has built 22 new gas-fired power plants, while WV has built NONE. Why not?

Because of Robert Murray, CEO and founder of Murray Energy, one of the largest independent coal mine operators in the U.S. Bob Murray is using a front organization called Ohio Valley Jobs Alliance (OVJA) to file a blizzard of frivolous lawsuits that have kept all new gas-fired plant projects from being built in WV.

The best chance ESC has in building its first gas-fired plant is in Harrison County. Only one roadblock remains–an OVJA challenge to the project’s air permit previously granted by the West Virginia Air Quality Board. Kind of ironic that Big Coal is challenging an air permit for far-cleaner-burning natural gas. Coal pollutes the air way more than natural gas.

The WV Supreme Court hears challenges to these kinds of permits. The paperwork has been filed with the high court. Once the court accepts and hears the case, which ESC thinks will be early fall, and the air permit is upheld, the first shovel of dirt will fly to build the $880 million Harrison County Power Station.

An ESC rep recently updated Harrison County officials and labor union members about the status of the project.

See also: Developers: Harrison gas-fired power plant project faces final hurdle before construction can begin | WV News

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BJ Services moving from central WV back to Penna., employs some 200 people

By BOB ROLLEY, The Express News Service, Lock Haven, PA, August 6, 2018

MILL HALL – A vacant facility location near Lock Haven PA is in line for reuse. The former local Baker Hughes regional natural gas services center will see new life in the coming months.

Texas-based BJ Services said it will relocate its Clarksburg, W. Va., operations into the former Baker Hughes facility just off Route 220 in the Lamar Township Business Park south of Mill Hall.

The company said it anticipates moving more than 200 employees here. That number reflects the firm’s entire natural gas fracturing operation in Clarksburg, BJ Spokesperson Michelle Pyner told PennLive.com.

The transfer will take place over the next three months. That’s the opposite of what occurred in spring 2016, when Baker Hughes closed the plant and moved operations to Clarksburg. The facility entails over 95,000 square feet under roof in six different buildings, with the main building combining an office area with a garage facility.

Baker Hughes opened the natural gas pressure pumping facility in late December 2012. At one point after it opened, Baker Hughes employed 200 people. However, as gas exploration and production slowed, Baker Hughes put the facility up for sale in September 2016 – four years after it invested upward of $37 million to build the center on 38 acres in the business park.

Clinton County Economic Partnership CEO Mike Flanagan said he’s elated BJ Services is moving an important part of its energy production business to Clinton County. “This is wonderful news,” Flanagan told The Express. “We believe it shows that the natural gas industry to coming back in this area.” He said it’s possible BJ Services will hire locally, though BJ Services said Clarksburg employees are being given the choice to stay with the firm and come to Clinton County.

Fracturing fleets and crews will report out of Mill Hall that will serve as the district office for support operations in the Marcellus and Utica natural gas basins, the firm said.

Clinton County and much of Pennsylvania sit atop the Marcellus Shale formation, from which natural gas is produced through well-drilling using vertical and horizontal hydraulic fracturing technology.

Much of the state-owned forestland in northern and western Clinton County was leased by the state for gas drilling. Some gas exploration activities are continuing north of Lock Haven.

BJ Services bought the hydraulic fracturing side of Baker Hughes a couple of years ago. Baker Hughes still owns about 45 percent of the business. This will be the only BJ Services facility in Pennsylvania.

The firm is considered to be among the largest oilfield-energy services provider in North America, focusing on land cementing and hydraulic fracturing services. It is an independent company created when CSL Capital Management and West Street Energy Partners in December 2016 acquired it from Baker Hughes which retained a 46.4 percent ownership stake.

BJ Services traces its roots to 1872, when Byron Jackson, a leader of the American Industrial Revolution at the turn of the 20th Century, formed the Byron Jackson Co. in Woodland, Calif. It was there where he designed and built the first centrifugal deep-well turbine pump, allowing large volumes of water to be pumped from deep underground reservoirs.

The move to Clinton County will better support “our growing business in the Marcellus and Utica natural gas basins,” Pyner said.

Distant Thunder & Rain Variations

In a Noisy World, Our Brains Still Need the Sounds of Nature

From an Article by Kerry Klein, The Allegheny Front, December 23, 2016

Kurt Fristrup is standing in the middle of a prairie and he’s the loudest thing for miles. He and I are huddled near an empty cattle pen in Pawnee National Grassland in northern Colorado. Before he pulled out his tools, the silence here was palpable. The breeze carried no sound except the rustle of a million stalks of yellow grass. A family of pronghorn, kind of like furry antelope, padded over to us to investigate.

Fristrup is disrupting this serene soundscape for a reason: He wants to better understand it—by recording it. Cows chewed through a microphone he set up a few months ago. And now he’s here to install a new one. “My respect for those cattle has just gone up,” he says. “They gnawed through some of these things, and they’re pretty tough.”

Fristrup is a senior scientist with the National Park Service in Fort Collins, Colorado. And he’s tasked with protecting a natural resource. It’s not water or minerals or endangered species. It’s sound. Natural sound. His team is studying how man-made noise is drowning out the sounds of birds and insects and rain. And as more and more research links our well-being to what we hear, Fristrup and his colleagues are pointing to natural sound as something to be managed—and even protected.

“I’d like to think that we can reach out through this effort, not just to park visitors and not just to backpackers, but help everyone realize that their lives could be better and their communities could be more vibrant places if we take some time to make them quieter.”

LISTEN: “Why We Need to Hear the Sounds of Nature”

Most of us can probably agree—our world is pretty noisy. But just how noisy is something Fristrup is trying to figure out. For a decade, he and a small team of engineers, physicists and biologists have hidden microphones in parks around the United States. Some are really remote—think grizzly bears and back-country skiing. But others are in urban areas, like Civil War memorials and the Statue of Liberty.

Each microphone recorded 24 hours a day for a month, capturing fantastic sounds—like the trumpeting of elk and goofy birds called ptarmigans. Not to mention the grunts of bears destroying the microphones, which Fristrup says was totally worth it.

But what Fristrup was after was loudness. Each device measured decibel levels 33 times per second. That mountain of data fed a model that created a sound map of the contiguous United States. It took the qualities of each site, like how close it is to roads or water, and calculated median sound levels for the entire rest of the country—even places outside parks.

“You can see that it looks very much like the images of the earth at night from satellites. The brightest noise sources are concentrated in cities. Then you see these lines along the interstates and other major transportation corridors that also light up with sound.”

Photo: Kurt Fristrup repairs a damaged recording system on a cattle pen in Colorado’s Pawnee National Grassland. 

 That big picture may not be all that surprising. But the differences in noise levels are staggering. “You and I are standing about three feet apart, and you can comfortably hear what I’m saying. In the Sierra, the background sound levels are about 1,000 times lower, which means you could stand 90 feet away from me in the Sierra. I could talk at this level, and you could hear me just as clearly.”

Every rise of three decibels doubles the sound hitting our eardrums. Now consider this: The loudest places in the U.S. are around 40 decibels noisier than the quietest. So if you do the math, Manhattan can be around 8,000 times louder than Great Sand Dunes National Park—one of the darkest spots on the map.

“There are times when I’ve been in the field in the intermountain west, where I’ve not only been able to hear my own heartbeat, but I’ve been able to hear the heartbeat of the person in the field with me.”

Our biggest noise producer is transportation—cars, trucks, motorcycles. Even the hiss of tires against pavement. But even far away from roads, there are still airplanes. Fristrup estimates man-made noise really took off in the mid-20th century, when flying became commonplace. Now, most of us are so used to planes, we don’t even notice them. After hiking with friends, Fristrup likes to ask how many they heard. “Most people will say, ‘You know, I think I heard one or two aircraft.’ And, being me, I’ve actually been counting the whole day and I’ll say, ‘Well, we actually heard 21 high-altitude jets, 10 propeller aircraft and two helicopters.’”

So if we’re not even conscious of the man-made noises around us, then what’s the big deal? Researchers at Penn State are trying to figure that out.

“In the Sierra, the background sound levels are about 1000 times lower, which means you could stand 90 feet away from me in the Sierra. I could talk at this level, and you could hear me just as clearly. There are times when I’ve been in the field in the intermountain west, where I’ve not only been able to hear my own heartbeat, but I’ve been able to hear the heartbeat of the person in the field with me.”

Heather Costigan, a lab manager at Penn State, outfitted me with a monitor that continuously recorded my heart rate for an experiment they’re conducting. It was informally called “the soundscape study.”

The first step was stress. I had to imagine I was applying for a big job and gave a five-minute speech in front of a one-way mirror. It was kind of intense. Then came the soundscape. Costigan whisked me into a dark room. I put on headphones and settled in to watch a video. On the screen was Half Dome, the majestic centerpiece of Yosemite Valley. The sun crept across the granite. Red and yellow leaves fluttered. But when I heard a garbage truck interrupt, and then a motorcycle, I cringed.

“We would like to know, when is sound helpful, when is noise harmful, under what circumstances and for what people?” says Joshua Smyth, a professor of biobehavioral health at Penn State who’s coordinating the soundscape study. His hypothesis is that natural sound will speed up stress recovery, even with people making noise in the background. But some test subjects watched that video with no man-made sound at all, and Smyth thinks they’ll recover even faster.

For each test subject, he and Costigan tracked heart rate and also measured cortisol—a hormone in saliva. Cortisol is a kind of stress indicator, and chronically stressed people produce a lot of it. Studies have connected that highly stressed state with all sorts of health issues—heart problems, breathing problems, musculoskeletal problems and a higher susceptibility to viruses and infections. “So we just generally see a decay in the capacity of the body [in] response to these sort of chronic conditions of stress,” Smyth says.

So when we hear irritating sounds, even if we try not to let them bother us, Smyth suspects that our stress levels still spike, priming our bodies for other health problems. But could noise ever be so bad that it alone breaks down our immune defenses? Probably not. “But, if I have that and stress from work and not a particularly supportive relationship and I’m worried about money, then collectively, I may be at risk.”

Photo: Joshua Smyth, a biobehavioral health professor at Penn State, is interested in how the human body responds to what it hears. 

So our cars, our airplanes—some of the very advances that make our lives easier and more productive—they might also be sabotaging us. So what’s the solution? Stop driving? Renounce technology? A social scientist across campus offers a gentler perspective.

“I think that talking about the positive effects of nature sounds is a much better story than talking about the negative impacts we have on the world,” says Peter Newman, who heads up Penn State’s department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Management. “Both might be true, but we know that we can focus on the fact that it’s important to us and it resonates with people. No pun intended.”

Newman is studying why people visit parks and what they do once they’re there. “Listening is a huge part of that experience that people have out there. They want to hear the noises of wildlife, they want to hear the sounds of wind and water. And those are really important things for how they feel.”

In the past, studies have shown we recover better from surgery when we can see nature. Newman says we also benefit from hearing it. Research shows natural sounds can improve cognition, mood and general well-being. And that’s an idea a lot of people already buy into. It’s easy to find recordings of relaxing nature sounds.

But Newman argues that we can preserve sound in the real world too. He points to a success story in Muir Woods, a national monument outside San Francisco. In an experiment in 2009, he and a few colleagues posted signs for quiet zones and showed visitors how to be less noisy.

“We actually were able to reduce the amount of noise there by about three decibels, which was the equivalent of doubling people’s listening area,” Newman says.

Conserving sound in parks may seem to be at odds with the Park Service mission of bringing people there. But back in Colorado, Kurt Fristrup sees these opposing values as a challenge. He knows the solution isn’t to keep people away. Instead, he’s helping develop new technology. Like quieter pavement and electric airplanes that could someday lead silent air tours. His team is also developing roadside noise gauges, kind of like the blinking signs that tell you how fast your car is moving, only it’s how loud you are.

“I look at this as an enormous opportunity to improve not only resource conditions in parks, but the quality of the environments in which we all live,” Fristrup says. “Because unlike many other forms of pollution, all of this goes away as soon as we throw the switch.”

Throwing that switch won’t be easy, but we all have an incentive to try. Because who wants a world in which recordings of nature are our only option? So next time you’re outside, turn off your car, stop talking and listen. What you hear might just be good for you. And it’s free. For everyone. Natural sound is a truly infinite resource. All we have to do is not drown it out.

>>> This story was originally published on 1/29/16 as part of the STEM Story Project.

See also:  www.FrackCheckWV.net

HELP! — Our Biosphere is being replaced by an Econosphere

Commentary by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Professor and Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

When I was about 16 and began to drive, I noticed the yellow spots on the map, and how much space they occupied. These were cities, of course, too densely developed to draw in the streets at the scale of whole-state road maps.

The world I grew up in consisted of the farm where Dad made our living and which provided most of our diet, thanks to Mom’s hard work with help from the three children. It was a great green continuum in all directions broken by houses and by the 30′s and some paved roads. By the 40′s strip mining was in progress, but it was understood the strip jobs would return to trees and grass in a decade or so. Cities were something else, large areas covered with concrete, roofs of metal and shingles, and a lot of bare spots. Later I learned about pollution from garages, chrome plating shops, and the huge amount of sewage towns produce.

This growth process in time lead to understanding what is called “environmental services.” We are essentially part of an ancient system, the organic world. Every atom of our bodies comes from the natural organic world through the food we ingest. When we die, we return to it, in spite of the effort we civilized folk make to delay the return. As a famous book says, we “come from the dust and we return to the dust,” this is through the ancient cycle of life.

Think of how it works: the atoms needed for our bodies are widely dispersed in the surface of the earth. Plants are able to gather them for their own use, and we eat the plants, or eat animals which have eaten plants. The part of the food we do not need is returned to the earth in our waste (when we live in a state of nature). When we die, the atoms of our bodies are also returned to the earth (again if we live in a state of nature). This system has served millions of species for a very long time. More microorganisms than you can imagine mediate it. We simply cannot exist without supplies from these natural processes for our food, and largely for our clothing and our shelter.

Our civilization separates us from the natural world. Stone age people continued to live in it, and many in the civilized world lived very close to it until recently, but much of today’s world has lost track of the organic necessity. One of the stories told here on Jesse Run is about a young couple that moved here from town. The husband told his wife he wanted to get a cow, so they could have milk. She replied, “I don’t want no milk that comes from a cow.”

Our offal is carefully carried to a sewage treatment plant where it is decomposed to the mineral state, with only a little fertility left in the sludge. Our artifacts go into a landfill. Our bodies are preserved in such a way it is difficult to return to the organic world. We extract what we need by organic means and then discard it in a way that it is not returned to the organic world. Mining and dumping. Our use of energy produced hundreds of millions of years ago by organisms using energy from the sun is prodigious.

Worse, our mining methods infringe on the organic world, green space, whatever you want to call it. This organic world is responsible for clean water, timber, food, oxygen in the atmosphere, and disposal of organic waste. What would the world be like if the dead dinosaurs and other species hadn’t decomposed and returned to be reused time and again?

We humans have been tremendously successful. The total weight of the seven billion of us is greater than most species. Some 350 million tons, as of 2012. The only species to exceed us in weight are bacteria, ants, marine fish (total), domestic cattle and termites. All whales (ten species) come in with only 40 million tons.

Another statement seen in the press lately is that the human race has doubled in the last 40 years and the total number of animals has dropped by half in the same time!  Shocking?

How long can this go on? Population rise is inexorable. Famines and plagues and wars are only a temporary setback. Look for a graph of population rise over the centuries. For several hundred years people have been talking about the “carrying capacity” of the earth, the maximum number of people can live here, followed by the same number of people generation after generation. Malthus in 1798 is given credit for the first written account of the idea. When the limit has been approached for one technology, another has been found. Potatoes and corn from the New World have supplemented cabbage and wheat, which poor North Europeans lived on.

There was a graph of the population of China vs. Time over many centuries published several years ago in Science. There was a series of stair steps of increasing population. Each was labeled with the introduction of a new foodstuff. Far back in time was millet, then dry land rice, then wetland rice. More recently, maize (which we call corn) and potatoes.

Also, fertilizer is making a difference, but we cannot count technology to go on forever. And, the population curve is rising.

I’d like to see a map with the yellow extended to houses, industrial areas and their pollution, buildings and roads of all kinds and all development. I’d like to know just how much land has been removed from production by civilization. I’d like to know how much each industry is killing the natural world, and how our “environmental services” are being reduced by them. We need to know. This kind of “return on investment” is both unknown and uncounted.

In the absence of such a map, the best we can do is get on Google Earth and “fly” over the earth at a low level. Stay a couple of thousand feet above the surface and move around. If you do this and learn to identify the “development,” you’ll be amazed at how much of the earth’s habitable surface is already preempted by what I call the “econosphere”, and lost to the biosphere.

West Virginia Landscape

Who Owns the Land (Part 2 of  3)

Commentary by S. Tom Bond, Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

Land in this country originally belonged almost entirely to individuals. The principal industry at the time was the acquisition of products of the land, won by hard labor. Experience in Europe had shown that concentrated land ownership produced inefficient use, separation of the population into different social classes, and frequent change of ownership of estates for service to the king, with little regard for best utilization of the land.

When the new United States began, the objectives were to minimize social differences among people, and to maximize the efficiency of producing goods from the use of resources, namely obtaining products of the land. Industry and trade were important, but mostly privately owned and lacking the complex legal structure of today. So both land ownership and business ownership were relatively dispersed. However, from the beginning, the government retained “eminent domain.” This was recognition that the function of a government was to regulate society to benefit all. So “ownership” is ultimately a right to operate land and pass it to ones designated heirs. The owner has “tenure,” but his or her use is for the public good.

Other arrangements are possible, of course. But, the point here is: “ownership,” as frequently thought of, is an inadequate conception. One “owns” (has tenure) land (or any other business) for his/her lifetime so long as they have a viable enterprise. When mineral extraction reduces the production of the surface it is damage not only to the present owner, in his ability to pay his debts and live well, to pay taxes, to enjoy the product of his labor, it injures future generations as well.

The unpaid for costs (including health effects and a host of other problems) of mineral extraction are referred to as “externalized costs” in economics. They have characterized mineral extraction for all history. I can show you the marks of coal mining, deep and strip mining, and I can show you the effects of early oil and gas extraction.

The previous injuries to the surface in Appalachia are huge, as everyone knows, but are relatively small in extent compared to what is coming with shale drilling. Six to ten or more acres paved out of each square mile for 100,000 square miles of Appalachia alone. Mini brownfields on many of them. Hundreds of miles of new pipeline right of way, kept cleared by spraying or brush cutting until the last gas has passed through.

This loss of productive capacity and value to the present tenants is a devastating loss. It is a loss to society, too.

If you look at aerial photographs or satellite pictures you have to be impressed with the percent of land area that already is “built up,” not having vegetative cover. If the increase in population projected occurs, still more land will be converted to accommodate it. The industrialization and one time, historically short term (probably no more than 20-25 years) use of rural land for shale drilling is a great loss to future generations.

Why is this not thought of? Shale drilling is the most hyped industry of our time, perhaps ever. It uses little labor compared to the total expenditure – it is capital intensive. The abundance of cash and the drive for additional investment make subordination of government and public opinion necessary. Corporations live in the present. The past is no lesson and the future is no worry. They hustle for immediate returns.

Most of our citizens are not aware of the need for environmental regulations, preferring amusements and taking a stance of  ”I can’t do anything about it, so why try?” The government and the business community can only see industrial development as a way forward – doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, as Einstein said.

So the law is one-sided (as explained in my previous article) and the legal establishment is enriching itself by stretching it to the limit. Regulatory agencies and the legislature consist of people who have too much to do to spend time in study or field work, and are fully subject to the necessity to get campaign funds for the next election.

So where does that leave the public interest? Big looser! One more reckoning day ignored. One more Sword of Damocles over public interests.

Next: The final part of the series: The Extraction Syndrome