
Clean Wisconsin
Is there any good news about clean water?
Yes. But first, the bad.
Lake Erie is experiencing unprecedentedly intense algae blooms, and Lake Michigan might not be far behind. The worst algae bloom in history severely contaminated the waters of western Lake Erie this summer, prompting concerns about whether the decades-long effort to clean up the lake may be undone by agricultural runoff and the spread of invasive species.
Lake Erie is the first line of attack, ahead of Lake Michigan, for the enormously harmful combination of polluted runoff and invasive species.The National Wildlife Federation released a report Oct. 12 documenting new and massive ecosystem breakdowns in the Great Lakes caused by interactions between excessive agricultural pollution and invasive zebra and quagga mussels. The report details the links between enormous algal blooms in Lake Erie that threaten the health of people and wildlife and a 95 percent decline in fish biomass in Lake Huron
Things are so bad that they’ve garnered the attention of the U.S. Senate. U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife, convened a hearing to discuss the causes and impacts of nutrient pollution in the U.S. and various approaches toward mitigating its effects. Sen. Cardin observed that, “Despite the protections of the Clean Water Act, the problem nationwide continues to grow… From the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, and from Long Island Sound to San Francisco Bay, we must address the pollution in America’s waters by dealing with all the pollution … through comprehensive efforts.”
This is a crisis in the Great Lakes system, and soon may be a crisis for Lake Michigan. There are many ways to approach a crisis.
Florida is illustrating the wrong way to do it. Most recently, Rich Budell, director of the office of Agricultural Water Policy at Florida’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, criticized nutrient regulations at the hearing Sen. Cardin convened, despite acknowledging the nutrient pollution problems in Florida. Mr. Budell joins the wrong direction club with his fellow Floridian, Rep. John Mica, who introduced legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives to gut the Clean Water Act.
President John F. Kennedy said, “In times of crisis, be aware of the danger, but recognize the opportunity.”
Here is the good news—in the face of these horrible threats, Wisconsin is coming together. We aren’t fighting regulations on behalf of some industries at the expense of everyone else. We’re working together to find manageable solutions. Wisconsinites came together last year to pass an innovative set of rules to address phosphorus in our waterways. These rules let permittees avoid expensive technology costs in favor of finding cost-effective ways to restore water quality in the watershed. Throughout Wisconsin, permittees will be able to fund clean-up efforts from our largest source of nutrient pollution—agricultural runoff. Doing so will clean up our waters and allow us to avoid expensive phosphorus-control technology.
By working together to find solutions in these troubling environmental times, we can all look forward to a future of cleaner lakes.
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A Game of Jenga
<p>Think of it as a game of Jenga and the planet's climate system as the tower. For generations, we have been slowly removing blocks. But at some point, we will remove a pivotal block, such as the collapse of one of the major global ocean circulation systems, for example the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), that will cause all or part of the global climate system to fall into a planetary emergency.</p><p>But worse still, it could cause runaway damage: Where the tipping points form a domino-like cascade, where breaching one triggers breaches of others, creating an unstoppable shift to a radically and swiftly changing climate.</p><p>One of the most concerning tipping points is mass methane release. Methane can be found in deep freeze storage within permafrost and at the bottom of the deepest oceans in the form of methane hydrates. But rising sea and air temperatures are beginning to thaw these stores of methane.</p><p>This would release a powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, 30-times more potent than carbon dioxide as a global warming agent. This would drastically increase temperatures and rush us towards the breach of other tipping points.</p><p>This could include the acceleration of ice thaw on all three of the globe's large, land-based ice sheets – Greenland, West Antarctica and the Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica. The potential collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is seen as a key tipping point, as its loss could eventually <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/324/5929/901" target="_blank">raise global sea levels by 3.3 meters</a> with important regional variations.</p><p>More than that, we would be on the irreversible path to full land-ice melt, causing sea levels to rise by up to 30 meters, roughly at the rate of two meters per century, or maybe faster. Just look at the raised beaches around the world, at the last high stand of global sea level, at the end of the Pleistocene period around 120,0000 years ago, to see the evidence of such a warm world, which was just 2°C warmer than the present day.</p>Cutting Off Circulation
<p>As well as devastating low-lying and coastal areas around the world, melting polar ice could set off another tipping point: a disablement to the AMOC.</p><p>This circulation system drives a northward flow of warm, salty water on the upper layers of the ocean from the tropics to the northeast Atlantic region, and a southward flow of cold water deep in the ocean.</p><p>The ocean conveyor belt has a major effect on the climate, seasonal cycles and temperature in western and northern Europe. It means the region is warmer than other areas of similar latitude.</p><p>But melting ice from the Greenland ice sheet could threaten the AMOC system. It would dilute the salty sea water in the north Atlantic, making the water lighter and less able or unable to sink. This would slow the engine that drives this ocean circulation.</p><p><a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/atlantic-conveyor-belt-has-slowed-15-per-cent-since-mid-twentieth-century" target="_blank">Recent research</a> suggests the AMOC has already weakened by around 15% since the middle of the 20th century. If this continues, it could have a major impact on the climate of the northern hemisphere, but particularly Europe. It may even lead to the <a href="https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/39731?show=full" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cessation of arable farming</a> in the UK, for instance.</p><p>It may also reduce rainfall over the Amazon basin, impact the monsoon systems in Asia and, by bringing warm waters into the Southern Ocean, further destabilize ice in Antarctica and accelerate global sea level rise.</p>The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation has a major effect on the climate. Praetorius (2018)
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