Monthly Archives: August 2014

Heat accumulating in the deep oceans has put global warming on pause

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There seem to have been a dozen or so explanations for why the Earth’s surface has warmed at a slower rate over the past 15 years compared to earlier decades.

This is perhaps not so surprising given the complexity of the climate system – the world’s best detectives will inevitably struggle to disentangle the factors which influence every lump and bump in the surface temperature record.

However, recent research implicates natural changes in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans as the prime culprits. Just as the apparently random motions in a river’s flow can shift before our eyes from one minute to the next, the gradual sloshing about of our vast ocean waters can influence Earth’s climate from one year to the next and from one decade to the next.

Natural variability and long term trends

It is clear that natural variability has and always will influence the climate. In addition to chaotic ocean fluctuations, changes in the brightness of the sun and variations in the frequency and intensity of volcanic eruptions (which cool the planet temporarily with sunlight-reflecting aerosol particles) influence the surface temperature.

The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working report found that these natural factors have contributed toward the slowing rate of surface warming since 1998.

However, recent measurements of ocean temperature made by thousands of automated buoys and observations of Earth’s radiative energy budget by satellite instruments indicate that heating has continued at a rate equivalent to every person worldwide using about 20 kettles each to continuously boil the oceans.

This is consistent with what is expected from the rising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases due to human activity. If anything, Earth’s heating rate increased between the 1985-1999 and 2000-2012 periods, despite a slowing in the rate of surface warming.

In search of the hidden heat – the Pacific?

So, how is it possible for increased heating to not directly correspond with surface warming?

The Earth’s heating is caused by an imbalance between the amount of absorbed sunlight and the heat emitted back to space. This surplus of heat is primarily absorbed by the oceans since they command the lion’s share of storage capacity compared with other parts of the climate system such as the land, the atmosphere or the cryosphere (ice and snow).

This large heat capacity of water is noticeable from the amount of time it takes to heat up your pan of vegetables. And there is a lot of water in the oceans – nearly a fifth of a cubic kilometre of water for each person on the planet.

Crucially, the temperature at the Earth’s surface depends upon where this heat is deposited in the oceans. If the upper levels warm, so too will the atmosphere above. However, if ocean circulations cause more heat to be drawn down to deeper depths (or less heat to be moved upward toward the sea surface) then surface temperatures will reflect this.

Recent research has implicated our largest ocean, the Pacific, as the most likely mechanism for subducting heat to deeper levels. Indeed, atmospheric and ocean conditions in the Pacific have been unusual in the past decade and computer simulations show that decades of slow surface warming despite rising greenhouse gas concentrations are associated with increased heating below 300m depth.

The mechanisms for heat absorption are less clear; the simulations show that similar patterns appearing to originate from the Pacific are associated with the draw-down of heat in the North Atlantic and Southern Ocean as well as the Pacific.

Or is it the Atlantic?

New research published in Science now shifts the focus towards the Atlantic Ocean. Xianyao Chen and Ka-Kit Tung of the University of Washington show that heating from rising greenhouse gas concentrations has preferentially warmed the ocean’s 300-1,500m layer since about 2000, thereby depriving the upper layers of this surplus heat and causing surface warming to slow.

The authors say these changes are part of a natural cycle of knock-on effects, involving ocean circulation responses to changes in how salty (and therefore dense) the upper Atlantic Ocean layers are.

This cycle is thought to last around 30 years, contributing a sustained cooling effect then a warming influence on surface temperatures. When combined with steady heating from greenhouse gas increases this leads to a ‘staircase’ effect of stable temperatures followed by rapid warming.

They argue the previous focus on the Pacific was based upon simulations that were unable to fully capture the intricacies of the Atlantic Ocean circulation. An observed decline in the North Atlantic Ocean circulation over recent years has also been identified as part of a longer-term shift based upon evidence from computer simulations.

Climate complexity disallows simple answers

The changes in ocean circulation have also been shown to influence seasonal extremes and, based upon the proposed Atlantic mechanism, may persist for another decade before rapid warming is re-established. However, the nature of internal ocean fluctuations means it is difficult to pin down timings with any confidence.

While it is human nature to seek a single cause for notable events, in reality the complexity of the climate system means that it is unlikely there is one simple reason for any extreme weather event or a decade of unusual climatic conditions.

Nevertheless, the recent hiatus in global surface warming has encouraged scientists to further scrutinise and learn in even finer detail than before the workings of our climate system.

 

 

Richard Allan is Professor of Climate Science at the University of Reading. He receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

 






Flump – Frozen microbial ecosystems, Primary forests, meta-analysis of genetic diversity studies, maps and more

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UNEP's recent publication includes maps of natural capital, providing a great visual of what and where nature provides humans with resources and services.

It’s Friday and that means that it’s time for our Friday link dump, where we highlight some recent papers (and other stuff) that we found interesting but didn’t have the time to write an entire post about. If you think there’s something we missed, or have something to say, please share in the comments section!

Nature published a study yesterday that provides the first evidence for microbial ecosystems beneath the Antarctic ice sheet.  Genetic data suggests that the microorganisms discovered are a mix of chemosynthetic autotrophs and heterotrophs, and therefore likely influence the geochemistry of the surrounding Southern Ocean.

Mackey et al., in a recent article in Conservation Letters, paint a dire picture of the state of primary forests worldwide. – Nate Johnson

Etienne Low-Décarie and colleagues show that, over the past years, ecological models have become much more complex and that their explanatory power have decreased steadily, in their new paper “Rising complexity and falling explanatory power in ecology“.

The last issue of Science features three letters about animal population declines:

At last, SCALES, a research project aiming to bring  the issue of sac ale into biodiversity conservation, ha just released a free ebook: “Scaling in Ecology and Biodiversity Conservation“. – Vinicius Bastazini.

August 22, 2014

Missive from ESA2014: BBB – Better Biodiversity Business?

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tesoroBaker1

The March Point Refinery in Anacortes, WA, which must be one of the most beautifully situated refineries on earth. I do research just behind it at the Padilla Bay National Estuarine Reserve, in the shadow of Mt. Baker. Photo: Tesoro

Paraphrasing Jill Baron, ESA President, we, as ecologists, might all feel a … certain way about oil companies, but then we get in our cars and drive away. Or fly to ESA.

So, at what point, or on what level, do we, again, as ecologists, directly engage businesses, including huge multinational corporations that are typically blamed for the environmental destruction we research, in a constructive conversation about maintaining biodiversity? One that doesn’t involve picket signs, or legalese, or inherent distrust?

I fully acknowledge my own visceral sense of distrust, evoked during last Monday’s special session on Biodiversity in Businesses, on the introduction of Maria Hartley, who works on implementing the environmental mission (who knew?) of Chevron (see Inevitable Caveat 1 below). Joining Ms. Hartley on the panel were Albert Straus (of Straus Family Creameries – HUGE fan of the European Style yogurt, totally changed my outlook on yogurt!), and Robbert Snep, who is both an academic and a consultant to businesses seeking to green up and improve sustainability and biodiversity in their practices. The panel benefitted from the experience of a range of company approaches – a huge multinational corporation seemingly anathema to the idea of conservation, a local/regional agricultural operation, where we are much more comfortable thinking about biodiversity and business coexisting, as well as a consultant who works with a range of business entities and has a landscape-level perspective.

One of the species that Chevron works to protect is the Desert Tortoise in the Mojave.

One of the species that Chevron works to protect is the Desert Tortoise in the Mojave. Find out more here. Photo: “DesertTortoise” by Wilson44691 – Own work. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

I latched onto the theme of motivation in each of these scenarios: Who are the parties that are motivated to build biodiversity into the business architecture and why? Who wants the business to consider environmental welfare and conservation? The shareholders? The consumers? The executives? The employees? The Public Relations office? What is their relation to the decision-making apparatus for the company? Is the business built in a way that protects sustainability as a priority, even when competing prioritie$ might emerge.

The answers to these questions determine how each business approaches biodiversity, and there is a range of structural solutions. For instance, on the flight (Inevitable Caveat 2) here, I read a short piece in the New Yorker about “B-corporations”, for-profit companies that are certified for high standards in “social and environmental practice” by B-Lab, a non-profit. B-corporations are, evidently, not to be confused with Benefit Corporations, which is hard, because they are both called “B-corps”. A B Corporation is a business incorporation status offered by about half of the states in the country. In both cases, there is an explicit commitment to social or environmental goals and objectives, that are variously controlled or evaluated by outside entities.

Straus was the first non-GMO verified creamery in the country. Find out more here.

Straus was the first non-GMO verified creamery in the country. Find out more here.

Neither Straus nor Chevron is a B-corp, in either sense of the colloquial term, though perhaps the latter goes without saying. Yet they both manage, in their way, to pursue environmental objectives. I got the sense that these objectives were both determined and executed in a very top-down way at Straus, reflecting the vision and mission of the company’s family founders. On the other hand, Chevron states environmental goals, but hires ecologists and lawyers to keep them in compliance. I do wonder whether either of those approaches is structured to protect these values when/if “Corporate Social Responsibility” ever becomes less fashionable.

So, the good news is that there are jobs out there for us ecologists who don’t see the allure in the current unstable academic funding environment. Companies are seeking out science and finding it worth their investment to ask ecologists how to do their business environmentally. How do we get those jobs? Snep noted that, as students, we spend very little time thinking about businesses (except perhaps as a funding opportunity, or an obstacle to our research). He suggests that it would benefit us to wear a businesses hat from time to time, to develop the ability to communicate with business and find ways to apply ecology, to their landscaping, to their sourcing, to their marketing. Straus added that their company is really looking for leaders and managers first, as the content and skills can be added. I have been told that a dual PhD(or MS)/MBA is a formidable combination. I’m not sure I’m quite ready for X years more school, given my current financial situation, and it seems almost laughable how fish-out-of-water I would look in a business school (she says as she looks around the room at ESA).

 

Inevitable Caveats:

(1)  On a personal note, the distrust was, of course, my own baggage. Ms. Hartley convinced me that she does work from a science-first perspective and believes the role she plays can make a difference in the world of biodiversity.

(2)  Presumably, this plane flew on petroleum – read here for more about conservation biologists and carbon footprint, an irony of which I am fully aware.

August 19, 2014

We are at ESA, and you can too!

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SPOTTED at ESA 2014! Messrs Halliday and Lefcheck

This week, BioDV contributors Jes Coyle, Emily Grason, Fletcher Halliday, and Jon Lefcheck are be attending the 2014 annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America.

Yes, we are all here to learn and share in the wonders of modern Ecological research, but we are also here because we want to meet you, our readers [and future contributors]. And to that end, we are organizing a BioDV social/mixer/meetup/shindig (pick your poison):

Thursday night, 8pm at Lowbrau Bierhall in Midtown

It’s just 7 blocks from the convention center, and the center of all hep activity in Sac-town, or so we’ve been assured. We will try to snag some of the tables out on the deck under the sycamores.  Come by and snag one of the BDV rulers – there are only a few left!

Hopefully you were all at Jes Coyle’s fantastic talk on local and regional diversity in lichens yesterday. We also you want to see you at our other talks.  Emily and Fletcher are both talking at the same time at 8:20 on Thursday:
Emily: Strangers in strange lands: Evidence for generalized risk assessment strategies in non-native marine snails in 315

Fletcher: Uncovering the structure of foliar parasite metacommunities in California grasslands in Ballroom B in the Hyatt.

You’ll have to choose between us, but Emily’s title is better – just sayin’.

Jon has no BDV competition, and speaks about how: Biodiversity drives ecosystem multifunctionality: A meta-analysis Friday 9:20am in Hyatt Ballroom B. An altogether more reasonable time of day to have a talk.

If you haven’t already found the good local fare – here are some insider tips:

1. Surviving ESA 2014

2. Where to eat and drink at ESA 2014

 

 

August 12, 2014

Flump – Whale shark populations, porpoise protection, art & science and fancy data analyses

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397px-Whale_Shark_A_deFrias_1

It’s Friday and that means that it’s time for our Friday link dump, where we highlight some recent papers (and other stuff) that we found interesting but didn’t have the time to write an entire post about. If you think there’s something we missed, or have something to say, please share in the comments section!

A study in Molecular Ecology gives evidence for population structure between Atlantic and Indo-Pacific whale sharks.  The genetic data suggests that, despite their classification as a highly migratory species and a “single global metapopulation”, whale sharks from these two regions rarely interbreed.  Typically, distinct populations are a species are managed independently, though it remains to be seen if regulations regarding these animals will change based on the paper’s conclusions.

A focus article in Science brings attention to the vaquita, a species of porpoise found in the Gulf of California, whose numbers are estimated at 150.  Check it out here, and help protect their extinction here. – Nate Johnson

Corridors can facilitate movement of invasive species between habitat patches, according to Resasco et al. in Ecology, and consequently result in a loss of native species in the habitats that humans are trying to protect.

Also in Ecology, Russell et al. take advantage of the fact that rats are everywhere, and demonstrate that tenure as reigning invasive rat is not necessarily a lifetime gig. Seemingly equivalent rats can displace resident invaders. – Emily Grason

“Are your analyses too fancy?” Methods in Ecology and Evolution has an interesting series of interviews and tutorials in Youtube. In their latest video, David Warton interviewed Professor Ben Bolker and Mark Brewer, a  Scottish consultant, about the tendency that Ecologist have of developing and using  fancy and complex analyses that are, in some situations, uncalled for. Here is the link to the interview.

Every year, the Princeton University runs an contest called “Art of Science“, which explores the interplay between science and art, with images that are produced during the course of scientific research. Here is the list of competitors and winners of this year contest.  – Vinicius Bastazini

August 8, 2014

The nuclear industry today: declining, but not (yet) dying

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Every year, the World Nuclear Industry Status Report reminds me why those in the Green movement who think nuclear has a major role to play in securing a low-carbon world are completely, dangerously off their collective trollies.

The Status Report is not an anti-nuclear polemic. Over the years, its authors (Mycle Schneider and Antony Froggatt) have assiduously built its reputation for dispassionate reporting on the state of the industry, presented as objectively and non-judgmentally as possible.

It uses a wide range of sources (academic, industry, avowedly pro-nuclear and avowedly anti-nuclear) to maintain longitudinal datasets going back over decades to tell it as it is – in contrast to all the froth of partisan propaganda. On both sides.

Let me just give you a taste from the newly-published 2014 Report:

Overview

“The nuclear share of the world’s power generation declined steadily from an historic peak of 17.6% in 1996 to 10.8% in 2013. Nuclear power’s share of global commercial primary energy production declined from the 2012 low of 4.5%, a level last seen in 1984, to a new low of 4.4%.”

“Twenty-eight years after the Chernobyl disaster, none of the next generation reactors (or so-called Generation III or III+) has entered service, with construction projects in Finland and France many years behind schedule.”

Construction

“As of July 2014, 67 reactors were under construction (one more than in July 2013), with a total capacity of 64GW. The average building time of the units under construction stands at seven years. However:

  • At least 49 of the 67 reactors have encountered construction delays, most of them significant (several months to several years). For the first time, major delays – several months to over two years – have been admitted on three-quarters (21 out of 28) of the projects in China.

  • Eight reactors have been listed as ‘under construction’ for more than 20 years, another for 12 years.

  • Two-thirds (43) of the units under construction are located in three countries: China, India and Russia.”


Certification delays

“The certification of new reactor designs encounters continuous obstacles. In the US, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) first delayed to 2015 the certification of the Franco-German-designed EP, and no longer projects any completion date for the review.

“The NRC rejected the licence application for the South Korean APR 1400 due to lack of information in key areas. Only the Westinghouse AP 1000 has received full generic design approval in the US.

“There is no projected completion date for the renewal of certification for the two versions of the ABWR (GE-Hitachi and Toshiba).”

Operating cost increases

“In some countries (including France, Germany, the US and Sweden), historically low inflation-adjusted operating costs – especially for major repairs – have escalated so rapidly that the average reactor’s operating cost is barely below, or even exceeds, the normal band of wholesale power prices.”

The Report is particularly strong on comparing the differences between nuclear power and renewable energy deployment.

“Compared to 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change was signed, there has been an additional 616 TWh per year of windpower produced, and 124 TWh of solar photovoltaics, outpacing nuclear with just 114 TWh.

In 2013, growth rates for generation from wind power above 20% were seen in North America, Europe and Eurasia, and Asia Pacific, with the two largest markets in the US (19%) and China (38%).

In the world of photovoltaics, North America saw a more than doubling of power generation, Asia Pacific a 75% increase.”

Installed capacity

“Globally, since 2000, the annual growth rates for wind power have averaged 25%, and for solar voltaics 43%. This has resulted, in 2013 alone, in 32 GW of wind and 37 GW of solar being added. Nuclear generating capacity declined by 19 GW compared to the 2000 level.”

China

“By the end of 2013, China had a total of 91 GW of operating windpower capacity. China’s 18 GW of installed solar capacity for the first time exceeded operating nuclear capacity.

China added a new world record of at least 12 GW of solar in just one year (versus 3 GW of nuclear), overtaking Germany’s previous 7.6 GW record and exceeding cumulative US additions since it invented photovoltaics in the 1950s.

“China now aims at 40 GW of solar, and will probably exceed the 100 GW wind power target for 2015.”

Nuclear’s installed capacity at the level of decades ago

Not surprisingly, this is the Report’s principal conclusion:

“The nuclear industry is in decline: the 388 operating reactors are 50 fewer than the peak in 2002, while the total installed capacity peaked in 2010 at 367 GW before declining to the current level, which is comparable to levels last seen two decades ago. Annual nuclear electricity generation reached a maximum of 2,660 TW hours in 2006, and dropped to 2,359 TW hours in 2013.”

This is all just the top line. The Report digs down deep into the situation in Japan (as troubling as ever, whatever the self-justifying protestations of George Monbiot – the man who, mystifyingly, ‘fell in love’ with nuclear power because of Fukushima – and others), in China, at Hinkley Point, and in the context of a whole range of “potential newcomer countries”.

As I worked my way through all this, page by page, it’s all but impossible for me to understand how any thoughtful, intelligent environmentalist could possibly suppose either that

  • a so-called nuclear renaissance is ever going to happen; or
  • even in the improbable circumstances that it did, how it could possibly deliver the kind of safe, secure, low-carbon energy the world needs so desperately.

And the longer they hang on to these fantasies, the more damage they do, sowing confusion and doubt, distracting attention from the business of driving forward with the renewables-efficiency-storage alternative.

All I can think is that these people never actually read up on the state of play in the nuclear industry. They should try it: it’s illuminating.

 

 

Jonathon Porritt has been an environmental campaigner since 1974, and is still hard at it nearly 40 years on. His latest book is The World we Made. He blogs at jonathonporritt.com/blog

Read the World Nuclear Report.

 

 






The cetacean brain and hominid perceptions of cetacean intelligence

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“What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason!
How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable!
In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god!
The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals!”
– William Shakespeare, Hamlet

The human species may not be the paragon of animals as Hamlet so eloquently described to us. There is another group of species on this Earth perhaps more deserving of such lofty praise.

It is ironic that science, in its pursuit of knowledge, may soon lead us to understand that we are not what we believe or desire ourselves to be, that we are not the most knowledgeable life-form on the planet. Biological science is provoking us to shatter our image of human superiority. Confronted with new realities, we may be forced to change our perceptions.

For the first time in our history, a small group of scientists stands on the threshold of communicating with a non-human intelligence. Probing the oceans instead of deep space, they are searching for an alternative terrestrial intelligence. (ATI)

Astronomers devoted to SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) keep our collective inquisitive ears tuned for signs of sentience from space. At the same time, cetologists observe, document, and decipher evidence that points to a profound intelligence dwelling in the oceans.

An ancient intelligence in the ocean

It is an intelligence that predates our own evolution as intelligent primates by millions of years. Furthermore, it is an intelligence that may prove to be far superior to us in terms of complex associative, linguistic, and survival abilities.

Dr. John Ford’s patient monitoring of the speech of orcas off British Columbia has revealed distinctive dialects between orca populations, so distinctive that it is possible to link a captive animal of unknown origin with its long-lost family in the wild.

In the cold waters off Patagonia, Dr. Roger Payne thrilled the world with his recordings of the songs of the humpback whale. Behind the aesthetic value of whale music, Payne’s research has revealed fascinating insights into the complex and highly sophisticated language of whales.

In the realm of zoological study, no other family of species has had such a profound impact upon human researchers. A few brilliant researchers have even been accused of losing their scientific objectivity simply because their study of cetaceans revealed knowledge about themselves.

“You see”, wrote Dr. John Lilly, “what I found after twelve years of work with dolphins is that the limits are not in them, the limits are in us. So I had to go away and find out, who am I? What’s this all about?”

Dr. Paul Spong, who came to the study of cetology as a psychologist, found himself transformed into a devout advocate of dolphin freedom.

“I came to the realization”, says Spong, “that at the same time I was manipulating their (orca) behavior, they were manipulating my behavior. At the same time I was studying them and performing experiments on them, they were studying me and performing experiments on me.”

Both men have taken to heart an advice: eloquently expressed by novelist Edward Abbey that, “it’s not enough to understand the natural world, the point is to defend and preserve it.”

Intelligent? But dolphins just eat fish …

Other scientists have told me that they understand this effect that cetaceans have on people and resist the tendency to become ‘involved’ with their subjects only from fear of ridicule from other scientists.

Knowing something is so does not mean that others will accept it or even be open-minded enough to ponder it. Some things are just not on the table for serious scientific debate, and the idea that humans are subordinate in intelligence to another species is one of them.

Ingrained anthropocentric attitudes dismiss the very idea that a dolphin or whale could be as intelligent as a human being, or more. In this respect, science is dogmatic and intransigent, differing little in attitude from the Papal pronouncement that the Earth could not possibly revolve around the sun.

Human imagination can instantly recognize intelligence in a blob of purple protoplasm or an insectoid extraterrestrial if it steps from a space ship dressed in a metallic suit and armed with a fantastic proton-plasmodic, negative-charged, ionic-cell destabilizer-blaster. Dolphins, on the other hand, just eat fish.

We willingly accept the idea of intelligence in a life-form only if the intelligence displayed is on the same evolutionary wavelength as our own. Technology automatically indicates intelligence. An absence of technology translates into an absence of intelligence.

Dolphins and whales do not display intelligence in a fashion recognizable to this conditioned perception of what intelligence is, and thus for the most part, we are blind to a broader definition of what intelligence can be.

Evolution molds our projection of intelligence. Humans evolved as tool-makers, obsessed with danger and group aggression. This makes it very difficult for us to comprehend intelligent non-manipulative beings whose evolutionary history featured ample food supplies and an absence of fear from external dangers.

Thinking like a whale, or a Neanderthal

I have observed whales and dolphins in the wild for fifty years, seeing varied and complex behavior that has displayed a definite pattern of sophisticated social interactions. They have exhibited discriminatory behavior in their dealings with us, treating us not like seals fit for prey but as curious objects to be observed and to be treated with caution.

They can see beyond to the manifest technological power that we have harnessed, and they can adjust their behavior accordingly. It is a fact that there has never been a documented attack by a wild orca on a human being. Perhaps they like us. More likely they know what we are.

The interpretation of behavior remains subject to the bias of the observer; one observer can classify behavior as intelligent, and a second observer will dismiss the same behavior as instinctive. There is also the tendency to be anthropomorphic – to attribute human feelings and motives to the behavior of non-humans.

Until we can actually talk with a non-human, it is difficult, if not impossible, to do anything but speculate on what is being thought or perceived. We cannot even understand with any certainty what a human being from a different culture, speaking a different language, may be thinking or perceiving.

Even among people of our own culture, language, class, or academic standing, it is a formidable task to peer inside the workings of the brain. In this respect all brains other than our own are alien, and I might venture to add that the inner workings of our individual brains are still a mystery to each of us that possess one.

It is a great tragedy for our development as a species that we have been alone among hominids for the last 30,000 years. Imagine Homo neanderthalensis existing today as a separate intelligent species of hominid primate. Our perception of the nature of intelligence would be profoundly different.

Homo neanderthalensis is an example of a species that possessed both technology and media communication. This tool-maker created haunting images of its experiences and environment. Some Neanderthal tools, artifacts, and cave art from the Chatelperonian period have survived and remind us that we are not the only species capable of material artistic expression.

Neanderthal ivory and bone carvings were used for adornment in addition to more practical purposes. Symbols carved on antlers relating to the movement of animals in relationship to the seasons indicate that Neanderthals may have invented ‘writing’, and carried a hunting almanac around with them.

I have often heard lectures and read articles on the art of early humans. Yet seldom have I heard it said that it was not Homo sapiens alone but Homo neanderthalensis who also left us that legacy. Another species created something that we believe we alone created.

The layers of the mammalian brain

We perceive reality based on how we preconceive it. In other words, we see what we want to see. Let’s take a close look at the anatomy of the brain. This is an organ that the human organism shares with most species above the invertebrate order. More specifically, we should look at the mammalian brain that is an organ composed of three distinct structures.

The foundation of the mammalian brain is the paleocortex, sometimes called the ‘reptilian’ or ‘ancient’ brain. The paleocortex segment reflects the primordial fish-amphibian-reptile structure. This basal combination of nerves is called the rhinic lobe (from the Greek rhinos, for nose) because it was once believed to be the area that dealt with the sense of smell.

The poorly developed rhinic lobe is overlaid by the slightly more advanced limbic lobe (from the Latin limbus, for border). On top of this lobe is overlaid the third and much larger segment called the supralimbic lobe.

Draped over these three lobes is a cellular covering called the neocortex, meaning ‘new brain’. This is the instantly recognizable, fissured, convoluted layer that envelops the other two more primitive segments. The neocortex is a bewilderingly complex community of intertwined axonal and dendritic nerve cells, synapses, and fibers.

The mammalian brain is a complex layering or lamination of evolutionary processes that reflects hundreds of millions of years of progressive development. The billions of electrochemical interactions within this complex organ define consciousness, awareness, emotion, vision, recognition, sound, touch, smell, personality, intuition, instinct, and intelligence.

The first factor in determining the mammalian stages of development is the number of brain laminations. The layering of the neocortex differs greatly between humans and other land animals. The expansion of the neocortex is always forward. This means that neocortex development can be used as a fairly accurate indicator of the evolutionary process of intelligence.

We cannot assume, however, that the determining factor in comparative intelligence is neocortex mass. The other factors considered in the equation are differentiation, neural connectivity and complexity, sectional specialization, and internal structure. All these factors contribute toward interspecial measurements of intelligence.

Comparing intelligence among species

Interspecies comparisons focus on the extent of lamination, the total cortical area, and the number and depth of neocortex convolutions. In addition, primary sensory processing relative to problem solving is a significant indicator; this can be described as associative ability.

The association or connecting of ideas is a measurable skill: a rat’s associative skill is measured at nine to one. This means that 90% of the brain is devoted to primary sensory projection, leaving only 10% for associative skills. A cat is one to one, meaning that half the brain is available for associative ability. A chimpanzee is one to three, and a human being is one to nine.

We humans need only utilize 10% of our brains to operate our sensory organs. Thus the associative abilities of a cat are measurably greater than a rat but less than a chimp, and humans are the highest of all.

Not exactly. The cetacean brain averages one to 25 and can range upward to one to 40. The reason for this is that the much larger supralimbic lobe is primarily association cortex. Unlike humans, in cetaceans sensory and motor function control is spread outside the supralimbic, leaving more brain area for associative purposes.

Comparisons of synaptic geometry, dendritic field density, and neural connectivity underscore the humbling revelation that the cetacean brain is superior to the human brain. In addition, the centralization and differentiation of the individual cerebral areas are levels higher than the human brain.

Many of us may remember our lessons from Biology 101. We were shown illustrations of the brain of a rat, a cat, a chimp, and a human. We listened as the instructor pointed out the ratio of brain to body size and the increased convolutions on the neocortex of the human over the chimp, the cat, the rat. The simplistic conclusion was an understanding that humans were smarter.

Of course, it was a human demonstration of intelligence, and the conclusion was arrived at by discrimination based on the selection of the examples. When the brain model of an orca is inserted into the picture, the conclusion based on the same factors places the human brain in second position.

But the cetacean brain is very different

Unfortunately for the pride of humankind, this simple comparison is elementary compared to a truly astounding fact: whereas the human brain shares three segments with all other mammals, the cetacean brain is uniquely different in its physiology.

Humans have the rhinic, limbic, and supralimbic, with the neocortex covering the surface of the supralimbic. However, with cetaceans we see a radical evolutionary jump with the inclusion of a fourth segment.

This is a fourth cortical lobe, giving a four-fold lamination that is morphologically the most significant differentiation between cetaceans and all other cranially evolved mammals, including humans. No other species has ever had four separate cortical lobes.

This well-developed extra lobar formation sandwiched between the limbic and supralimbic lobes is called the paralimbic. Considering neurohistological criteria, the paralimbic lobe is a continuation of the sensory and motor areas found in the supralimbic lobe in humans.

According to Dr. Sterling Bunnell, the paralimbic lobe specializes in specific sensory and motor functions. In humans, the projection areas for different senses are widely separated from one another, and the motor area is adjacent to the touch area. For us to make an integrated perception from sight, sound, and touch, impulses must travel by long fiber tracts with a great loss of time and information.

The cetacean’s paralimbic system makes possible the very rapid formation of integrated perceptions with a richness of information unimaginable to us.

Technology, or evolution?

Despite Biology 101, brain-to-body ratio is not an indication of intelligence. If this were so, the hummingbird would be the world’s most intelligent animal. Brain size in itself, however, is important, and the largest brains ever developed on this planet belong to whales.

More important is the quality of the brain tissue. With four lobes, greater, more pronounced neocortex convolutions, and superior size, the brain of the sperm whale at 9,000 cc or the brain of the orca at 6,000 cc are the paragons of brain evolution on the Earth. By contrast, the human brain is 1,300 cc. And by point of interest, the brain of a Neanderthal was an average 1,500 cc.

Apart from our collective ego as a species, the idea of an Earthling species more intelligent than ourselves is difficult to swallow. We measure intelligence in strictly human terms, based on those abilities that we as a species excel at.

Thus we view hand-to-eye coordination as a highly intelligent ability. We build things; we make tools and weapons, manufacture vehicles, and construct buildings. We use our brains to focus our eyes to guide our hands to force our environment to conform to our desires or our will.

Whales cannot or do not do any of the things we expect intelligent creatures to do. They do not build cars or spaceships, nor can they manage investment portfolios.

Cetaceans do have built-in abilities like sonar that put our electronic sonar devices to shame. Sperm whales have even developed a sonic ray-gun, so to speak, allowing them to stun prey from a head filled with spermaceti oil to amplify and project a sonic blast.

However, we expect an intelligent species to arrive in a spaceship armed with laser rayguns, bearing gifts of futuristic technologies. This is a fantasy that we can understand, that we yearn for. For us, technology is intelligence. Intelligence is not a naked creature swimming freely, eating fish, and singing in the sea.

The whale is an organic submarine. A whale may not arrive in a spaceship, but it is itself a living submersible ship. All of its technology is internal and organic. We do not accept this. The human understanding of intelligence is material. The more superior the technology, the more superior the intelligence.

Intelligence is adapative, not abstractive

Yet intelligence is relative; it evolves to fulfill the evolutionary needs of a species. All successful species are intelligent in accordance with their ecological position. In this respect, the intelligence of a crocodile or a whale, an elephant or a human is non-comparable.

A complex intelligence exists within every sentient creature relevant to its needs. We as humans cannot begin to compare our elaborate intelligence to the complex intelligence of other creatures whose brains or nerves are designed for completely different functions in radically different environments.

Most modern humans believe that we are vastly more intelligent compared to our ancestors of 75,000 years ago or even 10,000 years ago. Our technology is proof, is it not? The fact is that the brain of a person living today is identical in size and composition to that of our kind from tens of thousands of years ago. If you were to set Einstein’s brain beside the brain of a cave-dweller of the Paleolithic era, you would not be able to find a single difference in size or complexity.

Our technology is cumulative, the end product of millennia of trial and error. It is also exponential, and we now live in the time of the most rapid exponential growth. Individually, the average cave-dweller of the past could match the average citizen today in associative intelligence and would be as capable of learning.

Our intelligence is also cultural, and the vast amount of information that we have at our disposal lies outside of ourselves as individuals. Apart from the community, we are severely limited in understanding or manipulating technologies.

Left to our own resources on an undeveloped island, most of us would have absolutely no idea how to survive. We do not even have the knowledge to construct rudimentary stone tools or weapons. In this respect stone age humans would be our intellectual superiors.

Physiological measures

If we look at the comparative intelligences of species strictly on a morphological basis, judging all aspects on cortical structural development alone, we can assign an average associative score relative to human intelligence. Let’s assign the average human brain a score equal to 100. This is the number we consider average on human Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests.

Based on associative skills as defined by the physiological structure of the comparative brains, we will find that a dog scores about 15, and a chimpanzee around 35. These are scores that are comfortably within our understanding of intelligence.

Based upon comparisons of cortical structure alone, a sperm whale would score 2,000.

The truth of the matter is that we know absolutely nothing about what goes on in the brain of a whale or a dolphin. In our ignorance, we resort to the arrogance of denial and dismissal. We deny the physiological evidence and in general we have denied that other animals can think or even feel.

We forget that all mammals have climbed the evolutionary ladder with us, and some, like the whale, started climbing that ladder tens of millions of years before we evolved from that apelike ancestor that we shared with the Neanderthal, the chimp, and the mountain gorilla.

The whale has evolved in a different manner, its natural physical abilities giving it little cause to desire material baggage. The spear was not needed to get food – the whale is one of the most efficient hunters in natural history. The whale’s ability to travel, to communicate, to care for its young, and its complex social systems are all separate from external material acquisition.

Whales have biologically evolved what we utilize technology to achieve. Technology is something that the whales have never needed. They contain all the assets needed for survival and development within their massive bodies and formidable brains.

Humans are big-brained manipulators. Cetaceans and elephants are big-brained non-manipulators. The hominid brain grew in size from 450 cc to 1,300 cc over a period of only 5 million years. Cetaceans had already reached 690 cc in brain size some 30 million years ago and had developed to their present capacity well before our own evolutionary jump in brain development.

Another major difference between the cetacean and human brain is the shape. The cranium of the whale evolved over millions of years to conform to the need for streamlined movement through the water.

This need has shaped the brain, making it higher, but shortening the length front-to-back slightly. And this shape has resulted in a relatively thinner layering of the cortex that is more than compensated by the much greater surface area of the neocortex due to the tremendous in-folding of the convolutions.

According to Pilleri and Gihr, dolphins, toothed whales, and primates have the most highly differentiated brains of all mammals, and Krays and Pilleri showed through electroencephalographical studies that the Amazon River dolphins have the highest degree of encephalization, much higher than primates.

Construction of the cortex was found to be equal or superior to primates. Cetaceans are the most specialized mammalian order on the planet, and we see intelligence in dozens of species. By contrast, Homo sapiens are the sole surviving hominid.

Making, or thinking?

Humans may be the paramount tool-makers of the Earth, but the whale may be our paramount thinker. We can only imagine how a dolphin perceives the stars, but they may well do so better than we. Indeed, if the power of such an awesome brain could be utilized, travel to the stars might have already been achieved. The mind can travel to realms that rockets can never reach.

Or perhaps they have already discovered that the ultimate destination of a voyager is to arrive back where it belongs – in its own place within the universe. The desire to travel to the stars could very well be an aberration, a need within a species that has been ecologically deprived.

Intelligent species here or else where in the universe may have determined that space travel is not the ultimate expression of intelligence. It may only be the ultimate expression of technology: technology and wisdom may be widely diverse expressions of different forms of intelligence.

Intelligence can also be measured by the ability to live within the bounds of the laws of ecology – to live in harmony with one’s own ecology and to recognize the limitations placed on each species by the needs of an ecosystem.

Is the species that dwells peacefully within its habitat with respect for the rights of other species the one that is inferior? Or is it the species that wages a holy war against its habitat, destroying all species that irritate it?

What can be said of a species that reproduces beyond the ability of its habitat to support it? What do we make of a species that destroys the diversity that sustains the ecosystem that nourishes it? How is a species to be judged that fouls its water and poisons its own food?

On the other hand, how is a species that has lived harmoniously within the boundaries of its ecology to be judged?

A moral responsibility is upon us

It is an observable fact that whales and dolphins hold a special place in the hearts of human beings. We have had an affinity with them for years, recognizing in them something that it has been difficult to put a finger upon.

What we do know is that they are different from other animals, apart from them in a manner that suggests a unique quality that we can intuitively recognize. That quality is intelligence.

Recognizing this quality has profound moral responsibilities. How can humans continue to slaughter creatures of an equal or superior intelligence? The path toward the reality of interspecies communications between cetaceans and humans may lead us to the recognition that we have been committing murder.

Utilizing the computer technology of our species in company with the linguistic and associative skills of cetaceans, we may be able to talk with these beings some day soon. The key is in understanding the different evolutionary developments within two completely different brains with uniquely developed sensory modalities.

Imagine being able to see into another person’s body, being able to see the flow of blood, the workings of the organs, and the flow of air into the lungs. Cetaceans can do this through echo-location. A dolphin can see a tumor inside the body of another dolphin. If an animal is drowning, this becomes instantly recognizable from being able to ‘see’ the water filling the lungs.

Even more amazing is that emotional states can be instantly detected. These are species incapable of deception, whose emotional states are open books to each other. Such biologically enforced honesty would have radically different social consequences from our own.

Sight in humans is a space-oriented distance sense which gives us complex simultaneous information in the form of analog pictures with poor time discrimination.

By contrast, our auditory sense has poor space perception but good time discrimination. This results in human languages being comprised of fairly simple sounds arranged in elaborate temporal sequences. The cetacean auditory system is primarily spatial, more like human eyesight, with great diversity of simultaneous information and poor time discrimination

A language more like music

For this reason, dolphin language consists of very complex sounds perceived as a unit. What humans may need hundreds of sounds strung together to communicate, the dolphin may do in one sound.

To understand us, they would have to slow down their perception of sounds to an incredibly boring degree. It is for this reason that dolphins respond readily to music. Human music is more in tune with dolphin speech.

Utilizing their skill at echo-location with elaborate detailed mental images of what they ‘see’ through auditory channels, dolphins may be able to recreate and transmit images to each other.

In other words, whereas our language is analog, cetacean language is digital. With the invention of the computer, we are now communicating with each other digitally, and this may be the key to unlocking the doors of perception into cetacean communication.

The possibilities are fantastic. Instead of communicating across the vast expanse of space, we may be able to bridge the chasm between species. But we will not be able to say that “we come in peace.” The tragic reality is that we will be speaking with species that we have slaughtered, enslaved, and abused. We can only hope that they will be forgiving of our ignorance.

If so, the future holds a place for the exchange of knowledge, the secrets of the seas, alternative philosophies, and unique and different perspectives. I can envision the words of the whales translated into books.

Instead of just listening to the music of whale song, we will be able to understand what the songs convey. This may open up new horizons in literature, poetry, music, and oceanography.

In return, Moby Dick by Herman Melville might serve to show the whales that our species has come a long way toward peace between humankind and whalekind. The whales will learn the mysteries of the land and will be able to negotiate the release of members of their families that have been held captive for human amusement.

A universal right to dwell in peace

Perhaps we can convince them that our species is not uniform in its evolution toward morality and understanding. If so, we may be able to convince them that our whalers are aberrations, throwbacks to our more barbaric origins and a collective embarrassment to our species.

Most importantly, we will learn the lesson that we cannot presume to judge intelligence based upon our own preconceptions, prejudice, and cultural biases.

In so doing, we will be able to understand that we share this Earth with millions of other species, all intelligent in their own manner, and all equally deserving of the right to dwell in peace on this planet that we all call our home – this water planet with the strange name of Earth.

“They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.”
– D.H. Lawrence, Whales Weep Not.

 

 

 

Captain Paul Watson is founder of Sea Shepherd.

This essay was originally published on his Facebook page.

Bibliography and Sources:

  • Bunnell, Sterling. 1974. The Evolution of Cetacean Intelligence.
  • Deacon, Terrence W. 1997. The Symbolic Species: The Coevolution of Language and the Brain.
  • Jacobs, Myron.1974. The Whale Brain: Input and Behaviour.
  • Lawrence, D.H. Whales Weep Not. Licino, Aldo.
  • ‘Just Animals? Mammalian Studies Point to an Anatomical Basis to Intelligence.’ Mensa Berichten: Mensa International Journal Extra. June 1996.
  • Lilly, John. 1961. Man and Dolphin.
  • Morgane, Peter. 1974. The Whale Brain: The Anatomical Basis of Intelligence.
  • Pilleri, G. Behaviour Patterns of Some Delphinidae Observed in the Western Mediterranean.
  • Sagan, Dr. Carl. 1971.The Cosmic Connections, The Dragons of Eden.
  • Watson, Lyall, 1996. Dark Nature: The Nature of Evil.
  • Some information based on conversations over the last two decades with Dr. Michael Bigg (orcas), Dr. John Ford (orca dialects), Dr. Roger Payne (whale communication), and Dr. Paul Spong (orcas).

Illustration: Comparison of a human and dolphin brain showing the 4th lobe and more complex convolutions upon the neo-cortex of the dolphin as opposed to the human brain.

Photo: Whale shark and diver. Robin Hughes via Flickr.

 

 






Fish before agribusiness! California river tribes demand water

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Hundreds of Tribal members and supporters from the Trinity and Klamath Rivers are protesting this week at the Bureau of Reclamation in Sacramento this week to demand increased water flows to prevent a mass killing of wild Chinook salmon.

‘Preventative flows’ are desperately needed from Lewiston Dam into the Trinity River, the largest tributary of the Klamath River, they said.

Campaigners also asked that more water be let out of Iron Gate Dam on the Klamath – and denounced Reclamation’s recent decision to withhold emergency releases until large numbers of adult salmon die.

They say that emergency flow releases from Lewiston Dam would take four days to reach the struggling Klamath River salmon – leaving few if any survivors.

Large scale fish kill is now ‘likely’

Fisheries biologists agree that by the time the emergency flows are triggered and the water has traveled from the dam, it would be too late to prevent a large-scale fish die-off.

“Klamath River flows are lower than they were during the 2002 fish kill”, says Nat Pennington, Fisheries Biologist for the Salmon River Restoration Council.

“River temperatures are consistently higher than the acute stress level for Chinook salmon at 72 degrees Fahrenheit. If this trend continues, a large-scale fish kill is likely and the Klamath could loose the entire run.”

And tribal members say Reclamation is ignoring the beginning stages of a disaster. “Fish are pooled up at cold water tributaries because the water in the river is so warm and polluted”, said Hoopa Valley Tribal member, Kayla Brown.

“These fish are diseased and dying. Once the disease starts to spread, it can’t be stopped and we will have a fish kill on our hands, courtesy of the Bureau of Reclamation.”

According to the Klamath Fish Health Assessment Team, much of the Klamath River and its tributaries are on an ‘orange’ alert level, signifying high temperatures, a critically dry water year designation, and increased fish mortality. “A die-off is imminent and management levels in agencies need to be alerted.”

Wild salmon before agribusiness irrigation!

The protestors said they support Klamath River fisheries biologists’ assertion that a minimum of 2,500 cubic feet per second be maintained near the mouth of the Klamath River. This can be achieved if the Bureau of Reclamation approves preventative releases from the Lewiston Dam reservoir.

When the dams and diversion tunnels were built on the Trinity, laws were set up to protect the river and fish, before exporting water to the Central Valley. These laws established that fish, and the tribes that depend on them, are the top priority for the Trinity River flows.

But currently, five times more water is diverted to the Sacramento Basin for Central Valley irrigators than is released into the Trinity River. Even at this critical time, the Bureau of Reclamation appears set to ignore the law in order to favour California’s powerful agribusiness interests.

We will not give up our fight for the salmon

Karuk tribal member Molli White said: “Reclamation says they need the water for Sacramento River salmon, but our rivers are actually being exported to meet the demands of corporate agriculture like the Westland’s Water district.”

California’s almond growers are projecting an 8% increase in harvests, he added, while the rest of California experiences a devastating drought year.

“We need these releases now more then ever”, said Frankie Myers of the Yurok Tribe Watershed Restoration Program,

“The Klamath fish kill of 2002 was devastating for our tribal communities and to the West Coast Fisheries. Previously, Tribes, fisheries scientists, and the Department of the Interior have worked together to avert fish kills by releasing preventative flows during drought years.”

Klamath Justice Coalition members have made it clear that Tribal people and traditional fishermen will not give up until Reclamation releases water.

“Historically, the Klamath River was one of the three most productive salmon rivers in America”, according to California’s Friends of the River campaign group. “Today dams, diversions, and other basin activities have caused coho and fall Chinook salmon populations to decline to 10% of historic numbers.”

 

 

Follow the Klamath Justice Coalition on twitter at #releasethewater #savethesalmon #stopafishkill #neveragain

Information about current river conditions and fisheries health.

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Keystone XL – who needs it? We got a railroad!

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“Rail can get you just about anywhere. It’s like the Harry Potter stairway. You get on the stairs at one end and they move to wherever you need to go.

“That’s the beauty of the railway. You get on at one end here, with your bitumen or dilbit, and then you can end up in different places depending on what are the best markets.”

That quote is from Pete Sametz, president of Connacher Oil and Gas, speaking to the Daily Oil Bulletin about the appeal of moving tar sands oil by rail. And Sametz isn’t alone in his enthusiasm for rail transportation options for bitumen. 

At the Canadian Institute’s North American Pipeline Symposium in June, Randy Meyer of Canadian National railway, told the conference how this situation appeared to him.

“It’s kind of amusing when I read in the paper that there’s this angst and gnashing of teeth about Keystone and I’m going, ‘My goodness, we’re already there.’ We can go there and we are. We are shipping product there.”

Rail vs pipeline – a 16% price advantage

Aside from the magical Harry Potter flexibility of rail compared to pipelines, rail also offers the option of moving bitumen without having to dilute it, as is required for pipelines, which makes it cheaper as explained by Randy Meyer.

“We did a study where we took the American Association of Railway’s published rates, which averaged out all the traffic that moves and all its products. That average … is about 16 per cent less than pipeline costs.”

The reality is that tar sands bitumen transport is so well-suited for rail over pipelines that it is now cheaper to move tar sands bitumen by rail than it is by pipeline.

If you’re a tar sands industry executive, this is your light-bulb moment: Who needs the Keystone XL headache when you can bypass the controversy entirely using existing rail lines?

Heating bitumen for railcars costs less than diluting it for pipelines

This reality and the recent revelations that the impact of the tar sands oil will be much greater than initially predicted, present a grim picture for the environment, although apparently an amusing and exciting one for oil and rail executives. Companies like Grizzly Oil Sands outline their plans on their website.

“Grizzly is excited at the range of benefits to be generated from its oil-by-rail bitumen marketing strategy. The Company believes its approach can achieve economics superior to using the Keystone XL pipeline, if built.”

On their site Grizzly mentions purchasing new rail cars to move bitumen as well as completing a rail-to-barge facility on the Mississippi in Louisiana.

And despite predictions in the new proposed oil-by-rail regulations that the DOT-111 cars that will eventually not be allowed to carry the much more volatile Bakken crude oil would instead be repurposed to carry tar sands oil, this is unlikely. The most profitable way to move bitumen by rail is in thermally-jacketed cars that allow for the oil to be heated.

The current DOT-111 cars don’t have this capacity and retrofitting them would be too costly. Heating the bitumen versus diluting it is where the industry sees the cost advantages. 

Tar sands oil ‘exempt’ from new testing requirements

And while the new proposed regulations for moving volatile crude oil and ethanol mention that tar sands oil may be transported in DOT-111s in the future, the proposed changes do not apply to tar sands oil in any way.

When the DOT first announced new testing requirements for crude oil being shipped by rail in February of this year, there was immediate push back from the industry because of the impact it may have on moving tar sands by rail.

The government quickly clarified that tar sands oil would be exempt from the requirements, a move that at the time was described by the president of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers as a “judicious response”.

The cost advantages and flexibility of moving heated bitumen by rail and are spurring significant new investment in the oil-by-rail industry.

As reported by Oil Change International in their report Runaway Train, the planned expansion is massive and would increase the currently oil-by-rail capacity of one million barrels of oil per day to five times that amount. While much of this is also for lighter crudes like Bakken, it also is being driven by the desire to move tar sands oil by rail.

Trains give access to export oil terminals

As previously noted on DeSmogBlog, the additional reason that rail is appealing to tar sands producers is that they ultimately want to sell their product overseas. And while there is an export ban on oil produced in the US, this does not apply to the tar sands oil from Canada.

And the trains currently give access to the East, West and Gulf coasts where the oil can be loaded onto ocean going vessels and sent to the highest bidder on the world market.

Global Partners is currently one of the top capacity oil-by-rail companies with a terminal on the East coast in Albany, NY, on the West coast in Oregon and with plans to build a new facility in Texas and another in New Windsor, NY. And despite their current business of moving Bakken crude, they are actively promoting tar sands by rail to the industry.

Global Partners CEO Eric Slifka recently made the sales pitch for tars sands by rail at an industry conference saying, “we can take pure heavy crude oil, put it in a heated rail car … and move it directly.”

Global’s recent expansion plans in Texas resulted in the following headline in the Houston Business Journal: “Keystone? Who needs it? Railroad plans fuel terminal for Port Arthur”.

If the current economics of moving tar sands oil by rail can be proven to be scalable, and it would appear they can, rail appears to be faster, cheaper and more flexible as an option to get Canadian tar sands oil onto the international market.

Which means the producers can get higher prices, which in turn makes the expanded extraction and consumption of the tar sands that much more likely.

 

 

Justin Mikulka is a freelance writer, audio and video producer living in Albany, NY. Justin lends his Internet expertise to the group Gas Free Seneca which is working to prevent large LPG storage facilities in the Finger Lakes region of NY. He has a degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Cornell University.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JustinMikulka

This article was originally published on DeSmogBlog.