Fracking Nation

Environmental ?concerns over a ?controversial mining method could put America's largest ?reservoirs of clean-burning natural ?gas beyond reach. Is there a better way ?to drill??

Tracy Bank was concerned. A geochemist, she makes her living studying how water interacts with rocks. And four years ago, when she arrived at the State University of New York at Buffalo, water was definitely interacting with rocks.

Buffalo is perched on the edge of the largest known reservoir of natural gas in America, a geologic formation known as the Marcellus Shale (pdf). The 95,000-square-mile slab, which lies under sizable portions of West Virginia, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, could contain up to 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas—enough to meet the nation’s natural gas needs for at least two years. Owing to this bounty, the areas above the shale are now in the grip of an unprecedented gas-drilling boom. The gas is extracted using a method called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a technique that involves pumping millions of gallons of water laced with ?chemicals deep underground to blast open the shale and release the gas trapped inside. The blasting is what got Bank worried.

Fracking has already drawn considerable scrutiny from environmental groups, unhappy homeowners, and teams of lawyers who blame the drilling method for polluting pristine rivers, turning bucolic farmlands into noisy industrial zones, and leaking enough methane to make ordinary tap water as flammable as lighter fluid. Bank is now bringing attention to yet another problem: radiation. Her research shows that high-pressure fluids striking the shale could dislodge naturally occurring radioactive compounds such as uranium and strontium, putting groundwater at risk of contamination.

Climate Science Wins a Round, But the Campaign Goes Poorly

In 2010 climate researchers struggled to move past the controversy that had rocked their community the year before. The accusation was incendiary: that scientists had grossly exaggerated the case for global warming by manipulating their data. The evidence was murky: more than 1,000 e-mails and documents exchanged by leading climate scientists, which had been hacked from their computers. But the verdict, as delivered by five separate investigations, was clear: The accused scientists were exonerated of any misconduct.

Three British investigations focused on the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, site of the stolen e-mails and a leading center for studying global warming. Meanwhile, two American panels examined the integrity of Michael Mann, a prominent climate researcher at Pennsylvania State University. All five groups concluded that none of the scientists had violated academic standards. “We find that their rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt,” declared a report headed by Sir Muir Russell, chair of one of the British investigations.

Lisa Graumlich, a University of Washington paleoecologist who served on another British group, led by Lord Ronald Oxburgh, looked into a broader charge: whether there was something “fundamentally broken” about the integrity of the Climate Research Unit. Such charges, she determined, were baseless. On the contrary, as the Ox­burgh panel’s final report (pdf) put it, the attacks leveled against the scientists “showed a rather selective and uncharitable approach to information made available by the CRU.” Michael Mann was more blunt. In an e-mail to me, he asserted that the people who attacked his work “don’t have the science on their side, and they surely know this. So smears and disinformation are all they have left.”

Ice falls to near record low

This mosaic of satellite images over the Arctic Ocean shows ice levels nearing a record low set in 2007. Acquired from the European Space Agency's radar satellite Envisat ASAR, the blue areas represent regions where ice accounts for more than 80 per cent of the sea surface. ASAR captured the high resolution images over the course of three days beginning 9 September. The satellite's radar penetrates the obscuring effects of the Arctic's frequent dark hours and thick cloud cover.

Sea ice levels have plummeted since 1979, when satellite records of conditions in the Arctic began. By the 1980s, minimum ice levels observed at the end of each summer summer had already fallen 50 per cent.

The past five years have seen the five lowest levels on record. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, this year's minimum ice extent is 4.33 million square kilometres, just 160,000 square kilometres above the 2007 level. However, a team of researchers at the University of Bremen in Germany have come up with a separate estimate using a microwave sensor on board NASA's Aqua satellite. They suggest sea ice extent may have shrunk beyond 2007's minimum extent to an all-time low.

Fukushima's radioactive sea contamination lingers

Levels of radiation in the sea off the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant remain stubbornly high six months after the earthquake and tsunami struck Japan on 11 March.

After levels peaked at around 100,000 becquerels per cubic metre of seawater in early April, much of the radioactive iodine, caesium and plutonium from Fukushima was expected to rapidly disperse in the Pacific Ocean.

Instead, it seems that the levels remain high. That could be because contaminated water is still leaking into the sea from the nuclear plant, because currents are trapping the material that's already there, or both.

Ken Buesseler of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts, has told The New York Times that he has received samples of seawater taken in July from near the plant that contained 10,000 becquerels per cubic metre. The corresponding level last year, only months before the disaster, was just 1.5 becquerels, he says.

Simon Boxall, an oceanographer at the University of Southampton, UK, says that much of the radioactive material will still be sinking down to the seabed and being absorbed by marine life.

Arctic ozone hole breaks all records

In the first three months of this year, something unprecedented happened in the skies over the Arctic. A large hole appeared in the ozone layer, far bigger than any seen there before.

The Arctic ozone layer suffers a little damage every winter, but the effect is normally short-lived. "This is a clear step beyond that," says Neil Harris of the University of Cambridge. As the measurements came in, ozone researchers began to debate whether the loss could be compared to that seen over the Antarctic. "It's the first time we've even discussed that question," says Harris.

Between 18 and 20 kilometres up, over 80 per cent of the existing ozone was destroyed. "The loss in 2011 was twice that in the two previous record-setting Arctic winters, 1996 and 2005," says Nathaniel Livesey of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The hole was similar in size to those seen in Antarctica in the 1980s. The Antarctic hole has continued to grow since then, and is far larger today.

The Arctic ozone hole will have allowed more ultraviolet radiation than before through, but it is unlikely anyone has been seriously harmed, says Bruce Armstrong of the University of Sydney, Australia. "Occasional ozone depletion episodes such as this would add very little to the underlying population's risk of UV-related cancer."
Ozone killer

The question now vexing atmospheric scientists is why the hole grew so large, and whether it will open again. Livesey and his colleague Michelle Santee say the hole formed because the stratosphere remained cold for several months longer than usual. The cold air allowed water vapour and nitric acid to condense into polar stratospheric clouds, which catalyse the conversion of chlorine into chemically active forms that destroy ozone.

But we don't know why the stratosphere stayed cold for so long.

Air pollution is stunting India's monsoon

India has been drying out for half a century, and air pollution thousands of kilometres away is partly to blame.

The monsoon has been weakening since the 1950s. Indian air pollution has been blamed, but now it seems that emissions further afield are also a factor.

"The summer monsoon provides up to 80 per cent of total annual rainfall in south Asia, and supports 20 per cent of the world's population," says Yi Ming of Princeton University in New Jersey. With his colleagues, Ming used climate models to assess how different factors changed the monsoon.

The monsoon is brought by large-scale wind patterns that transport heat between the northern and southern hemispheres. For half the year the northern hemisphere experiences more solar heating and so is warmer than the southern hemisphere; the situation is reversed during the other six months. As the winds head north over the Indian Ocean during the northern hemisphere's summer they pick up moisture, which falls as rain over south Asia.

Air pollution in the form of aerosols can weaken these long-distance wind patterns, however. That's because it reflects sunlight back into space, cooling the polluted area. Thick aerosol pollution over Europe in summer ensures that the northern hemisphere isn't much warmer than the southern hemisphere, so there is nothing to drive the winds – and nothing to trigger the monsoon.

Lurching rains

Ming says his modelling suggests that the effect of European aerosol pollution accounts for about half the drop in the volume of monsoon rainfall – the other half is down to pollution over south Asia. In as-yet-unpublished experiments, he confirmed the important role that the European pollution plays in weakening the monsoon. He ran his models again, this time assuming no aerosol pollution over south Asia. Even so, India had a significantly weaker monsoon.

The study supports existing evidence that air pollution is weakening the monsoon, says Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the University of California, San Diego.

Another form of pollution – greenhouse gas emissions – is pushing the monsoon in the other direction, towards greater rainfall, says Ramanathan. The competing forces of the greenhouse effect and air pollution may lead to a much more variable monsoon, with drought one year followed by floods the next. He says this erratic behaviour is "more worrisome" than the overall decrease in rainfall.

Engineers can build a low-carbon world if we let them

The engineering solutions to combat climate change already exist. Politicians must be brave enough to use them before it's too late

One word sums up the attitude of engineers towards climate change: frustration. Political inertia following the high-profile failure of 2009's Copenhagen climate conference has coupled with a chorus of criticism from a vocal minority of climate-change sceptics. Add the current economic challenges and the picture looks bleak. Our planet is warming and we are doing woefully little to prevent it getting worse.

Engineers know there is so much more that we could do. While the world's politicians have been locked in predominantly fruitless talks, engineers have been developing the technologies we need to bring down emissions and help create a more stable future.

Wind, wave and solar power, zero-emissions transport, low-carbon buildings and energy-efficiency technologies have all been shown feasible. To be rolled out on a global scale, they are just waiting for the political will. Various models, such as the European Climate Foundation's Roadmap 2050, show that implementing these existing technologies would bring about an 85 per cent drop in carbon emissions by 2050. The idea that we need silver-bullet technologies to be developed before the green technology revolution can happen is a myth. The revolution is waiting to begin.
Climate call

The barriers preventing the creation of a low-carbon society are not technological but political and financial. That's why at a landmark London conference convened by the UK's Institution of Mechanical Engineers, 11 national engineering institutions representing 1.2 million engineers from across the globe, under the banner of the Future Climate project, made a joint call for action at December's COP17 climate change conference in Durban, South Africa.

The statement calls on governments to move from warm words to solid actions. They need to introduce legislation and financial support to get these technologies out of the workshop and into our homes and businesses and onto our roads. Targeted regulation and taxation will also drive innovation. This will require bold politics, and spending at a time when money is scarce. It is far from unaffordable, however. The UK's Committee on Climate Change, which advises the British government, continues to support the view of the Stern reportMovie Camera – an assessment of the climate change challenge in the UK – that the move to a low-carbon society will cost no more than 1 per cent of GDP by 2050.

Resistance to wind turbines and the power lines they feed, nuclear power and electric cars, as well as the economic costs, all make public opinion a powerful brake on change. However the alternative seems certain to be worse. It is not only the challenges of a deteriorating climate: with inaction comes a great risk to our economy in the long term. The green technology revolution, just like the industrial revolution before it, will give jobs to those countries which have created the right conditions for it to flourish.

Nuclear elephant

nvestment in renewable energy is vital for a prosperous, low-carbon society. However, decision-makers cannot ignore the elephant in the room – nuclear power. The enormous cost of implementing 100 per cent renewable power is not realistic for most nations, so nuclear offers our best chance of making a low-carbon society achievable and affordable. Yet the incident at Fukushima earlier this year has reinforced some long-standing concerns.

Unlike road use or smoking, nuclear power stirs anxieties in many of us that are out of proportion with its true risks. This is not to be complacent about the potential danger of a nuclear plant, but it is striking that nuclear power has killed fewer than 5000 people in its entire history. Compare that with coal mining, which in just one year and in one country – China in 2006 – killed 4700.

Fluorescent fish glows to show feminising chemicals up

FOR people worried about the feminising effect of oestrogen-like chemicals in the water there is now a modern-day equivalent of the canary in the coal mine: a genetically modified fish in a bowl.

Male fish exposed to oestrogen have delayed sperm development and grow smaller testes. Some industrial chemicals, such as bisphenol A, mimic oestrogen, but little is known about how the effects of different oestrogen-like chemicals add up in water.

To find out, Xueping Chen and colleagues at Vitargent, a biotechnology company in Hong Kong, have created a genetically engineered fish that glows green when it is exposed to oestrogen-like chemicals. Chen's team took the green fluorescent protein gene from jellyfish and spliced it into the genome of the medaka fish, Oryzias melastigma, next to a gene that detects oestrogen. Chemicals that have oestrogen-like activity cause the fish to express the modified gene, making them glow.

When the team tested the fish at eight sites around Hong Kong, they found that some chemicals that showed weak or no oestrogenic activity, including UV filters used in sunscreen, had combined in water to amplify or create an oestrogenic effect. The work is as yet unpublished.

William Price of the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia, warns the approach does not detect a biological response.

Since this article was first posted, William Price has asked us to clarify his opinion. His letter is posted below.

From William Price, University of Wollongong
I was quoted in your report on a transgenic fish that fluoresces when exposed to oestrogenically active chemical contaminants (11 June, p 16). My comment, as used, is slightly ambiguous. To clarify, the creation of a transgenic fish that glows in the presence of oestrogenically active compounds in the water is an advance and a novel invention. This development is essentially measuring a response to particular levels of contaminants. However, what is not being measured is whether the chemicals at those concentrations are likely to have an adverse biological (eg reproductive) or physiological effect on the transgenic fish or other biota in the water.
Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia