Death's Prisoner

% of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents.

Following is the transcript, with links and illustrations and more extended comments, from my contribution to Extinction Radio this week, where it will be archived, or you can listen to it live today at 3 pm ET.

“One of the greatest delusions of the average man is to forget that life is death’s prisoner.”

source

When oceanographers try to warn about coral bleaching using as analogy the hypothetical death of forests, it’s always an ironic comparison, because they seem unaware that the trees of the world are in fact dying, too, at least as fast if not faster.

What is real, though, are the trees dying right before my eyes.  Every fall since 2008 I have documented faded colors, scorched foliage and early leaf drop, but this is the most desolate season by far.  You can find an extended version of this Dispatch, with videos and photos, from Arkansas to Maine, and links to all of the topics in this episode, on my blog, Wit’s End.

For several years I have been following a series narrated by a Vermont reporter named Sharon, who starts a televised journey from the Canadian border in late September, following the southward march of peak autumn colors.  Each year it is harder for her to pull off the charade, as she tries to put a brave front on the increasingly ugly and barren landscape, searching for the sort of magnificent scenery that is no longer in existence.

She has to continue the pretense, of course, because tourism is a significant source of income in the New England region, and also advertising for the media outlet that employs her.

Yankee Magazine has a interactive map on the web where fans of autumn upload pictures, seemingly unaware that most are of sickly trees and shriveled or injured leaves, like those above from Caledonia County, Vermont, designated “peak” on October 6.  You can see a comparison to healthy leaves in the past, such as these from October 18, 2007 in Ontario, in “Spill the Scarlet Rain”, a post named for Emily Dickinson’s 1862 poem:

The name – of it – is “Autumn” -

This year, the rusty tone has become so noticeable that even the Concord Monitor published a story admitting that the once glorious brilliance is dimming.  Terminally, permanently.

The parade of stories about this or that dying species of tree has become a stampede.  Cactus and olive trees are in the news, as are giant sequoia.  As usual, clueless foresters and scientists enamored of climate change point to drought – unless like, with pumpkins, they blame a poor harvest on too much water, despite seasons with more rain a decade or so ago.
Incredibly, in Denver, a frost last November is held responsible for trees dying today – and meanwhile, in Texas, where 300 years of tree-ring data indicate a drought in the 1850’s was far more severe even than the infamous Dust Bowl, mass tree death is blamed on caterpillars.  As for the demise of the village of Granville, Ohio’s beloved Christmas blue spruce at the untimely age of only 45, the causes range from insects, to fungus, to pruning, to exhaust from traffic.

Ah, finally, the crux of the matter – the fumes.

At long last the EPA enacted stricter ozone standards, but only marginally, caving in to intense corporate lobbying.  Grist ran a scathing critique of the Obama administration’s tepid decision.  But in all fairness, it’s a measure of how difficult, really impossible, it is to reduce background levels and still maintain modern civilization.  A toxic atmosphere is simply a byproduct of incinerating anything, whether it is diesel for Volkswagens, fire from agriculture in Indonesia, or volcanic emissions. While the PETM extinction is looked to as an analog for contemporary global warming, I am afraid our Endocene more closely resembles the Permian-Triassic 250 million years ago.  It was the only mass extinction that included plants on a large scale, as well as insects.  Basalt eruptions would have emitted sulfur oxides creating poisonous acid rain – and I can’t think of any reason there wouldn’t have also been copious amounts of nitrous oxides as well, the precursor, along with methane, to ozone.

A study in 2009 points to fungus eating forests due to chemical conditions:

source

source

source

You might wonder why is everyone so quiet about how ozone is toxic to trees when it has been established since the 1950′s.  I have come to think the answer is deceptively simple – it’s because natural levels are incompatible with industrial civilization.  Most scientists continue to harbor hope, however faint, that technology can save us from CO2.  But there is no antidote to the pure poison of acidifying the earth.

VW exposed themselves (and it emerges they are by no means the only car manufacturers) to the outrage caused by the recent scandal, just to evade pollution controls:

It is only fairly recently that it has been known that pollution circumnavigates the globe, and many people remain unaware of the impact of long-distance transport on places still considered pristine, because they are remote.

One study published in August in Nature Geoscience, “Ozone Pollution Near and Far” says: “Tropospheric ozone is generated from precursor pollutants, but can be blown far afield. Satellite observations show rising ozone levels over China — and almost stable levels over western North America despite stricter regulations.”

Another in the same journal titled, “Rapid increases in tropospheric ozone production and export from China” concludes that the increase in China has offset efforts in the US to reduce levels according to government air quality policies.”

Right now, Southeast Asia is smothered in a toxic cloud from illegal burning of drained peatlands in Indonesia for agriculture.  Flights and sporting events are being cancelled and schools closed in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.

In a sad way, the conservatives who object to EPA stricter rules are right, as one study title phrases it, “Background ozone a major issue in US West”.  The September NASA release found that, “…on average, background ozone sources generated about 48.3 ppb, or 77 percent, of the total ozone in the study region of California and Nevada. The findings are particularly important in Northern California and Nevada, where wildfires and ozone transported to the region from abroad can cause background ozone to exceed 60 ppb.”

40 ppb is the level at which plants experience damage.  So when we read estimates such as one that was published last month, that 3.3 million people – about 6% of all annual deaths – die every year primarily from air pollution, it’s important to remember that plants are even more sensitive.  And yet despite a global decline of forests, most scientists continue to fixate on climate change and drought.

What is so amazing about these determined attempts to tie tree death in with carbon emissions is that severe droughts have occurred many times in the prehistorical past – and the way they are documented is using tree rings.  So obviously, trees survived past episodes.  One study sampled white oaks in Iowa going back to 1640 and found that prolonged droughts such as that of the 1930’s occur about twice per century.

“California’s Sequoia National Park garnered the top spot, with nearly a quarter of the year, or 87 days, recording dangerous smog levels.”

“Smog is so bad that signs in visitors centers caution guests when it’s not safe to hike. The government employment website warns job applicants that the workplace is unhealthy. And park workers are schooled every year on the lung and heart damage the pollution can cause.”

“Ozone also is to blame for weakening many stands of the park’s Jeffrey and ponderosa pines, leaving telltale yellowing of their long needles. Instead of absorbing carbon dioxide, they soak up ozone through the stoma in their needles, which inhibits photosynthesis. Ozone also stresses young redwood seedlings, which already face challenges to survival.”

Is it any wonder the forests are burning?  OF COURSE they are.

So how come Nate Stephenson just noticed sequoias having problems last September?  Who knows? – especially since I wrote to him nearly six years ago to point out that ALL species of trees were in steep decline from air pollution.   The article says he has colleagues mapping the standing dead by climbing trees, and fly-overs.  I wish they would come to the East Coast forests, because they would find the condition of the forests are no better here despite plentiful rainfall.  Color me cynical but then, if you acknowledge that pollution is the problem, I don’t suppose it would be quite as much fun or justifiable to swoop around in your fancy high-tech plane, which is “equipped with instruments that capture the chemistry of individual trees across entire landscapes, generating colorful 3D maps that allow land managers to identify hotspots of stress or resilience.”

Scientists are also striving to connect drought to ash tree beetles.  A NYTimes article reviewed research which stated:

“This may be why the beetle never caused much alarm: In East Asia, it left healthy ashes alone. ‘It’s going to kill already dying trees’, said Caterina Villari, a postdoctoral researcher at Ohio State and an author of the new study…Dr. Villari and her colleagues don’t know precisely how drought makes Manchurian ash trees vulnerable to the insects.”

That might be because pollution, and not drought, is the pre-disposing factor.

 [A reader from the Ozarks sent these photos, the pine taken in September and the persimmon, below, in August - the area has had 5 inches more rainfall than normal this season.]

And while I am being a full-blown Ozonista, how about this study from last month in New Phytologist Journal titled, “Ozone degrades floral scent and reduces pollinator attraction to flowers.”  The abstract states:  “The combined results of chemical analyses and behavioural responses of pollinators strongly suggest that high ozone concentrations have significant negative impacts on pollination by reducing the distance over which floral olfactory signals can be detected by pollinators.”

This week Smithsonian Magazine featured an upbeat story about the Archangel Tree Archive, which is cloning the world’s largest trees, in order to save them – based on the theory that they have the most genetic resilience.  The nonprofit was started by a nurseryman, Jake Milarch, who had given up on his business because he had determined the trees he was growing weren’t thriving because of pollution.  But like just about everyone else who knows – the authors of “An Appalachian Tragedy”, the retired scientist just interviewed by the Concord newspaper, the professor who wrote “Acidification of Earth” and the one who published the book “Global Alert – the Ozone Pollution Crisis” – he hardly ever talks about that anymore – even though this is what he said during an NPR radio interview in 2012:

“We’ve been in the shade tree business in northern Michigan for several generations. And 20 years ago, our trees that we were growing for the cities and nurseries started to die and we didn’t know why. Well, after a couple of years and a lot of research, we found out it was due in large part to the decline in air quality. So, we were trying to find an answer of trees that could be stronger, hardier, could take the increase in temperature as well as the increase in toxins in the air.”

After dwelling on our tragically blighted earth, and our reluctance to recognize it – let alone rectify it through personal sacrifice – I think it is difficult to find meaning in life when contemplating extinction. It helps me to remember that life has never had meaning, other than that which we invent. Once you recognize the human desire for immortality, it becomes possible to accept that it is just a dream – and simultaneously, go about creating meaning for yourself – while knowing, as Camus says, it is all an absurd paradox.

I just watched the movie “Creation”, which is about Charles Darwin’s personal emotional struggle to reconcile his confidence in the theory he articulated in the Origin of the Species with the overwhelming social pressure to believe in religion or indeed any sort of spirituality.  His agonizing strife makes clear that any such notions of direction, intention, or infinite souls are simply incompatible with the theory of evolution – which is at its very essence random and purposeless and primarily accidental.  People who claim to reconcile the two are stretching the constraints of one or the other or both.  There is no life after death, there is no “greater consciousness”.  There is only the beauty that you can find now – it’s up to each of us to make the most of it.

Thanks so much for listening.

Links below the trailer:

 
The Paucity of Hope:  http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-fine-frenzy-universal-dance-of.html