Case Studies of Resource Management

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Case Studies ofResource Management





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Outline of lecture

• A. Preliminaries
• B. Case Studies
• i. Cuyahoga River
• ii. Aral Sea
• iii. Acid Rain
• iv. Photochemical Smog
• v. Peak Oil

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Earth Day 2007

• http//www.earthsite.org/ (March 20)
• http//worldwildlife.org/earthday/ (April 22)

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Current World Population

• http//www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/popclockw
• http//opr.princeton.edu/popclock/

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You dont have to be a wacko...Or even a
Democrat

• To be concerned about the environment!

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Tree Hugger ---gtChipko movement
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Earth First! ers www.earthfirst.org/
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You should be interested in Conservation...
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Whats a (natural) resource ?

• Anything obtained from the environment to meet
  human needs and/or wants

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Examples

• Solar energy
• Water
• Air
• Food
• Minerals and Petroleum
• Soil

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Nonrenewable

• Resources that can be exhausted on a human time
  scale
• Fossil fuels
• Oil, natural gas, coal
• Metals (if not recycled)

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Renewable

• Resources are essentially inexhaustible on a
  human time scale
• Not many examples Solar energy, wind, salt
  water
• Others are potentially renewable
• Can be inexhaustible,
• if properly managed for example,
• Fresh water, clean air, trees, soil, metals

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This Lecture ...

• Will focus on three of the most fundamental
  resources
• Water
• Air
• Both are potentially renewable
• Oil very much non-renewable

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Problem with air

• Is quality (pollution)

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Problems with water include

• Both quality and quantity

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Problems with oil include

• Both quantity and pollution when its extracted
  and used
• And its a non-renewable resource it doesnt
  grow on trees

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Good News Bad News

• Bad
• Water tends to stay in compartments where it
  can be depleted and polluted
• Distributional problem

• Good
• Hydrologic Cycle continually recycles Earths
  water

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Distribution of H2O

• Oceans (salt water) - over 97
• Glaciers (ice) - almost 2
• Of the remainder (available to humans)
• Lakes and streams - a little over 1
• Groundwater - over 98 of fresh water
• Very liable to be polluted and depleted

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The Cost of Pollution

• A review of Dr. Brodmans lecture

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Most Costs are Internal

• Which are easily accounted for on the General
  Ledger
• Raw materials
• Labor
• Infrastructure
• Fuel
• Taxes

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Environmental Costs are mostly External

• Whats the cost (and to whom?) of the exhaust
  from your car?
• Whats the (environmental) cost of developing a
  piece of land?
• Usually very difficult for standard accounting,
  but

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Catskill Watershed and the NYC Water Supply
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Protect the watershed from development or
desalinate the Atlantic at a cost of 6 billion
per year?
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CASE STUDY 1

• Cuyahoga River, Ohio

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The Solution to Pollution...

• Is Dilution???
• Not!

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Location

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Cuyahoga River Caught Fire

• June 1969 http//www.epa.gov/glnpo/aoc/cuyahoga.ht
  ml

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Clean Water Acts

• Of 1972 and 1977
• Goal Make all of U.S. surface waters safe for
  fishing and swimming by 1983
• Progress has been made, but goal not met
• Between 1972 and 1993 in U.S., 575 billion spent
  on water pollution control
• 75G by government, 500G by private sector

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Stream Recovery

• Fact If they are not overloaded,
• Flowing waters (streams) recover rapidly from
  certain forms of pollution
• By dilution, aeration, and bacterial decay

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Cuyahoga today

• Much cleaner, especially upstream from Cleveland

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CASE STUDY 2

• Aral Sea, Central Asia
• Former U.S.S.R.
• http//www.orexca.com/aral_sea.shtml

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Principle of Unintended Consequences

• Results from poor planning

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LOCATION

• Central Asia

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Aral Sea Before 1960

• Was once the worlds fourth largest fresh water
  lake (now its the 10th largest inland water
  body)
• A five-year-plan of communist leadership called
  for agricultural development of area
• Starting in late 1950s, its two feeder rivers
  diverted for irrigation (mainly to grow cotton)

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Whats Wrong with this Picture?
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Aral Sea Results

• Surface area shrunk by 60
• Volume decreased by 75
• Split into two pieces ---gt

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Aral Sea Results

• Its now a salt lake - all fish have died, half
  of bird and mammal species gone
• Dry lake bottom contains salts and pesticides
  which blow around by winds gt salt dust storms

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Salt Dust Storm
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More Aral Sea Results

• Soil has become salty (salinized)
• No good any more for crops

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More Aral Sea Results

• Groundwater becoming contaminated
• Must truck in
  drinking H2O

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More Aral Sea Results

• Climate changing from semi-arid to desert
  gtHotter summers, colder winters (recall the
  effect of the heat capacity of H2O)

Aralkum Desert
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Recovery of Aral Sea?

• Dam built on Small Aral Sea in 1990s to help
  restore water
• Only limited success so far
• Hard to reverse environmental damage...
• http//www.newscientist.com/article.ns?iddn3947

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CASE STUDY 3

• Acid Rain
• Eastern U.S. and Canada
• http//classes.colgate.edu/aleventer/geol101/acida
  dir/acid13.htm

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Who has the authority...

• To regulate conflicting interests?

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Coal burning releases sulfur dioxide
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Regions with lots of SO2 emissions
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Acid Rain

• Results when sulfur and nitrogen oxides mix with
  water in clouds
• Recall At our latitudes, prevailing winds blow
  from west to east
• So, where do you think this rain falls?

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Regions affected by Acid Rain
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How Acid is Acid Rain?
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Results of Acid Rain include ...

• Dead trees, especially conifers
• Dead fish and other aquatic life
• About 6 of Adirondack lakes are fishless ----gt

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• Damage to buildings, statues and car finishes
• Canadian Parliament buildings in Ottawa gt

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A little bit about Politics...

• Bearing in mind the Acid Rain scenario,
• Should (at least) air pollution regulation occur
  at the state or federal level ?

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CASE STUDY 4

• Los Angeles, CA
• Photochemical smog
• http//www.env.gov.bc.ca/air/vehicle/nrtbpsag.html

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Cars, Geography, and High Population

• You cant have it all

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Photochemical Smog

• Clear day gt
• Note the brown haze of photochemical smog gt

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Unfortunate Conditions

• Hot, sunny weather PLUS
• Automobile exhaust YIELDS
• Photochemical Smog
• A noxious mixture that includes ozone - the
  bad kind O3
• Made worse sometimes by weather condition called
  a thermal inversion

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Thermal Inversion
Cooler
Cool
Cool
Warm inversion layer
Warm
Cool
THERMAL INVERSION
NORMAL
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On a clear day ...
Downtown L.A. - Civic Center
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During a high level thermal inversion ...
Pollution is trapped, bad air cant rise
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During a low level thermal inversion ...
Pollution trapped near surface
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Main cultural culprit is the

• Internal combustion engine
• (Gasoline and diesel)

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CASE STUDY 5

• Peak Oil

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Theres always more

• Thats what more means Doesnt it???

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Oil is a non-renewable resource!
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Hubberts Peak
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Hubberts Peak

• is the maximum rate of production of oil

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Peak Oil

• Occurs when the demand for oil equals Hubberts
  Peak

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Oily Facts

• Current global oil consumption is 80 million
  barrels per day (1 bbl 42 gallons)
• 20 million bbl/day in 1960
• 60 million bbl/day in 1980
• So far, production has been able to meet demand
• Will this be able to continue?

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Ultimate Production
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Global Oil Production

• Will eventually reach a maximum
• At which time, demand for oil will equal
  production rate ( Peak Oil)
• The result?
• Very high prices, and even more importantly
• Shortages ask your parents about 1973

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The 4 biggest oil fields in production are

• Al Ghawar, Saudi Arabia 4.5 million barrels/day
• Cantarell, Mexico 2.1 million
• Burgan, Kuwait 1 million
• Da Qing, China 1 million
• Only one of these was discovered after 1960 ---
  Cantarell in 1976

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New oil finds?

• Oil found by exploration drill bit worldwide is
  as follows (in billions of barrels)
• 1997 4.5
• 1998 5.8
• 1999 9.5
• 2000 13.05
• 2001 4.02
• 2002 3.34

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New Oil exploration?

• The annual exploration cost for the 10 companies
  as a group exceeded the estimated value of annual
  new discoveries made in both 2001 and 2002a
  reversal from previous years
• When people spend more than they make, they quit
  spending
• The US onshore went value negative (money spent
  vs. value of oil found) back in the 1990s. 
• For the world to go value negative is a really
  bad omen. It shows in 2004 exploration budgets 
• In spite of high prices, Shell, ENI, Total, BP,
  Anadarko, and El Paso have all cut their
  exploration budgets!

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Analogy Inheriting a Fortune

• Suppose you were given a billion dollars, but
• Could withdraw only 100 a day
• Would you still be a billionaire?
• Analogous to oil --- maybe 100 years of molecules
  left in ground, but
• When demand exceeds maximum production, were in
  trouble Peak oil

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The World's Second Largest Oil Field Declines

• http//home.entouch.net/dmd/burgan.htm

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World Population Check

• http//www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/popclockw
• How many people have been added during this
  lecture?

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Some musings http//home.entouch.net/dmd/burgan.
htm

• All this was foreshadowed in the energy crisis of
  the late 1970s when a serious inflection in oil
  supply by the year 2000 was clearly forecast. How
  ironic that those earlier forecasts now look
  correct, while more modern and recent forecasts
  begin to look over optimistic and out-of-date
  with geological reality.
• Nobody can change the geology, and forces of
  nature that laid down reserves of oil and gas
  over millions and millions of years. Could it be
  that we have been blinded by technological
  advances into thinking that there is some way to
  beat nature?
• The natural world has an uncanny ability to hit
  back at the arrogance of man, and perhaps a
  reassessment of reality at this point is called
  for, rather than a reliance on oil statistics
  that may owe more to political maneuvering than
  geological facts.

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Philosophy of Science

• Epistemology models ontology nature is real and
  its study yields real results
• Consilience knowledge from various areas must
  fit together opposed to ad hoc
• Heurism good scientific theories should lead
  to further research