Dumping Oil & Thawing Tundra

Dumping oil in the ocean... on purpose.

This is the Environment Report. I’m Lester Graham.

Ships are intentionally spilling millions of gallons of oil into our oceans each year. And it’s everything from cruise ships to cargo ships to oil tankers. Rebecca Williams has been looking into this – what kind of oil are we talking about?

RW: It’s waste oil – ships have tons of mechanical parts that all use oil. The ships are supposed to collect that oil and separate it out... but it turns out a lot of ships just dump it overboard.

Stacey Mitchell is chief of the environmental crimes section at the Department of Justice. She says some estimates are all this used oil adds up to about 88 million gallons a year. That’s EIGHT times the amount of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez. And those are just the ships they catch.

“As we do more and more of these enforcements the crews on board these vessels who are trying to defeat our purposes are getting craftier and are coming up with new ways to commit this crime and new ways to conceal it.”

LG: Why would they dump oil into the ocean?

RW: Well Mitchell says it takes time and costs money to separate the oil out the way you’re supposed to... and so the chance of getting caught might be worth the risk. Though the fines can be in the millions of dollars.

LG: But they’re still doing it?

RW: Yeah. No one knows exactly how bad this is for the oceans... but in the case of the Exxon
spill, it’s estimated a quarter of a million birds got killed, along with fish, seals and sea otters. These waste oil spills are a lot more spread out, but the oil’s definitely not good for wildlife.



(((STING)))

This is The Environment Report.

This week the journal Nature looks at how thawing ground up north might impact global warming. Reporter Amy Mayer spent some time in Interior Alaska with one of the scientists at a place called Eight Mile Lake. :10

Permafrost is ground that's supposed to be frozen all the time. But for decades it's been thawing in places. When that happens, carbon gets released—potentially contributing to the greenhouse effect. Ted Schuur's a biologist at the University of Florida but he spends his summers doing experiments near Healy, Alaska. I tagged along during some field visits. (very low driving sound under) Pretty soon, we're there. (:19)

Cut (Schuur): (:04) This has to be one of my more photogenic field sites that I ever worked at.

(cross driving sound to getting-ready/tussock sound)

Tundra surrounds us. We're just north of the Alaska Range. I can see the snow-capped peaks. We change into rubber boots and bumble over tussocks. Schuur stops, (amby out) kneels in the ground and starts picking plants and packing them into jars. Then, he cuts into the tundra, pulls a chunk out and stuffs the roots he finds into jars. (:16)

Cut (Schuur): We’re going to measure respiration of plants. (:03)

(mix below scrubber sound)

A machine scrubs out carbon from the air. Later, he'll use fancy equipment to "date" the carbon that's left from the plants. He needs the age of the carbon because when he finds older carbon he knows it's only recently escaped the frozen ground. That makes it extra in the system. At first, Schuur learned, new carbon coincides with new plant growth that uses up the addition—that means, no greenhouse effect. But, later, the permafrost keeps thawing, more old carbon becomes available, and plant growth just can't keep up. That means, more carbon dioxide ends up in the atmosphere from the thawing permafrost—just like it does from burning coal or gasoline. He's trying to find out just how bad the greenhouse effect from thawing permafrost might be. He might just thaw some himself. (:36)

Cut (Schuur): (:05) As strange as it seems, I would love to thaw permafrost on a large scale, experimentally.

Schuur says the area he'd warm is tiny relative to the whole circumpolar region—and understanding the threat of thawing permafrost might help scientists get a better picture of global climate change. For the Environment Report, I'm Amy Mayer. (:11)



You can get more information about that story from the journal Nature on our website… environmentreport.org.

I’m Lester Graham.