Save the carbon-consuming whales

 

On Monday this column noted the general disinterest among northeastern politicians in studying costs and benefits as they seek to replace fossil fuels and nuclear power with offshore wind projects. The costs may be even greater and the benefits even fewer than reported. Some climateers may not care what a whoomping, whooshing turbine sounds like to a whale. But they‘re bound to care about the impact reduced whale populations could have on the climate.

 

Bloomberg’s Jennifer A Dlouhy reported last month:

 

Planned wind projects off the New England coast threaten to harm the region’s dwindling population of endangered right whales, according to a US government marine scientist.

 

The warning from a top National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration official, obtained by Bloomberg under a Freedom of Information Act request, underscores the potential legal and environmental perils of offshore wind development along the coast. President Joe Biden has a goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind within the decade.

 

Both initial construction of wind projects and decades of expected operation threaten to imperil right whales in southern New England waters, Sean Hayes, chief of the protected species branch at NOAA’s National Northeast Fisheries Science Center, said in a May 13 letter to Interior Department officials.

 

Even those who prioritize the climate above all other concerns and are willing to accept some level of whale suffering for the planetary good have reason to pause before embracing wind power. That’s because a reduction in the whale population could itself exacerbate the problem they seek to address.

 

The changes wrought by the installation and operation of wind projects could prove to be excruciating for our large mammalian friends, and the negative impact may be much broader. Rachel Ramirez reports for CNN:

 

The world’s largest whales are more than just astonishing creatures. Much like the ocean, soil and forests, whales can help save humanity from the accelerating climate crisis by sequestering and storing planet-heating carbon emissions, researchers say.

 

In a paper published... in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution, climate researchers suggest that whales are important, but often overlooked, carbon sinks. The enormous size of these marine mammals, which can reach 150 tons, means they can store carbon much more effectively than smaller animals.

 

And because whales live longer than most animals, some for more than 100 years, the paper said they could be “one of the largest stable living carbon pools” in the ocean. Even when they die, whale carcasses descend to the deepest parts of the sea and settle on the seafloor, trapping the carbon they’ve stored in their stout, protein-rich bodies.

 

An indirect way whales can be critical carbon sinks is through their feces. Whale poop is rich in nutrients which can be taken up by phytoplankton — tiny organisms that suck up carbon dioxide as they grow. When they die, phytoplankton also sink at the bottom of the seafloor, taking tiny bits of carbon in their carcasses.

 

The Trends in Ecology & Evolution paper offers plenty of qualifiers and expressions of uncertainty but notes the role of whales in carbon capture:

 

The great whales (baleen and sperm whales), through their massive size and wide distribution, influence ecosystem and carbon dynamics. Whales directly store carbon in their biomass and contribute to carbon export through sinking carcasses. Whale excreta may stimulate phytoplankton growth and capture atmospheric CO2; such indirect pathways represent the greatest potential for whale-carbon sequestration but are poorly understood.

 

A 2019 report from the International Monetary Fund was more enthusiastic:

 

The carbon capture potential of whales is truly startling. Whales accumulate carbon in their bodies during their long lives. When they die, they sink to the bottom of the ocean; each great whale sequesters 33 tons of CO2 on average, taking that carbon out of the atmosphere for centuries. A tree, meanwhile, absorbs only up to 48 pounds of CO2 a year...

 

Wherever whales, the largest living things on earth, are found, so are populations of some of the smallest, phytoplankton. These microscopic creatures not only contribute at least 50 percent of all oxygen to our atmosphere, they do so by capturing about 37 billion metric tons of CO2, an estimated 40 percent of all CO2 produced. To put things in perspective, we calculate that this is equivalent to the amount of CO2 captured by 1.70 trillion trees—four Amazon forests’ worth—or 70 times the amount absorbed by all the trees in the US Redwood National and State Parks each year. More phytoplankton means more carbon capture.

 

Backing offshore wind projects despite the potential threat to whales could be especially awkward for environmentalists in the Northeast these days. That’s because many activists have been busy raising whale concerns as a means of limiting the lobster catch.

 

Ben Lieberman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute opines in the Boston Herald today:

 

Environmentalists want to crack down on the Maine lobster industry in the name of protecting endangered whales, but they turn a blind eye to the greater threat to whales from proposed offshore wind farms. The irony is almost as delicious as the lobster dinners at stake.

 

As for the impact of lobstering on whales, Mr. Lieberman writes:

 

The threat is almost entirely speculative. The Maine lobster industry has co-existed with migrating whales for a long time, and actual confirmed instances of harm are exceedingly rare. “The last known entanglement in Maine lobster gear happened more than 17 years ago, and that whale survived. In fact, there has never been a right whale death in Maine lobster gear,” notes Maine Lobstermen’s Association Vice President Dustin Delano...

 

While the Maine lobster industry has a solid track record that should dispel any concerns, the same cannot be said of proposals to introduce hundreds and eventually thousands of massive offshore wind turbines. Ten large wind farms have been proposed along the right whale’s migratory path, part of the Biden Administration’s goal of building 30 Gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. It’s a key component of President’s climate change agenda.

 

There seems to be an environmental double standard on the political left. Let’s hope that the whales of the Atlantic and the planet we all share can survive it.

 

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