Natural Services Economy – Always working – Gratis
Natural Ecosystem Services…
Way to clean up like a good Mother does after her kids.
I was reminded of this morning, while speaking to a group of Earth Scientists at Columbia University in New York.
I spoke about the Recuperative powers of Nature…
And of How little we pay attention to them.
And of course of Why we don’t ever account for them as the other externalities in our own cost Accounting from our Commercial and Industrial Economic pursuits.
We simply take Nature’s Services as granted.
Take the oily water of the Gulf for example.
Drive to any certified laboratory and go ahead and use a high powered microscope and tell me what You see…
Even using samples of water, far from the Deepwater Horizon oil slick you will find a huge community of critters hard at work breaking down the oil.
A community of lowly bacteria.
Marine Biologists and bacterial Life researchers have found that dozens of different kinds of marine bacteria have a healthy appetite for oil and are vastly multiplying when oil is found and they work top break it down for it’s energy content…
Water samples from the Gulf of Mexico are showing signs that marine bacteria are already pitching in to help with clean-up efforts, and that populations of these bacteria in this area are likely to boom as they feast on the oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
These aren’t necessarily good guys either. Just opportunistic following the energy trail.
Some are strong members of the Vibrio family, which includes the species that causes cholera. There is no evidence that this species is one of those that breaks down oil, but at least they are here feasting. However many other Vibrios that cause other nasty human infections also break down the oil and help nature clean up…
“The Vibrios use breakdown products of oil,” says Rita Colwell of the University of Maryland in College Park. “When the oil from Deepwater Horizon reaches the estuary, Vibrios very likely will increase.
The greatest risk of bacterial infection in the Gulf comes from Vibrio fish pathogens and other species that commonly infect shellfish. Some of these can cause disease in humans also. Many humans working in the clean up crews have been getting sick, but to not be confused, these were illnesses directly related to Toxicity from petroleum exposure.
Toxic syndrome from the oil fumes also has been reported. Grimes’s research department had the only research vessel, the R/V Pelican, on the scene and his research is very valuable. It brought back samples of oil droplets that already had Vibrios clustered around them. Low oxygen levels were also detected near patches of oil, a sign that bacteria are feasting.
Crucially, R/V Pelican happened to be in the area when Deepwater Horizon blew up. That means the team could immediately collect water samples to test for bacterial populations from areas that were threatened by the spill but had not yet been contaminated. The work is on-going and will be vital in future studies of how the spill has changed local ecosystems.
“Now we plan to see how the microbial community evolves when you give it oil,” says Grimes. He hopes to screen bacteria from oil-affected water for the DNA of oil-eating enzymes, and use this to determine their species.
“This blowout could permanently reshuffle the microbial community in the Gulf,” Grimes says. In previous research he found that Vibrio became the dominant type of marine bacteria off the south-eastern US as oil tanker traffic increased after the 1970s.
For now the oil mainly threatens larval fish clinging to the underside of mats of seaweed. “I hope most of the oil will stay out to sea,” says Grimes. “It may kill a year’s production of fish, but if it hits the coastal marshes, it could be there for a decade.” At particular risk are coastal salt marshes.
Sadly the oil has hit many hundreds of miles of coastal estuaries and coastal marches already…
Yet nature’s defenses are manifested here. Along with it’s immense economical might that dwarfs any and all of human efforts. Ultimately, the tiny bacteria which Grimes and his colleagues are poring over will finish the Deepwater clean-up operation. Nature arranges it just so that the oil-eating microbes already present in seawater will be enough to get rid of any oil that is not physically removed by the clean-up crews – except for insoluble, tarry material that poses little toxic risk.
Another major effort by Atlas, who managed the “bioremediation” of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, says the bacterial process will be helped if fertiliser is added to the water, as then the oil-eaters will have the nitrogen and phosphate they need to grow.
Fertiliser has already been used to aid the bacterial breakdown of oil that has hit the shore, but it could also help bacteria in the open sea if it is added to the detergents that are being used to disperse the oil. The fertiliser lodges in the surface of the oil droplets created by the detergents, he says – right where the bacteria can use them.
Working in conjunction with nature aids the Life processes of all organisms.
Let’s build that in our Econometric projections….
Yours,
Pano
PS:
This afternoon am speaking to a Private Equity group again in New York.
People who are hesitant to look at Renewables as profitable Energy generation long term without government subsidies.
What about Nature’s Subsidies?
Far more abundant and plentiful in many fold returns.
A piece of Advise to my friends in Wall Street…
Natural Services Ecosystems is the largest Economy in the Universe.
Make no mistake to bet against it.
You’ll simply burn
