Dark Fantasy (3) ? Black Snake Poison

            There are no clown sightings on Atlas Obscura's map in the North Dakota Plains near the  Missouri River, where an indigenous encampment has been growing since April 2016.

            The camp exists to protect the waters of the Missouri River from a pipeline being built to transport crude oil from the Bakken oil fields. The campers claim the mantle of water protectors and call the pipeline the Black Snake.

Standing Rock Sioux Camp, ND

            The immediate reason for this direct action, begun by the Standing Rock Sioux, a Native American Tribe, was a change in the route of the pipeline. The pipe has to cross the Missouri River; the original route was a little north of Bismark, ND, but the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rejected that route. "One reason mentioned in the agency’s environmental assessment is the proximity to wellhead source water protection areas that are avoided to protect municipal water supply wells," according to Amy Dairymple writing in the Bismark Tribune on 14 August 2016.  The changed route brings the river crossing close to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, and threatens the reservation's sole water supply, which is apparently not a concern (unlike the case of the Bismark water supply). The new route also disturbs land held sacred by the tribe though it doesn't have legal title to this land.

            Media coverage is mostly focused on the gathering of native nations in North Dakota. In addition to environmental concerns, a multitude of complex issues relating to indigenous rights, as well as constitutional guaranties, are being highlighted as the effort to stop the pipeline continues. (http://time.com/4548566/dakota-access-pipeline-standing-rock-sioux/  has a summary of the pipeline story as of 28 October 2016.)

            I've seen little attention given to the source and effect of the fuel to be transported. But there are troubling and broad-reaching issues involved in the Bakken oil and gas fields, if scientific reports can be believed.    

            It seems that beginning around 1984, and continuing until 2009, global ethane levels were dropping. The main source of ethane is extraction of oil and gas; venting and flaring in the production fields release it, and when it reacts with sunlight, surface-level ozone results. Ozone, needed in the upper atmosphere to protect us against ultraviolet sunlight, at surface levels acts as a toxic substance and as a greenhouse gas.

            A mountaintop sensor in Europe detected a reversal of the downward trend in ethane levels in 2010.  The increase continued, so a study was launched to locate the reason. After taking air samples over Bakken for 12 days in May 2014, "airborne measurements from directly over and downwind of oil production areas show that the [Bakken] field's ethane emissions of 0.23 teragrams per year, or roughly 250,000 U.S. tons, effectively cancel out half of the global decline rate," [emphasis added] according a report by University of Michigan in its Michigan News. Video posted on You Tube by Michigan Engineering shows the changes in surface ozone  from the Bakken Field emissions.

https://youtu.be/D-Dvm0MTpNo

            The report continues: "'These findings not only solve an atmospheric mystery—where that extra ethane was coming from—they also help us understand how regional activities sometimes have global impacts,' said co-author Colm Sweeney, a scientist with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, and NOAA. 'We did not expect a single oil field to affect global levels of this gas.'"[1]

           

            You may ask, how does this all fit into some dark fantasy story of the presidential campaign?

            In the middle of the northern plains, an ever-increasing number of indigenous peoples and their allies gather in prayer to defend the natural world against what they interpret as a Black Snake foreseen in prophesy.  State police agencies are pushing back where the confrontation has escalated. The creator of the Black Snake is a single fossil fuel extraction operation that supplies roughly 2 percent of ethane emissions in the world.

            Meanwhile, the Donald (who has a fairly substantial investment in Energy Transfer Partners  LLC, the pipeline's developer) in increasingly strident tones denies the influence of human activity on climate change. Aside from personal financial interest, this position gives him a solid edge in the oil and gas producing states. (Native Americans make up only about 2% of the US population; it's a negligible voting block.) Energy Transfer has not surprisingly supported his campaign with significant contributions.
         
            But the climate change problem he rejects has global reach and requires international cooperation--and a willingness to face down fossil fuel interests and honor our international commitments. While Secretary Clinton has not directly addressed the DAPL, she at least accepts the science of climate change and the threat it presents.

            The GOP candidate's polemic strives to harness the apocalyptic foursome: fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear. But this exploitation in no way serves the national interest. 

            Sightings of red-maned clowns sprout where he campaigns.

            Even in Maine.

           

           

             

                       

           

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[1] The study is titled "Fugitive emissions from the Bakken shale illustrate role of shale production in global ethane shift." Also contributing were researchers from NOAA, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Columbia University, Stanford University and Harvard University. The research was funded primarily by NOAA and NASA.