California's Biggest Carbon Emitters
Carbon addiction is the same as any other in at least one respect: the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. For greenhouse gases, reducing emissions requires knowing what you're putting out to begin with.
The Conoco Phillips refinery in Rodeo is a relatively small player, as refineries go, at 1.9 million metric tons of CO2 per year. Photo: Craig Miller
It was toward this end that this week the California Air Resources Board released the first comprehensive data on large-scale industrial carbon emissions in the state. Not surprisingly, the top emitters tend to fall into two categories: power plants and oil refineries, with cement manufacturers not far behind.
Individually, major oil refineries have the largest carbon footprint. Two of Chevron's refineries–in Richmond and El Segundo, BP's Carson refinery and the Shell refinery in Martinez, all clocked in at more than three million metric tons (tonnes), CO2-equivalent, for 2008.
Use the interactive map below, prepared by Climate Watch intern David Ferry, to locate the largest industrial emitters and see how they sort out by industry. (Click here for a larger map and a list of all the largest emitters.)
View KQED: California's Biggest Industrial CO2 Emitters of 2008 in a larger map
Cumulatively, electric power generation is California's biggest emitter, despite the virtual absence of coal-powered plants in the state. The ARB report lists nearly 20 utility or industrial cogeneration plants in the million-plus club. Several plants put out more than two million tonnes, including Dynegy's gas-fired plant at Moss Landing, the LaPaloma McKittrick plant, Southern California Edison's Rosemead plant, and the L.A. Department of Water & Power's Haynes Generating Plant.
The federal EPA considers anything above 25,000 tonnes to be a large emitter. But with carbon emissions, "large" is a relative concept. California imports power from other states and we can get a clue to "large" from the carbon output numbers on some of the mostly coal-fired plants feeding the California grid from states like Utah and Wyoming. Some fossil fuel plants in those states weigh in at a hefty six, ten–even 15 million metric tons. Los Angeles still depends on out-of-state fossil plants for roughly half of its electric power.
A few large cement plants are also in the million-plus column. To find out why, listen to Amy Standen's report for Quest.
Of course, all this careful accounting leaves aside the elephant in the room: transportation, which has a bigger footprint in California than all electrical generation combined, including imports from other states–and is about equal to total industrial emissions.
The industrial tally released this week is subject to revision and will be used to set caps and allowances for the carbon trading (cap & trade) system mandated by the state's 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act, commonly known as AB-32.
Closing the Climate Psychology Gap
A Matter of Degree is a survey of attitudes developed by Climate Watch, in partnership with Yale and George Mason Universities.
Keep emotions out of it and meet the uncertainties head-on. Those tips are among the advice offered in a new guide for climate change communicators. Published by the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University, "The Psychology of Climate Change Communication" is a 54-page guide available on the CRED website that attempts to help educators, journalists, and scientists communicate more clearly about the complicated, politically-charged subject of climate change. The gist? It's not just what you say, it's how you say it. Not that this is an earth-shattering revelation but it's a good reminder to those tasked with conveying detailed scientific information to a general audience that might not have the time, context, or desire to fully process the message.
From the introduction:
… in order for climate science information to be fully absorbed by audiences, it must be actively communicated with appropriate language, metaphor, and analogy; combined with narrative storytelling; made vivid through visual imagery and experiential scenarios; balanced with scientific information; and delivered by trusted messengers in group settings.
This guide speaks to the messengers. Key recommendations include common-sense strategies such as knowing your audience, getting their attention, and being sure to translate scientific data into concrete experience. The guide also stresses avoiding the overuse of emotional appeals reasoning that while they may work in the short term, they could backfire down the road because people have a "finite pool of worry" and repeated emotional appeals could lead to "emotional numbing" and apathy. Most of these recommendations sound useful for all kinds of communication — not just about climate change.
One point, however, seems especially relevant to climate change; the recommendation to directly and precisely address scientific and climatic uncertainties. In other words, meet the unknowns head-on but keep them in perspective:
Climate science uncertainty often conveys the mistaken impression that scientists are hopelessly confused about this complicated subject, when in fact scientific uncertainties about exactly how much warmer the planet will be in 100 years does not change the very high confidence scientists have that human-made greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet and are likely to continue doing so.
The guide stresses the importance of being very clear about where the uncertainties lie, because they are easy to overstate or understate, which leads to more confusion. A particularly interesting resource is Table 4: Words with Different Meanings to Scientists and the General Public. The table itself is a little confusing, but it gives recognition to the "language barrier" between scientists and "laymen," a key to getting a clear message across.
A study published last month by the Pew Center for People and the Press found that the percentage of American adults who think that there is solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades has declined over the past year, from 71% to 57%. The proportion of Americans who say global temperatures are rising as a result of human activity, such as burning fossil fuels, shrank from 47% to 36% in the same period. It's an indication that those who have taken on the mantle of communicating the current science can use a little help.
$11 Billion in Water Bonds: Follow the Money
Governor Schwarzenegger traveled to Fresno County Monday to sign the centerpiece of last week’s package of water bills—an $11.14 billion bond measure that would pay for new dams and reservoirs and a sweeping program of conservation, water recycling and drought relief projects.
The governor appeared at a Friant Dam press conference with state Senator Dave Cogdill, R-Modesto, author of the bond initiative. Schwarzenegger said he’s hopeful that the bond, along with other measures in last week’s comprehensive water agreement, will put an end to the “holy water wars” pitting Northern v. Southern California and among cities, agriculture, fishing communities, and environmentalists.
The the governor signed the bond bill amid criticism that last-minute negotiations added more than $1 billion in earmarks designed to win support for the measure.
See our map, prepared by KQED editor Dan Brekke, for a detailed breakdown of where the $11.14 billion in bond money is supposed to go.
View Where Would the Money Go? in a larger map
View Where Would the Money Go? in a larger map
When Will Lake Mead Go Dry?
Exposed turbine intakes and the "bathtub ring" at Lake Mead. Photo: Craig Miller
You can see a slide show of the retreating waters at Lake Mead and Hoover Dam and listen to my radio feature from The California Report. Also, The American Experience will rerun its documentary on Hoover Dam, Monday night on most PBS stations.
The Las Vegas Sun has a digital clock on its website, counting down to a theoretical doomsday when the city's principal source of water would go dry. Wagering on that question may not have found its way into the sports books on the Strip–but it did become a lively pastime among engineers and hydrologists, when a report emerged from San Diego's Scripps Institution, with a dire forecast. The paper, by climate physicist Tim Barnett, put the odds at 50-50 that Lake Mead, the giant reservoir behind Hoover Dam, would reach "dead pool" by 2017. That's the point at which the dam shuts down and neither hydroelectric power nor water emerges from it.
The Barnett study "definitely raised eyebrows throughout the basin," admits Terry Fulp, deputy director of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Lower Colorado Region, which operates Hoover Dam and Lake Mead. As it turns out, Barnett was a bit pessimistic. Subsequent work by him and others revealed that he overestimated the evaporation rate at Lake Mead, and omitted inflows below a certain point on the river.
The bottom line, according to Balaji Rajagopalan at the University of Colorado: Doomsday is not quite that near at hand. But that doesn't mean it's not on the horizon. "After 2027, the demand increase outpaces the supply decrease," Rajagopalan told me in a recent interview. "And that’s why much of the risk explodes from 2027 to 2057."
All of these studies are couched in probabilities, much in the same way that the Corps of Engineers talks about a "100-year" flood. Rajagopalan says: "Even in our study, we have a 50% risk [of dead pool], but that occurs in 2057. And that makes a big difference in terms of water managers, what they can do."
One of those managers is Pat Mulroy, who directs the Southern Nevada Water Authority. Her constituents rely on Lake Mead for 90% of their water, so she says she's not inclined to wait around for a consensus. "I mean, during the entire period of the ‘90s when we were bickering with our friends in the lower basin over surpluses, there was zero probability that the drought that we’re currently in was going to happen," Mulroy told me. "I’ve lost confidence in probabilities."
The Bureau's Fulp says the Colorado system leans heavily on the huge water storage capacity of Lake Mead and its sister reservoir upstream, Lake Powell. "We’ve known for decades that this system is highly variable and that’s why so much storage was built." When filled to capacity (which it was, more or less, 10 years ago), Lake Mead alone can hold enough to put an area the size of Pennsylvania under a foot of water. But a 10-year drought has left Mead at just over 40% of capacity (so think of flooding something more the size of Costa Rica). Just as current evidence and climate models both point toward lessening flows on the Colorado, many parts of the southwest still see relatively high population growth.
Scientists continue to run their statistical models aimed at handicapping the Colorado's demise as a dependable bringer of water. But as Fulp sums it up, "It’s really a debate about when. It’s not really 'if."
I regret an error of my own that appeared in the radio feature. I misstated the number of people in southern Nevada who are dependent on water from the Colorado. The correct number is about two million.
Yosemite's Fiery Future
Photo: Tim Walton
California’s Yosemite National Park has been scarred by several big fires in recent years—the latest contained less than two months ago. But new research affirms that this crown jewel among national parks is likely to have even more fire in its future.
In late August, when fire crews attacked the Big Meadow Fire in Yosemite, it was hard to blame nature for the 74-hundred acres lost. That was a "prescribed burn" that got out of hand (or "escaped," as the official report puts it). But nine out of ten wildland fires in the Sierra start with a lightning strike. Newly published work suggests that as California’s climate changes, the combination of warmer temperatures, less snow and more lightning strikes could mean 20% more fires by mid-century.
USGS research forester emeritus Jan van Wagtendonk co-authored the study with James Lutz at the University of Washington. He says they studied 20 years of Yosemite fire data to identify a trend. The mechanism starts with the oft-cited warming scenario, causing more rain and less snow at upper elevations.
"What happens in the mountains is that, as snow recedes in the spring the moisture in the fuels follows," says van Wagtendonk. "The fuel starts drying out earlier and we extend the fire season by having more days available for fires to burn."
But there’s another wildcard in the deck: lightning. Separate studies suggest that higher concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide will set the stage for more lightning strikes.
The study assumes a 17% reduction in snowpack by 2050—under the relatively modest B1 warming scenario, drawn from IPCC models. The results are in line with other climate studies that imply not just more fires, but more intense fires as the climate warms. It's a trend, says van Wagtendonk, that has already started:
"We were able to trace, through satellite imagery, the change that we’ve seen in the severity of those fires just over the past 20 years, so it’s been obvious to us from those data that whatever temperature trends are occurring today are already having an effect on increased severity."
"We see more of the same," said the forester, "and a continued increase in both size, number and severity of fires."
Yosemite fires from 1984-2005. The black triangles indicate fires sparked by lightning. Image: International Journal of Wildland Fire.
Scott Stephens, an associate professor of fire science at UC Berkeley, says lightning is changing the landscape in more ways than one.
Stephens recently told KQED's Central Valley Bureau Chief, Sasha Khokha: "In Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings Canyon, they manage quite a few lighting fires in the wilderness area, away from people, and they allow these things to burn for months and months and months to try to allow that lighting fire to begin to shape the landscape again like it did 100 or 200 yrs ago. Those types of events probably increased the resiliency of the forest to deal with climate change and other impacts."
The article is published in the current issue (10/27) of the International Journal of Wildland Fire.
KQED's Central Valley Bureau Chief, Sasha Khokha, contributed to this post, as well as to the radio report.
Marketplace Parses Climate Questions
The public radio program Marketplace continues its ambitious series on climate change, later this month. New reports will air November 16-20 as part of "The Climate Race", a multidimensional look at "how global warming is already affecting us and the tough choices we have to make." While the geographic scope of the series ranges well beyond California's borders, it underscores that much of the nation grapples with the same issues that confront us here in the West. The first four reports, aired last week, are worth catching up with online.
Part 1: "Climate Change in Our Own Backyards" is a snapshot of how climate change is already affecting residents of Helena, MT. Fewer cold snaps have allowed the mountain pine beetle to run rampant, devastating the area's surrounding pine forests, and leaving a tinderbox of dead trees for miles across the landscape. Reporters Sam Eaton and Sarah Gardner talk to residents about how this reality has changed the way people think about climate change and what challenges lie ahead.
Part 2: "The Planet Will Survive, But Will We?" explores episodes of severe climate change in the Earth's distant past, and explains what ancient tree stumps can tell us about climate past, present, and future
Part 3: Is There Energy to Slow Climate Change?" focuses on energy and the political, social, technological, and economic challenges we face as we consider moving from fossil fuels to renewable energy supplies. This report zeroes in on West Virgina and the debate between the coal industry and wind power advocates. In Part 4; "How Do We Live With a Warmer Planet?", Eaton and Gardener look at what lies ahead for business, agriculture, and society, as temperatures continue to rise.
Photographs and audio slide shows related to the radio stories are available on the series web page: "Futuristic Farming" offers a look at a farm that takes water efficiency to new heights, and "Climate Past" features stunning shots of Mono Lake and an interview with paleoclimatologist and geomorphologist, Scott Stein. The "Climate Race" page also includes links to resources, an interactive map of the United States with statistics about how climate change is affecting regions and what changes are expected by the end of the century, and audio clips from experts on topics such as how climate change is expected to affect health and agriculture.
Climate Watch will be sharing resources with Markeplace to cover the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen, next month. KQED's L.A. Bureau Chief Rob Schmitz will team up with Eaton for coverage of the two-week conference. Schmitz, who recently reported a series of Climate Watch stories from Japan, speaks Chinese and has extensive experience in international reporting.
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