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.
An Hour with Stewart Brand
Climate Watch sat down with ecologist and futurist Stewart Brand to talk about the rethinking of "traditional green pieties" that he says environmentalists will have to confront, in order to address climate change. In his new book, Whole Earth Discipline, he argues for a major change in the way "greens" have traditionally thought about stewarding the planet — one that calls for managing the earth's natural infrastructure "with as light a touch as possible and with as much intervention as necessary."
What do you think the world is facing in terms of climate change?
"I pretty much buy James Lovelock's approach that we're warming toward an equilibrium of maybe five degrees warmer than now, which doesn't sound like much, but the last time we were that was 55 million years ago and crocodiles were swimming around in the polar oceans. [Lovelock] thinks the carrying capacity for humans in a world that's five degrees warmer would be about a billion to a billion-and-a-half people. And it could happen fairly quickly because there are various positive feedbacks that are self-reinforcing, amplification of change going on. A four-or-five-billion person die-back is horrible to contemplate. Nothing like it has ever happened in human history, and it does get your attention.
"I am persuaded by a number of data points he looks at and climatologists he listens to and the system dynamics of climate, which is tremendously non-linear. It has lots of these positive feedbacks in it and various thresholds. Sometimes we know where the threshold is, and sometimes we find out after we've passed it. Abrupt climate change, it turns out, is pretty common in the historical record and that's what we could be looking at this century, maybe even in the first half of this century."
You write in your book: "Accustomed to saving natural systems from civilization, Greens now have the unfamiliar task of saving civilization from a natural system: climate change." Can you talk more about this?
"I wonder if there will be people turning up soon saying, "Let the climate do what it wants. Gaia's just having her usual carryings-on and we must not stand in her way." [Ed. Note: There are people already saying this] I think when it cuts this close to home, environmentalists do realize that when humans are an endangered species we've got to rise to the occasion and be green to protect this species and its habitat as well.
"There's a shift that goes on because the standard, deep, ideological, emotional stance of environmentalists is that nature is always right and humans are always wrong, and this is a case when actually, nature is up to something we really, really don't like and we have to do, as humans, something that's right to head that off. That's a switch. And it's my point of leverage in the book which is to say, okay, bear that switch in mind, now think through all the things you've had opinions about for 20 or 30 years and revisit them.
"The climate crunch gives us permission, indeed encouragement, to rethink nuclear power, to rethink genetically-engineered food crops, to rethink how we feel about cities, and to start thinking in a serious way and an encouraging way about geo-engineering, which is direct intervention in the climate."
The idea of "playing God" with nature can raise a lot of emotion and controversy…
"The thing is, we've been having god-like power in nature for a very long time, probably at least 10,000 years, maybe 55,000 years when we started doing massive burning to change the landscape in a way that we liked. In ecology, the current term is "niche construction" or "ecological engineering." We don't have a choice not to do it because it's what we are doing. One of the terms for our era geologically is the 'Anthropocene;' the human-dominated era of geology. And so we're already terraforming the Earth, and we're doing it badly. So, is the choice to stop terraforming the Earth? No. Actually that's no longer an option. The only choice is to stop doing it badly and start doing it well."
It's a large laboratory that we're talking about in terms of learning from our mistakes, because we'll be conducting our experiments (geo-engineering, bio-engineering, etc) in the world.
"We're running an experiment in the world anyway by raising the greenhouse gas percentage in the atmosphere, and we're starting to get results from that experiment, and we don't like them, so we're already doing interventionist science outside the lab in the laboratory of the world. If we don't like what's happening so far, we have no choice but to do better experimentation and better science and start getting the results that are better."
How do you respond to Amory Lovins' recent article on Grist, criticizing your position on nuclear power?
"I think it's great that Amory Lovins, who is an old friend, has put up a rebuttal to my chapter on nuclear in the book. I think that's absolutely fair and right since my whole chapter is basically a rebuttal of his anti-nuclear arguments.* I respect him enormously for most of the things I think he's right about. I think he's wrong about nuclear. He thinks I'm right about most things, and that I'm wrong about nuclear, so that's the debate."
*Last week we posted highlights from a conversation with Amory Lovins, aired originally on KQED's Forum program. Brand's name was not evoked in those excerpts but Lovins was critical of the idea of a nuclear power revival, dismissing it as financially unsupportable.
A Sea Change in Ocean Policy Promised
Photo: Reed Galin
A phalanx of high-level federal officials marched into San Francisco today to announce a major shift in the way the federal government oversees the oceans.
The top-level administrators from the White House and several agencies held a public meeting to launch efforts toward a first-ever National Ocean Policy, in which they say restoring a healthy ecosystem will be a top priority.
The newly formed Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force is led by Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and one of President Obama's top advisors on the environment. She arrived surrounded by representatives from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), EPA, Navy, Coast Guard and Dept. of Interior (which, odd as it sounds, is responsible for vast tracts on the outer continental shelf).
Asked why we're just getting around to a unified national ocean policy, Sutley said that "Too often the federal government sits in its stovepipes," with each agency taking a narrow view. This effort is an attempt to break through traditional parochialism in favor of a more holistic approach to the challenges.
Task force member Jane Lubchenco, who heads NOAA, said that for the first time, policy makers are saying loudly that "healthy oceans matter." And right now, she says, they're not real healthy.
"At a global scale, I would say that oceans are in critical condition," said Lubchenco. " Most people are unaware of how much disruption and depletion has occurred within the oceans. We’re seeing the symptoms of much of that. It’s time to get on with the solutions."
The task force will address a growing array of concerns, from shrinking fisheries to higher acid levels in the ocean—many of which are likely related to climate change.
Lubchenco, who is also an Undersecretary of Commerce, told me that "Climate change is exacerbating many of the existing challenges for ocean uses. There's very good evidence that climate change is already having very significant impacts on oceans." Lubchenco also cited "the related problem of ocean acidification," and reeled off a laundry list of climate impacts, including "loss of biological diversity, increasing transport of invasive species, nutrient pollution, habitat loss, and over-fishing."
Lubchenco added "That sum total of stresses on ocean ecosystems means that we need to be taking new approaches." The most sweeping of those "new approaches" will be "ecosystem-based management," a term used repeatedly in the Interim Report issued by the task force this month.
According to the report:
"The implementation of ecosystem-based management embodies a fundamental shift in how the United States manages these resources, and provides a foundation for how the remaining objectives would be implemented…It would provide the opportunity to ensure proactive and holistic approaches to balance the use and conservation of these valuable resources. This broad-based application of ecosystem-based management would provide a framework for the management of our resources, and allow for such benefits as helping to restore fish populations, control invasive species, support healthy coastal communities and ecosystems, restore sensitive species and habitats, protect human health, and rationally allow for emerging uses of the ocean, including new energy production."
The task force will also be taking its own stab at some long-term solutions for the troubled Sacramento River Delta. The interim report is open for public comment until October 10.
Major Shifts in California Bird Movements
Stellar's Jay. Photo: National Park Service
Climate change has California's birds on the move, but not in the usual direction or at the same pace, a new study has found. Research suggests that warming temperatures and changing precipitation patterns will cause bird species distributions to shift independently, resulting in new bird "communities" appearing in up to half the state.
In some cases, these new communities will create combinations of birds that have never existed before, a situation that could disrupt the delicate balance of species interactions with potentially unanticipated consequences for whole ecosystems, the report authors concluded.
One of the co-authors, Stanford biologist Terry Root, told Climate Watch: "This will not be just a few species in a few locations–this tearing apart of communities could be quite extensive across California."
Root was among researchers from Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment, PRBO Conservation Science, the University of California-Santa Cruz, and the Klamath Bird Observatory, who collaborated on the study. They used bird survey data and climate model projections for California to map current and future bird distributions for 70 species. Many species often found together, such as acorn woodpeckers and western bluebirds, are projected to shift and adapt in different ways, resulting in these new assemblages.
PBRO has posted interactive maps of the future projections for individual species distributions on its Climate Change, Birds, and Conservation website, in the section called "Where will the birds be?".
The study authors, including Terry Root of Stanford and Diana Stralberg and John Wiens of PRBO, write that the emergence of new bird communities in the coming decades present enormous conservation and management challenges. They assert that rapidly changing habitats and ecological communities are going to require new approaches to conservation and management. "As new combinations of species interact, some species will face new competition and/or predation pressures, while others may be released from previous biotic interactions," they wrote. "Managers and conservationists will be faced with difficult choices about how, where, and on which species to prioritize their efforts and investments."
Root pointed to experience with wolves, coyotes and foxes, in which wildlife managers tried to control one, only to see unexpected spikes in the population of another: "Here is a community of only 3 canines to which we purposely forced changes, and we had two big surprises. Now we are talking about 70 species of birds shifting without any control of the force or the species being changed. I guarantee there will be a lot of surprises."
How a Data-Gathering Ocean Robot was Born
Thayer Walker is a San Francisco-based freelance writer, who first reported on development of the Wave Glider for The New York Times. His radio segment for Climate Watch, was produced by Nathanael Johnson and is scheduled to air Monday, 8/31 on KQED's The California Report.
Red Flash in the Sunset
By Thayer Walker
A Silicon Valley engineering firm called Liquid Robotics recently launched a new device called a Wave Glider off the California coast. It's the latest and perhaps, the most ingenious design in the growing network of "autonomous ocean samplers," which is to say sea-going science robots. The glider is a sensor-carrying platform powered entirely by wave energy and it has the potential to collect an enormous amount of data about the ocean, which in turn will give scientists a better understanding of climate change.
"Red Flash" at sea. Photo: Liquid Robotics
Jim Bellingham, Chief Technologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, calls the device a “transformational development” in the field of ocean science and technology, but when the inventors came up with the idea they weren’t trying to revolutionize marine studies, they were trying to eavesdrop on humpback whales.
In 2005, Joe Rizzi, the chairman of Liquid Robotics, wanted to listen to the song of humpback whales off the coast of his home in Puako, Hawaii. He anchored a hydrophone near the shore, but instead of picking up whale song he heard the sound of frying bacon. Snapping shrimp, a small crustacean that uses its powerful claw to generate sound blasts that stuns its prey, had drowned out the call of the whales.
When Rizzi moved the hydrophones into deeper water he captured clear whale sounds, but kept losing the moored devices to rough seas. “The difficulty,” says Rizzi “was holding a hydrophone anchored in 600 feet of water during winter storms.” Rizzi realized that to keep a hydrophone stationary, he would need a powered device. “You’re not going to do that with a battery and a motor and a solar panel,” he explains. “The amount of power to hold station in a 60 mile per hour wind and 10 foot waves is thousands of watts. We recognized that it’s an energy problem.”
Rizzi presented the problem to Liquid Robotics CEO Roger Hine, who quickly came up with a design, and the Wave Glider was born. “We weren’t sitting around thinking this thing would have a lot of scientific uses,” says Rizzi, “but as it turns out, there are a lot more uses for this device than just listening to whales.”
The Wave Glider's passive propulsion system harnesses the up-and-down motion of sea swells for locomotion. Diagram: Liquid Robotics
Delta Dawn
Scientists and policy wonks seem to be in general agreement on this: that it's time to close out the current management epoch on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and begin anew. There's less accord on how to proceed.
Photo: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
Policy makers have assembled "blue ribbon" panels to study the options and make recommendations. Volumes of studies and proposals line the shelves in Sacramento and elsewhere.
Last week a new idea surfaced for moving water through the Delta: Instead of channeling around it, tunnel under it.
This week the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California released its recommendations for a mechanism to fund the enormous fixes that will be required: Those who benefit pay (ecologists use the term "ecosystem services" for all those bennies we get from natural resources and tend to take for granted).
Whatever the outcome, one thing seems inevitable, with or without human intervention. Driven by warming ocean temperatures, rising sea levels will continue to push saltwater farther upstream, changing the Delta's character and the "services" it provides.
Recently a team of students at U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism produced a Flash presentation on some of the issues raised by advancing salt in the Delta. The multimedia report: Delicate Balance was produced for Climate Watch by Amanda Dyer, Martin Ricard and Jeremy Whitaker. We're grateful to them for their time and creativity.
Plan Moves Climate Adaptation to Front Burner
A one-fifth reduction in per capita water use by 2020 is among the goals outlined in a new state report on adapting to climate change.
Released by the California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) as a "discussion draft," the 2009 California Climate Adaptation Strategy is being billed as the nation's first comprehensive game plan for adaptation to climate change.
Photo: Reed Galin
Most of the state's high-profile climate initiatives (and battles) have been about mitigation; how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to slow down warming. This report swings the spotlight over to adaptation; what needs to be done to accommodate the climate change effects that are already "in the pipeline."
While the California's centerpiece climate law was passed three years ago, this week's CNRA report concedes that "adaptation is a relatively new concept in California policy." The 161-page white paper comes in response to an executive order from the Governor last fall, calling for a statewide adaptation strategy.
The draft divides the strategy into seven "sectors:" Public health, biodiversity and habitat, ocean and coastal resources, water, agriculture, and forestry.
Tony Brunello, Deputy Secretary for Climate Change and Energy at CNRA, says "This is the first report that really looks at how climate change is going to impact the state and what we need to do about it."
But Brunello stopped short of conceding that mitigation is a lost cause. "You only have half a deck if you're only focused on mitigation," he said. "You need to focus on both mitigation and adaptation to truly be prepared."
Some strategies attack both. Brunello points to water conservation measures, which save both water and energy (20% of the energy used in the state is deployed moving water around).
The plan is designed to work in consort with the California Air Resources Board's implementation plan for AB-32, the state's multifaceted attack on greenhouse gas emissions. CNRA says one of its goals is to "enhance" existing efforts, rather than create new programs and offices that need funding.
CNRA also promises to use the "best available science in identifying climate change risks and adaptation strategies." Andrew Revkin has a useful overview of the mounting challenges to climate scientists, published this week in the New York Times.
One planned product from the adaptation plan is an interactive website devoted to climate adaptation, with maps and data to assist local planners. CNRA hopes to have that in place by early next year. The draft plan now enters a 45-day period for public comment.
NOAA Confirms El Nino
Warm water patterns in the Pacific during normal (upper) and El Nino (lower) years. The lower image is from 1995-96. Image from NASA
Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration today confirmed what many had pretty much surmised: El Nino is back.
Officially the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the cyclical pattern of ocean conditions has broad implications for weather and the Pacific food chain.
According to the NOAA news release:
"NOAA expects this El Niño to continue developing during the next several months, with further strengthening possible. The event is expected to last through winter 2009-10."
NOAA's Climate Prediction Center suggested about a month ago that conditions were right for the return of El Nino.
More recently, the high incidence of underweight sea lion pups turning up along the California coast was taken by some as a harbinger of ENSO. During El Nino cycles, normal upwelling of deep, cold water slows down, essentially shutting down the "food elevator" for many species.
Of course, there can be an upside. According to NOAA:
"El Niño's impacts depend on a variety of factors, such as intensity and extent of ocean warming, and the time of year. Contrary to popular belief, not all effects are negative. On the positive side, El Niño can help to suppress Atlantic hurricane activity. In the United States, it typically brings beneficial winter precipitation to the arid Southwest, less wintry weather across the North, and a reduced risk of Florida wildfires."
Links to climate change are less clear. Some scientists have suggested that warming air and sea temperatures might bring about more and longer El Nino events.
Starving Sea Lions: A Climate Connection?
Photos by Victoria Carpenter
I thought the highlight of my trip to Point Reyes last week would be the cows grazing on spectacular cliffs covered with yellow lupine. I was visiting a historic dairy there for an upcoming story on crashing milk prices.
But then I noticed a white van marked “rescue” driving down to a dock near the Pt. Reyes lighthouse, and decided to follow it. Turns out, I stumbled upon an incredible scene: rescue workers releasing baby sea lions and elephant seal pups back into the waves.
Volunteers lugged what looked like over-sized pet carriers out of the van and slid them onto a cement boat dock. Then a trio of sea lion pups poked their heads out, sniffed the salt air, and flippered their way across the cement and into the water, playfully nuzzling each other.
They seemed exhilarated–but thin. These pups had been rescued near Monterey, revived in the Marine Mammal Center’s Sausalito hospital, and were now healthy enough to return to the ocean, though you could still see their rib cages poking through their fur.
The sea lions swam out quickly but the elephant seals were a little more sluggish. One pup kept swimming back toward the humans, begging for fish. Then a giant female came out of the waves, perhaps offering herself as an adoptive mom, nudging the baby into the water.
Jim Oswald of the Marine Mammal Center (MMC) says the staff is seeing an unprecedented spike in rescue calls. In just the first two weeks of June, nearly 1,300 people phoned in, worried about stranded sea lions and other mammals. Most of them are malnourished sea lions who can’t seem to find enough anchovies, herring, or sardines to snack on.
Researchers aren’t quite sure why–but haven't ruled out some kind of climate connection. The MMC is reporting its findings to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to try and figure out the cause. Possible El Nino Conditions? Warming oceans sending schools of smaller fish northwards? No one quite knows at this point.
“If it’s a climate change variable, that’s going to affect the fish the animals feed on," says NOAA Wildlife Biologist Joe Cordaro. "That could be a very long temporary shift in the bait fish distribution, or it could be long-term depending on how severely climate change affects the surface temperature of the ocean.”
But Cordaro says at this point, the sea lion strandings are “one big puzzle,” with climate change as just one possible factor. We could simply be witnessing a high-birth year for sea lions, with a lot more pups than usual, or early signs of a returning El Nino weather pattern. Meteorologists won’t know until the fall whether California actually meets the criteria for a strong El Nino year. If so, Cordaro predicts “things are going to get a lot worse for the sea lions this fall and next spring.”
[Editor's Note: The case for a return to El Nino was advanced on Wednesday, when the Australian Bureau of Meteorology reported that indications are almost certain at this point]
Regardless of the cause, the MMC's Oswald says it's cause for concern.
“These young sea lion pups get to the point where they’re so weak, they end up on the land and they’re too weak to go back,” Oswald explains. “It’s easier for them to waddle along, hoping they’ll find another waterway where they can find some food. They’re using up all their reserves if they stay out in the ocean.”
Stranded sea lion pups have even turned up on Bay Area freeways. Last week, rescuers found one on the 880 freeway in Oakland.
“His name is Fruitvale,” reports Oswald, “for the district in Oakland he was rescued from. He seems to be doing okay. He’s still being tube fed. I’m told from veterinarians that he’s feisty, moving around, and nippy, which is a good sign.”
The Marine Mammal Center’s Sausalito headquarters lets visitors watch volunteers in action. There’s an interactive exhibit with a sea lion on a gurney, where you can see its x-rays and test results. You can watch volunteers prepare fish meal, or even witness a post-mortem in the necropsy room.
Sounds grim, but until sea lion pups start finding more fish to eat–and humans start to figure out what’s causing the food chain to collapse, the Marine Mammal Rescue Squad plans on a very busy summer.
Sasha Khokha is chief of KQED's Central Valley Bureau and a frequent contributor to Climate Watch.
And for more about the Marine Mammal Center's sea lion rescue efforts, listen to Amy Standen's recent radio report on KQED's Quest. You can also view her slideshow and read her Reporter's Notes on the Quest blog.
Parsing the White House Climate Report
At least one researcher cited in the 196-page climate impacts report issued this week by the Obama administration is not impressed with the final product. Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado's Center for Science & Technology Research has written a blog post critical of the report and in particular, the way in which his work was interpreted. If you'd rather not plow through the entire post, John Tierney has an overview of Pielke's critique on his blog for the New York Times.
2004 California heat wave, from the Aqua satellite. Image: NASA
The report was arguably the first to break down both observed and projected effects of climate change into coherent regional summaries. For the purposes of the report, California was considered part of the Southwest region, which included states as far east as Colorado and New Mexico.
Not surprisingly, many of the points raised in the Southwest section (beginning on p. 129) have to do with water supply. Most have been reported or discussed in our Climate Watch coverage, either here or in our radio reports. Selected "highlights" include:
- Past climate records based on changes in Colorado River flows indicate that drought is a frequent feature of the Southwest, with some of the longest documented “megadroughts” on Earth.
- The prospect of future droughts becoming more severe as a result of global warming is a significant concern, especially because the Southwest continues to lead the nation in population growth.
- Human-induced climate change appears to be well underway in the Southwest. Recent warming is among the most rapid in the nation, significantly more than the global average in some areas.
- Projections suggest continued strong warming, with much larger increases under higher emissions scenarios compared to lower emissions scenarios. Projected summertime temperature increases are greater than the annual average increases in some parts of the region, and are likely to be exacerbated locally by expanding urban
heat island effects.- Water supplies in some areas of the Southwest are already becoming limited, and this trend toward scarcity is likely to be a harbinger of future water shortages. Groundwater pumping is lowering water tables, while rising temperatures reduce river flows in vital rivers including the Colorado.
- Projected temperature increases, combined with river-flow reductions, will increase the risk of water conflicts between sectors, states, and even nations.
- Increasing temperature, drought, wildfire, and invasive species will accelerate transformation of the landscape.
- Under higher emissions scenarios, high-elevation forests in California, for example, are projected to decline by 60 to 90 percent before the end of the century.
- In California, two-thirds of the more than 5,500 native plant species are projected to experience range reductions up to 80 percent before the end of this century under projected warming.
- Projected changes in the timing and amount of river flow, particularly in winter and spring, is estimated to more than double the risk of Delta flooding events by mid-century, and result in an eight-fold increase before the end of the century.
- A steady reduction in winter chilling could have serious economic impacts on fruit and nut production in the region. California’s losses due to future climate change are estimated between zero and 40 percent for wine and table grapes, almonds, oranges, walnuts, and avocados, varying significantly by location.
By the way, Pielke's critique does not directly address anything in this list, though his work does involve weather-related disasters, which would include floods. Asked by a commentator on his blog if he thinks the entire report should be dismissed based on the flawed interpretation of his research, Pielke replied: "I wouldn't think so and would certainly hope not. At the same time the section which covers my research does not give me a lot of confidence in the process that led to the report."
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