Craig Miller

The California coast near Pigeon Point.

When ocean explorer and documentary filmmaker Jean-Michel Cousteau brought his environmental message to Silicon Valley, I caught up with him to discuss climate change; President Obama’s energy policy efforts; and AB 32, California’s response to climate change.

Jean-Michel Cousteau is the son of legendary ocean explorer, Jacques Cousteau, and chairman of Ocean Futures Society, a non-profit dedicated to exploring, protecting and educating people about the world’s oceans. He was vocal in condemning BP for its Gulf oil spill and has frequently highlighted the link between climate change and the state of our oceans and coastline.

A native of France, he now calls Santa Barbara home and describes California’s response to climate change – its Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32) and proposed cap and trade system – as steps in the right direction. But he also explained why we need to do a lot more.

“It’s an issue of understanding and changing our ways,” he said. “Creating new ways of serving our needs and taking care of the environment at the same time.”

He’s talking specifically about renewable energy and points out that algae are fueling US Navy ships and commercial airliners. He emphasizes the advances being made in solar and wind energy and even cites a hotel in Bora Bora that is using temperature differences in the ocean depths to power its air conditioning system — all this without petroleum and its hefty environmental impact.

Alison van Diggelen / Fresh Dialogues

The son of Jacques Cousteau considers himself the "voice of the ocean."

Surprisingly, despite his dives to examine the BP oil spill devastation in the Gulf of Mexico, Cousteau still had good things to say about Big Oil, pointing out that oil companies like Shell, Total and BP are investing in renewable energy.

“Traditional industries are coming to understand that whether it’s nuclear [or] traditional oil and gas, in the end it’s going to be in their best interests to slowly adopt other ways of collecting energy, renewable energy,” he said.

He also emphasized that Americans are consuming more energy per capita than anywhere else in the world and that before we criticize other heavy CO2 emitters, like China, we must look closer to home.

So, in the ocean explorer’s view, is President Obama doing the right thing in response to climate change?

“He really has to convince our decision makers, in government and in industry, that things have to change,” he said and even offered his assistance to the president.

“If I can help I will do that,” he said.

He’s done it before. Cousteau made former President George W. Bush an unlikely environmental hero, at least in the mid-Pacific. In 2006, Cousteau showed Voyage to Kure, his documentary about the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, (co-produced by KQED Public Television) at the White House. Shortly after, Bush designated the 140,000 square mile stretch the world’s largest marine conservation area.

If he gets to revisit the White House this year and discuss climate change and energy policy with President Obama, he might be wise to repeat his father’s mantra: “The impossible missions are the only ones which succeed.”

Liquid Robotics

"Wave Gliders" use wave energy to move and solar energy to power their scientific instruments.

Four ocean-going robots called Wave Gliders have made their way from San Francisco to the Big Island of Hawai’i, setting a Guinness world record for distance traveled by an unmanned, wave-powered vehicle. They’re not just long-distance voyagers though, they’re also collecting data on ocean conditions and the weather.

Wave Gliders, created by Sunnyvale-based  Liquid Robotics, are about the size and shape of surfboards, but they do more than catch waves. They’re attached to a cable and a set of fins below the surface of the water, which capture wave energy and move the vehicle forward, and they’re equipped with solar panels and scientific instruments. They collect data and send it back via satellite, saving the time and money that go into manned research expeditions.

The four gliders — each one is named after an oceanographer — will continue their trip across the Pacific. Two of them will head across the Mariana Trench to Japan; the other two will veer south, to Australia. You can follow their progress and the data they collect on the PacX Challenge website.

Climate Watch reported on the genesis of the idea of Wave Gliders, and on an early test of the robots.

If you want to see one in action, this video from NOAA describes how they’re using Wave Gliders.

The California Current is a conveyor belt for cold water from the north Pacific.

It’s the reason that wetsuits are such big sellers in California. The river of ocean water known as the California Current barges in off the Aleutians, and as it rolls southward along the West Coast, makes for more than bone-chilling body surfing. It supports a robust stew of sea life.

But as Mike Lee reports for The San Diego Union-Tribune, it’s warming up. And that has researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography concerned about future biodiversity off the California coast. Scientists say shellfish are already under attack from acid levels elevated when the ocean is forced to absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

A schematic of the "food web" fostered by the California Current. Note the upwelling effect near the coastline, sometimes described as the "elevator" of the ocean food chain. (Image: Scripps Institution of Oceanography)

The Scripps researchers are just one section in the recent chorus raising alarms about the state of the oceans. This week Richard Black writes for the BBC that a British panel of scientists has concluded that the world’s oceans are in even worse shape than we thought, describing the current condition of the oceans as “critical.”

The warning shot, from a group of scientists known as the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) is a preview of its comprehensive report, due out next year.

High tide at Pier 14 in San Francisco on January 19, 2011 (Photo: Jack Gregg)

This week another round of extremely high tides will hit the California coast, providing a glimpse of what the state can expect as sea levels continue to rise. These “king tides” will roll in from February 16th through the 18th, with the highest swells expected on the morning of the 17th, between 7:30 and 9 a.m.

A consortium of environmental groups is again calling for help documenting these high tides. The San Francisco Bay National Estuarine Reserve (NERR), which is spearheading the local effort, has set up a Flickr site where members of public can share their photos.  Organizers launched the site last month, in time for the king tides in January, and since then more than 80 photos have been uploaded by dozens of contributors.

“It’s exploded,” said Bobak Talebi, who is managing the Bay Area King Tides Photo Initiative for NERR. “It’s been great.  We’ve been gaining interest from the general public and from new organizations.  It’s more than we expected.”

Talebi said partnerships with a similar effort in San Diego and a new statewide effort will provide the building blocks to expand documentation of high tides.

Sara Aminzadeh of the California Coastkeeper Alliance says king tides are an important reminder of just how vulnerable many shoreline developments are to sea level rise and storm surges.

“Climate change and sea level rise are such huge issues and they are going to occur slowly, so they can be hard for people grasp,” she said, “but this project can really help people visualize what we’re facing as Californians.”

High tides this week are likely to be higher than they were for January’s king tides, said Talebi.  At that time, the weather was calm.  This week, rain and winds are expected, which will likely exacerbate high tides.   A “Hazardous Weather Outlook” for the Bay Area from the National Weather Service says large swells arriving Wednesday will coincide with the king tides, producing breakers up to 15 feet and possible minor coastal flooding.  Which, of course, is just the kind of scenario that could likely become more common as sea levels rise.

Aminzadeh is hoping that heightened public interest in the Photo Initiative specifically, and in sea level rise in general, will influence the state’s Ocean Protection Council (OPC) to make strong recommendations for sea level rise adaptation planning.  The OPC is an inter-governmental body tasked with coordinating ocean-related state efforts.  It’s scheduled to release its second draft resolution on sea level rise next week.

The Alliance, along with several other environmental groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club, are urging the OPC to adopt a resolution that not only sets projections for what sea level rise will look like, but also sets clear guidelines for how state agencies and municipal governments should deal with it, in accordance with principles from the 2009 California Climate Adaptation Strategy.

“We’re looking to them to take a leadership role on how agencies and communities can begin addressing sea level rise,” said Aminzadeh.

Sea levels have risen about eight inches in the last century, and the San Francisco Bay Conservation & Development Commission (BCDC) advises planners to prepare for a sea level rise of about 16 inches by mid-century and 55 inches by 2100.

Iceberg B-15A was 76 miles long and 17 miles wide. (Phot0: Josh Landis, NSF)

I know it’s only January but my vote for the year’s Really Cool Sound Award: A  massive iceberg cracks up.

Occasional Climate Watch contributor Tom Banse reports today for Oregon Pubic Broadcasting about a just-released recording of a massive iceberg cracking, creaking, snapping, and groaning as it broke up in 2005 off the coast of Antarctica.  The recording has been condensed, so that you can listen to the five-hour process in just two minutes.

According to Seeyle Martin, the University of Washington scientist who released the recording, the iceberg was 76 miles long and 17 miles wide — about the size of Puget Sound. It shattered when it hit an underwater shoal.  Martin says the sound was recorded by seismic equipment 700 miles away at the South Pole.

Wednesday's king tide along the Embarcadero in San Francisco (Photo: Noah Knowles)

But I snapped photos anyway, for the Bay Area King Tide Photo Initiative, a project aimed at documenting these extreme high tides in order to identify local areas vulnerable to sea level rise.

Reportedly, things at San Francisco’s Embarcadero, however, were a little more dramatic. USGS scientist Noah Knowles was there to take pictures of yesterday’s king tide.

“There was already water splashing over the sides [of the sea wall] yesterday,” he said.  “This was of course on a very calm day, and clearly there was no storm surge, which could have added another half-meter and had the water up on the streets.”

That’s the thing about sea level rise.  The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC)  advises people to plan for 11-18 inches of sea level rise by mid-century.  That by itself might not cause huge amounts of damage on a normal day, just as today’s extra-high tide didn’t flood the road in China Camp State Park.  What it will do, however, is raise the baseline for what a high tide is, making storm surges more apt to cause destructive flooding.

Just before the king tide at China Camp State Park in San Rafael, CA (Photo: Gretchen Weber)

Knowles said that it’s important to raise awareness about what the potential effects of sea level rise could mean for the Bay Area.

“I think it doesn’t always hit home how low-lying so many area around the Bay already are,” said Knowles.

For photos of the king tides around the Bay Area, visit the Bay Area King Tide Photo Initiative on Flickr, or wait for the next one on February 18th and snap your own.

Photo of Distillery Point near Half Moon Bay, a contribution to the King Tide Photo Initiative. (Photo: jsutton8, Flickr)

This week, seasonal high tides, known as “King Tides” will roll into the Bay Area, providing a preview of what the region might face if sea level rises over the coming decades as predicted.

So the organizers of the Bay Area King Tide Photo Initiative want you to grab your camera and help document the tides.  The San Francisco Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) has set up a Flickr site for the photos, where participants can upload their “before, during, and after” shots.

Organizers say the idea is to:

1. Identify and catalog coastal areas currently vulnerable to tidal inundation; and

2. Gather compelling graphics and pictures, so we can promote awareness of the specific potential impacts of sea level rise on the region to support climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Sea levels have risen about eight inches in the last century, and the San Francisco Bay Conservation & Development Commission (BCDC) advises planners to prepare for a sea level rise of about 16 inches by mid-century and 55 inches by 2100.  A rise like that could inundate 41 square miles of coastal land according to a 2009 Pacific Institute study.

Upcoming extreme high tides are expected to occur on January 19th (tomorrow) and 20th and on February 16th-18th.

In addition to NERR and BCDC, partners in initiative include the National Marine Sanctuaries, NOAA, the National Weather Service, and the California Coastal Commission.   For more about how to participate, see the project website.

Scientists like to joke that “climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.” The relatively soggy winter so far is a classic example of that.

Satellite image from last weekend, showing storm systems marching across the Pacific toward California. (Image: NASA)

A closely-watched oscillation in the Pacific is in the La Niña phase this winter, creating colder-than-normal surface temperatures and distorting weather patterns. Usually a La Niña means drier-than-normal conditions for Southern California in particular and often for northern parts of the state as well. Not this year–at least not so far. The rain set multiple records over the weekend. Los Angeles has had a third of its average annual rainfall in a week. So what’s going on?

Kevin Trenberth, who heads the Climate Analysis Section at the Nat’l Center for Atmospheric Research, says lately there’s a monkey wrench in the works, in the form of a “blocking anticyclone.”

“In La Niña conditions, which is what we have now, the main storms that come into North America come barreling into Washington, Oregon and British Columbia more,” Trenberth told me in a phone interview.

But lately a persistent region of high pressure in the north Pacific is diverting storms south, into California. Trenberth says: “There’s a crapshoot or a random component to it, if you like, in the more northern latitudes, that’s adding some extra flavor to what’s going on, I think.

But that doesn’t mean it’ll keep raining. The tap could be shut off at any time and Trenberth, for one, still thinks it’ll happen. He says this is considered a “strong” La Niña and is still likely to wield influence over the winter as a whole. One clue is ocean temperatures in the central-to-eastern Pacific, which are running 2 degrees C (3.5 F) below normal. “That only occurs—probably less than 10% of the time, so it’s a relatively rare event and certainly stronger than anything we’ve seen in recent years,” said Trenberth.

Earlier in the season, Jet Propulsion Laboratory climatologist Bill Patzert told the Los Angeles Times that 82% of La Niñas since 1949 have produced below-average rainfall.

That’s more the case for the Southland. As you move north, La Niña’s influence on precipitation reverses itself and the Pacific Northwest gets doused. Trenberth says the transition line is right about 40 degrees north latitude. Around that line, La Niña’s effects become murky and things can go either way. San Francisco is at 37 degrees north and Reno is at 39.

US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu appeared to pull some punches while speaking at the US Center in Cancun on Monday. (Photo: Gretchen Weber)

The UN climate negotiations in Cancun may be the official attraction, but in many ways, there’s just as much happening at the “side events” here at COP16.  There are dozens everyday — last week there were more than 150, and that number is increasing this week as more people arrive for the final days of the talks.  While the negotiations are limited to representatives from national governments, the side events provide a stage for non-governmental organizations (NGOs), scientists, business leaders, and local and regional government officials, many of them, it turns out, from California.

On Monday, US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, (former head of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab) took the stage to talk about emissions reductions in the US at the national level, and raising eyebrows in the room by taking no questions.

Earlier Lauren Faber of the Cal-EPA spoke on a panel about what California is doing to reduce emissions, highlighting the defeat of Prop 23 (which got a round of applause from the international audience of about 150), California’s efforts to implement a cap-and-trade system, and the state’s vehicle emissions standards, which served as a model for the new federal rules.

Neither talk broke any new ground. In fact, I’d already heard much of Chu’s talk at Stanford earlier this year. He predicted increases in the cost of oil and warned that the damage now being inflicted on the planet won’t be felt for 100 years.  Here in Cancun, however, he left out much of the “call to action” that characterized that Stanford speech, opting instead to catalog many of the clean energy tax incentive and R&D programs that the federal stimulus package has funded in the US, under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Over the weekend, I attended the first-annual Gigaton Awards, which was hosted by Sir Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room and by the Gigaton Throwdown, a group founded by San Francisco-based clean tech investor Sunil Paul that “encourages entrepreneurs, investors and policy makers to grow companies that stabilize the climate.”  Awards were given in five categories to companies that had made significant cuts in their own emissions, and, depending on the category, on the influence their products have had on outside emissions.

None of the winners were from California, but the Golden State was well represented at the awards dinner.  Attendees included executives from HP, Google, and Hara, a San Mateo-based company that develops software for energy-and-carbon-accounting.

While the side events allow regional governments and businesses to share ideas and celebrate what they consider their achievements, they’re also a venue for organizations and scientists to raise awareness about issues they think are not getting enough attention.

Tony Haymet, director of the Scripps Institute for Oceanography was doing just that on Friday, across the lawn from the UN negotiations at a briefing about ocean acidification.

“Sometimes I feel the science that’s talked about here is from 1965,” he said, adding that the word “ocean” is  barely mentioned in the UN climate change negotiating documents.

“This is sort of the tyranny of the atmosphere here at the climate talks,” he said.

Haymet says that because CO2 in the atmosphere “inevitably” dissolves into the ocean, the amount of carbon in the ocean has increased by 30% over the last 150 years.  This change in ocean chemistry is harmful for organisms that rely on their calcium carbonate shells.

“If we persist in putting CO2 in the atmosphere and then in the ocean, eventually those organisms won’t be able to make their shells at all,” he said, which would destroy coral reefs, disrupt ocean food chains, and have negative consequences for the world’s commercial fisheries.

“We’re trying to raise a red flag that CO2 has another bad effect,” said Haymet.  “The conclusion of all this is very simple.  We just have to make electricity without making CO2.”

The tidal gauge off of San Francisco's Fort Point is the oldest in North America.

The Ocean Climate Center is housed in a collection of century-old military buildings on the edge of the Bay at Crissy Field. It couldn’t be a more picturesque — and critical — location. Adjacent to the oldest tidal gauge in North America, the center will allow cash-strapped federal agencies to pool resources into climate change research and work with natural resource managers to combat negative impacts on the marine ecosystem and communities along the coastline.

DeWayne Cecil of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said the center is a first-of-its-kind collaboration among federal agencies on the West Coast, including NOAA, the Department of Interior parks and marine fisheries services, and the US Geological Survey (USGS).

“We all have dwindling budgets to do basic and applied research to respond to societal needs,” said Cecil. “As those budgets dwindle we can put together centers like this where we can all work together to leverage our funding.”

Patrick Barnard, a coastal geologist with USGS, said the center was located in San Francisco because of the degree of scientific research already underway here. The center’s reach will stretch across the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, from the Farrallon Islands to Suisun Bay and along the coastline up to Point Reyes.

A $100 million research grant has been designated for the first joint project to study sea level rise and storms along the coast and the communities most vulnerable. Barnard said the results of the two-year study will be translated into tools for community planning.

“All these agencies working together gives more credence to the data that comes out of it instead of one isolated institution,” Barnard said. “The collaboration is important in getting more of a foothold in the public mindset in what’s going to happen.”

The center will also be hosting real-time “webinars” for the public to ask questions of scientists. A separate visitors’ center is planned to open in a few years, to explain how the changing climate will affect the Bay Area.

Alison Hawkes is a San Francisco-based environmental journalist and co-founder of the Way Out West News website.