All posts by Craig Miller

Craig is a former KQED Science editor, specializing in weather, climate, water & energy issues, with a little seismology thrown in just to shake things up. Prior to that, he launched and led the station's award-winning multimedia project, Climate Watch. Craig is also an accomplished writer/producer of television documentaries, with a focus on natural resource issues.
Government & Business, Power

The Mystery Cities in Prop 10

Every ballot measure has its fine print and every piece of legislation its earmarks and “ornaments.” Prop 10, officially the California Renewable Energy and Clean Alternative Fuel Act is typical of this time-honored tradition, except in one respect. Usually these quirks can be explained by the people promoting them.

On page 16 of the measure, Prop 10 specifically allocates multi-million-dollar grants to each of eight cities in California. Los Angeles, San Diego, Long Beach, Irvine, San Francisco, Oakland, Fresno and Sacramento (listed in that order) would each get $25 million:

“…for the purpose of capital projects and operating expenses promoting and demonstrating the actual use of alternative and renewable energy in park, recreation and cultural venues, including the education of students, residents and the visiting public about these technologies and practices.”

Seems straightforward enough–except nobody seems to know how these eight cities were chosen. It’s not merely a list of the state’s eight largest cities. It’s close, except that San Jose (#3) is conspicuously missing but Irvine (#17) makes the cut.

John Dunlap, former head of the state Air Resources Board and a paid consultant to the Prop 8 campaign, appeared to be stumped when I asked him for the rationale. His best  guess was that they might be locations with significant transportation infrastructure, such as major port facilities. Again, the mystery of Irvine…and Fresno isn’t quite the Rotterdam of the West Coast.

I called the official office of “Yes on 10” and a media representative told me that she thought the cities were chosen for “geographic distribution” but admitted that she hadn’t been asked before. She promised to get back to me with a definitive answer. That was last week. Election Day is tomorrow. If Prop 10 goes down to defeat, it won’t matter. If it passes, it’ll be even more important to have an answer.

Power

Methane Takes its Turn in the Spotlight

No sooner had I posted a piece about “The Other Greenhouse Gases,” than more new data bubbled up about one of them; methane.

Benicia Refinery

According to a study published by researchers at MIT, there was a global spike in atmospheric methane last year. The increase, on the order of millions of metric tons, was uniform around the world, not concentrated around major methane emitters, as one might expect. In other words, “background” methane levels are up all over, so that the atmospheric concentration is nearly 1800 parts per billion.

That’s a much lower concentration than carbon dioxide, which stands at about 385 parts per million. Methane also breaks down faster in the atmosphere. But it worries climatologists because it is far more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas; anywhere from 25 to 50 times more harmful, depending on how you measure it. Researchers Matthew Rigby and Ronald Prinn say atmospheric methane levels have more than tripled since the Industrial Revolution but has held steady in recent years. Recently something has thrown it out of balance but the MIT team could only speculate about possible reasons.

Methane escapes from a combination of both natural and human-induced sources. It leaks from oil & gas industry infrastructure and landfills, and is produced by livestock (and human) digestion. It’s also released by marshes and rice paddies. California is a major rice producer but the rice fields’ share of total U.S. methane emissions is relatively tiny.

Climate Watch is preparing an upcoming feature on  methane and climate change. Listen for it on The California Report in November.

Government & Business

The Other Greenhouse Gases

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Carbon dioxide is the 900-pound gorilla of greenhouse gases. There’s little doubt of that, whether you’re tracking news coverage or policy measures.

But lately, some of the other beasts are getting more scrutiny. Reuters published a story last week that focused on nitrogen triflouride, a by-product of semiconductor manufacturing and a key ingredient in flat-screen TVs.

Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego have been tracking the gas, which goes by the shorthand NF3, and concluded that the atmospheric load of the stuff is growing at 11% a year. What makes that a little scary is that NF3 is said to be 17,000 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, though over all it’s still a much smaller factor in global warming.

At the same time, Kirk Smith of UC Berkeley is taking his show on the road, with a lecture he calls “CO2 on Steroids.” It’s about the role that methane plays in the warming equation and what he believes are the opportunities to make relatively fast headway against global warming by attacking methane emissions. Smith will present his findings at the state air board’s Chair’s seminar series in Sacramento. You can watch a webcast of his lecture on November 10.

I interviewed Smith for an upcoming Climate Watch radio feature on the methane issue in California. Listen for it on The California Report in mid-November.

Uncategorized

A Long, Dry Season

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In California, the term “fire season” is tossed around with a certain amount of vagueness, mainly because unlike, say “deer season,” there are no hard and fast rules for when it begins and ends. But like, for instance, “Holiday Season,” it does seem to be getting longer and more tedious.

For budgeting purposes, CalFire reckons it to be May 15 to November 15. As a practical matter, we don’t really expect the first wildfire to break out on May 15–except this year it did. The Summit Fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains flamed up about a month before people really expect to start seeing smoke in the air. It was the start of what could be a record-breaking season.

Last year’s fire season was the worst in a decade; 1.5 million acres burned. This year we’re on track to surpass that.  Climatologists say: Get used to it. According to a 2005 report from the California Climate Change Center, using warming scenarios from the IPCC:

If average statewide temperatures rise to the medium warming range (5.5 to 8°F), the risk of large wildfires in California is expected to increase about 20 percent by mid-century and 50 percent by the end of the century. This is almost twice the wildfire increase expected if temperatures are kept within the lower warming range.
Along with temperature, wildfires are determined by a variety of factors, including precipitation. Because of this, future wildfire risk throughout the state will not be
uniform. For example, a hotter, drier climate could increase the flammability of vegetation in northern California and promote up to a 90 percent increase in large wildfires by the end of the century. A hotter, wetter climate would also lead to an increase in wildfires in northern California, but to a lesser extent—about a 40 percent increase by century’s end.

Phyllis Banducci, an El Dorado County forester for CalFire, says that normally they would start “ramping down” (laying off seasonal firefighters and so forth) in the north state around mid-October but this year CalFire has delayed winding things down until November 3rd.

Recently I took a walking tour through some Sierra burn sites with Crawford Tuttle, Chief Deputy Director at CalFire. You can hear excerpts from that and comments on the climate connection from UC Merced researcher Tony Westerling on The California Report, starting Friday morning.

You can watch a video of that walk by clicking on the viewer below. The first location is Sierra Springs. The second walk was on Icehouse Ridge, above Highway 50. Both locations are in El Dorado County.

We’ve also set up a spot where you can share your own fire photos and experiences.

Uncategorized

Double Dose of Climate Calamity TV

PBS will air its long awaited climate documentary “Heat” tonight, as part of its Frontline series. The two-hour program rolls at 9 p.m. on KQED and most other PBS stations.

My companion program, “California Heat” also premieres tonight as part of the Viewfinder documentary series on KVIE Public Television in Sacramento. This show airs at 7 p.m., and sets the stage for Frontline by examining the almost certain effects on California–and interior California in particular.

Frontline takes it from there, examining our readiness as a nation and as a global community, to take on the challenge.

Government & Business, Power

400,000 Jobs or Bust. Or Both.

There’s an interesting juxtaposition nowadays between the grim economic/public funding forecasts and the eye-popping estimates of job growth in the “green-collar” economy…at least in the ever-optimistic Golden State.

Given the current meltdown in the capital markets, there is understandable fear that investment in renewable energy and carbon-reducing technology will be nipped in the bud. Recent articles in the New York Times and Times of London reflect the new angst.

But against this backdrop of doom, predictions are popping out all over about the coming economic boom, if we can somehow stay the course toward a low-carbon economy. This week number-crunchers at UC Berkeley issued the bold declaration that through energy efficiency alone, California can add 403,000 new jobs. David Roland-Holst and his colleagues assume a scant 1% annual improvement in overall energy efficiency, in order to get there. And by the way, they say, you can pencil an extra $76 billion in gross state product into the bargain. We’ll be spending so much less to light, heat, cool, and move us around, that it will free up billions of dollars and an outbreak of general prosperity will ensue. Sound like Pollyanna gone wild? The authors say we’ve done it before.

A recent economic analysis by the California Air Resources Board predicted that full implementation of the sweeping Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (CA AB-32) would add 100,000 jobs by 2020. The astute reader might wonder how, since energy efficiency is just one facet of AB-32, can the Berkeley number be so much higher. The answer, according to Roland-Holst, is that the Air Board estimate is “innovation-neutral.” In other words, it assumes that nothing new is invented on the efficiency front.

Hear more details as KQED’s Peter Jon Shuler speaks with  Roland-Holst about his methodology.

Water

Filling Out the Reservoir Picture

At the annual “Watershed Event” fundraiser for the Sacramento River Watershed Program, Elissa Lynn, Sr. Meteorologist for the state Dept. of Water Resources, offered a rundown of where we stand at the start of the official “water season.”

The short version: It’s bleak.

Lake Oroville in September

As I noted last week, Lake Oroville, a key reservoir on the Feather River, stood at 31% of capacity as of midnight on September 30. Readings from the same hour showed the state’s largest reservoir, Shasta Lake, at 30%; Folsom Lake (American River, east of Sacramento) at 28%; and San Luis Reservoir, east of Silicon Valley at 12–yes, twelve percent of capacity.

Capacity figures by themselves can be misleading. We expect reservoirs to be low this time of year, right at the end of the dry season. But as DWR was taking these readings, Oroville, to use one example, was at 49%–less than half–of “normal” for this time of year.

So, much depends on the coming winter. Even with all the advanced tools that forecasters have at their disposal in this first decade of the 21st Century, it’s hard to say how much water we’ll wring out of the skies this winter. Lynn says we’re in a “La Nada” pattern, meaning the Pacific Ocean isn’t giving a strong signal for either El Nino or its opposite, La Nina. The two conditions describe the degree–or lack–of cold water upwelling from the ocean depths, which has a strong influence on California’s precipitation patterns.

But Lynn says the consensus among forecasters is “leaning toward a dry-to-average” winter and average won’t get us there. We’ll need several soggy months to make up for lost water and avoid more severe water restrictions throughout the state next summer.

Water

Key Reservoir Flirts with Historic Low

Oroville Reservoir from Hwy 70

Water officials confirmed today that the water level at Oroville Reservoir in Butte County is near the lowest point ever recorded for this date. Today officially begins the water “season” in California, meaning the point at which rainfall could reasonably be expected.

At midnight last, the surface level behind Oroville Dam had dropped to 678 feet, measured from the lowest point in the lake.

That puts the lake at just 31% of capacity. According to state drought coordinator Wendy Martin at the Dept. of Water Resources, the lowest measurement ever recorded on October 1st was 650 feet, in 1977.

Oroville is a major supplier of water for the State Water Project, which provides water for drinking and irrigation as far south as the Los Angeles Basin.

Water customers on the project have already seen their allocations cut back severely. But Martin says that without an extremely wet winter, those allocations could be reduced to a scant 10 or 15% of normal by next year.

Martin says the main message is that even if the season’s first rain arrives this weekend, as forecast, it’s not a signal to start hosing down the driveway again between storms; that conservation will continue to be crucial throughout the winter months.

Government & Business, Power

Three Bucks a Ton

You load 16 tons and whaddayou get? The late Tennessee Ernie Ford’s answer to that was “Another day older and deeper in debt.” But in the emerging carbon market, we now have a real answer: about $48.

At least that’s how much you’d use up in carbon credits if you participated in the nation’s first “cap-and-trade” auction for carbon emissions, which set the price for a ton of carbon in that particular market at $3.07. That auction last week was for RGGI, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, casually known as “Reggie.” It’s the carbon trading market set up by a group of ten northeastern states and it may give us a preview for when trading begins by the Western Climate Initiative, a consortium of eleven western states and Canadian provinces, including California. As I reported last week, the WCI just made public its general gameplan for carbon trading to begin in 2012. The first RGGI auction raised $40 million, which the states can now spend on developing low-carbon sources of energy (let’s hope “Reggie” fares better in the long run than “Fannie” and “Freddie.”)

Actually, 16 tons isn’t even enough to get you noticed in these carbon markets. Burning a gallon of gas in your car typically releases less than 20 pounds of CO2. Only facilities that pump out 25,000 tons or more per year will have to comply with WCI, which has yet to decide what portion of its credits to give away or auction off.

On Friday, we expect staffers at the California Air Resources Board to release the last version of their “scoping plan,” before it goes to the board for approval. It’s the master plan for implementing the state’s comprehensive law to combat the effects of climate change. Part of it hinges on California’s participation in the WCI, so the successful first auction of credits by RGGI bodes well.

Government & Business

Another Climate “Summit”

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said today that he plans to host a major climate conference in November. Few details were offered for the planned Governors’ Global Climate Summit–not even a date–but there is a goal and that’s to “form a broad international alliance,” to lay a “framework” for the next round of UN-sponsored talks,  scheduled for December in Poznan, Poland. Schwarzenegger plans to invite every U.S. governor as well as provincial governors from around the world, including China.

At the conferences in Poznan and later, Copenhagen, negotiators will try to build momentum toward a meaningful international climate accord, before the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

In his speech before members of the Commonwealth Club of California, at San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel, the Governor took U.S. leaders to task for being “asleep at the wheel” when it comes to taking action to mitigate global warming. “We are not waiting for the federal government,” said Schwarzenegger, “We (will) continue on and push forward.”

He also had some choice words for U.S. automakers, who he said “need to get off their butts” and start building greener cars. He applauded Tesla Motors for its decision to build electric cars in San Jose, a project touted to bring 1,000 new jobs to Silicon Valley.

The Governor sidestepped a question about Proposition 10, the natural gas initiative supported by Texas entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens, saying he’ll take a position on that and other statewide ballot measures in the weeks to come.

Schwarzenegger said he would “review very carefully” SB 375, the anti-sprawl bill awaiting his signature. He said he “loves the idea” but that the bill would have effects almost as sweeping as the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.

The Governor’s entire speech will be broadcast on KQED Radio tonight at 8 p.m., with re-broadcasts scheduled for Saturday and Sunday.