Tag Archives: Air

Government & Business, Power, Water

The Cost of Sloth

The changing climate could cost Californians “tens of billions of dollars a year.”

Money Man

Those are just the direct costs, toted up in a new report by economists at U-C Berkeley.
“California Climate: Risk and Response” is billed as the first comprehensive report on the costs that may be inflicted on California from the effects of climate change. The 127-page report was co-authored by Fredrich Kahl and David Roland-Holst of Berkeley’s Center for Energy, Resources and Economic Sustainability (part of the Dept. of Agricultural and Resource Economics).

Higher energy demand, heat waves, scarce water, wildfire and rising sea levels–even the “collapse” of the state’s half-billion-dollar ski industry–are just some of the potential cost drivers. The “good news,” according to the report, is that much of this cost could be avoided by immediate investment in strategies to prepare.

A key question is where the money will come from—especially in tough economic times—to invest in the energy and other infrastructure needed to stave off the worst damage. Skip Laitner of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, says we’re not necessarily talking about finding “new” money for these investments. “In the US economy,” says Laitner, “we’re looking at almost two trillion dollars of investment anyway, regardless of how tight the market is. The point I think is a smart re-deployment of investment to more productive uses.”

That includes rapid development of renewable energy and measures to use water more efficiently. The study was funded by the nonpartisan think tank known as Next 10 and is just the latest in a repeating chorus of studies making the point that a full-on confrontation with climate change will, in the long run, be good for the economy, and may even provide some near-term stimulus.

Just weeks ago, Roland-Holst unveiled a separate study on the potential for job creation from promoting conservation and a shift to renewable energy. Earlier this week, a Cal State Fullerton study put a $28 billion-dollar current price tag on air pollution in the south coast and San Joaquin Valley regions.

Roland-Holst will be one of the guests on KQED’s Forum program tomorrow (Friday). He’ll be joined by representatives from Next 10 and Environment California, in a robust discussion of the cost of climate change.

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

CA Wildfires Responsible for Unhealthy Ozone Levels

Those of us in the San Francisco Bay Area woke up to the smell of smoke on Monday morning, the result of the fires that burned on Angel Island through the night scorching about 400 acres.  Wildfires also burned in nearby Napa country throughout the weekend.  While we know that inhaling all that smoke can’t be a good thing, a new study out from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has quantified some of the risks, and what they’ve found is dangerous amounts of ground level ozone.

The study, which focused on California’s wildfires September and October of last year, found that the fires repeatedly boosted ozone to unhealthy levels – levels that exceed U.S. health standards — across much of California and Nevada.

While ozone in the upper atmosphere where it blocks ultraviolet radiation from the sun is a good thing for life on Earth, it’s a bad thing down here at the surface where ozone can cause breathing difficulty and aggravate respiratory problems like asthma and emphysema in humans and it can harm agricultural crops.  The EPA’s brochure on “good” and “bad” ozone identifies ozone as the main component of urban smog.

Many climate scientists are predicting hotter and drier weather for the American West, likely increasing the frequency and duration of wildfires.  “Bad” ozone might be something we’ll be getting used to.

Here’s a July article from the San Francisco Chronicle with an overview of California’s fires for the first half of 2008.

Uncategorized

Despite a Cool Summer, LA is Getting Hotter

It was looking like a cool summer in Los Angeles until a couple of weeks ago.  Temperatures in downtown LA topped 90 degrees Fahrenheit only once this summer until September 25th.  Since then, according to the National Weather Service’s Climatological Report, the city has seen 4 days above 90, including today. Which is what a group of university and NASA scientists say Southern Californians had better get used to.  

The scientists analyzed 100 years of temperature data collected in downtown Los Angeles  and found that between 1906 and 2006 the average number of extreme heat days – those over 90 degrees – increased from 2 per year to more than 25 per year.  In that time, the average maximum daytime temperature for the city climbed 5 degrees.  Heat waves have also increased, from 2-day events to sweltering stretches that last for 1-2 weeks. The scientists predict that in the coming decades, 10-14 day heat waves will be the norm. 

The bottom line? Even though this summer was a cool one, Southern California is going to get warmer, for longer periods of time. “Our snow pack will be less, our fire seasons will be longer, and unhealthy air alerts will be a summer staple” said study co-author Bill Patzert, a NASA climatologist and oceanographer.

The scientists assert that the main cause of this increase in temperature and heat days in Los Angeles is due the “urban heat island effect,” which makes urban areas 2-10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the surrounding rural areas.

Check out a historical temperature chart for downtown Los Angeles and a full report on the study here.

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

Selling the Benefits of AB 32

Well-timed would be one way to describe the pair of rosy forecasts from the state’s Air Resources Board today. For Californians beleaguered by the slumping economy, both reports were choc-a-bloc with good news. The only drawback is that we’ll have to wait a while for the payoff.

The ARB is the “lead agency” for implementing California’s comprehensive plan passed in 2006 to combat climate change, known affectionately as AB32. The primary objective is to get a 30% reduction in greenhouse gases statewide by 2020. The two reports released today attempt to gauge the long-term economic and public health benefits from fully implementing the plan.

Over time, the reports point to creation of more than 100,000  jobs and higher per capita income on the economic front. Estimated health benefits include fewer premature deaths (mostly related to heat waves) and asthma cases.

Some of the touted benefits are relatively small incremental improvements over programs already in place. For instance, ARB anticipates that by 2020, all the provisions of AB32 combined would mean 67 fewer hospital admissions per year (statewide) for respiratory conditions. That compares to the 770 admissions spared in 2020 that would result from existing air quality measures.