Kit Stolz

Climate change and VC: the good, the bad, and the odd

From my Earth Day cover story from the Ventura County Reporter:

California does not need fear hurricanes, but it does every few years face El Niño, an oceanic shift that drives unimaginably vast amounts of water across the Pacific and up against the coasts of North and South America, raising the sea level by as much as a foot. It is similar to the storm surge that comes ashore with a hurricane, according to Susi Moser, a climate researcher at Stanford.

“Twelve inches [of sea level rise] is well within the kind of projection we can expect from a good storm surge during an El Niño,” she said. “It’s not exactly comparable to Superstorm Sandy because, for the most part, California’s coast is fairly steep. But where it is flat, such as low-lying areas around Ventura Harbor and the Oxnard shores, we have to expect major flooding. It’s not the end of the world for California, but if you think about the landfill areas in San Francisco Bay, for example, and take out the entire inner ring of the bay and lose the airport, that’s a pain in the ass.”

Like a scientist who can speak bluntly. Learned a lot doing this story — interesting to see that projections from fourteen different climate models found that falls especially will be hotter, but Januaries will be as cold as ever. Hope you like the story.

Navy meteorologist convinced that global warming is real

Last weekend I wrote a story about a conference in UCSB on sea level change in the Ventura County Star. To quote Rear Admiral (ret) David Titley, a meterologist who once was a skeptic but now believes in climate change:

“I’ve told the Navy and Congress that we should expect a global sea rise between now and the year 2100 of about 1 meter,” Titley told a hall full of students and others Friday who attended the conference, called “Risk and Uncertainty and the Communication of Sea Level Rise.”

“If I’m wrong, I’m probably wrong on the low end,” he said.

Titley is an easy guy to like, and has a good story: after all, he lost his home to Katrina. But he says that didn't influence his opinion on climate change: for more, here's his TEDx talk.

Brower: Wilderness a place to rescue yourself

"For [David] Brower [who led the Sierra Club] wilderness was the place "where man could be alone, where you could rescue your self from what Ortega calls the other — all the extraneities that pile on you too deep."

From Nature's Altars, p216

This is my way of saying I'm going to hit the Pacific Crest Trail, for just a few days, just enough to get my feet dusty.

Have left a few posts for your entertainment…after all, here in SoCal, there are some unique aspects to the PCT. Here's a sign near Campo, where the trail starts, not far from the border.

Actually good to see some signs of caring. What for some of us is a chance to question our reality — because quest is after all at the heart of question — is for others a chance at a new life.

I can't help but sympathize with those will to roll those dice.

From the edge of climate change: Vice (mag) in Venice

A profile of Vice magazine (and its CEO Shane Smith) in The New Yorker concludes with this memorable scene. And yes, this was a report on climate change, from a believer in "environmentalism" — Smith.

We took a water taxi through the canals, past crumbling buildings and
water-stained walls, and arrived at San Marco just as the floodwaters
were rising. The area was swarming with tourists, and a narrow pathway
of raised wooden planks was threaded precariously through the square. As
the water rose, the tourists crossed the square on the planks,
shuffling in a long, two-person-wide line, like animals boarding Noah’s
Ark.

“It’s fantastic,” Smith said, watching the tourists. He
began to talk about global warming. “Humans won’t do anything unless we
have a gun pointed to our heads. But I think this is it. I think we have
a gun pointed to our heads. It’s like, ’K, chaps, it’s time to fucking
fix it!”

Lombardi had bought Smith and his crew some plastic
waders from a souvenir stand. He and his cameraman put them on and
strode into the knee-deep water. Smith kept his hands in his pockets as
Fairman filmed. I waded a few feet behind. The water was filthy, and
occasionally a dead pigeon floated past. Someone was playing the piano
in a café at the edge of the square, and its tinkling sounds filled the
air. Smith began doing a little waltz in the water. He marvelled, “It’s
all eerily surreal.”

About halfway into the square, Smith stopped.
A few hundred yards away, he spotted the Bar Americano, which had a
foot of water inside but appeared to be open for business. Smith had an
idea. “You know what’ll make this a Vice story?” he called over his
shoulder. “We’re going to walk into a bar and have a drink!” The idea
had all the elements of a Vice feature—a collision of tragedy, hedonism,
and world-shaping events. Smith mused, with evident pleasure, “The
world is sinking, and we’re having a drink.”

He waded in the direction of the bar, and the cameraman followed. A tourist pointed and shouted, “CNN!”

Does make climate change sound kind of…fun.

A pic from a traveler of Venice at high tide. Believe it or don't.

What makes this New York subway pic so disturbing?

It's a question. I really don't know…but I do think this pic is scary.

Is it because we can't tell if this is a man or a woman? Is it because we can't tell if he/she is just surprised, or really angry? Is it the surreal aspect — the fur coat versus the scuzzy subway, against the sunset backdrop?

To me this looks like a shot from a video game. Just before all hell breaks loose.

From a slideshow of subway pics from l970's New York. It was different back then, I can attest.

Texas-sized drought of 2012: Fluke or global warming?

The extreme drought of 2012, which persists into 2013 in about half the country, was just a fluke, says a massive report by dozens of government scientists, helmed by Martin Hoerling. Hoerling is an expert in general circulation models and projections, specializing in the Southwest, and a believer in global warming.

As Seth Borenstein wrote for the AP:

Last year's huge drought was a freak of nature that wasn't caused by man-made global warming, a new federal science study finds.

Scientists say the lack of moisture usually pushed up from the Gulf of Mexico was the main reason for the drought in the nation's midsection.

Thursday's report by dozens of scientists from five different federal agencies looked into why forecasters didn't see the drought coming. The researchers concluded that it was so unusual and unpredictable that it couldn't have been forecast.

"This is one of those events that comes along once every couple hundreds of years," said lead author Martin Hoerling, a research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Climate change was not a significant part, if any, of the event."

But Kevin Trenberth, who has published more than 400 papers on climate, and is a leader at the National Center for Atmospheric, criticized the report for narrow-mindedness. From Andrew Freedman's story at Climate Central:

Kevin Trenberth, a researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and a frequent critic of Hoerling's work, blasted the report's conclusions in an online commentary. "The question never addressed is what does global warming and human influences bring" to the High Pressure areas typically associated with extreme heat and drought events, Trenberth said.

The report, Trenberth said, "fails completely to say anything about the observed soil moisture conditions, snow cover, and snow pack during the winter prior to the event in spite of the fact that snow pack was at record low levels in the winter and spring."

Trenberth has a least one point I can speak to, and bring in the work of John Neilsen-Gammon of Texas A&M, the state climatologist of Texas, to verify. I saw a big presentation he gave at the American Meteorological Society on the drought that struck Texas last year (and which has persisted into 2013 in much of the state).

Neilsen-Gammon said that about 20% of the drought could be attributed to global warming, which indirectly tends to support Trenberth's view. But more directly, Neilsen-Gammon said that they knew in Texas in the fall of 2011 that Texas would go into drought in 2012 because the ground was so dry that there would not be enough moisture in the air to make possible a significant amount of rain. That's what Trenberth alluded to in one of his points.

What caused this dryness? Well, might not record-breaking heat have something to do with it? And might not record breaking heat waves have some connection to global warming?

But Hoerling et al certainly looked at soil moisure, and the lack thereof in Texas can clearly be seen in some of their own slides (from the report, which looks unusually clear and well presented).

So I must read this report, first. For myself and perhaps for some of you.

Students confront climate change denying scientist

It's almost impossible to quote this story without snark, but I'm going to try. At Michigan State University, a conservative group sponsored a presentation by a notorious climate change skeptic named Willie Soon, an astrophysicist. A small group of students, 21 in all, showed up to hear him, five of which were affiliated with a campus group, MSU Greenpace.

Greenpeace, MSU Greenpeace’s parent organization, released an investigation in 2011 based upon documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act alleging Soon has become increasingly under the thumb of the fossil fuel industry. From 2001 to 2012, Soon received about $1.33 million in funding from sources such as the American Petroleum Institute, the ExxonMobil Foundation and the Charles G. Koch Foundation , according to Greenpeace.

Soon's reaction is fascinating/horrifying.

When asked about these criticisms, Soon looked haggard and asked to sit down. He complained that he had been “tortured” by environmental activists throughout the four-stop university tour.

“It’s just not about money. I know that it looks bad. Since 2004, I am first unable[sic], then I decided to not take (government) money anymore,” Soon said. “I’ve been trying to get funding from whoever foundation or anybody who wants to give me money. Coal, anything, I don’t care. Really, I don’t, because I know that I’m not being influenced by money.”

It's the denouement of a bad horror movie, in which the villain breaks down and confesses.

Koch & Exxon climate denial scientist confronted by Greenpeace Students (VIDEO)

Billionaires Secretly Funded Vast Climate Denial Network

Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial thinktanks

How The Dirty Energy Money Funding Climate Inaction Slips By The Press

Fracking in Ventura County: the next oil boom?

Great op-ed from Marianne Ratcliff in today's Star on fracking in Ventura County. How much fracking is going on, and how much more will be going on? Difficult to say. According to her research, most wells in this area have already been fracked — but that's not to say that more couldn't be, or couldn't be hazardous.

Fracking is such a proven method of increasing oil and gas production
in the Silverthread lease in Upper Ojai that it is the rare well that
has not been fracked, according to a 1975 Society of Petroleum Engineers
report on the Ojai Silverthread Field.

Ambitious energy companies are reporting plans in company
prospectuses and investor reports, such as the one published in March
2012 by Underground Energy Corp., reporting that Occidental Petroleum
Corp.’s Vintage Production California LLC subsidiary, the largest
Monterey landholder in the Ventura, Los Angeles and San Joaquin basins,
has “200,000 acres and 520 drilling targets de-risked for oil-prone
shale development.”

"De-risked?" For them or us? Here's a map from CNN, showing the oil formation overlaid on the state.

Will attend the meeting on Tuesday, in which the county will hear from its legal counsel on fracking locally. All but one of the supervisors want to know more…as do some of us.

My heart knows what the wild goose knows: Roger Ebert

A personal fav from among his many entries to the New Yorker's caption contest:

(Didn't win but doesn't matter. Roger Ebert lives on.)

Obama quails on Keystone XL: Poll shows why

Looks like Obama intends to back down and let Keystone XL bitumen pipeline go through.

From the NY Times:

SAN FRANCISCO — Appearing at the home of an outspoken critic of the Keystone XL pipeline, President Obama on Wednesday night told a group of high-dollar donors that the politics of the environment “are tough.”

Mr. Obama appears to be leaning toward the approval of the pipeline, although he did not specifically mention it to the donors. But he acknowledged that it is hard to sell aggressive environmental action — like reducing pollution from power plants — to Americans who are still struggling in a difficult economy to pay bills, buy gas and save for retirement.

“You may be concerned about the temperature of the planet, but it’s probably not rising to your No. 1 concern,” Mr. Obama said. “And if people think, well, that’s shortsighted, that’s what happens when you’re struggling to get by.”

Maybe the Prez saw this poll from Pew Research:

And maybe it's not a coincidence that this past week James Hansen decided he had to quit his job working for the federal government, and this today argued fiercely against the pipeline:

The perspective of pipeline apologists is contrary to the laws of physics and basic economics, neither of which gives a damn about politics. [edit]

The science on climate change has been in for a quarter of a century. There are no more mixed messages, just catastrophe after catastrophe. The president stands at a fork in the road: Rejecting the pipeline will show the world we are serious and determined to be on the right side of history. Approving it will signal we are too entrenched with business-as-usual to do what's right by the people, planet and future generations.

Meanwhile atop the NY Times, a disturbing story from perhaps the second best-known of all climate scientists, Lonnie Thompson, on the rapid melting of an ice cap in Peru.

Glacial ice in the Peruvian Andes that took at least 1,600 years to form has melted in just 25 years, scientists reported Thursday, the latest indication that the recent spike in global temperatures has thrown the natural world out of balance.

It's much more than Obama's legacy that hangs in the balance. Regrettably.