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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11280\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/IMG_4397_web.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11280\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11280\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/IMG_4397_web.jpg\" alt=\"Richmond Pacific Railroad's clean-diesel switch engine, the first of its kind in the U.S.\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Richmond Pacific Railroad’s clean-diesel switch engine, the first of its kind in the U.S.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>You gotta start somewhere. In this case, it’s the BNSF switchyard in Richmond, where the \u003ca title=\"RPR - main\" href=\"http://www.levinterminal.com/facilities-and-services/rail-services/\">Richmond Pacific Railroad\u003c/a> is testing the nation’s first “Tier 4” switch engine for certification. Tier 4 is a standard set by the federal Environmental Protection Agency for ultra-low emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The location couldn’t be more appropriate, since Richmond is an industrial town with a major rail hub, a huge oil refinery and with housing right up against it all, a hotspot for air-quality-related health complaints such as asthma.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Even one locomotive can make a big impact in terms of health,” says Damian Breen, who directs “strategic incentives” for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. The District provided the railroad with a half-million-dollar grant to roll out and test the new switch engine, a smaller locomotive used to shuffle rail cars around in the yard or move them short distances. Breen says the new switcher will eliminate 6,000 tons of emissions per year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, “clean” is a relative term in the railroad biz. Most locomotives are belching volcanoes of black soot, partly because they’re typically powered by a single, huge diesel engine and spend a lot of their time idling. Instead, the new switcher has a series of smaller engines and generators, optimized by computer controls to call up only as much power as the moment demands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s really a new design concept,” says Steve Sonni, California rep for the locomotive builder, \u003ca title=\"NRE - main\" href=\"http://www.nationalrailway.com/\">NRE\u003c/a>. He says the combination reduces noise, fuel consumption and stack emissions. “You’re talking 30 to 40 percent for sure,” he says, and adds that it could be 90 percent cleaner than many “legacy” locomotives that have been on the rails for 40 years or more. “I can assure you that there’s hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of old locomotives that were designed and built in the ’50s and ’60s operating all over the United States,” says Sonni, many without any restrictions on emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11281\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/IMG_4400_web.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11281\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11281\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/IMG_4400_web.jpg\" alt=\"Jeff...\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jeff Schwab starts up the new ultra-quiet, low-emissions switch locomotive.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Nobody seems more enthused about the new switcher than the guy in the cab. For one thing, “It’s really quiet,” says Jeff Schwab, the railroad’s chief mechanic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You have a computer monitoring everything, helping the engineer make decisions,” he notes, such as a kind of traction control, where the computer will redistribute power to wheels to avoid wheels slipping, a common occurrence when switchers are hooked up to heavy loads. “It’s just incredible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Breen says he also expects to see climate benefits from the new engine, as a major component of diesel exhaust is black carbon, which Breen calls “a major forcer of climate.” Based on recent science, state regulators are recommending a stronger focus on black carbon as a greenhouse gas. Breen expects the switcher to save two metric tons of soot each year, reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and use less fuel overall. But with an estimated 550 switch engines operating in California, there would seem to be a long road ahead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are looking to see more of these locomotives deployed by the major railroads,” says Breen, though he concedes that it’s up to them to decide whether to adopt the cleaner engines. The new locomotives will become more widely available in 2015. “We have talked to them quite a bit about reducing risk in these communities,” he added. “We know they are willing to work with us.” At a cost upwards of $1 million for a single locomotive, that can be a tough sell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "Short Version: Yes, We Need More Rain",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11358\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/shastalevels.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11358\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/shastalevels.jpg\" alt=\"shasta lake reservoir water supply\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Shasta Lake, California’s largest reservoir, is at about 62 percent of average for this time of year. (Molly Samuel/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The system that just passed through Northern California \u003ca title=\"NOAA - precip\" href=\"http://www.cnrfc.noaa.gov/awipsProducts/RNORR4RSA.php\">brought a decent “wetting,”\u003c/a> a glimmer of hope and put a damper on the wildfire season. But you’re familiar with the term: “a drop in the bucket?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For a rough gauge of how the state is doing, water managers keep a close eye on a network of eight recording stations in the northern Sierra, between Shasta and Tahoe. Right now those stations are reporting about 2 and a half inches of precipitation for October and November, or just about a third of what’s considered “normal” for this date.[contextly_sidebar id=”129024539bde565bf58088ac3351ce07″]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s gonna be hard to make that up,” says Maury Roos, chief hydrologist for the state Department of Water Resources. If we don’t, Roos says he’ll be ready to invoke the dreaded “D-word.” Roos says a second straight dry winter “would put us into what I would consider drought–a real hydrologic drought. I don’t think we’ve reached that threshold yet.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is time to catch up. Typically the state gets about half its annual precipitation during the coming two months, December and January. Last year we had a soggy December and then the tap simply shut off, leaving us with an epic dry spell from January through March and overall, a “wet season” that failed to fully recharge key reservoirs. That means that another winter on the dry side would leave us without the “carry-over” storage that helped Californians through this past summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sadly, the chances of that seem pretty good. The winter outlook just released by NOAA’s \u003ca title=\"NCPC - outlook\" href=\"http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/\">National Climate Prediction Center\u003c/a> shows the odds in favor of “persistent or intensified drought” for nearly all of California, through February.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11350\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 551px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/CPC_OutlookMap.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11350\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11350 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/CPC_OutlookMap.jpg\" alt=\"Current models seem to favor another dry winter for California. (NOAA)\" width=\"551\" height=\"419\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Current models seem to favor another dry winter for California. (NOAA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There’s been a lot of talk already this fall about whether California is in a “record-dry” year. Peter Gleick of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute \u003ca title=\"HuffPo - Gleick\" href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/extreme-weather-is-this-c_b_4310418.html\">breaks down that discussion\u003c/a> in his latest post. As usual, the answer is: it depends on what you’re counting. But Gleick isn’t waiting around for any official declarations to roll out the D-word:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>California is in the midst of another severe drought, measured as the weighted average of precipitation around the state. Indeed, the past two years have both been very dry.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>More troubling, writes Gleick, is the long-term trend, which shows flagging precipitation despite California’s wild annual fluctuations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11358\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/shastalevels.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11358\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/shastalevels.jpg\" alt=\"shasta lake reservoir water supply\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Shasta Lake, California’s largest reservoir, is at about 62 percent of average for this time of year. (Molly Samuel/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The system that just passed through Northern California \u003ca title=\"NOAA - precip\" href=\"http://www.cnrfc.noaa.gov/awipsProducts/RNORR4RSA.php\">brought a decent “wetting,”\u003c/a> a glimmer of hope and put a damper on the wildfire season. But you’re familiar with the term: “a drop in the bucket?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For a rough gauge of how the state is doing, water managers keep a close eye on a network of eight recording stations in the northern Sierra, between Shasta and Tahoe. Right now those stations are reporting about 2 and a half inches of precipitation for October and November, or just about a third of what’s considered “normal” for this date.\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s gonna be hard to make that up,” says Maury Roos, chief hydrologist for the state Department of Water Resources. If we don’t, Roos says he’ll be ready to invoke the dreaded “D-word.” Roos says a second straight dry winter “would put us into what I would consider drought–a real hydrologic drought. I don’t think we’ve reached that threshold yet.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is time to catch up. Typically the state gets about half its annual precipitation during the coming two months, December and January. Last year we had a soggy December and then the tap simply shut off, leaving us with an epic dry spell from January through March and overall, a “wet season” that failed to fully recharge key reservoirs. That means that another winter on the dry side would leave us without the “carry-over” storage that helped Californians through this past summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sadly, the chances of that seem pretty good. The winter outlook just released by NOAA’s \u003ca title=\"NCPC - outlook\" href=\"http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/\">National Climate Prediction Center\u003c/a> shows the odds in favor of “persistent or intensified drought” for nearly all of California, through February.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11350\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 551px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/CPC_OutlookMap.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11350\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11350 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/CPC_OutlookMap.jpg\" alt=\"Current models seem to favor another dry winter for California. (NOAA)\" width=\"551\" height=\"419\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Current models seem to favor another dry winter for California. (NOAA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There’s been a lot of talk already this fall about whether California is in a “record-dry” year. Peter Gleick of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute \u003ca title=\"HuffPo - Gleick\" href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/extreme-weather-is-this-c_b_4310418.html\">breaks down that discussion\u003c/a> in his latest post. As usual, the answer is: it depends on what you’re counting. But Gleick isn’t waiting around for any official declarations to roll out the D-word:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>California is in the midst of another severe drought, measured as the weighted average of precipitation around the state. Indeed, the past two years have both been very dry.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>More troubling, writes Gleick, is the long-term trend, which shows flagging precipitation despite California’s wild annual fluctuations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Arctic Algae Offer New Insights on Prehistoric Climate Data",
"headTitle": "Arctic Algae Offer New Insights on Prehistoric Climate Data | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11310\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/clathromorphum-compactum.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11310\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11310\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/clathromorphum-compactum.jpg\" alt=\"Clathromorphum compactum\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003cem>Clathromorphum compactum\u003c/em> records centuries of climatic data in its thin annual layers. Images courtesy Walter Adey, Smithsonian Institution\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As scientists work on better climate models to help us deal with global warming, there are only two places to gather more data: the present and the past. The present crawls along at its usual pace, producing its daily trickle of information, but the past promises to yield buckets of data in the right archives. A new paper has opened up a long-needed archive for the high northern ocean, recorded in the annual “tree rings” of red coralline algae.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The tropical corals most of us are familar with are stony structures, built out of the dissolved minerals in seawater, that are occupied by colonies of tiny animals. But outside the tropics, coral-like structures are built by various species of algae—colonies of one-celled plants. The red coralline alga \u003cem>Clathromorphum compactum\u003c/em> lives on the cold shallow seafloors around the Arctic Ocean and slowly but steadily puts on annual layers as reliably as treetrunks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/11/13/1313775110.abstract\">A paper published this week in the \u003cem>Proceedings of the National Academy of Science\u003c/em>\u003c/a> reports a record of annual sea ice in northeastern Canada, based on \u003cem>C. compactum\u003c/em> layers, that goes back 646 years. This organism joins a select list of “climate proxy” species that include tropical corals, \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/paleoclimatology-data/datasets/coral-sclerosponge\">sclerosponges\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"http://www.sonic.net/bristlecone/intro.html\">bristlecones\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://ltrr.arizona.edu/\">other trees\u003c/a>. Along with annual-scale records from other climate proxies, including \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2012/10/18/a-new-radiocarbon-yardstick-from-japan/\">lake sediments\u003c/a> and ice from the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/11/07/where-should-we-look-for-the-worlds-oldest-ice/\">polar ice caps\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2013/04/04/a-new-rosetta-stone-tropical-ice-core/\">tropical glaciers\u003c/a>, we can splice together pictures of prehistoric climate that are accurate enough to use in detailed climate modeling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every climate proxy has its own quirks that can be turned into information. Tree rings vary with the species, the region, and the individual seasons of each year. Glacier ice captures dust from the air, and bubbles of the ancient air itself. In the case of \u003cem>C. compactum\u003c/em>, which lives at 20-meter depths all around the northern seas, the red alga grows at a rate that responds closely to water temperature. Not just the growth rate, but the chemistry of its mineral layer correlates with temperature—more magnesium enters the calcium-carbonate material during warmer weather. And then when sea ice forms, the alga shuts down entirely, thus its annual layers are also a sensitive indicator of the icy season.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While tree rings are usually wide enough to measure with calipers under a low-power microscope, the coralline algae layers are measured in microns. The paper’s authors used electron microscopic techniques to image the layers and analyze their chemistry. They also collected many specimens ranging from Maine to Arctic Bay, at the north end of Baffin Island, and painstakingly assembled a year-by-year record of ice cover in these waters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11311\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/algaelayers.gif\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11311\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11311\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/algaelayers.gif\" alt=\"annual layers in arctic algae\" width=\"500\" height=\"347\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Annual layers in another coralline alga species. The dots are reproductive structures called conceptacles\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The ice record matches what we know and what we suspect from other sources. Notably, during the “little ice age” period from about 1450 to about 1850, thick and long-lasting sea ice corresponded with the spread of cultures based on seal hunting. Since 1850, the sea ice has undergone “a long-term decline distinctly steeper than at any time since the 14th century.” Throughout this time period, sea ice has been highly variable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not so long ago, there was a lot of chatter each year about the fluctuations of the annual Antarctic ozone hole, and then the world took action against the chlorofluorocarbons that were eroding it. Since then the ozone hole has been recovering, gradually and with wide variations, without a lot of discussion. It’s worth remembering as we watch the Arctic sea ice today through satellite imagery. Instead of cheering or bemoaning the state of the ice every year, we would do better to keep our eye on the long-term trend—and long-term action.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The short list of climate proxy species gains a new member in the critical Arctic Ocean region, a crusty red alga named \u003ci>Clathromorphum compactum\u003c/i>.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11310\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/clathromorphum-compactum.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11310\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11310\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/clathromorphum-compactum.jpg\" alt=\"Clathromorphum compactum\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003cem>Clathromorphum compactum\u003c/em> records centuries of climatic data in its thin annual layers. Images courtesy Walter Adey, Smithsonian Institution\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As scientists work on better climate models to help us deal with global warming, there are only two places to gather more data: the present and the past. The present crawls along at its usual pace, producing its daily trickle of information, but the past promises to yield buckets of data in the right archives. A new paper has opened up a long-needed archive for the high northern ocean, recorded in the annual “tree rings” of red coralline algae.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The tropical corals most of us are familar with are stony structures, built out of the dissolved minerals in seawater, that are occupied by colonies of tiny animals. But outside the tropics, coral-like structures are built by various species of algae—colonies of one-celled plants. The red coralline alga \u003cem>Clathromorphum compactum\u003c/em> lives on the cold shallow seafloors around the Arctic Ocean and slowly but steadily puts on annual layers as reliably as treetrunks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/11/13/1313775110.abstract\">A paper published this week in the \u003cem>Proceedings of the National Academy of Science\u003c/em>\u003c/a> reports a record of annual sea ice in northeastern Canada, based on \u003cem>C. compactum\u003c/em> layers, that goes back 646 years. This organism joins a select list of “climate proxy” species that include tropical corals, \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/paleoclimatology-data/datasets/coral-sclerosponge\">sclerosponges\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"http://www.sonic.net/bristlecone/intro.html\">bristlecones\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://ltrr.arizona.edu/\">other trees\u003c/a>. Along with annual-scale records from other climate proxies, including \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2012/10/18/a-new-radiocarbon-yardstick-from-japan/\">lake sediments\u003c/a> and ice from the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/11/07/where-should-we-look-for-the-worlds-oldest-ice/\">polar ice caps\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2013/04/04/a-new-rosetta-stone-tropical-ice-core/\">tropical glaciers\u003c/a>, we can splice together pictures of prehistoric climate that are accurate enough to use in detailed climate modeling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every climate proxy has its own quirks that can be turned into information. Tree rings vary with the species, the region, and the individual seasons of each year. Glacier ice captures dust from the air, and bubbles of the ancient air itself. In the case of \u003cem>C. compactum\u003c/em>, which lives at 20-meter depths all around the northern seas, the red alga grows at a rate that responds closely to water temperature. Not just the growth rate, but the chemistry of its mineral layer correlates with temperature—more magnesium enters the calcium-carbonate material during warmer weather. And then when sea ice forms, the alga shuts down entirely, thus its annual layers are also a sensitive indicator of the icy season.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While tree rings are usually wide enough to measure with calipers under a low-power microscope, the coralline algae layers are measured in microns. The paper’s authors used electron microscopic techniques to image the layers and analyze their chemistry. They also collected many specimens ranging from Maine to Arctic Bay, at the north end of Baffin Island, and painstakingly assembled a year-by-year record of ice cover in these waters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11311\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/algaelayers.gif\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11311\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11311\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/algaelayers.gif\" alt=\"annual layers in arctic algae\" width=\"500\" height=\"347\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Annual layers in another coralline alga species. The dots are reproductive structures called conceptacles\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The ice record matches what we know and what we suspect from other sources. Notably, during the “little ice age” period from about 1450 to about 1850, thick and long-lasting sea ice corresponded with the spread of cultures based on seal hunting. Since 1850, the sea ice has undergone “a long-term decline distinctly steeper than at any time since the 14th century.” Throughout this time period, sea ice has been highly variable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not so long ago, there was a lot of chatter each year about the fluctuations of the annual Antarctic ozone hole, and then the world took action against the chlorofluorocarbons that were eroding it. Since then the ozone hole has been recovering, gradually and with wide variations, without a lot of discussion. It’s worth remembering as we watch the Arctic sea ice today through satellite imagery. Instead of cheering or bemoaning the state of the ice every year, we would do better to keep our eye on the long-term trend—and long-term action.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Can California Burn its Way Out of its Wildfire Problem?",
"headTitle": "Can California Burn its Way Out of its Wildfire Problem? | KQED",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"audio-wrap\">\n\u003ch2>Listen:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/science/2013/11/20131118science.mp3\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11068\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/nightburn-large.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11068\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/nightburn-large.jpg\" alt=\"A nighttime prescribed burn in the Stanislaus National Forest in California's Sierra Nevada. (Eric Knapp/U.S. Forest Service)\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A nighttime prescribed burn in the Stanislaus National Forest in California’s Sierra Nevada. (Eric Knapp/U.S. Forest Service)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Rim Fire, which consumed more than 250,000 acres in and around Yosemite National Park this summer, is a prime example of America’s dangerous legacy of putting out too many wildfires. After a century of suppressing the flames, firefighting agencies have let the brush and small trees get so thick, that when a fire does get going, it can turn into a monster.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People who fight and study fire generally agree that one of the best tools for preventing massive wildfires is prescribed burning: intentionally setting smaller fires before the big ones hit. But there are major challenges to fighting fire with fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Setting the Forest on Fire\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a sunny day earlier this fall, about 50 Forest Service firefighters, mostly men, all wearing the Forest Service uniform of fire-resistant bright yellow shirts and fire-resistant dark green pants, are working a prescribed burn in the Shasta National Forest, near Redding, California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.kqed.org/assets/slideshow/fightfirewithfire/_files/iframe.html?noscale=640x400\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Setting fire to a forest actually requires many of the same tactics as putting one out. The crews are planning today to burn a slope near Shasta Lake, bordered on three sides by fire lines, and on the fourth by the lake itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They had earlier cleared fire lines, strips without brush and leaves, that will contain the flames. As they begin their work this morning, they burn what they call “the black,” an area ahead of and along the edges of the area to be burned that creates a safety zone for them and helps keep the fire from spreading. Then, beginning at the top of the ridge and working their way down (fire travels uphill, so this helps keep it in check), the crews set flame to dead leaves, and let the fire do its work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11079\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/settingfire.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11079\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/settingfire.jpg\" alt=\"A firefighter works a prescribed burn at the Shasta National Forest.(Molly Samuel/KQED)\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A firefighter works a prescribed burn at the Shasta National Forest.(Molly Samuel/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This is not a scene from \u003cem>“Bambi,”\u003c/em> with flames raging and animals fleeing. For the most part, the fire barely reaches a foot high. It kills bushes and smaller trees and clears out leaves and brush. But most of the bigger, older trees survive. Fires like this have, on occasion, gotten out of control and turned into wildfires in their own right. But this one is well under control. It’s the end of the wildfire season, and the firefighters — many of whom are on the elite hotshot teams that fight the biggest fires — are relaxed while monitoring the flames, talking about their kids and their dogs. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I always like seeing fire on the ground,” says Eric Knapp, an ecologist with the Forest Service. He says prescribed burns are good for the environment, for animals, for preventing massive wildfires and for keeping firefighters and the public safe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But getting them done is tricky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11081\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/fireline.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11081 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/fireline.jpg\" alt=\"A fire line marks the left-hand side of the burn. (It looks like a hiking trail.) The area to the left of the line burned previously. (Molly Samuel/KQED)\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A fire line marks the left-hand side of the burn. (It looks like a hiking trail.) The area to the left of the line burned previously. (Molly Samuel/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>It’s Not Easy to Fight Fire with Fire\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The window for conducting prescribed burns is narrow: when it’s dry enough that a fire will start, but not so dry that it will rage. “We have a limited opportunity to burn, maybe a week or two every year,” says Knapp. “And (we have) a limited number of resources to get a lot of acres done.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Often the people conducting the burns are seasonal firefighters, who are only budgeted for six months. “A lot of their seasons are spent dealing with wildfire during the hotter, drier times,” says Knapp. In fact, at the Shasta burn, some of the firefighters are on the second-to-last day of their contracts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there’s the smoke. “It’s a carcinogen,” Knapp acknowledges. “And there are people who are legitimately strongly affected.” Because of that, regional air quality districts tightly regulate prescribed burns. Another burn, scheduled to take place near Redding on the same day we went to Shasta, was cancelled because of smoke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11083\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/smoke.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11083\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/smoke.jpg\" alt=\"Smoke rises from the prescribed burn at the Shasta National Forest. (Molly Samuel/KQED)\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Smoke rises from the prescribed burn at the Shasta National Forest. (Molly Samuel/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And sometimes it just comes down to a public relations issue. Not everyone sees the benefit of starting fires. “There’s a consensus among the scientists and the land managers,” Knapp says. “I don’t believe there’s a consensus in the public.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">It’s like we’re losing the race, we’re just not losing it quite as fast.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>It all adds up to mean that not enough acres burn. “Every year we fall further behind and the fuel continues to build up,” says Knapp. “If it weren’t for prescribed burning, we’d fall behind even more. But it’s like we’re losing the race, we’re just not losing it quite as fast.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Backlog\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In California alone, about 15 million acres of forest are in need of some kind of treatment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re in a huge deficit,” says Scott Stephens, a fire scientist at University of California, Berkeley. Before the year 1800, he says, 4.5 million acres burned in California every year. Fires started either by Native Americans or by lightning were generally smaller and less intense, but much more frequent. Many areas burned every ten years or so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11089\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/firefighters.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11089\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/firefighters.jpg\" alt=\"Firefighters monitor the flames and keep the burn on the right side of the fire line. (Molly Samuel/KQED)\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Firefighters monitor the flames and keep the burn on the right side of the fire line. (Molly Samuel/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But because of aggressive fire suppression policies that managers followed for decades, many places haven’t burned in a century or more. Some forests are so overgrown, they have ten times the number of trees as they had historically. That’s the difference between running through the trees, arms outstretched, maybe with a couple of friends by your side, and not being able to crawl through. Forests like these are more susceptible to giant wildfires, because there’s more fuel to burn and it burns hotter.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">We’re carrying these forests that are incredibly vulnerable forward into climate change. It’s a disaster really.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“We’re carrying these forests that are incredibly vulnerable forward into climate change,” says Stephens. “It’s a disaster really.” Because, he explains, California’s changing climate will make the fire season longer, and the prescribed-burn season shorter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Caught in the middle are the firefighting agencies, each with different approaches and priorities. The National Park Service and the Forest Service both have prescribed burn programs, but while the parks are concerned with conservation, the Forest Service must also take into account logging, and other land uses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state agency, CalFire, has its own constraints, fighting many wildfires close to development in the “wildland-urban interface.” This mingling of forest and residential areas makes prescribed burns still more difficult.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11092\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/burning.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11092\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/burning.jpg\" alt=\"The firefighters set the fire in spots then let it spread uphill. (Molly Samuel/KQED)\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The firefighters set the fire in spots then let it spread uphill. (Molly Samuel/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A Success and a Nightmare Scenario\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If this summer’s Rim Fire — the largest known fire in the Sierra Nevada and the third-largest in California history — is a lesson in the dangers of fire suppression, it also offers glimmers of hope about the benefits of prescribed burns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Where I started my division assignment on the Rim Fire, was in areas where the Forest Service had recently completed some prescribed burns,” says Tom Garcia, the fire manager at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area. “And we were able to stall that fire out in that particular area and buy some decision space and some time.” With that extra time, Garcia says, they were able to get ahead of the fire, and save some nearby homes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11098\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 308px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/ericknapp.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-11098 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/ericknapp.jpg\" alt=\"Eric Knapp, an ecologist with the Forest Service, says we're going to have to accept more frequent fires. (Molly Samuel/KQED)\" width=\"308\" height=\"431\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Eric Knapp, an ecologist with the Forest Service, says we’re going to have to accept more frequent fires. (Molly Samuel/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“My real nightmare scenario is current conditions going forward,” says Stephens. He says he hopes the Rim Fire will serve as a turning point: a glimpse of the path we’re on, and an opportunity to choose a different path that includes more thinning, more prescribed burns and more ability to manage and take advantage of fires that start naturally. A few of the National Forests in California are currently reviewing their management plans, and Stephens says he sees that as an opportunity to bring in more fire, too. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we don’t do it now we’re going to set people up in the future for less decision space. They’re going to have less options. It’s going to be warmer. It’s going to have longer drier periods,” he says. “50 years from now, 80 years from now, they will just wish that we would have moved.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Knapp, the Forest Service ecologist, says he’s optimistic about the future. But major wildfires will be a part of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re going to have to accept the fact that we live in an environment with occasional fire and that fire is more intense,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because after a century of admonishments from Smokey Bear, even with the best efforts of firefighters, even with prescribed burns and logging and managed wildland fire, the era of catastrophic fires is upon us.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "People who fight and study fire generally agree that one of the best tools for preventing massive wildfires is prescribed burning: intentionally setting smaller fires before the big ones hit. But there are major challenges to fighting fire with fire.",
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"description": "People who fight and study fire generally agree that one of the best tools for preventing massive wildfires is prescribed burning: intentionally setting smaller fires before the big ones hit. But there are major challenges to fighting fire with fire.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cdiv class=\"audio-wrap\">\n\u003ch2>Listen:\u003c/h2>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/div>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11068\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/nightburn-large.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11068\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/nightburn-large.jpg\" alt=\"A nighttime prescribed burn in the Stanislaus National Forest in California's Sierra Nevada. (Eric Knapp/U.S. Forest Service)\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A nighttime prescribed burn in the Stanislaus National Forest in California’s Sierra Nevada. (Eric Knapp/U.S. Forest Service)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Rim Fire, which consumed more than 250,000 acres in and around Yosemite National Park this summer, is a prime example of America’s dangerous legacy of putting out too many wildfires. After a century of suppressing the flames, firefighting agencies have let the brush and small trees get so thick, that when a fire does get going, it can turn into a monster.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People who fight and study fire generally agree that one of the best tools for preventing massive wildfires is prescribed burning: intentionally setting smaller fires before the big ones hit. But there are major challenges to fighting fire with fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Setting the Forest on Fire\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a sunny day earlier this fall, about 50 Forest Service firefighters, mostly men, all wearing the Forest Service uniform of fire-resistant bright yellow shirts and fire-resistant dark green pants, are working a prescribed burn in the Shasta National Forest, near Redding, California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.kqed.org/assets/slideshow/fightfirewithfire/_files/iframe.html?noscale=640x400\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Setting fire to a forest actually requires many of the same tactics as putting one out. The crews are planning today to burn a slope near Shasta Lake, bordered on three sides by fire lines, and on the fourth by the lake itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They had earlier cleared fire lines, strips without brush and leaves, that will contain the flames. As they begin their work this morning, they burn what they call “the black,” an area ahead of and along the edges of the area to be burned that creates a safety zone for them and helps keep the fire from spreading. Then, beginning at the top of the ridge and working their way down (fire travels uphill, so this helps keep it in check), the crews set flame to dead leaves, and let the fire do its work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11079\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/settingfire.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11079\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/settingfire.jpg\" alt=\"A firefighter works a prescribed burn at the Shasta National Forest.(Molly Samuel/KQED)\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A firefighter works a prescribed burn at the Shasta National Forest.(Molly Samuel/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This is not a scene from \u003cem>“Bambi,”\u003c/em> with flames raging and animals fleeing. For the most part, the fire barely reaches a foot high. It kills bushes and smaller trees and clears out leaves and brush. But most of the bigger, older trees survive. Fires like this have, on occasion, gotten out of control and turned into wildfires in their own right. But this one is well under control. It’s the end of the wildfire season, and the firefighters — many of whom are on the elite hotshot teams that fight the biggest fires — are relaxed while monitoring the flames, talking about their kids and their dogs. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I always like seeing fire on the ground,” says Eric Knapp, an ecologist with the Forest Service. He says prescribed burns are good for the environment, for animals, for preventing massive wildfires and for keeping firefighters and the public safe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But getting them done is tricky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11081\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/fireline.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11081 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/fireline.jpg\" alt=\"A fire line marks the left-hand side of the burn. (It looks like a hiking trail.) The area to the left of the line burned previously. (Molly Samuel/KQED)\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A fire line marks the left-hand side of the burn. (It looks like a hiking trail.) The area to the left of the line burned previously. (Molly Samuel/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>It’s Not Easy to Fight Fire with Fire\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The window for conducting prescribed burns is narrow: when it’s dry enough that a fire will start, but not so dry that it will rage. “We have a limited opportunity to burn, maybe a week or two every year,” says Knapp. “And (we have) a limited number of resources to get a lot of acres done.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Often the people conducting the burns are seasonal firefighters, who are only budgeted for six months. “A lot of their seasons are spent dealing with wildfire during the hotter, drier times,” says Knapp. In fact, at the Shasta burn, some of the firefighters are on the second-to-last day of their contracts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there’s the smoke. “It’s a carcinogen,” Knapp acknowledges. “And there are people who are legitimately strongly affected.” Because of that, regional air quality districts tightly regulate prescribed burns. Another burn, scheduled to take place near Redding on the same day we went to Shasta, was cancelled because of smoke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11083\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/smoke.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11083\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/smoke.jpg\" alt=\"Smoke rises from the prescribed burn at the Shasta National Forest. (Molly Samuel/KQED)\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Smoke rises from the prescribed burn at the Shasta National Forest. (Molly Samuel/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And sometimes it just comes down to a public relations issue. Not everyone sees the benefit of starting fires. “There’s a consensus among the scientists and the land managers,” Knapp says. “I don’t believe there’s a consensus in the public.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">It’s like we’re losing the race, we’re just not losing it quite as fast.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>It all adds up to mean that not enough acres burn. “Every year we fall further behind and the fuel continues to build up,” says Knapp. “If it weren’t for prescribed burning, we’d fall behind even more. But it’s like we’re losing the race, we’re just not losing it quite as fast.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Backlog\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In California alone, about 15 million acres of forest are in need of some kind of treatment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re in a huge deficit,” says Scott Stephens, a fire scientist at University of California, Berkeley. Before the year 1800, he says, 4.5 million acres burned in California every year. Fires started either by Native Americans or by lightning were generally smaller and less intense, but much more frequent. Many areas burned every ten years or so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11089\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/firefighters.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11089\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/firefighters.jpg\" alt=\"Firefighters monitor the flames and keep the burn on the right side of the fire line. (Molly Samuel/KQED)\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Firefighters monitor the flames and keep the burn on the right side of the fire line. (Molly Samuel/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But because of aggressive fire suppression policies that managers followed for decades, many places haven’t burned in a century or more. Some forests are so overgrown, they have ten times the number of trees as they had historically. That’s the difference between running through the trees, arms outstretched, maybe with a couple of friends by your side, and not being able to crawl through. Forests like these are more susceptible to giant wildfires, because there’s more fuel to burn and it burns hotter.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">We’re carrying these forests that are incredibly vulnerable forward into climate change. It’s a disaster really.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“We’re carrying these forests that are incredibly vulnerable forward into climate change,” says Stephens. “It’s a disaster really.” Because, he explains, California’s changing climate will make the fire season longer, and the prescribed-burn season shorter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Caught in the middle are the firefighting agencies, each with different approaches and priorities. The National Park Service and the Forest Service both have prescribed burn programs, but while the parks are concerned with conservation, the Forest Service must also take into account logging, and other land uses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state agency, CalFire, has its own constraints, fighting many wildfires close to development in the “wildland-urban interface.” This mingling of forest and residential areas makes prescribed burns still more difficult.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11092\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/burning.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11092\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/burning.jpg\" alt=\"The firefighters set the fire in spots then let it spread uphill. (Molly Samuel/KQED)\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The firefighters set the fire in spots then let it spread uphill. (Molly Samuel/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A Success and a Nightmare Scenario\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If this summer’s Rim Fire — the largest known fire in the Sierra Nevada and the third-largest in California history — is a lesson in the dangers of fire suppression, it also offers glimmers of hope about the benefits of prescribed burns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Where I started my division assignment on the Rim Fire, was in areas where the Forest Service had recently completed some prescribed burns,” says Tom Garcia, the fire manager at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area. “And we were able to stall that fire out in that particular area and buy some decision space and some time.” With that extra time, Garcia says, they were able to get ahead of the fire, and save some nearby homes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11098\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 308px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/ericknapp.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-11098 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/ericknapp.jpg\" alt=\"Eric Knapp, an ecologist with the Forest Service, says we're going to have to accept more frequent fires. (Molly Samuel/KQED)\" width=\"308\" height=\"431\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Eric Knapp, an ecologist with the Forest Service, says we’re going to have to accept more frequent fires. (Molly Samuel/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“My real nightmare scenario is current conditions going forward,” says Stephens. He says he hopes the Rim Fire will serve as a turning point: a glimpse of the path we’re on, and an opportunity to choose a different path that includes more thinning, more prescribed burns and more ability to manage and take advantage of fires that start naturally. A few of the National Forests in California are currently reviewing their management plans, and Stephens says he sees that as an opportunity to bring in more fire, too. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we don’t do it now we’re going to set people up in the future for less decision space. They’re going to have less options. It’s going to be warmer. It’s going to have longer drier periods,” he says. “50 years from now, 80 years from now, they will just wish that we would have moved.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Knapp, the Forest Service ecologist, says he’s optimistic about the future. But major wildfires will be a part of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re going to have to accept the fact that we live in an environment with occasional fire and that fire is more intense,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because after a century of admonishments from Smokey Bear, even with the best efforts of firefighters, even with prescribed burns and logging and managed wildland fire, the era of catastrophic fires is upon us.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10766\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/anticecore.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-10766\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10766\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/anticecore.jpg\" alt=\"scientist checks an ice core\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michelle Koutnik of the University of Copenhagen’s Center for Ice and Climate prepares an Antarctic ice core for transport to the lab. NASA photo by Lora Koenig\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A large team of Antarctic researchers has published instructions for locating the oldest available samples of the ancient atmosphere. If their thinking is correct, we ought to be able to retrieve air from Antarctica’s ice sheets that’s almost twice as old as what we have today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ancient ice is a crucially important source of information about global climates of the past. Although the ice itself is a valuable record of regional conditions, the real prize is the air bubbles preserved in it. Because the gases in the atmosphere are so well mixed by winds and weather, even a tiny sample is a faithful record of the whole world. Ice is the gold standard for researching ancient atmospheres. Today’s longest ice cores have given us a record that goes back about 800,000 years. The new paper, \u003ca href=\"http://www.clim-past.net/9/2489/2013/cp-9-2489-2013.html\">published this month in the open-access journal \u003cem>Climate of the Past\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, raises the possibility of ice as old as 1.5 million years and outlines how to locate it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We have evidence of ancient climates from other sources: sediment layers on the seafloor preserve microscopic fossils, for instance. These can tell us something about ocean temperatures at different depths in the sea. Those sediment layers pile up essentially forever, too, much longer than ice lasts. But that evidence is always indirect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ice is best, but it is geologically perishable. Ice begins to flow as it reaches a thickness of a hundred meters or so. Even on a dead level, it spreads sideways, stretching its annual layers thinner and thinner. At greater thicknesses, ice sheets start to melt at the bottom because of geothermal heat from the Earth’s crust beneath. The oldest possible ice must lie in places with a delicate balance between accumulation and destruction, and that’s what the paper’s authors, led by Hubertus Fischer of the University of Bern, set out to calculate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fischer’s team already knew that sites where Antarctic ice is piled on a high bedrock plateau are best for minimizing flow of all kinds. These are known as domes. The 800,000-year ice core was drilled on Antarctica’s Dome C. But the team showed that Dome C’s very thick ice makes the bottom melt faster than a dome with thinner ice would, limiting the age of its ice. A dome with thinner ice might actually have a longer record. To help their search for older ice the scientists used the latest “hugely improved data set” showing Antarctica’s ice thickness, made using high-powered radar, which easily penetrates ice. Subtracting the ice thickness from the ice surface yielded the best map yet of Antarctica’s hidden bedrock surface.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10767\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/antarctic-ice.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-10767\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10767\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/antarctic-ice.png\" alt=\"Antarctic ice thickness and surface topography\" width=\"600\" height=\"322\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Antarctic ice thickness (left) and derived surface topography (right), from Figure 8 of Fischer et al. (2013)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The sweet spot would be a dome site where the ice is no more than 2.5 kilometers thick. The oldest decent ice would lie about 100 meters above bedrock, because ice flow smears and disrupts the bottom layers. The best sites should also not be windy, to avoid scouring of the ice and “wind glazing” (whereas such “blue ice” regions are superb for hunting meteorites in Antarctica). Fischer’s team ran their maps through their model to yield a map of likely prospects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10768\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/old-icemap.gif\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-10768\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10768\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/old-icemap.gif\" alt=\"Targets for the oldest ice\" width=\"600\" height=\"488\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">From Figure 11 of Fischer et al. (2013). The dark outline between Domes A and C is subglacial Lake Vostok\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Domes A, C, and F look the most promising, but the details matter—there are buried mountain ranges and deep valleys, where the lowest ice would be roiled to uselessness. There is also the unknown degree of geothermal heating underneath different sites. When the search gets serious, detailed radar studies would pick out internal details of the ice. Fischer’s team recommends a strategy of drilling a lot of rapid, shallow holes before launching an expensive coring mission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The paper is not an academic exercise, but part of efforts to plan a drilling campaign that would capture the oldest possible samples of Earth’s atmosphere. With the right international support—and that assumes no more government shutdowns like last month’s, which disrupted a whole year of American research in Antarctica—the goal could be reached in a decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This news is not just cool; it’s important. In looking at the future, all we have to go on is the past and the present. Climate scientists use past and present data to build computer models of the global climate. These promise to give us useful pictures of how the world will respond to the atmospheric changes that humans are causing today. The better these models work, the more meaningful it will be when we use them to explore alternative futures.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10766\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/anticecore.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-10766\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10766\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/anticecore.jpg\" alt=\"scientist checks an ice core\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michelle Koutnik of the University of Copenhagen’s Center for Ice and Climate prepares an Antarctic ice core for transport to the lab. NASA photo by Lora Koenig\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A large team of Antarctic researchers has published instructions for locating the oldest available samples of the ancient atmosphere. If their thinking is correct, we ought to be able to retrieve air from Antarctica’s ice sheets that’s almost twice as old as what we have today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ancient ice is a crucially important source of information about global climates of the past. Although the ice itself is a valuable record of regional conditions, the real prize is the air bubbles preserved in it. Because the gases in the atmosphere are so well mixed by winds and weather, even a tiny sample is a faithful record of the whole world. Ice is the gold standard for researching ancient atmospheres. Today’s longest ice cores have given us a record that goes back about 800,000 years. The new paper, \u003ca href=\"http://www.clim-past.net/9/2489/2013/cp-9-2489-2013.html\">published this month in the open-access journal \u003cem>Climate of the Past\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, raises the possibility of ice as old as 1.5 million years and outlines how to locate it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We have evidence of ancient climates from other sources: sediment layers on the seafloor preserve microscopic fossils, for instance. These can tell us something about ocean temperatures at different depths in the sea. Those sediment layers pile up essentially forever, too, much longer than ice lasts. But that evidence is always indirect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ice is best, but it is geologically perishable. Ice begins to flow as it reaches a thickness of a hundred meters or so. Even on a dead level, it spreads sideways, stretching its annual layers thinner and thinner. At greater thicknesses, ice sheets start to melt at the bottom because of geothermal heat from the Earth’s crust beneath. The oldest possible ice must lie in places with a delicate balance between accumulation and destruction, and that’s what the paper’s authors, led by Hubertus Fischer of the University of Bern, set out to calculate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fischer’s team already knew that sites where Antarctic ice is piled on a high bedrock plateau are best for minimizing flow of all kinds. These are known as domes. The 800,000-year ice core was drilled on Antarctica’s Dome C. But the team showed that Dome C’s very thick ice makes the bottom melt faster than a dome with thinner ice would, limiting the age of its ice. A dome with thinner ice might actually have a longer record. To help their search for older ice the scientists used the latest “hugely improved data set” showing Antarctica’s ice thickness, made using high-powered radar, which easily penetrates ice. Subtracting the ice thickness from the ice surface yielded the best map yet of Antarctica’s hidden bedrock surface.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10767\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/antarctic-ice.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-10767\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10767\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/antarctic-ice.png\" alt=\"Antarctic ice thickness and surface topography\" width=\"600\" height=\"322\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Antarctic ice thickness (left) and derived surface topography (right), from Figure 8 of Fischer et al. (2013)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The sweet spot would be a dome site where the ice is no more than 2.5 kilometers thick. The oldest decent ice would lie about 100 meters above bedrock, because ice flow smears and disrupts the bottom layers. The best sites should also not be windy, to avoid scouring of the ice and “wind glazing” (whereas such “blue ice” regions are superb for hunting meteorites in Antarctica). Fischer’s team ran their maps through their model to yield a map of likely prospects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10768\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/old-icemap.gif\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-10768\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10768\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/old-icemap.gif\" alt=\"Targets for the oldest ice\" width=\"600\" height=\"488\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">From Figure 11 of Fischer et al. (2013). The dark outline between Domes A and C is subglacial Lake Vostok\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Domes A, C, and F look the most promising, but the details matter—there are buried mountain ranges and deep valleys, where the lowest ice would be roiled to uselessness. There is also the unknown degree of geothermal heating underneath different sites. When the search gets serious, detailed radar studies would pick out internal details of the ice. Fischer’s team recommends a strategy of drilling a lot of rapid, shallow holes before launching an expensive coring mission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The paper is not an academic exercise, but part of efforts to plan a drilling campaign that would capture the oldest possible samples of Earth’s atmosphere. With the right international support—and that assumes no more government shutdowns like last month’s, which disrupted a whole year of American research in Antarctica—the goal could be reached in a decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This news is not just cool; it’s important. In looking at the future, all we have to go on is the past and the present. Climate scientists use past and present data to build computer models of the global climate. These promise to give us useful pictures of how the world will respond to the atmospheric changes that humans are causing today. The better these models work, the more meaningful it will be when we use them to explore alternative futures.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Peter Lollo / KQED News\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10732\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 215px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/RS696_Download090427-061-scr-215x162.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-10732\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/RS696_Download090427-061-scr-215x162.jpg\" alt=\"California's climate change policies are cutting emissions, but not enough, according to a report from Berkeley Lab. (Craig Miller/KQED)\" width=\"215\" height=\"162\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">California’s climate change policies are cutting emissions, but not enough, according to a report from Berkeley Lab. (Craig Miller/KQED) \u003ccite>(Craig Miller/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>California is not on track to meet its ambitious greenhouse gas reduction goals, according to a \u003ca href=\"http://eetd.lbl.gov/publications/estimating-policy-driven-greenhouse-g\">study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory\u003c/a>. The report, released on Monday, found that California’s current energy policies have put the state on track to meet its \u003ca href=\"http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/ab32/ab32.htm\">2020 target\u003c/a>, which is to bring greenhouse gas emissions down to 1990 levels. But without adopting more aggressive tactics, the state will not meet its \u003ca href=\"http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/energy/ExecOrderS-3-05.htm\">2050 goal\u003c/a> to reduce emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The set of policies that we have — the renewable portfolio standard, the low-carbon fuel standard, vehicle efficiencies, zero net energy buildings, more efficient appliance standard, et cetera et cetera — are all very helpful,” said Berkeley Lab scientist Jeffery Greenblatt, who led the study. But, he said, taken by themselves, these policies will not get the state to its long-term emissions goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re going to have to develop some additional policies to get us all the way to the 2050 target and we’re going to have to invest in more technology R&D in order to have those lower-carbon technologies available.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Greenblatt recommended that the state invest in biofuels, derive 100 percent of its energy from renewable sources and develop more energy storage. Storage will become especially important as more and more power is acquired from fluctuating, intermittent sources like wind and solar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California Air Resources Board, the agency charged with implementing California’s emissions goals, acknowledged the gap between current policy and long-term targets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We agree that there’s more that needs to be done,” said Dave Clegern of the Air Board. He said that the state has been focused on meeting the 2020 goals, but now officials are drafting a new plan to help guide future energy policy. “It’s the first one to really look beyond 2020,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That plan is expected to be completed by March of next year.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Peter Lollo / KQED News\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10732\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 215px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/RS696_Download090427-061-scr-215x162.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-10732\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/11/RS696_Download090427-061-scr-215x162.jpg\" alt=\"California's climate change policies are cutting emissions, but not enough, according to a report from Berkeley Lab. (Craig Miller/KQED)\" width=\"215\" height=\"162\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">California’s climate change policies are cutting emissions, but not enough, according to a report from Berkeley Lab. (Craig Miller/KQED) \u003ccite>(Craig Miller/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>California is not on track to meet its ambitious greenhouse gas reduction goals, according to a \u003ca href=\"http://eetd.lbl.gov/publications/estimating-policy-driven-greenhouse-g\">study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory\u003c/a>. The report, released on Monday, found that California’s current energy policies have put the state on track to meet its \u003ca href=\"http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/ab32/ab32.htm\">2020 target\u003c/a>, which is to bring greenhouse gas emissions down to 1990 levels. But without adopting more aggressive tactics, the state will not meet its \u003ca href=\"http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/energy/ExecOrderS-3-05.htm\">2050 goal\u003c/a> to reduce emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The set of policies that we have — the renewable portfolio standard, the low-carbon fuel standard, vehicle efficiencies, zero net energy buildings, more efficient appliance standard, et cetera et cetera — are all very helpful,” said Berkeley Lab scientist Jeffery Greenblatt, who led the study. But, he said, taken by themselves, these policies will not get the state to its long-term emissions goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re going to have to develop some additional policies to get us all the way to the 2050 target and we’re going to have to invest in more technology R&D in order to have those lower-carbon technologies available.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Greenblatt recommended that the state invest in biofuels, derive 100 percent of its energy from renewable sources and develop more energy storage. Storage will become especially important as more and more power is acquired from fluctuating, intermittent sources like wind and solar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10385\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/IMG_3146.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-10385\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10385\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/IMG_3146.jpg\" alt=\"Late-summer sunset over San Francisco Bay. (Craig Miller)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Late-summer sunset over San Francisco Bay. (Craig Miller)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>California has joined with Oregon, Washington and British Columbia in a \u003ca title=\"Gov Brown - release\" href=\"http://cert1.mail-west.com/jnX/rmaKy/mc7/1aKgtmyuzjan/avdg1/vnqaKrmp1rm819/teg11aKq/5pm2qq73alijo?_c=d%7Cze7pzanwmhlzgt%7C11trgyn37dd2zc5&_ce=1383006344.02379dfd281eefbdcb79ccc9e24c445a\">new multi-pronged attack\u003c/a> on climate change and its impacts. Describing it as a “small-but-powerful first step,” California Governor Jerry Brown conceded that the newly-minted Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy won’t by itself reverse the current long-term warming trend. But, he promised, “this will spread.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And while the pact has no binding legal authority on any of the parties, leaders of all four governments have agreed, in part, to:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>– \u003cstrong>Put a price on carbon.\u003c/strong> California and BC have already done this, using a combination of carbon markets and taxes. California’s year-old \u003ca title=\"Q-Sci - post\" href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/audio/cap-and-trade-101-how-californias-carbon-market-works/\">cap-and-trade program\u003c/a> is part of a comprehensive plan set in motion by the state’s landmark \u003ca title=\"Wiki - AB 32\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming_Solutions_Act_of_2006\">2006 climate law\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>– \u003cstrong>Synchronize their watches.\u003c/strong> The four will “harmonize 2050 targets for greenhouse gas reductions” and also seek a more definitive “mid-range” target for emissions cuts by 2030 or thereabout. California’s current 2050 target is backed only by an executive order issued during the Schwarzenegger administration, not by legislation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>– \u003cstrong>Attack ocean acidification.\u003c/strong> The states and province say they’ll “urge” their respective federal governments to “take action on ocean acidification,” which scientists say is a threat to the marine food web.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>– \u003cstrong>Green up transportation.\u003c/strong> Among the more specific goals is one to “work together toward” \u003ca title=\"Q-Sci - post\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/10/24/california-joins-eight-state-roadmap-toward-more-electric-cars/\">juicing the market for electric cars\u003c/a> and other zero-emissions vehicles. In one of the few specific goals outlined by the basic agreement, the region is pledged to “take action” to transform the car market, so that by 2016, 10 percent of new car purchases are ZEVs (California’s current goal is 15% by 2025). All have committed to some form of low-carbon standard for transportation fuels. California has one, though it is being challenged in the courts. The parties also pledge to “continue deployment of high-speed rail across the region.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agreement also contains a five-point plan to boost renewable energy and modernize the electrical grid, along with the usual assertions to base policy on sound climate science and to continue the push toward a global climate agreement, something that the UN Framework has yet to achieve after two decades of talks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Washington Governor Jay Inslee summed up the call to action succinctly, saying that, “While progress in Washington, DC is strangled by climate deniers, there is no denying the fact that the West Coast is rip-roarin’ and ready to go.” But that hasn’t always been the case. Take the case of the ill-fated Western Climate Initiative, in which several states and provinces were to launch a unified carbon market. So far, \u003ca title=\"CARB - release\" href=\"http://www.arb.ca.gov/newsrel/newsrelease.php?id=508\">only Quebec has committed\u003c/a> (starting next year). British Columbia forged ahead with a carbon tax of its own while Oregon and Washington adopted a wait-and-see stance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>– \u003cstrong>Green up transportation.\u003c/strong> Among the more specific goals is one to “work together toward” \u003ca title=\"Q-Sci - post\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/10/24/california-joins-eight-state-roadmap-toward-more-electric-cars/\">juicing the market for electric cars\u003c/a> and other zero-emissions vehicles. In one of the few specific goals outlined by the basic agreement, the region is pledged to “take action” to transform the car market, so that by 2016, 10 percent of new car purchases are ZEVs (California’s current goal is 15% by 2025). All have committed to some form of low-carbon standard for transportation fuels. California has one, though it is being challenged in the courts. The parties also pledge to “continue deployment of high-speed rail across the region.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agreement also contains a five-point plan to boost renewable energy and modernize the electrical grid, along with the usual assertions to base policy on sound climate science and to continue the push toward a global climate agreement, something that the UN Framework has yet to achieve after two decades of talks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Washington Governor Jay Inslee summed up the call to action succinctly, saying that, “While progress in Washington, DC is strangled by climate deniers, there is no denying the fact that the West Coast is rip-roarin’ and ready to go.” But that hasn’t always been the case. Take the case of the ill-fated Western Climate Initiative, in which several states and provinces were to launch a unified carbon market. So far, \u003ca title=\"CARB - release\" href=\"http://www.arb.ca.gov/newsrel/newsrelease.php?id=508\">only Quebec has committed\u003c/a> (starting next year). British Columbia forged ahead with a carbon tax of its own while Oregon and Washington adopted a wait-and-see stance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "California Joins Eight-State Roadmap To More Electric Cars",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10229\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/IMG_0012_crop.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-10229\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10229\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/IMG_0012_crop.jpg\" alt='An electric car \"fuels up\" at a public charger in Sacramento. (Craig Miller/KQED)' width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An electric car “fuels up” at a public charger in Sacramento. (Craig Miller/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Transportation wonks prefer to call them ZEVs, or \u003ca title=\"OPR - ZEVs\" href=\"http://www.opr.ca.gov/s_zero-emissionvehicles.php\">zero-emission-vehicles\u003c/a>. Eight governors, including California Governor Jerry Brown want more of them on the road. So the group has signed a “memorandum” in which they pledge to “join forces to revolutionize the automobile market by promoting zero-emission vehicles.” In a joint statement, Brown called the move, “a serious and profoundly important commitment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv title=\"Page 1\">\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cp>The goal is to get 3.3 million of them on the road by 2025 and along the way, “to help build a \u003ca title=\"Autoblog - post\" href=\"http://green.autoblog.com/2013/10/11/global-electric-vehicle-sales-will-jump-48-each-year-through-20/\">robust national market\u003c/a> for electric and hydrogen-powered cars,” according to the multi-state news release. Exactly how they’ll go about that will be mapped out over the next six months. Specific actions are likely to include revamping building codes to standardize vehicle charging stations, and “developing streamlined metering options for homes equipped with electric vehicle chargers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It could also mean more rebates or other perks for those who buy ZEVs, though it’s up to each state to:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>“…evaluate the need for, and effectiveness of, monetary incentives to reduce the upfront purchase price of ZEVs and non-monetary incentives, such as HOV lane access, reduced tolls and preferential parking, and to pursue such incentives as appropriate.”\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>California already has a rebate program in place, freshly re-funded by lawmakers. California also has the majority of ZEVs already on the road — about 50,000, compared to 15,000 for all of the other states in the pact combined. Most of the other states are back east — Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont. But combined, the eight states represent about a quarter of the US car market. All of them have adopted targets for 15% of new car sales to be ZEVs by 2025.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv title=\"Page 1\">\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cp>Broadly defined, zero-emission vehicles can be battery-electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid-electrics, or hydrogen fuel-cell-electric vehicles. But hydrogen models and infrastructure are \u003ca title=\"Wired - post\" href=\"http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/10/elon-musk-hydrogen/\">running far behind\u003c/a> electrics in ramping up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The states argue that they’re not rushing the technology, citing the 16 zero-emission vehicle models currently available from eight manufacturers. They also point to recent sales figures showing that “U.S. electric car sales in 2012 more than tripled to about 52,000 from 17,000 in 2011,” and that 40,000 plug-ins were sold in the first half of this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I know that electric cars are being sold at about three times the rate of where I understand the Prius was at this point in its rollout,” says Dave Clegern of the California Air Resources Board. “The market is definitely taking off. It’s just a question of getting it in place in a way that makes it easier for expansion.”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10229\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/IMG_0012_crop.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-10229\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10229\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/IMG_0012_crop.jpg\" alt='An electric car \"fuels up\" at a public charger in Sacramento. (Craig Miller/KQED)' width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An electric car “fuels up” at a public charger in Sacramento. (Craig Miller/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Transportation wonks prefer to call them ZEVs, or \u003ca title=\"OPR - ZEVs\" href=\"http://www.opr.ca.gov/s_zero-emissionvehicles.php\">zero-emission-vehicles\u003c/a>. Eight governors, including California Governor Jerry Brown want more of them on the road. So the group has signed a “memorandum” in which they pledge to “join forces to revolutionize the automobile market by promoting zero-emission vehicles.” In a joint statement, Brown called the move, “a serious and profoundly important commitment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv title=\"Page 1\">\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cp>The goal is to get 3.3 million of them on the road by 2025 and along the way, “to help build a \u003ca title=\"Autoblog - post\" href=\"http://green.autoblog.com/2013/10/11/global-electric-vehicle-sales-will-jump-48-each-year-through-20/\">robust national market\u003c/a> for electric and hydrogen-powered cars,” according to the multi-state news release. Exactly how they’ll go about that will be mapped out over the next six months. Specific actions are likely to include revamping building codes to standardize vehicle charging stations, and “developing streamlined metering options for homes equipped with electric vehicle chargers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It could also mean more rebates or other perks for those who buy ZEVs, though it’s up to each state to:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>“…evaluate the need for, and effectiveness of, monetary incentives to reduce the upfront purchase price of ZEVs and non-monetary incentives, such as HOV lane access, reduced tolls and preferential parking, and to pursue such incentives as appropriate.”\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>California already has a rebate program in place, freshly re-funded by lawmakers. California also has the majority of ZEVs already on the road — about 50,000, compared to 15,000 for all of the other states in the pact combined. Most of the other states are back east — Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont. But combined, the eight states represent about a quarter of the US car market. All of them have adopted targets for 15% of new car sales to be ZEVs by 2025.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv title=\"Page 1\">\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cp>Broadly defined, zero-emission vehicles can be battery-electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid-electrics, or hydrogen fuel-cell-electric vehicles. But hydrogen models and infrastructure are \u003ca title=\"Wired - post\" href=\"http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/10/elon-musk-hydrogen/\">running far behind\u003c/a> electrics in ramping up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The states argue that they’re not rushing the technology, citing the 16 zero-emission vehicle models currently available from eight manufacturers. They also point to recent sales figures showing that “U.S. electric car sales in 2012 more than tripled to about 52,000 from 17,000 in 2011,” and that 40,000 plug-ins were sold in the first half of this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I know that electric cars are being sold at about three times the rate of where I understand the Prius was at this point in its rollout,” says Dave Clegern of the California Air Resources Board. “The market is definitely taking off. It’s just a question of getting it in place in a way that makes it easier for expansion.”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "New State Laws on Fracking and Toxics: A Mixed Bag for Environmentalists",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>By Amy Standen and Molly Samuel\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10027\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 216px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/Brown-signature-216x162.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-10027\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/Brown-signature-216x162.jpg\" alt=\"(Photo: Office of California Governor Jerry Brown)\" width=\"216\" height=\"162\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Photo: Office of California Governor Jerry Brown)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Here at KQED, like a lot of news outfits, we tend to cover bills before they pass, during the often fiery debates over whether they deserve the Governor’s signature. On Sunday, those debates (at least some of them) came to an end with the winding down of the legislative season.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much of the press went to the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2013/09/12/californias-minimum-wage/\">minimum wage boost\u003c/a> (raising workers’ hourly minimum from $8 to $10 an hour by January 2016) and a law granting \u003ca href=\"http://topics.sacbee.com/driver%27s+licenses/\">driver’s licenses\u003c/a> to undocumented immigrants. But there were a number of science and environment bills in the mix. Among California’s new environmental laws:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Hunters will be banned from using lead bullets. \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/10/11/to-protect-wildlife-california-bans-hunting-with-lead-bullets/\">This law\u003c/a>, the first of its kind in the country, was inspired largely by efforts to protect the \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/audio/with-condors-on-the-brink-california-considers-a-lead-bullet-ban-for-hunters/\">endangered California condor\u003c/a>. Scientists say condors suffer from lead poisoning when they eat carcasses left behind by hunters.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_9941\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 532px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/Condor-VWS.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-9941 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/Condor-VWS.jpg\" alt=\"Endangered California condors are among the wildlife at risk from eating lead bullets in carrion. (Tim Huntington, courtesy of the Ventana Wildlife Society)\" width=\"532\" height=\"297\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Endangered California condors are among the wildlife at risk from eating lead bullets in carrion. (Tim Huntington, courtesy of the Ventana Wildlife Society) \u003ccite>(Tim Huntington, courtesy of the Ventana Wildlife Society)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Renters will be able to choose to buy more renewable energy.\u003c/strong> \u003ca href=\"http://www.dailydemocrat.com/breakingnews/ci_24094654/wolks-community-green-energy-legislation-sent-governor\">The bill\u003c/a> makes it possible for customers of PG&E and the other big investor-owned utilities in California to buy up to 100% of their electricity from renewable sources. So if you’re a renter — or maybe your roof is just too shady for solar panels — you’ll have more access to solar and wind power.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Electricity rates will be overhauled. \u003c/strong>The law requires utilities to continue buying electricity generated by rooftop solar panels on people’s homes, an incentive known as \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/could-rooftop-solar-kill-utilities-california-grapples-with-solars-success-2/\">net metering\u003c/a>. It also allows a fixed charge on some people’s bills to help maintain the grid, creates a\u003ca href=\"http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-brown-energy-bills-20131008,0,6466305.story\"> new formula\u003c/a> which is intended to lower rates for people in hotter parts of the state and allows regulators to require that utilities \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Law-to-change-energy-rates-aid-renewable-power-4876504.php\">generate more power from renewable sources\u003c/a>.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>California and Nevada bury the hatchet over Tahoe. \u003c/strong>The bi-state Tahoe Regional Planning Agency was created by Congress in 1969 to end the rampant development that reduced the lake’s fabled clarity. Nevada threatened to leave the agency, but now \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/10/14/new-rules-for-lake-tahoe-development-give-locals-more-leverage/\">both Brown\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://gov.nv.gov/News-and-Media/Press/2013/Sandoval-Signs-TRPA-Bill/\">Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval\u003c/a> have signed on to continue working together.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10014\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 518px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/Tahoe_SandHarbor_7-11-13_0816_resized.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-10014 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/Tahoe_SandHarbor_7-11-13_0816_resized.jpg\" alt=\"Visitors like these in Sand Harbor, Nevada, are some of the 3 million yearly tourists that fuel Lake Tahoe’s economy. (Arwen Curry/KQED)\" width=\"518\" height=\"292\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Visitors like these in Sand Harbor, Nevada, are some of the 3 million yearly tourists that fuel Lake Tahoe’s economy. (Arwen Curry/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Pregnant women will be warned about toxic chemicals. \u003c/strong>Medical providers already give pregnant women a pamphlet on prenatal testing. Now they’ll also provide information about the dangers of chemical exposures.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Fire safety officials will weigh whether to use flame retardants in buildings. \u003c/strong>Previous laws required the use of chemical flame retardants in buildings but studies have shown that the \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/news/story/2013/03/28/118491/epa_asks_are_flame_retardants_safe?category=bay+area\">chemicals themselves could be dangerous\u003c/a>. This \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Law-may-cut-use-of-flame-retardants-in-buildings-4879854.php\">new law doesn’t ban their use\u003c/a>, but it does ask regulators to consider their options.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Environmentalists \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2013/09/16/111444/environmental-bills-failing-california\">suffered some setbacks\u003c/a>, too:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>A bill that regulates fracking in California passed, \u003c/strong>but \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2013/09/11/110875/fracking-bill-caifornia-senate-vote\">environmentalists aren’t happy\u003c/a> about it — they say it’s a “half measure.” The law requires drillers to report what chemicals they’re using and how much water they withdraw, but it does not introduce a moratorium on fracking, which some environmental groups wanted to see until more research is done on the impacts.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10038\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 512px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/frackingprotest.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-10038 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/frackingprotest.jpg\" alt=\"The group Californians Against Fracking staged a protest outside of California Gov. Jerry Brown's San Francisco offices demanding that Gov. Brown ban fracking in the state. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\" width=\"512\" height=\"288\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The group Californians Against Fracking staged a protest outside of California Gov. Jerry Brown’s San Francisco offices demanding that Gov. Brown ban fracking in the state. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>The California Coastal Commission will not be given the ability to issue fines.\u003c/strong> A bill would have \u003ca href=\"http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23653226/california-coastal-commission-bill-could-give-commission-teeth\">allowed the Coastal Commission to issue fines\u003c/a> for building illegal structures, blocking beach access or damaging habitat (as it is now, the Commission can’t fine people for violating the law), but it \u003ca href=\"http://articles.latimes.com/2013/sep/10/local/la-me-coastal-bill-20130911\">didn’t make it past the State Assembly\u003c/a>.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>A probe into whether California refineries are manipulating gas production and prices won’t happen. \u003c/strong>Gas prices in California are some of the highest in the country. That’s due at least in part to California’s strict \u003ca href=\"http://www.arb.ca.gov/fuels/lcfs/lcfs.htm\">air quality laws\u003c/a>. This bill would have assigned the California Energy Commission the task of tracking oil prices to find out if there is any price manipulation happening. Brown \u003ca href=\"http://gov.ca.gov/docs/SB_448_2013_Veto_Message.pdf\">vetoed the bill\u003c/a>.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Plastic bags won’t be banned statewide. \u003c/strong>California cities from \u003ca href=\"http://www.cawrecycles.org/issues/plastic_campaign/plastic_bags/local\">Ukiah to West Hollywood\u003c/a> have banned plastic bags, but an effort to introduce a statewide ban \u003ca href=\"http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/30/local/la-me-pc-plastic-bag-ban-20130530\">died in the State Senate\u003c/a>.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>And one new law that we don’t see landing squarely either in the environmentalists’ “wins” or “losses” list:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Prop. 65 will be slightly revised.\u003c/strong> The source of all those warning signs in businesses, Prop. 65 was passed by voters to reduce exposure to toxic chemicals, and it’s lead to a host of lawsuits — but \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/who-profits-from-proposition-65-part-one/\">some say many of them are frivolous\u003c/a>. The \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/business/networth/article/Prop-65-lawsuit-bill-helps-businesses-4876499.php\">new law\u003c/a> allows small businesses that are in violation of Prop. 65 to avoid an expensive lawsuit by putting up a sign and paying a fine.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Now that California's legislative session is now over, here's a roundup of the environmental bills that passed -- and a review of some big ones that didn't.",
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"description": "Now that California's legislative session is now over, here's a roundup of the environmental bills that passed -- and a review of some big ones that didn't.",
"title": "New State Laws on Fracking and Toxics: A Mixed Bag for Environmentalists | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>By Amy Standen and Molly Samuel\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10027\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 216px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/Brown-signature-216x162.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-10027\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/Brown-signature-216x162.jpg\" alt=\"(Photo: Office of California Governor Jerry Brown)\" width=\"216\" height=\"162\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Photo: Office of California Governor Jerry Brown)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Here at KQED, like a lot of news outfits, we tend to cover bills before they pass, during the often fiery debates over whether they deserve the Governor’s signature. On Sunday, those debates (at least some of them) came to an end with the winding down of the legislative season.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much of the press went to the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2013/09/12/californias-minimum-wage/\">minimum wage boost\u003c/a> (raising workers’ hourly minimum from $8 to $10 an hour by January 2016) and a law granting \u003ca href=\"http://topics.sacbee.com/driver%27s+licenses/\">driver’s licenses\u003c/a> to undocumented immigrants. But there were a number of science and environment bills in the mix. Among California’s new environmental laws:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Hunters will be banned from using lead bullets. \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/10/11/to-protect-wildlife-california-bans-hunting-with-lead-bullets/\">This law\u003c/a>, the first of its kind in the country, was inspired largely by efforts to protect the \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/audio/with-condors-on-the-brink-california-considers-a-lead-bullet-ban-for-hunters/\">endangered California condor\u003c/a>. Scientists say condors suffer from lead poisoning when they eat carcasses left behind by hunters.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_9941\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 532px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/Condor-VWS.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-9941 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/Condor-VWS.jpg\" alt=\"Endangered California condors are among the wildlife at risk from eating lead bullets in carrion. (Tim Huntington, courtesy of the Ventana Wildlife Society)\" width=\"532\" height=\"297\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Endangered California condors are among the wildlife at risk from eating lead bullets in carrion. (Tim Huntington, courtesy of the Ventana Wildlife Society) \u003ccite>(Tim Huntington, courtesy of the Ventana Wildlife Society)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Renters will be able to choose to buy more renewable energy.\u003c/strong> \u003ca href=\"http://www.dailydemocrat.com/breakingnews/ci_24094654/wolks-community-green-energy-legislation-sent-governor\">The bill\u003c/a> makes it possible for customers of PG&E and the other big investor-owned utilities in California to buy up to 100% of their electricity from renewable sources. So if you’re a renter — or maybe your roof is just too shady for solar panels — you’ll have more access to solar and wind power.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Electricity rates will be overhauled. \u003c/strong>The law requires utilities to continue buying electricity generated by rooftop solar panels on people’s homes, an incentive known as \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/could-rooftop-solar-kill-utilities-california-grapples-with-solars-success-2/\">net metering\u003c/a>. It also allows a fixed charge on some people’s bills to help maintain the grid, creates a\u003ca href=\"http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-brown-energy-bills-20131008,0,6466305.story\"> new formula\u003c/a> which is intended to lower rates for people in hotter parts of the state and allows regulators to require that utilities \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Law-to-change-energy-rates-aid-renewable-power-4876504.php\">generate more power from renewable sources\u003c/a>.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>California and Nevada bury the hatchet over Tahoe. \u003c/strong>The bi-state Tahoe Regional Planning Agency was created by Congress in 1969 to end the rampant development that reduced the lake’s fabled clarity. Nevada threatened to leave the agency, but now \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/10/14/new-rules-for-lake-tahoe-development-give-locals-more-leverage/\">both Brown\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://gov.nv.gov/News-and-Media/Press/2013/Sandoval-Signs-TRPA-Bill/\">Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval\u003c/a> have signed on to continue working together.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10014\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 518px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/Tahoe_SandHarbor_7-11-13_0816_resized.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-10014 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/Tahoe_SandHarbor_7-11-13_0816_resized.jpg\" alt=\"Visitors like these in Sand Harbor, Nevada, are some of the 3 million yearly tourists that fuel Lake Tahoe’s economy. (Arwen Curry/KQED)\" width=\"518\" height=\"292\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Visitors like these in Sand Harbor, Nevada, are some of the 3 million yearly tourists that fuel Lake Tahoe’s economy. (Arwen Curry/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Pregnant women will be warned about toxic chemicals. \u003c/strong>Medical providers already give pregnant women a pamphlet on prenatal testing. Now they’ll also provide information about the dangers of chemical exposures.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Fire safety officials will weigh whether to use flame retardants in buildings. \u003c/strong>Previous laws required the use of chemical flame retardants in buildings but studies have shown that the \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/news/story/2013/03/28/118491/epa_asks_are_flame_retardants_safe?category=bay+area\">chemicals themselves could be dangerous\u003c/a>. This \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Law-may-cut-use-of-flame-retardants-in-buildings-4879854.php\">new law doesn’t ban their use\u003c/a>, but it does ask regulators to consider their options.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Environmentalists \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2013/09/16/111444/environmental-bills-failing-california\">suffered some setbacks\u003c/a>, too:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>A bill that regulates fracking in California passed, \u003c/strong>but \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2013/09/11/110875/fracking-bill-caifornia-senate-vote\">environmentalists aren’t happy\u003c/a> about it — they say it’s a “half measure.” The law requires drillers to report what chemicals they’re using and how much water they withdraw, but it does not introduce a moratorium on fracking, which some environmental groups wanted to see until more research is done on the impacts.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10038\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 512px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/frackingprotest.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-10038 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/frackingprotest.jpg\" alt=\"The group Californians Against Fracking staged a protest outside of California Gov. Jerry Brown's San Francisco offices demanding that Gov. Brown ban fracking in the state. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\" width=\"512\" height=\"288\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The group Californians Against Fracking staged a protest outside of California Gov. Jerry Brown’s San Francisco offices demanding that Gov. Brown ban fracking in the state. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>The California Coastal Commission will not be given the ability to issue fines.\u003c/strong> A bill would have \u003ca href=\"http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23653226/california-coastal-commission-bill-could-give-commission-teeth\">allowed the Coastal Commission to issue fines\u003c/a> for building illegal structures, blocking beach access or damaging habitat (as it is now, the Commission can’t fine people for violating the law), but it \u003ca href=\"http://articles.latimes.com/2013/sep/10/local/la-me-coastal-bill-20130911\">didn’t make it past the State Assembly\u003c/a>.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>A probe into whether California refineries are manipulating gas production and prices won’t happen. \u003c/strong>Gas prices in California are some of the highest in the country. That’s due at least in part to California’s strict \u003ca href=\"http://www.arb.ca.gov/fuels/lcfs/lcfs.htm\">air quality laws\u003c/a>. This bill would have assigned the California Energy Commission the task of tracking oil prices to find out if there is any price manipulation happening. Brown \u003ca href=\"http://gov.ca.gov/docs/SB_448_2013_Veto_Message.pdf\">vetoed the bill\u003c/a>.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Plastic bags won’t be banned statewide. \u003c/strong>California cities from \u003ca href=\"http://www.cawrecycles.org/issues/plastic_campaign/plastic_bags/local\">Ukiah to West Hollywood\u003c/a> have banned plastic bags, but an effort to introduce a statewide ban \u003ca href=\"http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/30/local/la-me-pc-plastic-bag-ban-20130530\">died in the State Senate\u003c/a>.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>And one new law that we don’t see landing squarely either in the environmentalists’ “wins” or “losses” list:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Prop. 65 will be slightly revised.\u003c/strong> The source of all those warning signs in businesses, Prop. 65 was passed by voters to reduce exposure to toxic chemicals, and it’s lead to a host of lawsuits — but \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/who-profits-from-proposition-65-part-one/\">some say many of them are frivolous\u003c/a>. The \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/business/networth/article/Prop-65-lawsuit-bill-helps-businesses-4876499.php\">new law\u003c/a> allows small businesses that are in violation of Prop. 65 to avoid an expensive lawsuit by putting up a sign and paying a fine.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Watsonville Lacks Funds to Control Toxic Algae, Threatening Wildlife",
"headTitle": "Watsonville Lacks Funds to Control Toxic Algae, Threatening Wildlife | KQED",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"audio-wrap\">\n\u003ch2>Listen:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/science/2013/10/2013-10-07-science.mp3\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>By Krista Almanzan\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_9661\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/PINTO1_KA_crop.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-9661\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9661\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/PINTO1_KA_crop.jpg\" alt=\"The menace lurking in Pinto Lake isn't always obvious. (Krista Almanzan)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The menace lurking in Pinto Lake isn’t always obvious. (Krista Almanzan/KAZU)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In the Central Coast town of Watsonville, \u003ca href=\"http://www.pintolakepark.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pinto Lake City Park\u003c/a> is a fixture in the life of many locals, including 20-year-old Juan Perez. He’s been fishing off the jetty at the southern end of the lake since he was 8 years old. “I come out here whenever I can,” Perez said. He usually fishes for sport–catch and release–except late this summer when he caught more than 100 pounds of carp, winning Watsonville’s “Carpageddon” competition. The monthly $50 prize to the angler who removes the most carp from the lake is about all Watsonville can afford, to address the lake’s big problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nasty stuff\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pinto Lake is \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/09/24/california-lakes-toxic-algae-among-worst-in-u-s/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">plagued with chronic blooms\u003c/a> of a toxic blue-green algae called cyanobacteria. The algae feed on phosphorus from decades-old deposits of sediment in the lake. Farm fertilizers and leaky septic systems are also contributors, and the bottom-feeding carp stir that phosphorus up into the lake waters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_9662\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 350px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/PINTO-3-e1380900507238.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-9662\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9662\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/PINTO-3-e1380900507238.jpg\" alt=\"Blue green algae near the shore of Pinto Lake in Watsonville. (Krista Almanzan)\" width=\"350\" height=\"263\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Blue green algae near the shore of Pinto Lake in Watsonville. (Krista Almanzan/KAZU)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“So if we can reduce the amount of carp in the lake we can reduce the amount of phosphorus in the water column,” said Robert Ketley, a senior utilities engineer with the city of Watsonville. The algae stay green while they’re floating on the surface of the water and then turn blue where they’ve dried on shore. “The problem really manifests in the fall months, and that’s when you come down here and the lake will look luminescent green and will have an odor that you will either distinguish as ‘gym bag’ or ‘manure,’” Ketley said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Visitors may not always notice the small patches of algae floating on the lake but it’s hard to miss the signs along the shore warning people to avoid direct contact with the water. When it gets really bad, the lake has to be roped off. Patricia McQuade, who manages Pinto Lake City Park, including its RV campground and boat rentals, says she’s had to make changes to keep people from getting sick. For example, she no longer rents boats to families with kids. “Can’t do that,” McQuade told me on a recent visit. “We can’t let them on the water because a kid \u003cem>has\u003c/em> to put their hands over the side of the boat, right? Then they’re going to have to put their hands in their mouth.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Spiking the meter\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_9665\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 350px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/PINTO-4.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-9665\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9665\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/PINTO-4.jpg\" alt=\"Signs warn of the blue green algae at Watsonville's Pinto Lake. (Krista Almanzan)\" width=\"350\" height=\"263\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Signs warn of the blue green algae at Watsonville’s Pinto Lake. (Krista Almanzan/KAZU)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The algae produce a toxin called \u003ca href=\"http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/eh/hazardous/topics/bluegreenalgae.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">microcystin\u003c/a> that when touched or ingested can cause effects ranging from nausea to liver damage. The California health limit for the toxin is 0.8 parts-per-billion. Between 2009 and 2012, Pinto Lake averaged 84 ppb: 100 times the health limit. And one sample back in 2007 showed nearly 2.9 million ppb of microcystin. That’s the highest level of that toxin ever recorded in California: more than 3 million times the health limit. A \u003ca href=\"http://www.toxicalgaenews.com/toxic-algae-report-2013.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">new study\u003c/a> sponsored by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nwf.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">National Wildlife Federation\u003c/a> ranks Pinto Lake’s algae among the worst in the nation. The blooms have been linked to the deaths of birds, fish and even sea otters in nearby Monterey Bay. That’s because the lake’s waters eventually flow into the Pajaro River, which empties into the bay. Once Ketley and a researcher showed symptoms of exposure themselves. Otherwise there are no documented cases of people getting sick from the slime.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ketley says the algae will get worse when the rainy season kicks in. That’s when runoff from nearby agricultural fields and neighborhoods gives the biggest boost to phosphorus levels in the lake. The city plans to educate homeowners and businesses in the watershed about the effects of runoff, but that will only go so far. It’s also considering treating the lake with a chemical compound called \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alum\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">alum\u003c/a>. “You put alum into the lake,” Ketley said, “it binds up the phosphorus in the water column, and you create a barrier on the bottom of the lake, over the sediment, so that the phosphorus from the sediments can’t get up in the water column.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_9671\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 450px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/PINTO-2.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-9671\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9671\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/PINTO-2.jpg\" alt=\"Watsonville engineer Robert Ketley wants Pinto Lake to be a successful laboratory for countering algae. (Krista Almanzan) \" width=\"450\" height=\"338\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Watsonville engineer Robert Ketley wants Pinto Lake to be a successful laboratory for countering algae. (Krista Almanzan/KAZU)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He says the alum treatment will cost several hundred thousand dollars. It’s money Watsonville does not have. The city hasn’t recovered from the economic downturn, when it had to cut staff and services. So Ketley applied for a grant from the State Water Resources Control Board. He says Pinto is the perfect-sized laboratory lake for other California communities. “One of the things I really feel strongly about,” Ketley said, “is I want to make sure people see this as an opportunity to have a success story rather than doom and gloom–‘Oh no, toxic lake, bad situation.’ We can fix this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McQuade and other community members say it must be fixed. They recently formed a group called \u003ca href=\"http://friendsofpintolake.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Friends of Pinto Lake\u003c/a>. “When you think of how hard we work to save a redwood, maybe 300 years old,” McQuade offers for perspective, “this is 8,000 years old, so we have to do it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It could be months before Watsonville knows if it will get any state money to help clean up the algae and preserve this treasured lake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003c/em>\u003cem>Krista Almanzan reports for public radio station KAZU in the Monterey Bay Area. She has also produced stories for NPR and KQED.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The city of Watsonville has an expensive problem on its hands: toxic algae stirred up from the bottom of Pinto Lake makes the lake poisonous to humans and deadly to birds, fish, and even the otters in Monterey Bay, where the lake water eventually empties into the sea. Knowing how to clean it is one thing; paying for it is another.\r\n",
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"description": "The city of Watsonville has an expensive problem on its hands: toxic algae stirred up from the bottom of Pinto Lake makes the lake poisonous to humans and deadly to birds, fish, and even the otters in Monterey Bay, where the lake water eventually empties into the sea. Knowing how to clean it is one thing; paying for it is another.\r\n",
"title": "Watsonville Lacks Funds to Control Toxic Algae, Threatening Wildlife | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cdiv class=\"audio-wrap\">\n\u003ch2>Listen:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/science/2013/10/2013-10-07-science.mp3\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>By Krista Almanzan\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_9661\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/PINTO1_KA_crop.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-9661\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9661\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/PINTO1_KA_crop.jpg\" alt=\"The menace lurking in Pinto Lake isn't always obvious. (Krista Almanzan)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The menace lurking in Pinto Lake isn’t always obvious. (Krista Almanzan/KAZU)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In the Central Coast town of Watsonville, \u003ca href=\"http://www.pintolakepark.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pinto Lake City Park\u003c/a> is a fixture in the life of many locals, including 20-year-old Juan Perez. He’s been fishing off the jetty at the southern end of the lake since he was 8 years old. “I come out here whenever I can,” Perez said. He usually fishes for sport–catch and release–except late this summer when he caught more than 100 pounds of carp, winning Watsonville’s “Carpageddon” competition. The monthly $50 prize to the angler who removes the most carp from the lake is about all Watsonville can afford, to address the lake’s big problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nasty stuff\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pinto Lake is \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/09/24/california-lakes-toxic-algae-among-worst-in-u-s/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">plagued with chronic blooms\u003c/a> of a toxic blue-green algae called cyanobacteria. The algae feed on phosphorus from decades-old deposits of sediment in the lake. Farm fertilizers and leaky septic systems are also contributors, and the bottom-feeding carp stir that phosphorus up into the lake waters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_9662\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 350px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/PINTO-3-e1380900507238.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-9662\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9662\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/PINTO-3-e1380900507238.jpg\" alt=\"Blue green algae near the shore of Pinto Lake in Watsonville. (Krista Almanzan)\" width=\"350\" height=\"263\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Blue green algae near the shore of Pinto Lake in Watsonville. (Krista Almanzan/KAZU)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“So if we can reduce the amount of carp in the lake we can reduce the amount of phosphorus in the water column,” said Robert Ketley, a senior utilities engineer with the city of Watsonville. The algae stay green while they’re floating on the surface of the water and then turn blue where they’ve dried on shore. “The problem really manifests in the fall months, and that’s when you come down here and the lake will look luminescent green and will have an odor that you will either distinguish as ‘gym bag’ or ‘manure,’” Ketley said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Visitors may not always notice the small patches of algae floating on the lake but it’s hard to miss the signs along the shore warning people to avoid direct contact with the water. When it gets really bad, the lake has to be roped off. Patricia McQuade, who manages Pinto Lake City Park, including its RV campground and boat rentals, says she’s had to make changes to keep people from getting sick. For example, she no longer rents boats to families with kids. “Can’t do that,” McQuade told me on a recent visit. “We can’t let them on the water because a kid \u003cem>has\u003c/em> to put their hands over the side of the boat, right? Then they’re going to have to put their hands in their mouth.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Spiking the meter\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_9665\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 350px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/PINTO-4.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-9665\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9665\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/PINTO-4.jpg\" alt=\"Signs warn of the blue green algae at Watsonville's Pinto Lake. (Krista Almanzan)\" width=\"350\" height=\"263\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Signs warn of the blue green algae at Watsonville’s Pinto Lake. (Krista Almanzan/KAZU)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The algae produce a toxin called \u003ca href=\"http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/eh/hazardous/topics/bluegreenalgae.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">microcystin\u003c/a> that when touched or ingested can cause effects ranging from nausea to liver damage. The California health limit for the toxin is 0.8 parts-per-billion. Between 2009 and 2012, Pinto Lake averaged 84 ppb: 100 times the health limit. And one sample back in 2007 showed nearly 2.9 million ppb of microcystin. That’s the highest level of that toxin ever recorded in California: more than 3 million times the health limit. A \u003ca href=\"http://www.toxicalgaenews.com/toxic-algae-report-2013.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">new study\u003c/a> sponsored by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nwf.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">National Wildlife Federation\u003c/a> ranks Pinto Lake’s algae among the worst in the nation. The blooms have been linked to the deaths of birds, fish and even sea otters in nearby Monterey Bay. That’s because the lake’s waters eventually flow into the Pajaro River, which empties into the bay. Once Ketley and a researcher showed symptoms of exposure themselves. Otherwise there are no documented cases of people getting sick from the slime.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ketley says the algae will get worse when the rainy season kicks in. That’s when runoff from nearby agricultural fields and neighborhoods gives the biggest boost to phosphorus levels in the lake. The city plans to educate homeowners and businesses in the watershed about the effects of runoff, but that will only go so far. It’s also considering treating the lake with a chemical compound called \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alum\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">alum\u003c/a>. “You put alum into the lake,” Ketley said, “it binds up the phosphorus in the water column, and you create a barrier on the bottom of the lake, over the sediment, so that the phosphorus from the sediments can’t get up in the water column.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_9671\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 450px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/PINTO-2.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-9671\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9671\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/PINTO-2.jpg\" alt=\"Watsonville engineer Robert Ketley wants Pinto Lake to be a successful laboratory for countering algae. (Krista Almanzan) \" width=\"450\" height=\"338\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Watsonville engineer Robert Ketley wants Pinto Lake to be a successful laboratory for countering algae. (Krista Almanzan/KAZU)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He says the alum treatment will cost several hundred thousand dollars. It’s money Watsonville does not have. The city hasn’t recovered from the economic downturn, when it had to cut staff and services. So Ketley applied for a grant from the State Water Resources Control Board. He says Pinto is the perfect-sized laboratory lake for other California communities. “One of the things I really feel strongly about,” Ketley said, “is I want to make sure people see this as an opportunity to have a success story rather than doom and gloom–‘Oh no, toxic lake, bad situation.’ We can fix this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McQuade and other community members say it must be fixed. They recently formed a group called \u003ca href=\"http://friendsofpintolake.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Friends of Pinto Lake\u003c/a>. “When you think of how hard we work to save a redwood, maybe 300 years old,” McQuade offers for perspective, “this is 8,000 years old, so we have to do it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It could be months before Watsonville knows if it will get any state money to help clean up the algae and preserve this treasured lake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003c/em>\u003cem>Krista Almanzan reports for public radio station KAZU in the Monterey Bay Area. She has also produced stories for NPR and KQED.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Drought Could Hamper Forest Recovery After Rim Fire",
"headTitle": "Drought Could Hamper Forest Recovery After Rim Fire | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_9628\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/Rim-fire2.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9628\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/Rim-fire2.jpg\" alt=\"California's dry weather could make it tough for young trees to get established after the Rim Fire. (Photo: Lauren Sommer/KQED)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">California’s dry soil could make it tough for young trees to get established after the Rim Fire. (Photo: Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Fire ecologists say it will take decades for forests to recover from the Rim Fire in Yosemite National Park, given the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2013/09/19/rim-fire-draft/\">extent of the high-severity burn\u003c/a>. Now they’re adding another concern to that list: California’s dry weather.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sprawling stands of dead trees, an estimated 40 percent of the burned area, are reminiscent of another major national park fire: \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94126845\">Yellowstone in 1998\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=”3112b44fa131a811d44c7bbb13b64918″]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Initial response was that Yellowstone had been destroyed and it was a disaster,” says Malcolm North, a Forest Service ecologist. “We’ve come to understand that fire was actually very characteristic for Yellowstone and did a lot of ecological benefit.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But here, not so much. Forests in Yellowstone adapted to high-intensity fires, as seen in the lodgepole pines commonly found there. “The cones on the tree are actually sealed with pitch and only open up and release new seeds under high-intensity fire,” says North. “We have lodgepole pine in California but in almost all of it, the cones do not open and release seeds the same way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_9700\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 350px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/Yellowstone.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9700\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/Yellowstone.jpg\" alt=\"Lodgepole pines regrowing 15 years after the Yellowstone fire. (Photo: Monica Turner)\" width=\"350\" height=\"232\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lodgepole pines regrowing 15 years after the Yellowstone fire. (Photo: Monica Turner)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_9630\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 351px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/North-fire.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9630\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/North-fire.jpg\" alt=\"A California forest burned 10 years ago in the Cone Fire is replaced with shrubland. (Photo; Malcolm North/USFS)\" width=\"351\" height=\"231\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A California forest burned 10 years ago in the Cone Fire is now shrub land. (Photo: Malcolm North/USFS)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Mid-elevation forests, like the area of the Rim Fire, have historically seen frequent, low-intensity fires where most of the large trees survive and seed the next generation. “You need to have live trees nearby an area for the seed to be blown in on the wind,” North says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That could be a challenge in the Rim Fire’s largest swath of dead trees, estimated to be 63,000 acres. “It’s very unlikely that seed is going to be able to get into the interior of that high-severity patch,” says North.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even when young trees get established, drought could hamper the recovery, as North and other fire ecologists \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/41.summary\">published in the journal Science\u003c/a> on Thursday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The most susceptible stage of forests throughout their 400-year life is really the first 10 years,” he says. “There’s a much higher likelihood that they’re going to die within that period until they get large enough that they get deep enough root systems.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s been a record-dry year in California so far, something that could aid shrubs and bushes – the quick-colonizers that could potentially take over historically forested areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The shrubs are really strong competitors for soil moisture,” North says. “Not only do you have the influence of the climate drying and making the overall soil moisture lower, the shrubs are much better at picking up and using the soil moisture.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Forest Service is currently considering whether to plant trees in badly-burned areas to give shrubs some competition and the forest a head start.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Ferns and new shoots from oak trees are already appearing in the ashes of the Rim Fire in Yosemite National Park. But fire ecologists say the long-term recovery of the forest could be hampered if California’s dry weather continues",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_9628\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/Rim-fire2.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9628\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/Rim-fire2.jpg\" alt=\"California's dry weather could make it tough for young trees to get established after the Rim Fire. (Photo: Lauren Sommer/KQED)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">California’s dry soil could make it tough for young trees to get established after the Rim Fire. (Photo: Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Fire ecologists say it will take decades for forests to recover from the Rim Fire in Yosemite National Park, given the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2013/09/19/rim-fire-draft/\">extent of the high-severity burn\u003c/a>. Now they’re adding another concern to that list: California’s dry weather.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sprawling stands of dead trees, an estimated 40 percent of the burned area, are reminiscent of another major national park fire: \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94126845\">Yellowstone in 1998\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Initial response was that Yellowstone had been destroyed and it was a disaster,” says Malcolm North, a Forest Service ecologist. “We’ve come to understand that fire was actually very characteristic for Yellowstone and did a lot of ecological benefit.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But here, not so much. Forests in Yellowstone adapted to high-intensity fires, as seen in the lodgepole pines commonly found there. “The cones on the tree are actually sealed with pitch and only open up and release new seeds under high-intensity fire,” says North. “We have lodgepole pine in California but in almost all of it, the cones do not open and release seeds the same way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_9700\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 350px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/Yellowstone.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9700\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/Yellowstone.jpg\" alt=\"Lodgepole pines regrowing 15 years after the Yellowstone fire. (Photo: Monica Turner)\" width=\"350\" height=\"232\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lodgepole pines regrowing 15 years after the Yellowstone fire. (Photo: Monica Turner)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_9630\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 351px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/North-fire.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9630\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/10/North-fire.jpg\" alt=\"A California forest burned 10 years ago in the Cone Fire is replaced with shrubland. (Photo; Malcolm North/USFS)\" width=\"351\" height=\"231\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A California forest burned 10 years ago in the Cone Fire is now shrub land. (Photo: Malcolm North/USFS)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Mid-elevation forests, like the area of the Rim Fire, have historically seen frequent, low-intensity fires where most of the large trees survive and seed the next generation. “You need to have live trees nearby an area for the seed to be blown in on the wind,” North says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That could be a challenge in the Rim Fire’s largest swath of dead trees, estimated to be 63,000 acres. “It’s very unlikely that seed is going to be able to get into the interior of that high-severity patch,” says North.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even when young trees get established, drought could hamper the recovery, as North and other fire ecologists \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/41.summary\">published in the journal Science\u003c/a> on Thursday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The most susceptible stage of forests throughout their 400-year life is really the first 10 years,” he says. “There’s a much higher likelihood that they’re going to die within that period until they get large enough that they get deep enough root systems.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s been a record-dry year in California so far, something that could aid shrubs and bushes – the quick-colonizers that could potentially take over historically forested areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The shrubs are really strong competitors for soil moisture,” North says. “Not only do you have the influence of the climate drying and making the overall soil moisture lower, the shrubs are much better at picking up and using the soil moisture.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Forest Service is currently considering whether to plant trees in badly-burned areas to give shrubs some competition and the forest a head start.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "California's Fire History Written in the Trees",
"headTitle": "California’s Fire History Written in the Trees | KQED",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"audio-wrap\">\n\u003ch2>Listen:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>http://kqed02.streamguys.us/anon.kqed/radio/science/2013/09/2013-09-16-science.mp3\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>Much has been made of the Rim Fire being one of California’s largest “on record,” and the biggest burn yet seen in the Sierra Nevada. But it depends on what record you’re looking at.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_8760\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/rimfire-featured.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8760\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/rimfire-featured.jpg\" alt=\"Flames from the Rim Fire consume trees on August 25, 2013 near Groveland, California. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Flames from the Rim Fire consume trees on August 25, 2013 near Groveland, California. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Scientists are finding that in the not-too-distant past — we’re \u003cem>not\u003c/em> talking Jurassic here — forest fires burned far more real estate than they typically do today, and more often. The difference is that the forests bounced back much more readily.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A century of forest management practices, combined with hotter and longer summers brought on by climate change, have set the stage for more catastrophic fires. But “big” didn’t always mean catastrophic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_8681\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 216px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/IMG_4113-216x162.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-8681 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/IMG_4113-216x162.jpg\" alt=\"USFS geographer Carl Skinner is piecing together a fire history of California by studying tree rings. (Craig Miller/KQED)\" width=\"216\" height=\"162\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">USFS geographer Carl Skinner is piecing together a fire history of California by studying tree rings. (Craig Miller/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For 25 years, Carl Skinner and his colleagues at the U.S. Forest Service have been building a kind of “pre-history” of fire in California by scrutinizing tree rings. The shelves of his lab near Redding are piled high with crosscut slabs of big sugar pines and other trees from northern California forests.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We find 1822 fires all over the place,” Skinner told me while sorting through wooden slabs. “It was a very dry year. 1729 is another one. There’s a number of these very pronounced drought years that give us an idea of what to expect in a year like this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Trees tell the story\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skinner pointed to intermittent black marks within the tree rings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The areas here are scars, where the fire came along and killed a very small section of the tree right here, and then this is the healing where the tree tries to heal over,” he observed. “And then a few years later another fire came and then it heals, and then a few years later another fire.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tracking backward in time, from the outside in, something surprising emerges. Fire was an integral part of the landscape — and there was a lot of it, caused primarily by lightning strikes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_8690\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/FireScars_4110-featured.jpeg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8690\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/FireScars_4110-featured.jpeg\" alt='Black \"scars\" in the annual growth rings in this cedar tree reveal when fires occurred though the years. (Craig Miller/KQED)' width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Black “scars” in the annual growth rings in this cedar tree reveal when fires occurred though the years. (Craig Miller/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Every 8-to-12 years, they were putting scars on the trees and some places even much more frequently than that,” he explained. “What this did was to clean out a lot of the understory, keep it low and have the forest, instead of being pretty dense like it is today, it’d be much more open in general, but kind of patchy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What that meant was that fires could roar through a forest and stay low to the ground, without “crowning,” that is climbing and burning the big trees, as we just saw with the Rim Fire. And so a couple of hundred years ago, before there were people bent on putting out fires, forest fires were both bigger and more frequent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Typical years would have had somewhere between 5 million acres to 12 million acres burn before we began fire suppression,” said Skinner. “Since fire suppression, it’s far below that.” The Rim Fire has already consumed more than a quarter-million acres by itself, but nowadays a million acres total is a very nasty fire season. “So that means we’re storing up a lot of vegetation, which is there to burn.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Climate Factor\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fuel isn’t the only thing feeding bigger fires. Most scientists agree that the warming climate is, too, and may already be setting the stage for more intense events.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“Fire seasons are lengthening.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“Fire seasons are lengthening,” says Skinner, who cites research that shows them starting earlier in the spring and lasting longer. “Basically what that does is creates a longer period for drying in the summer, makes more fuel available and much more period of time in the year that you can have a fire, so your probability of having a fire just goes up with that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fire “management”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skinner says that throughout the West, the fire season is running about a month longer than even 30 or 40 years ago. That means not just more potential for catastrophic fires, but also a narrower window to do “prescribed burns” in the off-season, when foresters light fires intentionally to clear out some of the fuel languishing in the forest understory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This process can’t start until the arrival of enough rain to keep things from getting out of control. But there’s a narrow window, because fire managers have to conduct the burns before winter sets in. Skinner has seen that window shrinking since the 1970s, when those first rains might have arrived as soon as September in the northern forests of California. Now, he said, the prescribed fire season might not start until late-October.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“(Climate change) is actually, we think, playing havoc with a lot of the prescribed fire program,” he said. “Because of the lengthening fire season, it’s squashing down the prescribed fire period before it becomes too wet in the winter.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Forest Service and Cal Fire got lucky last year, with an unexpectedly light fire season. But Skinner has learned that luck is a kind of two-edged sword. It means that more fuel is accumulating, waiting for the next big burn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile Cal Fire has floated a new plan that would reduce fuels on an additional 216,000 acres per year on average, using a combination of burning, logging, targeted grazing and herbicides. The use of herbicides has invited controversy but prescribed burns have been controversial, too. And according to research by the U.S. Geological Survey, outlined in this video, how well it works depends on where it’s done.\u003cbr>\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-SNFf0xM5g\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cdiv class=\"audio-wrap\">\n\u003ch2>Listen:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>http://kqed02.streamguys.us/anon.kqed/radio/science/2013/09/2013-09-16-science.mp3\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>Much has been made of the Rim Fire being one of California’s largest “on record,” and the biggest burn yet seen in the Sierra Nevada. But it depends on what record you’re looking at.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_8760\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/rimfire-featured.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8760\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/rimfire-featured.jpg\" alt=\"Flames from the Rim Fire consume trees on August 25, 2013 near Groveland, California. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Flames from the Rim Fire consume trees on August 25, 2013 near Groveland, California. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Scientists are finding that in the not-too-distant past — we’re \u003cem>not\u003c/em> talking Jurassic here — forest fires burned far more real estate than they typically do today, and more often. The difference is that the forests bounced back much more readily.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A century of forest management practices, combined with hotter and longer summers brought on by climate change, have set the stage for more catastrophic fires. But “big” didn’t always mean catastrophic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_8681\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 216px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/IMG_4113-216x162.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-8681 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/IMG_4113-216x162.jpg\" alt=\"USFS geographer Carl Skinner is piecing together a fire history of California by studying tree rings. (Craig Miller/KQED)\" width=\"216\" height=\"162\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">USFS geographer Carl Skinner is piecing together a fire history of California by studying tree rings. (Craig Miller/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For 25 years, Carl Skinner and his colleagues at the U.S. Forest Service have been building a kind of “pre-history” of fire in California by scrutinizing tree rings. The shelves of his lab near Redding are piled high with crosscut slabs of big sugar pines and other trees from northern California forests.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We find 1822 fires all over the place,” Skinner told me while sorting through wooden slabs. “It was a very dry year. 1729 is another one. There’s a number of these very pronounced drought years that give us an idea of what to expect in a year like this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Trees tell the story\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skinner pointed to intermittent black marks within the tree rings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The areas here are scars, where the fire came along and killed a very small section of the tree right here, and then this is the healing where the tree tries to heal over,” he observed. “And then a few years later another fire came and then it heals, and then a few years later another fire.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tracking backward in time, from the outside in, something surprising emerges. Fire was an integral part of the landscape — and there was a lot of it, caused primarily by lightning strikes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_8690\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/FireScars_4110-featured.jpeg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8690\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/FireScars_4110-featured.jpeg\" alt='Black \"scars\" in the annual growth rings in this cedar tree reveal when fires occurred though the years. (Craig Miller/KQED)' width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Black “scars” in the annual growth rings in this cedar tree reveal when fires occurred though the years. (Craig Miller/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Every 8-to-12 years, they were putting scars on the trees and some places even much more frequently than that,” he explained. “What this did was to clean out a lot of the understory, keep it low and have the forest, instead of being pretty dense like it is today, it’d be much more open in general, but kind of patchy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What that meant was that fires could roar through a forest and stay low to the ground, without “crowning,” that is climbing and burning the big trees, as we just saw with the Rim Fire. And so a couple of hundred years ago, before there were people bent on putting out fires, forest fires were both bigger and more frequent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Typical years would have had somewhere between 5 million acres to 12 million acres burn before we began fire suppression,” said Skinner. “Since fire suppression, it’s far below that.” The Rim Fire has already consumed more than a quarter-million acres by itself, but nowadays a million acres total is a very nasty fire season. “So that means we’re storing up a lot of vegetation, which is there to burn.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Climate Factor\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fuel isn’t the only thing feeding bigger fires. Most scientists agree that the warming climate is, too, and may already be setting the stage for more intense events.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“Fire seasons are lengthening.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“Fire seasons are lengthening,” says Skinner, who cites research that shows them starting earlier in the spring and lasting longer. “Basically what that does is creates a longer period for drying in the summer, makes more fuel available and much more period of time in the year that you can have a fire, so your probability of having a fire just goes up with that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fire “management”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skinner says that throughout the West, the fire season is running about a month longer than even 30 or 40 years ago. That means not just more potential for catastrophic fires, but also a narrower window to do “prescribed burns” in the off-season, when foresters light fires intentionally to clear out some of the fuel languishing in the forest understory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This process can’t start until the arrival of enough rain to keep things from getting out of control. But there’s a narrow window, because fire managers have to conduct the burns before winter sets in. Skinner has seen that window shrinking since the 1970s, when those first rains might have arrived as soon as September in the northern forests of California. Now, he said, the prescribed fire season might not start until late-October.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“(Climate change) is actually, we think, playing havoc with a lot of the prescribed fire program,” he said. “Because of the lengthening fire season, it’s squashing down the prescribed fire period before it becomes too wet in the winter.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Forest Service and Cal Fire got lucky last year, with an unexpectedly light fire season. But Skinner has learned that luck is a kind of two-edged sword. It means that more fuel is accumulating, waiting for the next big burn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile Cal Fire has floated a new plan that would reduce fuels on an additional 216,000 acres per year on average, using a combination of burning, logging, targeted grazing and herbicides. The use of herbicides has invited controversy but prescribed burns have been controversial, too. And according to research by the U.S. Geological Survey, outlined in this video, how well it works depends on where it’s done.\u003cbr>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/g-SNFf0xM5g'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/g-SNFf0xM5g'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
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"possible": {
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"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"radiolab": {
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},
"rightnowish": {
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"tagline": "Art is where you find it",
"info": "Rightnowish digs into life in the Bay Area right now… ish. Journalist Pendarvis Harshaw takes us to galleries painted on the sides of liquor stores in West Oakland. We'll dance in warehouses in the Bayview, make smoothies with kids in South Berkeley, and listen to classical music in a 1984 Cutlass Supreme in Richmond. Every week, Pen talks to movers and shakers about how the Bay Area shapes what they create, and how they shape the place we call home.",
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"tagline": "Real stories with killer beats",
"info": "The Snap Judgment radio show and podcast mixes real stories with killer beats to produce cinematic, dramatic radio. Snap's musical brand of storytelling dares listeners to see the world through the eyes of another. This is storytelling... with a BEAT!! Snap first aired on public radio stations nationwide in July 2010. Today, Snap Judgment airs on over 450 public radio stations and is brought to the airwaves by KQED & PRX.",
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"soldout": {
"id": "soldout",
"title": "SOLD OUT: Rethinking Housing in America",
"tagline": "A new future for housing",
"info": "Sold Out: Rethinking Housing in America",
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"description": "[caption id=\"attachment_13657\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"351\"] Just over 2,000 wells have been fracked in California, according to industry data. (Craig Miller/KQED)[/caption] Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has been used for more than 30 years in California, but it’s attracting attention and scrutiny because of renewed interest in the state’s large oil reserve, known as the Monterey Shale. In California, fracking is done mainly for oil, while in other states with recent fracking booms, like Pennsylvania and Texas, it’s used largely for natural gas. What is it? Fracking is just one phase of the process used to bring an oil or gas well into production. The technique is used to release oil from rocks deep underground. Water, mixed with sand and chemicals, is injected down the well bore at high pressure to create tiny fractures in the rock. According to the oil industry, more than 2,000 wells have been fracked in the state. Concerns Environmental groups have called for a moratorium on fracking until the state does a comprehensive review of potential impacts on both water and air quality. A chief concern is the chemicals used, some of which are carcinogens, and potential contamination of groundwater. Fracking also uses large volumes of freshwater. Industry sources say it uses less freshwater in California than is used in other states and no cases of groundwater contamination have been found. Where it Stands In November 2013, state regulators released draft rules for fracking that are now expected to go into effect in July 2015. They followed passage of SB 4, a bill signed by Governor Jerry Brown, that spelled out what the regulations should cover. Under the rules, oil and gas operators would be required to apply for a permit prior to fracking a well, and to provide written notice to nearby landowners. Operators would have to disclose what chemicals they use, but not the specific concentrations if they consider those a trade secret. State water regulators are also developing a groundwater monitoring program. The regulations are expected to be finalized by the end of 2014.",
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