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"content": "\u003cp>Envision California’s lush forests from San Francisco to the Oregon border. Now imagine that 90 percent of those forests disappear within two years. Laura Rogers-Bennett, senior environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, says that’s exactly what happened to underwater kelp forests off Northern California’s coastline from 2014-16.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-51114-y\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">analysis published this week\u003c/a> in \u003cem>Scientific Reports\u003c/em> documents the rapid decline of California’s bull kelp. The study links the reduction in the seaweed’s population to a confluence of environmental and ecological stressors, including a marine heat wave, a sea star die-off and the emergence of an “urchin barrens,” large swaths of subtidal zones overtaken by kelp-hungry purple sea urchins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1949763\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1949763\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/Katie-Sowul-CDFW-Urchin-Barren-surrounds-Red-Abalone-800x462.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"462\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Purple sea urchins have overtaken California waters, grazing down forests of bull kelp. \u003ccite>(Katie Sowul/California Department of Fish and Wildlife)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Rogers-Bennett, who monitors kelp forests in partnership with the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory, says taken together, these strains on the kelp population threaten the greater coastal ecosystem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are finding out,” she says, “that if we cross some of these thresholds, that the system will collapse.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Observers are now noting kelp deforestation off the Oregon coast and in California south of San Francisco to Monterey Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ripple Effects \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The paper, published Monday, points to \u003ca href=\"https://climatechange.ucdavis.edu/news/unprecedented-number-of-warm-water-species-moved-northward-during-marine-heatwave/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">intense ocean warming\u003c/a> recorded in Northern California waters from 2014-17 as a major cause for the decline of the kelp forest. Kelp relies on nitrogen to thrive, but that element decreases as the ocean heats up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rogers-Bennett says as temperatures cooled back down, bull kelp, a resilient species, would normally have recovered. But warmer ocean temperatures created other conditions that accelerated the decline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2013, an outbreak of \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/01/30/690003678/massive-starfish-die-off-is-tied-to-global-warming\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sea star wasting disease\u003c/a> linked to the warm ocean “blob” led to the mass die-off of 20 starfish species along the West Coast. In California, the disease decimated sea stars from San Mateo to Mendocino counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A primary food source for sea stars is urchins, which in turn feed on kelp. Without starfish to keep urchin populations in check, the number of purple sea urchins swelled beginning in 2014. The following year, says the analysis in \u003cem>Scientific Reports\u003c/em>, “purple sea urchins shifted to a more aggressive feeding behavior,” devouring more layers of the kelp forest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Other Species Affected\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The deforestation of Northern California’s kelp affects other species that rely on it for sustenance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, in 2017, abalone stocks in the region were down by 80 percent. That led the recreational red abalone fishery to shut down in 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you envision the land … without the forest, there’d be many animals that would be starving, and that’s what we’re seeing,” Rogers-Bennett says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are picking up and detecting what’s happening with the abalone, but they’re just an indicator species of that whole suite of organisms that depend on the kelp forest, that are all starving or have no homes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Restoring the Forest\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One way to help restore the kelp forest, Rogers-Bennett says, is to harvest urchins for human consumption. Uni, or sea urchin gonads, is a premium menu item at many sushi restaurants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rogers-Bennett says that while the scarcity of kelp harms the health and harvestability of wild urchins, relocating them to designated urchin farms, where they could be fed algae and other nutrients, could be a solution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This goes beyond sustainable farming, she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re actually having a restorative seafood product because the more you eat of urchin, the better it is for the kelp forest,” she said. “So you’re restoring the kelp forest by eliminating that grazing pressure from those urchin that are just eating everything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rogers-Bennett and colleagues are in the process of \u003ca href=\"https://farallones.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Bull-Kelp-Recovery-Plan-2019.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">identifying pockets of coastal waters\u003c/a> off Sonoma and Mendocino counties where harvesters could remove urchins to bolster the recovery of California’s kelp forests.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Envision California’s lush forests from San Francisco to the Oregon border. Now imagine that 90 percent of those forests disappear within two years. Laura Rogers-Bennett, senior environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, says that’s exactly what happened to underwater kelp forests off Northern California’s coastline from 2014-16.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-51114-y\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">analysis published this week\u003c/a> in \u003cem>Scientific Reports\u003c/em> documents the rapid decline of California’s bull kelp. The study links the reduction in the seaweed’s population to a confluence of environmental and ecological stressors, including a marine heat wave, a sea star die-off and the emergence of an “urchin barrens,” large swaths of subtidal zones overtaken by kelp-hungry purple sea urchins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1949763\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1949763\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/Katie-Sowul-CDFW-Urchin-Barren-surrounds-Red-Abalone-800x462.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"462\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Purple sea urchins have overtaken California waters, grazing down forests of bull kelp. \u003ccite>(Katie Sowul/California Department of Fish and Wildlife)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Rogers-Bennett, who monitors kelp forests in partnership with the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory, says taken together, these strains on the kelp population threaten the greater coastal ecosystem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are finding out,” she says, “that if we cross some of these thresholds, that the system will collapse.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Observers are now noting kelp deforestation off the Oregon coast and in California south of San Francisco to Monterey Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ripple Effects \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The paper, published Monday, points to \u003ca href=\"https://climatechange.ucdavis.edu/news/unprecedented-number-of-warm-water-species-moved-northward-during-marine-heatwave/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">intense ocean warming\u003c/a> recorded in Northern California waters from 2014-17 as a major cause for the decline of the kelp forest. Kelp relies on nitrogen to thrive, but that element decreases as the ocean heats up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rogers-Bennett says as temperatures cooled back down, bull kelp, a resilient species, would normally have recovered. But warmer ocean temperatures created other conditions that accelerated the decline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2013, an outbreak of \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/01/30/690003678/massive-starfish-die-off-is-tied-to-global-warming\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sea star wasting disease\u003c/a> linked to the warm ocean “blob” led to the mass die-off of 20 starfish species along the West Coast. In California, the disease decimated sea stars from San Mateo to Mendocino counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A primary food source for sea stars is urchins, which in turn feed on kelp. Without starfish to keep urchin populations in check, the number of purple sea urchins swelled beginning in 2014. The following year, says the analysis in \u003cem>Scientific Reports\u003c/em>, “purple sea urchins shifted to a more aggressive feeding behavior,” devouring more layers of the kelp forest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Other Species Affected\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The deforestation of Northern California’s kelp affects other species that rely on it for sustenance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, in 2017, abalone stocks in the region were down by 80 percent. That led the recreational red abalone fishery to shut down in 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you envision the land … without the forest, there’d be many animals that would be starving, and that’s what we’re seeing,” Rogers-Bennett says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are picking up and detecting what’s happening with the abalone, but they’re just an indicator species of that whole suite of organisms that depend on the kelp forest, that are all starving or have no homes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Restoring the Forest\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One way to help restore the kelp forest, Rogers-Bennett says, is to harvest urchins for human consumption. Uni, or sea urchin gonads, is a premium menu item at many sushi restaurants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rogers-Bennett says that while the scarcity of kelp harms the health and harvestability of wild urchins, relocating them to designated urchin farms, where they could be fed algae and other nutrients, could be a solution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This goes beyond sustainable farming, she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re actually having a restorative seafood product because the more you eat of urchin, the better it is for the kelp forest,” she said. “So you’re restoring the kelp forest by eliminating that grazing pressure from those urchin that are just eating everything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rogers-Bennett and colleagues are in the process of \u003ca href=\"https://farallones.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Bull-Kelp-Recovery-Plan-2019.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">identifying pockets of coastal waters\u003c/a> off Sonoma and Mendocino counties where harvesters could remove urchins to bolster the recovery of California’s kelp forests.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Exxon's Trial Begins in New York Climate Fraud Case",
"headTitle": "Exxon’s Trial Begins in New York Climate Fraud Case | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/Neq_CwpkPvsGmMG7hVOy7A?domain=insideclimatenews.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">InsideClimate News\u003c/a> is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter \u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/pD-rCxklQwf1V61yTviMEq?domain=insideclimatenews.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In late 2013, ExxonMobil faced increasing pressure from investors to disclose more about the risks the company faced as governments began limiting greenhouse gas emissions. Of the many costs climate change will impose, oil companies face a particularly acute one: the demand for their product will have to shrink.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For years, Exxon had been using something called a proxy cost of carbon to estimate what stricter climate policies might mean for its bottom line. But as pressure from shareholders grew, a problem came sharply into focus: An\u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/puqHCQWOVBT6krMGTPuk1D?domain=documentcloud.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> internal presentation warned\u003c/a> top executives that the way the company had been applying this proxy cost was potentially misleading. That’s because Exxon didn’t have one projected cost of carbon. It had two.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The contents of that presentation are at the heart of a trial set to start next week in a civil case brought against the company by the New York attorney general. Exxon is accused of disclosing one set of these projected carbon costs while planners used an entirely different set internally for evaluating investments. The public set projected that climate policies would be more stringent, while the internal one assumed more modest attempts to limit emissions. The effect of using these dueling estimates,\u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/BqoDCR6LWDurvBj9hPnMtP?domain=documentcloud.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> the attorney general says\u003c/a>, was that Exxon hid tens of billions of dollars in potential costs, downplaying the risk to investors and inflating the company’s value.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the company is found guilty of defrauding stockholders, it could face substantial penalties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Exxon has denied wrongdoing, it does not dispute the core fact of the case: that for years it disclosed a proxy cost that was higher than what it applied to its investment evaluations. Its lawyers have argued these different sets of figures did not mislead investors. But this only highlights another side of the case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The energy Exxon produces today is more polluting, according to the attorney general’s complaint, because the company took the potential costs of climate change less seriously than it represented to investors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Applying a lower estimate for carbon costs made high-polluting projects look more attractive, and it undermined the investment case for any project that would reduce emissions. Nowhere is this clearer than in Canada’s oil sands, a vast expanse of low-grade hydrocarbons that now make up about 30 percent of Exxon’s oil reserves, far more than any of its peer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Oil sands tick all the boxes when it comes to a carbon-risky asset,” \u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1949663 alignright\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/ExxonTarSandsReserves529px.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"529\" height=\"567\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/ExxonTarSandsReserves529px.png 529w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/ExxonTarSandsReserves529px-160x171.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 529px) 100vw, 529px\">said Andrew Logan, who runs the oil and gas program at Ceres, a sustainable investment advocacy group. Because they require enormous amounts of energy to exploit, the oil sands are among the world’s most expensive and carbon-polluting sources of oil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The oil sands are this very concrete, specific example—and very big example—of the kind of asset you wouldn’t invest in,” he said, “if you actually believed the rhetoric of Exxon and others about climate risk.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the trial may prove to be about much more than Exxon’s risky investments. Climate change has abruptly shifted in the public consciousness from a future threat to a present danger. In the United States alone, more than a dozen local and state governments\u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/DwLFCVON1KClx9NrfJ36zu?domain=insideclimatenews.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> have sued energy companies\u003c/a> seeking damages. Exxon is a defendant in many of these cases, and the New York attorney general’s case would be the first to go to trial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The story behind the trial begins in the 1990s, when Lee Raymond took control of Exxon as chief executive. State-owned energy companies were on the rise, and while Exxon was still a giant in the industry, it was struggling to replace the oil it pumped each year. At least through this lens, Exxon was shrinking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Soon enough, Raymond began boasting the opposite—that the company was actually increasing its reserves, as Steve Coll details in his history of Exxon, Private Empire, thanks to new investments in an obscure resource in Canada.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The oil sands, or tar sands, lie beneath a swath of northern Alberta about the size of New York State. They are a viscous mix of sand and bitumen that’s generally strip-mined and then heated and treated to produce an oil that can be refined into fuel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just as Exxon was increasing its stakes in the oil sands, it was also confronting what a carbon-constrained future might look like. In its 2010 Outlook for Energy report, Exxon projected carbon prices would reach $60 per ton in 2030. But it turns out that, at the time, Exxon had a second estimate for carbon pricing—it called this one a “greenhouse gas cost” rather than a proxy cost—which company strategists used to evaluate investments and which was not disclosed publicly. This internal greenhouse gas cost estimate did not rise above $40 per ton, according to the complaint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a 2011 email exchange cited in the lawsuit, Robert Bailes, the company’s greenhouse gas manager,\u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/JRmwCW682Xuj5GR7CmCAGj?domain=documentcloud.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> proposed aligning the two cost estimates\u003c/a> by using the higher set of figures only.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Rex has seemed happy with the difference previously,” replied Tom Eizember, a planning manager, referring to then-chief executive Rex Tillerson. Apparently, he wrote, Tillerson liked that the lower greenhouse gas costs didn’t give as much incentive to invest in efforts to cut emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a June deposition, Tillerson said\u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/KgUJCXDM32FnX0Vvh9-hVU?domain=documentcloud.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> he didn’t recall discussing\u003c/a> the issue with Eizember.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also in 2011, the complaint says, an internal presentation by Exxon’s vice president of environmental policy and planning warned that high carbon costs would present a “major concern” for energy-intensive operations like oil sands, which would be “vulnerable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It wasn’t until 2014, after management was given \u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/puqHCQWOVBT6krMGTPuk1D?domain=documentcloud.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the presentation about the potentially misleading\u003c/a> internal carbon cost, however, that executives ordered that the lower greenhouse gas cost be revised to match the proxy cost contained in the Outlook reports. (In a\u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/t50ZCYEM4Nt3LOERs3hYYc?domain=documentcloud.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> pre-trial memorandum\u003c/a>, Exxon asserts that it aligned the costs in response to shifting climate policies.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2015, New York prosecutors working for then-Attorney General Eric Schneiderman issued their first subpoenas, provoked by investigative reports\u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/a2dUCZ6W5NuM52rZhNVO2k?domain=insideclimatenews.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> published by InsideClimate News\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/B-3oC1w95PSpM52yImplIX?domain=graphics.latimes.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> the Los Angeles Times\u003c/a>. A tumbling oil market abruptly halted new investment in Canada’s tar sands, but Exxon had already spent $33 billion on a new project there, according to the complaint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The attorney general’s allegations go beyond Alberta, too. The complaint says Exxon understated greenhouse gas costs at operations around the world, including natural gas assets in the U.S., a refinery in Belgium and a liquid natural gas terminal in Cyprus. All told, the attorney general claims, these practices cost investors as much as $1.6 billion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Exxon declined to comment for this article. But the company has asserted in filings that it was appropriate to use different estimates. It’s public facing proxy cost, it said, was used to estimate global demand for fossil fuels and reflected a collection of policies Exxon expected to see enacted internationally. While this would affect how much oil Exxon would sell, it wouldn’t necessarily reflect the direct costs at company projects scattered around the globe. Instead, the internal “greenhouse gas costs” were meant to estimate these direct costs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In order to prevail, prosecutors do not have to prove that Exxon executives intentionally misled investors. But they will have to show that the company’s policies had a “material” effect on its stock price, said David Shapiro, a financial crimes specialist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The devil is in the details,” he said. “Conceptually they have a great case.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Exxon’s stock is still widely held by investment giants like Vanguard, and most Wall Street analysts give it a hold rating, rather than buy or sell. But these financial trends have led some of the industry’s critics to warn that the company is facing a reckoning.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The New York attorney general says Exxon used two sets of books and misled investors by downplaying the potential costs of carbon emissions.",
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"description": "The New York attorney general says Exxon used two sets of books and misled investors by downplaying the potential costs of carbon emissions.",
"title": "Exxon's Trial Begins in New York Climate Fraud Case | KQED",
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"headline": "Exxon's Trial Begins in New York Climate Fraud Case",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/Neq_CwpkPvsGmMG7hVOy7A?domain=insideclimatenews.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">InsideClimate News\u003c/a> is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter \u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/pD-rCxklQwf1V61yTviMEq?domain=insideclimatenews.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In late 2013, ExxonMobil faced increasing pressure from investors to disclose more about the risks the company faced as governments began limiting greenhouse gas emissions. Of the many costs climate change will impose, oil companies face a particularly acute one: the demand for their product will have to shrink.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For years, Exxon had been using something called a proxy cost of carbon to estimate what stricter climate policies might mean for its bottom line. But as pressure from shareholders grew, a problem came sharply into focus: An\u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/puqHCQWOVBT6krMGTPuk1D?domain=documentcloud.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> internal presentation warned\u003c/a> top executives that the way the company had been applying this proxy cost was potentially misleading. That’s because Exxon didn’t have one projected cost of carbon. It had two.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The contents of that presentation are at the heart of a trial set to start next week in a civil case brought against the company by the New York attorney general. Exxon is accused of disclosing one set of these projected carbon costs while planners used an entirely different set internally for evaluating investments. The public set projected that climate policies would be more stringent, while the internal one assumed more modest attempts to limit emissions. The effect of using these dueling estimates,\u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/BqoDCR6LWDurvBj9hPnMtP?domain=documentcloud.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> the attorney general says\u003c/a>, was that Exxon hid tens of billions of dollars in potential costs, downplaying the risk to investors and inflating the company’s value.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the company is found guilty of defrauding stockholders, it could face substantial penalties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Exxon has denied wrongdoing, it does not dispute the core fact of the case: that for years it disclosed a proxy cost that was higher than what it applied to its investment evaluations. Its lawyers have argued these different sets of figures did not mislead investors. But this only highlights another side of the case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The energy Exxon produces today is more polluting, according to the attorney general’s complaint, because the company took the potential costs of climate change less seriously than it represented to investors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Applying a lower estimate for carbon costs made high-polluting projects look more attractive, and it undermined the investment case for any project that would reduce emissions. Nowhere is this clearer than in Canada’s oil sands, a vast expanse of low-grade hydrocarbons that now make up about 30 percent of Exxon’s oil reserves, far more than any of its peer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Oil sands tick all the boxes when it comes to a carbon-risky asset,” \u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1949663 alignright\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/ExxonTarSandsReserves529px.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"529\" height=\"567\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/ExxonTarSandsReserves529px.png 529w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/ExxonTarSandsReserves529px-160x171.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 529px) 100vw, 529px\">said Andrew Logan, who runs the oil and gas program at Ceres, a sustainable investment advocacy group. Because they require enormous amounts of energy to exploit, the oil sands are among the world’s most expensive and carbon-polluting sources of oil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The oil sands are this very concrete, specific example—and very big example—of the kind of asset you wouldn’t invest in,” he said, “if you actually believed the rhetoric of Exxon and others about climate risk.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the trial may prove to be about much more than Exxon’s risky investments. Climate change has abruptly shifted in the public consciousness from a future threat to a present danger. In the United States alone, more than a dozen local and state governments\u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/DwLFCVON1KClx9NrfJ36zu?domain=insideclimatenews.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> have sued energy companies\u003c/a> seeking damages. Exxon is a defendant in many of these cases, and the New York attorney general’s case would be the first to go to trial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The story behind the trial begins in the 1990s, when Lee Raymond took control of Exxon as chief executive. State-owned energy companies were on the rise, and while Exxon was still a giant in the industry, it was struggling to replace the oil it pumped each year. At least through this lens, Exxon was shrinking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Soon enough, Raymond began boasting the opposite—that the company was actually increasing its reserves, as Steve Coll details in his history of Exxon, Private Empire, thanks to new investments in an obscure resource in Canada.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The oil sands, or tar sands, lie beneath a swath of northern Alberta about the size of New York State. They are a viscous mix of sand and bitumen that’s generally strip-mined and then heated and treated to produce an oil that can be refined into fuel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just as Exxon was increasing its stakes in the oil sands, it was also confronting what a carbon-constrained future might look like. In its 2010 Outlook for Energy report, Exxon projected carbon prices would reach $60 per ton in 2030. But it turns out that, at the time, Exxon had a second estimate for carbon pricing—it called this one a “greenhouse gas cost” rather than a proxy cost—which company strategists used to evaluate investments and which was not disclosed publicly. This internal greenhouse gas cost estimate did not rise above $40 per ton, according to the complaint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a 2011 email exchange cited in the lawsuit, Robert Bailes, the company’s greenhouse gas manager,\u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/JRmwCW682Xuj5GR7CmCAGj?domain=documentcloud.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> proposed aligning the two cost estimates\u003c/a> by using the higher set of figures only.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Rex has seemed happy with the difference previously,” replied Tom Eizember, a planning manager, referring to then-chief executive Rex Tillerson. Apparently, he wrote, Tillerson liked that the lower greenhouse gas costs didn’t give as much incentive to invest in efforts to cut emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a June deposition, Tillerson said\u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/KgUJCXDM32FnX0Vvh9-hVU?domain=documentcloud.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> he didn’t recall discussing\u003c/a> the issue with Eizember.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also in 2011, the complaint says, an internal presentation by Exxon’s vice president of environmental policy and planning warned that high carbon costs would present a “major concern” for energy-intensive operations like oil sands, which would be “vulnerable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It wasn’t until 2014, after management was given \u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/puqHCQWOVBT6krMGTPuk1D?domain=documentcloud.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the presentation about the potentially misleading\u003c/a> internal carbon cost, however, that executives ordered that the lower greenhouse gas cost be revised to match the proxy cost contained in the Outlook reports. (In a\u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/t50ZCYEM4Nt3LOERs3hYYc?domain=documentcloud.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> pre-trial memorandum\u003c/a>, Exxon asserts that it aligned the costs in response to shifting climate policies.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2015, New York prosecutors working for then-Attorney General Eric Schneiderman issued their first subpoenas, provoked by investigative reports\u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/a2dUCZ6W5NuM52rZhNVO2k?domain=insideclimatenews.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> published by InsideClimate News\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/B-3oC1w95PSpM52yImplIX?domain=graphics.latimes.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> the Los Angeles Times\u003c/a>. A tumbling oil market abruptly halted new investment in Canada’s tar sands, but Exxon had already spent $33 billion on a new project there, according to the complaint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The attorney general’s allegations go beyond Alberta, too. The complaint says Exxon understated greenhouse gas costs at operations around the world, including natural gas assets in the U.S., a refinery in Belgium and a liquid natural gas terminal in Cyprus. All told, the attorney general claims, these practices cost investors as much as $1.6 billion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Exxon declined to comment for this article. But the company has asserted in filings that it was appropriate to use different estimates. It’s public facing proxy cost, it said, was used to estimate global demand for fossil fuels and reflected a collection of policies Exxon expected to see enacted internationally. While this would affect how much oil Exxon would sell, it wouldn’t necessarily reflect the direct costs at company projects scattered around the globe. Instead, the internal “greenhouse gas costs” were meant to estimate these direct costs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In order to prevail, prosecutors do not have to prove that Exxon executives intentionally misled investors. But they will have to show that the company’s policies had a “material” effect on its stock price, said David Shapiro, a financial crimes specialist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The devil is in the details,” he said. “Conceptually they have a great case.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Exxon’s stock is still widely held by investment giants like Vanguard, and most Wall Street analysts give it a hold rating, rather than buy or sell. But these financial trends have led some of the industry’s critics to warn that the company is facing a reckoning.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Why Is This Happening? Answers to Your Questions on the PG&E Shutdown",
"headTitle": "Why Is This Happening? Answers to Your Questions on the PG&E Shutdown | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Pacific Gas & Electric has generated confusion — not to mention outrage — with its power grid shutdowns. The situation continues for a second day in 34 California counties. On social media and phone calls to KQED’s Forum radio program, people throughout PG&E’s service area have asked how and why the investor-owned utility took this step. KQED reporters have some answers to some of the questions that have come in …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why Is PG&E Turning the Power Off? Is This PG&E’s Fault?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bottom line, PG&E doesn’t want to risk having its power lines start another fire, so it is pre-emptively turning the power off during this week’s dry, windy weather. The company made the decision based on information from its wildfire center, where meteorologists keep watch on fire conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E’s power lines have sparked many catastrophic wildfires in California, including last year’s Camp Fire in Butte County that caused 85 deaths, making it the deadliest U.S. wildfire in 100 years. PG&E lines started more than a dozen fires in 2017. Less than a month ago, the company agreed to pay billion in a settlement with victims of the recent fires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The shutoffs are part of its wildfire mitigation \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11750896/cpuc-pge-deenergization-wildfire-safety-power-shutoffs\">plan\u003c/a>, mandated by the state and agreed to by the California Public Utilities Commission, the state’s top power regulator. — \u003cem>Kevin Stark\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Who Made This Decision and When?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If past practice tells us anything, PG&E has been making and remaking this decision, with the help of its meteorological team, over several days. The utility says it considers weather, fuel and other conditions and observations, as well as the need for notice by state and local parties, when it decides to implement shutoffs. As we’ve seen over the last few days, the planned outage times can change with shifting conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fact is, there’s nothing new about turning off power lines when conditions get risky: San Diego Gas and Electric, with the permission of the CPUC, has mitigated fire risk this way since 2012. What is new \u003ca href=\"https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/uploadedFiles/CPUC_Public_Website/Content/News_Room/Public-Safety-Power-Shutoff-Policies-and-Procedures-September-2018.pdf\">are the guidelines PG&E filed\u003c/a> just a year ago for its public safety power shutoff procedures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the last couple of years, the CPUC has required investor-owned utilities to describe their processes for arriving at decisions like the one affecting nearly three dozen California counties right now. PG&E shut off power two times last year; the last time PG&E called a public safety power shutoff, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/uploadedFiles/CPUC_Public_Website/Content/Utilities_and_Industries/Energy_-_Electricity_and_Natural_Gas/PGE%20PSPS%20Report%20Letter_06-21-19.pdf\">for two days in June\u003c/a>, it affected about 22,000 customers in the North Bay and the Sierra foothills, including Butte County and Paradise. — \u003cem>Molly Peterson\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why Are the Shutoffs So Widespread?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Essentially, PG&E says that current conditions warrant extreme caution. The utility does its own predictive analysis, with a \u003ca href=\"https://www.pge.com/en_US/safety/emergency-preparedness/natural-disaster/wildfires/psps-weather-map.page?WT.mc_id=Vanity_weather\">dedicated page\u003c/a> offering a 7-day forecast of the possibility of a public safety power shutoff. As a rationale for the current outages, members of PG&E’s meteorological team have pointed out that Diablo and Santa Ana winds, along with low humidity and dry surface fuels, are making the state vulnerable to wildfire. Apart from PG&E’s in-house operation, the National Weather Service has issued \u003ca href=\"https://www.weather.gov/mqt/redflagtips\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Red Flag Warnings\u003c/a> for large chunks of California, and PG&E says these are “in alignment” with its own analysis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michael Wara, director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment, says these dangerous winds, though occurring annually, haven’t been this widespread in the state since the Wine Country Fires of 2017, before PG&E had instituted its de-energization protocol.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wara also says PG&E may have had to cast a wide net because the energy infrastructure of California wasn’t built to accommodate the kind of fire risk we’re now experiencing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’ll have a power line that will serve one valley and then go up and over a ridge to serve the next valley,” Wara told KQED’s Miranda Leitsinger. “And that means that if you have to turn that light off, you could black out both valleys in addition to the ridgetop — even though the risk is only on the ridgetop.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, is a longtime critic of the company who is \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/TedrickG/status/1182312963090182145\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">questioning\u003c/a> the widespread nature of the outage. In a letter sent to the California Public Utilities Commission Wednesday, he wrote:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I strongly disagree with the binary position currently offered by PG&E – they can turn the power off and shut down the economy and livelihoods of millions in California, an action which may protect us from wildfire, or they can roll the dice and continue with the lights on, and risk an enormous fire starting from their power lines. This situation is not acceptable nor sustainable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hill wrote that a public safety power shutoff must be a surgical, last resort measure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In any event, PG&E will have to say more about the choices it made: The utility must file a CPUC report with information related to its decisionmaking 10 days after the shutoff event ends. —\u003cem>Molly Peterson\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>This Is Intolerable. Why Can’t PG&E Just Bury The Lines?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For new construction, PG&E places most power lines underground, so its main issue is dealing with 81,000 miles of existing overhead lines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s no small feat. A little back-of-the-envelope math: Strung together, the lines could extend there and back from San Francisco to Buenos Aires about four times. Burying lines is very expensive. On its website, PG&E estimates it would cost $3 million per mile to puts its lines underground. So $3 million x 81,000 miles = $243 billion, which is more than California’s entire 2019 budget. One \u003ca href=\"https://www.eei.org/issuesandpolicy/electricreliability/undergrounding/Documents/UndergroundReport.pdf\">report\u003c/a> suggests that burying lines in urban places can be even more expensive — up to $5 million a mile.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, consumer safety advocates \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/soapbox/article222387335.html\">argue\u003c/a> that leaders in Sacramento should require the utility to bury lines in heavily populated, high-risk fire areas. — \u003cem>Kevin Stark\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why Can’t the State Take Over PG&E and Solve This Mess?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not beyond the realm of possibility, though there’s no real model for a state taking over a publicly traded utility of this size. We also have yet to see the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11718683/pge-bankruptcy-filing-poses-big-questions-challenges-for-gov-newsom\">political\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11718683/pge-bankruptcy-filing-poses-big-questions-challenges-for-gov-newsom\">will\u003c/a> for this to occur. One reason is that taxpayers would have to take on the financial responsibility that just bankrupted PG&E — liability for its aging, unsafe electrical grid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If there were a way to untangle PG&E’s many stakeholders and its various functions — don’t forget, it’s a gas company, too — other challenges would emerge: For one, figuring out how to value its massive assets and sorting out how the state would foot the bill for them, especially since ratepayers have already been paying for the system. Also, the main wildfire problems of aging, poorly maintained electrical transmission lines in rural, fire-prone areas, as well as more frequently occurring climate change-driven severe weather, are not going away, no matter who is in charge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Public power \u003cem>does \u003c/em>exist in California — Sacramento and Los Angeles both have it, and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">San\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">Francisco\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">is\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">offering\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">to\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">buy\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">PG\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">&\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">E\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">’\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">s\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">assets\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">within\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">city\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">limits\u003c/a>. But that’s different than completely ending PG&E as we know it and making it a public, state-run power company. It’s worth mentioning that PG&E workers largely oppose this option.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One idea that’s been floated: \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11739802/money-for-victims-uncertainty-for-pge-everythings-on-the-table-in-newsoms-new-wildfire-plan\">Breaking\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11739802/money-for-victims-uncertainty-for-pge-everythings-on-the-table-in-newsoms-new-wildfire-plan\">up\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11739802/money-for-victims-uncertainty-for-pge-everythings-on-the-table-in-newsoms-new-wildfire-plan\">PG\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11739802/money-for-victims-uncertainty-for-pge-everythings-on-the-table-in-newsoms-new-wildfire-plan\">&\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11739802/money-for-victims-uncertainty-for-pge-everythings-on-the-table-in-newsoms-new-wildfire-plan\">E\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11739802/money-for-victims-uncertainty-for-pge-everythings-on-the-table-in-newsoms-new-wildfire-plan\">into\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11739802/money-for-victims-uncertainty-for-pge-everythings-on-the-table-in-newsoms-new-wildfire-plan\">smaller\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11739802/money-for-victims-uncertainty-for-pge-everythings-on-the-table-in-newsoms-new-wildfire-plan\">companies\u003c/a>. — \u003ci> Marisa Lagos\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why Are These Winds So Dangerous?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These are known as “Diablo winds,” although they’re not necessarily hot. They are, however, pretty typical for this time of year. Their speed and dryness make them especially good at fanning and spreading flames. That can turn a potentially manageable wildfire into an out-of-control inferno.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These winds that are so good at driving wildfires actually start out cold\u003cstrong>.\u003c/strong> Early autumn’s big, cold air masses, brought by the\u003ca href=\"https://www.weather.gov/jetstream/jet\"> jet stream\u003c/a>, first move over Washington and Oregon then head to the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. This cold air is drier because it holds less moisture, and it has relatively higher pressure than the warmer air sitting over California. The meeting of these air currents propels the winds over the Sierra. As the winds move downslope, they speed up, the air compresses and warms, and the humidity plummets. This removes moisture from the landscape, and makes any spark more likely to start a wildfire. — \u003cem>Danielle Venton\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Will Any Good Come Of This Shutdown?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, one thing is that the outages are testing the region’s emergency response system. They could expose weaknesses that can be fixed before the next major earthquake hits — for example, Caltrans administrators realized they needed to install a backup generator at the Caldecott Tunnel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The shutoffs underscore another fact: PG&E’s grid technology is outdated and clunky. The utility proactively shut off power on Wednesday morning, only to have people wake up to no electricity, less-than-gusty wind conditions, and warnings that the lights could remain off for days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The disruption could serve as a focusing event for California to invest in local wind, solar, battery storage and other technologies that would turn neighborhoods into small power islands, called microgrids, said \u003ca href=\"https://www.navigantresearch.com/team/peter-asmus\">Peter\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.navigantresearch.com/team/peter-asmus\">Asmus\u003c/a>, a director at Navigant Research, a market research firm for the power sector.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Forecasts are often wrong,” he said. “In an ideal situation, you would have the flexibility to make real-time adjustments.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Puerto Ricans lived without electricity for months after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island in 2017. Now its main utility \u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/02/12/puerto-ricos-utility-prepa-plans-to-divide-island-into-renewable-energy-microgrids/#4c0e345755fc\">plans\u003c/a> to divide the entire island into a series of microgrids that could offer resiliency and flexibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E has not widely adopted that technology. But, Asmus suggested, “the shutoffs are going to drive California to be the leader in microgrids in the U.S.” — \u003cem>Kevin Stark\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Will These Power Shutoffs Work?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ll have to wait and see. There are many other ways fires can start: discarded cigarette butts, overheated cars idling over dry vegetation, chains dragging on the ground and sparking. — \u003cem>Danielle Venton\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "Why Is This Happening? Answers to Your Questions on the PG&E Shutdown | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Pacific Gas & Electric has generated confusion — not to mention outrage — with its power grid shutdowns. The situation continues for a second day in 34 California counties. On social media and phone calls to KQED’s Forum radio program, people throughout PG&E’s service area have asked how and why the investor-owned utility took this step. KQED reporters have some answers to some of the questions that have come in …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why Is PG&E Turning the Power Off? Is This PG&E’s Fault?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bottom line, PG&E doesn’t want to risk having its power lines start another fire, so it is pre-emptively turning the power off during this week’s dry, windy weather. The company made the decision based on information from its wildfire center, where meteorologists keep watch on fire conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E’s power lines have sparked many catastrophic wildfires in California, including last year’s Camp Fire in Butte County that caused 85 deaths, making it the deadliest U.S. wildfire in 100 years. PG&E lines started more than a dozen fires in 2017. Less than a month ago, the company agreed to pay billion in a settlement with victims of the recent fires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The shutoffs are part of its wildfire mitigation \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11750896/cpuc-pge-deenergization-wildfire-safety-power-shutoffs\">plan\u003c/a>, mandated by the state and agreed to by the California Public Utilities Commission, the state’s top power regulator. — \u003cem>Kevin Stark\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Who Made This Decision and When?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If past practice tells us anything, PG&E has been making and remaking this decision, with the help of its meteorological team, over several days. The utility says it considers weather, fuel and other conditions and observations, as well as the need for notice by state and local parties, when it decides to implement shutoffs. As we’ve seen over the last few days, the planned outage times can change with shifting conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fact is, there’s nothing new about turning off power lines when conditions get risky: San Diego Gas and Electric, with the permission of the CPUC, has mitigated fire risk this way since 2012. What is new \u003ca href=\"https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/uploadedFiles/CPUC_Public_Website/Content/News_Room/Public-Safety-Power-Shutoff-Policies-and-Procedures-September-2018.pdf\">are the guidelines PG&E filed\u003c/a> just a year ago for its public safety power shutoff procedures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the last couple of years, the CPUC has required investor-owned utilities to describe their processes for arriving at decisions like the one affecting nearly three dozen California counties right now. PG&E shut off power two times last year; the last time PG&E called a public safety power shutoff, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/uploadedFiles/CPUC_Public_Website/Content/Utilities_and_Industries/Energy_-_Electricity_and_Natural_Gas/PGE%20PSPS%20Report%20Letter_06-21-19.pdf\">for two days in June\u003c/a>, it affected about 22,000 customers in the North Bay and the Sierra foothills, including Butte County and Paradise. — \u003cem>Molly Peterson\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why Are the Shutoffs So Widespread?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Essentially, PG&E says that current conditions warrant extreme caution. The utility does its own predictive analysis, with a \u003ca href=\"https://www.pge.com/en_US/safety/emergency-preparedness/natural-disaster/wildfires/psps-weather-map.page?WT.mc_id=Vanity_weather\">dedicated page\u003c/a> offering a 7-day forecast of the possibility of a public safety power shutoff. As a rationale for the current outages, members of PG&E’s meteorological team have pointed out that Diablo and Santa Ana winds, along with low humidity and dry surface fuels, are making the state vulnerable to wildfire. Apart from PG&E’s in-house operation, the National Weather Service has issued \u003ca href=\"https://www.weather.gov/mqt/redflagtips\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Red Flag Warnings\u003c/a> for large chunks of California, and PG&E says these are “in alignment” with its own analysis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michael Wara, director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment, says these dangerous winds, though occurring annually, haven’t been this widespread in the state since the Wine Country Fires of 2017, before PG&E had instituted its de-energization protocol.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wara also says PG&E may have had to cast a wide net because the energy infrastructure of California wasn’t built to accommodate the kind of fire risk we’re now experiencing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’ll have a power line that will serve one valley and then go up and over a ridge to serve the next valley,” Wara told KQED’s Miranda Leitsinger. “And that means that if you have to turn that light off, you could black out both valleys in addition to the ridgetop — even though the risk is only on the ridgetop.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, is a longtime critic of the company who is \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/TedrickG/status/1182312963090182145\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">questioning\u003c/a> the widespread nature of the outage. In a letter sent to the California Public Utilities Commission Wednesday, he wrote:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I strongly disagree with the binary position currently offered by PG&E – they can turn the power off and shut down the economy and livelihoods of millions in California, an action which may protect us from wildfire, or they can roll the dice and continue with the lights on, and risk an enormous fire starting from their power lines. This situation is not acceptable nor sustainable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hill wrote that a public safety power shutoff must be a surgical, last resort measure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In any event, PG&E will have to say more about the choices it made: The utility must file a CPUC report with information related to its decisionmaking 10 days after the shutoff event ends. —\u003cem>Molly Peterson\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>This Is Intolerable. Why Can’t PG&E Just Bury The Lines?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For new construction, PG&E places most power lines underground, so its main issue is dealing with 81,000 miles of existing overhead lines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s no small feat. A little back-of-the-envelope math: Strung together, the lines could extend there and back from San Francisco to Buenos Aires about four times. Burying lines is very expensive. On its website, PG&E estimates it would cost $3 million per mile to puts its lines underground. So $3 million x 81,000 miles = $243 billion, which is more than California’s entire 2019 budget. One \u003ca href=\"https://www.eei.org/issuesandpolicy/electricreliability/undergrounding/Documents/UndergroundReport.pdf\">report\u003c/a> suggests that burying lines in urban places can be even more expensive — up to $5 million a mile.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, consumer safety advocates \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/soapbox/article222387335.html\">argue\u003c/a> that leaders in Sacramento should require the utility to bury lines in heavily populated, high-risk fire areas. — \u003cem>Kevin Stark\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why Can’t the State Take Over PG&E and Solve This Mess?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not beyond the realm of possibility, though there’s no real model for a state taking over a publicly traded utility of this size. We also have yet to see the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11718683/pge-bankruptcy-filing-poses-big-questions-challenges-for-gov-newsom\">political\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11718683/pge-bankruptcy-filing-poses-big-questions-challenges-for-gov-newsom\">will\u003c/a> for this to occur. One reason is that taxpayers would have to take on the financial responsibility that just bankrupted PG&E — liability for its aging, unsafe electrical grid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If there were a way to untangle PG&E’s many stakeholders and its various functions — don’t forget, it’s a gas company, too — other challenges would emerge: For one, figuring out how to value its massive assets and sorting out how the state would foot the bill for them, especially since ratepayers have already been paying for the system. Also, the main wildfire problems of aging, poorly maintained electrical transmission lines in rural, fire-prone areas, as well as more frequently occurring climate change-driven severe weather, are not going away, no matter who is in charge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Public power \u003cem>does \u003c/em>exist in California — Sacramento and Los Angeles both have it, and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">San\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">Francisco\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">is\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">offering\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">to\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">buy\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">PG\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">&\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">E\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">’\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">s\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">assets\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">within\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">city\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11773007/san-francisco-offers-to-buy-pge-electric-grid-in-the-city-for-2-5-billion\">limits\u003c/a>. But that’s different than completely ending PG&E as we know it and making it a public, state-run power company. It’s worth mentioning that PG&E workers largely oppose this option.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One idea that’s been floated: \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11739802/money-for-victims-uncertainty-for-pge-everythings-on-the-table-in-newsoms-new-wildfire-plan\">Breaking\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11739802/money-for-victims-uncertainty-for-pge-everythings-on-the-table-in-newsoms-new-wildfire-plan\">up\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11739802/money-for-victims-uncertainty-for-pge-everythings-on-the-table-in-newsoms-new-wildfire-plan\">PG\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11739802/money-for-victims-uncertainty-for-pge-everythings-on-the-table-in-newsoms-new-wildfire-plan\">&\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11739802/money-for-victims-uncertainty-for-pge-everythings-on-the-table-in-newsoms-new-wildfire-plan\">E\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11739802/money-for-victims-uncertainty-for-pge-everythings-on-the-table-in-newsoms-new-wildfire-plan\">into\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11739802/money-for-victims-uncertainty-for-pge-everythings-on-the-table-in-newsoms-new-wildfire-plan\">smaller\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11739802/money-for-victims-uncertainty-for-pge-everythings-on-the-table-in-newsoms-new-wildfire-plan\">companies\u003c/a>. — \u003ci> Marisa Lagos\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why Are These Winds So Dangerous?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These are known as “Diablo winds,” although they’re not necessarily hot. They are, however, pretty typical for this time of year. Their speed and dryness make them especially good at fanning and spreading flames. That can turn a potentially manageable wildfire into an out-of-control inferno.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These winds that are so good at driving wildfires actually start out cold\u003cstrong>.\u003c/strong> Early autumn’s big, cold air masses, brought by the\u003ca href=\"https://www.weather.gov/jetstream/jet\"> jet stream\u003c/a>, first move over Washington and Oregon then head to the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. This cold air is drier because it holds less moisture, and it has relatively higher pressure than the warmer air sitting over California. The meeting of these air currents propels the winds over the Sierra. As the winds move downslope, they speed up, the air compresses and warms, and the humidity plummets. This removes moisture from the landscape, and makes any spark more likely to start a wildfire. — \u003cem>Danielle Venton\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Will Any Good Come Of This Shutdown?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, one thing is that the outages are testing the region’s emergency response system. They could expose weaknesses that can be fixed before the next major earthquake hits — for example, Caltrans administrators realized they needed to install a backup generator at the Caldecott Tunnel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The shutoffs underscore another fact: PG&E’s grid technology is outdated and clunky. The utility proactively shut off power on Wednesday morning, only to have people wake up to no electricity, less-than-gusty wind conditions, and warnings that the lights could remain off for days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The disruption could serve as a focusing event for California to invest in local wind, solar, battery storage and other technologies that would turn neighborhoods into small power islands, called microgrids, said \u003ca href=\"https://www.navigantresearch.com/team/peter-asmus\">Peter\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.navigantresearch.com/team/peter-asmus\">Asmus\u003c/a>, a director at Navigant Research, a market research firm for the power sector.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Forecasts are often wrong,” he said. “In an ideal situation, you would have the flexibility to make real-time adjustments.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Puerto Ricans lived without electricity for months after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island in 2017. Now its main utility \u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/02/12/puerto-ricos-utility-prepa-plans-to-divide-island-into-renewable-energy-microgrids/#4c0e345755fc\">plans\u003c/a> to divide the entire island into a series of microgrids that could offer resiliency and flexibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E has not widely adopted that technology. But, Asmus suggested, “the shutoffs are going to drive California to be the leader in microgrids in the U.S.” — \u003cem>Kevin Stark\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Will These Power Shutoffs Work?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ll have to wait and see. There are many other ways fires can start: discarded cigarette butts, overheated cars idling over dry vegetation, chains dragging on the ground and sparking. — \u003cem>Danielle Venton\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Your SUV Is Really Messing With California's Climate Plans",
"headTitle": "Your SUV Is Really Messing With California’s Climate Plans | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>A couple of years ago, environmental groups and state leaders cheered when California reported it had reached its 2020 emissions target four years \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-adv-california-climate-pollution-20180722-story.html\">early\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when it comes to meeting California’s ambitious 2030-and- beyond climate goals, it appears to be way too early to pop any celebratory champagne.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote]Emissions from the transportation sector soared to a record high, as more people drove more miles in larger, less-efficient trucks and SUVs. These gas guzzlers made up 57% of new vehicle registrations in the fourth quarter of 2018, up from 39% five years ago.[/pullquote] According to the latest report from the annual California Green Innovation Index, at its current rate of emissions reduction, the state is 31 years behind its 2030 goal, which it wouldn’t meet until 2061.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If California is to meet the 2030 target, a 40% reduction in greenhouse gases from 1990 levels, the state needs to cut emissions about three times faster than the current rate. The outlook for California reaching its 2050 goal — an 80% reduction compared to 1990 — is even bleaker. At its current pace, the state will overshoot that goal by a full century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the latest report, by researchers at Beacon Economics and is not the state’s \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/ghg-inventory-program\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">official greenhouse gas inventory\u003c/a>, California reduced emissions by just over 1 percent from 2017 to 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We could be decades behind if we don’t implement an ambitious new set of innovative policies, and that’s a big if,” said Noel Perry, founder of Next 10, the nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that releases the report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perry called the numbers, which draw on nearly a decade’s worth of data, “a wakeup call.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Wildfire Issue\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California wildfires in 2018 emitted an estimated 45.5 million metric tons of CO2, a 24% increase from 2017, when California wildfires released an estimated total of 26.7 million metric tons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2018, wildfires in California produced “an estimated nine times more emissions than were reduced across the entire state’s economy the year prior,” according to the report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California Air Resources Board, which is in charge of implementing the state’s emissions reduction policies, is pushing back on the report’s inclusion of these emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stanley Young, a spokesman for the California Air Resources Board, said it is a “mistake to compare carbon released by wildfire with human-caused emissions” because carbon released by wildfires is part of the natural carbon cycle, while emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are the result of extracting carbon that otherwise would stay in the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Young acknowledged that the state’s 2030 goal is going to be a heavy lift.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2017, California published a \u003ca style=\"font-weight: bold\" href=\"https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/cc/scopingplan/scoping_plan_2017.pdf\">plan\u003c/a> to achieve reductions that are “cost-effective” and “technologically feasible,” said Young. But they are going to require “continued legislative and funding support,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He pointed to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s emissions \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1945609/california-and-carmakers-reach-clean-vehicle-agreement-rebuking-trump-administration\">agreement\u003c/a> with four major car companies, and the state’s investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from its cap-and-trade program towards incentives for electric vehicles, as examples of “California’s full-throated commitment to transforming the transportation sector, where we face the biggest challenges.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Policy Changes\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make the necessary reductions in emissions, Californians will need to make drastic changes in the way they get around, build homes, manufacture goods and consume energy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California historically has shown its ability to use policy and technology innovation to make dramatic shifts in carbon reductions,” Perry said. “We’ve seen that through renewable energy and also in energy efficiency. Although the news is sobering, if California were to galvanize together and create new regulations and new policies that help to drive the reduction of emissions, I think that it is quite possible that we can hit our ambitious policy goals.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not that California isn’t making progress. In fact, the state’s energy sector is slashing carbon emission, particularly from its electricity grid, at the same time the economy has been growing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since 1990, the state’s GDP increased by 41% while per capita planet-warming gas emissions fell by 25%, according to the report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re finally seeing a lot of research and development investment start to pay off,” said Adam Fowler, director of research at Beacon. “Renewable energy has reached a tipping point in terms of being increasingly cost competitive with fossil fuels, and that’s exciting.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem is that emissions from other sectors are flat or, in the case of transportation, rising. Transportation-related carbon pollution remains the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in California, mostly because of personal vehicles, the report says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2017, emissions from the transportation sector soared to a record high, as more people drove more miles in larger, less-efficient trucks and SUVs. These vehicles made up 57% of new registrations in state in the fourth quarter of 2018, up from 39% five years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There has been a shift in consumer preference toward what have historically been less efficient vehicles,” Fowler said. “This is probably one of the most sobering points from the report. Breakthroughs in these hard to reach sectors are going to require ambitious policy setting to push our economic and climate goals forward.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some other key takeaways from the report:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>The state’s renewable energy sector is strong. In 2017, for the first time, a greater portion of California’s power mix came from renewable energy sources like wind and solar than from fossil fuels\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Renewable resources like hydroelectric, solar and wind are increasingly replacing natural gas.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Electric vehicle sales are rising, with adoption up 37% in 2018 over the previous year. Still, while electric, hybrid, and even hydrogen vehicles are more popular, at the current pace, they will account for just 2% of all the cars registered on the road by the end of 2019.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Emissions from landfills continue to rise, jumping about 7% in 2017. At the same time, the state’s recycling rate declined. At this rate, California is not on track to meet its goal of a 75% recycling rate by the year 2020, Fowler said.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A couple of years ago, environmental groups and state leaders cheered when California reported it had reached its 2020 emissions target four years \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-adv-california-climate-pollution-20180722-story.html\">early\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when it comes to meeting California’s ambitious 2030-and- beyond climate goals, it appears to be way too early to pop any celebratory champagne.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp> According to the latest report from the annual California Green Innovation Index, at its current rate of emissions reduction, the state is 31 years behind its 2030 goal, which it wouldn’t meet until 2061.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If California is to meet the 2030 target, a 40% reduction in greenhouse gases from 1990 levels, the state needs to cut emissions about three times faster than the current rate. The outlook for California reaching its 2050 goal — an 80% reduction compared to 1990 — is even bleaker. At its current pace, the state will overshoot that goal by a full century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the latest report, by researchers at Beacon Economics and is not the state’s \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/ghg-inventory-program\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">official greenhouse gas inventory\u003c/a>, California reduced emissions by just over 1 percent from 2017 to 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We could be decades behind if we don’t implement an ambitious new set of innovative policies, and that’s a big if,” said Noel Perry, founder of Next 10, the nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that releases the report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perry called the numbers, which draw on nearly a decade’s worth of data, “a wakeup call.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Wildfire Issue\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California wildfires in 2018 emitted an estimated 45.5 million metric tons of CO2, a 24% increase from 2017, when California wildfires released an estimated total of 26.7 million metric tons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2018, wildfires in California produced “an estimated nine times more emissions than were reduced across the entire state’s economy the year prior,” according to the report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California Air Resources Board, which is in charge of implementing the state’s emissions reduction policies, is pushing back on the report’s inclusion of these emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stanley Young, a spokesman for the California Air Resources Board, said it is a “mistake to compare carbon released by wildfire with human-caused emissions” because carbon released by wildfires is part of the natural carbon cycle, while emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are the result of extracting carbon that otherwise would stay in the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Young acknowledged that the state’s 2030 goal is going to be a heavy lift.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2017, California published a \u003ca style=\"font-weight: bold\" href=\"https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/cc/scopingplan/scoping_plan_2017.pdf\">plan\u003c/a> to achieve reductions that are “cost-effective” and “technologically feasible,” said Young. But they are going to require “continued legislative and funding support,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He pointed to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s emissions \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1945609/california-and-carmakers-reach-clean-vehicle-agreement-rebuking-trump-administration\">agreement\u003c/a> with four major car companies, and the state’s investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from its cap-and-trade program towards incentives for electric vehicles, as examples of “California’s full-throated commitment to transforming the transportation sector, where we face the biggest challenges.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Policy Changes\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make the necessary reductions in emissions, Californians will need to make drastic changes in the way they get around, build homes, manufacture goods and consume energy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California historically has shown its ability to use policy and technology innovation to make dramatic shifts in carbon reductions,” Perry said. “We’ve seen that through renewable energy and also in energy efficiency. Although the news is sobering, if California were to galvanize together and create new regulations and new policies that help to drive the reduction of emissions, I think that it is quite possible that we can hit our ambitious policy goals.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not that California isn’t making progress. In fact, the state’s energy sector is slashing carbon emission, particularly from its electricity grid, at the same time the economy has been growing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since 1990, the state’s GDP increased by 41% while per capita planet-warming gas emissions fell by 25%, according to the report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re finally seeing a lot of research and development investment start to pay off,” said Adam Fowler, director of research at Beacon. “Renewable energy has reached a tipping point in terms of being increasingly cost competitive with fossil fuels, and that’s exciting.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem is that emissions from other sectors are flat or, in the case of transportation, rising. Transportation-related carbon pollution remains the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in California, mostly because of personal vehicles, the report says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2017, emissions from the transportation sector soared to a record high, as more people drove more miles in larger, less-efficient trucks and SUVs. These vehicles made up 57% of new registrations in state in the fourth quarter of 2018, up from 39% five years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There has been a shift in consumer preference toward what have historically been less efficient vehicles,” Fowler said. “This is probably one of the most sobering points from the report. Breakthroughs in these hard to reach sectors are going to require ambitious policy setting to push our economic and climate goals forward.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some other key takeaways from the report:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>The state’s renewable energy sector is strong. In 2017, for the first time, a greater portion of California’s power mix came from renewable energy sources like wind and solar than from fossil fuels\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Renewable resources like hydroelectric, solar and wind are increasingly replacing natural gas.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Electric vehicle sales are rising, with adoption up 37% in 2018 over the previous year. Still, while electric, hybrid, and even hydrogen vehicles are more popular, at the current pace, they will account for just 2% of all the cars registered on the road by the end of 2019.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Emissions from landfills continue to rise, jumping about 7% in 2017. At the same time, the state’s recycling rate declined. At this rate, California is not on track to meet its goal of a 75% recycling rate by the year 2020, Fowler said.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Hotter-burning wildfires are transforming California’s forests, and not for the better. A new \u003ca href=\"https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ecs2.2882\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">study\u003c/a> from UC Davis finds high-intensity fires leave fewer trees and a less diverse population of plants behind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re finding that high intensity, really dangerous fires … are becoming more frequent,” said Clark Richter, a graduate student in ecology at UC Davis. “They’re burning a larger area than was typical historically.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote citation=\"Clark Richter, UC Davis\"]‘We’re finding that high intensity, really dangerous fires … are becoming more frequent.’[/pullquote]Richter and a team sampled plants across patches of land in the Sierra Nevada that were burned in at least eight fires over the last 20 years. Their goal was to get a better picture of what happened to plants in the forest understory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Richter calls the current pattern of fire in California, one where fires burn intensely hot, “novel.” He and a research team saw that “when fire climbs up into the canopy, it often kills the adult trees,” he said. “And that causes a dramatic change to the system.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those intense fires transform forest into shrubland. And according to Richter, the more frequent and the larger the area burned at these high-severity sites, the larger the shrub fields left behind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Less Diversity\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Field sampling by the researchers found less plant diversity on the landscape after high-intensity fires, especially in shrublands. And when fire returns to that landscape, it’s more likely “that system is going to continue to be a high-severity site, that’s going to continue to be a shrub field potentially indefinitely,” Richter said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It wasn’t always this way in California’s yellow pine mixed-conifer forests, Richter says. Historically, the fires that burned these forests at elevation were low- and moderate-intensity. “These weren’t really fierce, fierce fires with really tall flame lengths in the canopies of trees,” Richter said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Richter thinks of these less-intense fires as recurring events that “chew up” but don’t destroy understory fuels on the ground, thus preserving an array of plants after the fire is out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The study supports the idea that active management of forests, including reducing tree density and managing understory growth with prescribed fire and mechanical means, promotes ecosystem health. The study’s authors acknowledged the challenges to managing forests this way, including increased costs and legal opposition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, Richter said, “Our concern is that if these shrub fields continue to burn, that there will be an overall loss of understory plant diversity in these sites at a landscape level.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Hotter-burning wildfires are transforming California’s forests, and not for the better. A new \u003ca href=\"https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ecs2.2882\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">study\u003c/a> from UC Davis finds high-intensity fires leave fewer trees and a less diverse population of plants behind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re finding that high intensity, really dangerous fires … are becoming more frequent,” said Clark Richter, a graduate student in ecology at UC Davis. “They’re burning a larger area than was typical historically.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Richter and a team sampled plants across patches of land in the Sierra Nevada that were burned in at least eight fires over the last 20 years. Their goal was to get a better picture of what happened to plants in the forest understory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Richter calls the current pattern of fire in California, one where fires burn intensely hot, “novel.” He and a research team saw that “when fire climbs up into the canopy, it often kills the adult trees,” he said. “And that causes a dramatic change to the system.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those intense fires transform forest into shrubland. And according to Richter, the more frequent and the larger the area burned at these high-severity sites, the larger the shrub fields left behind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Less Diversity\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Field sampling by the researchers found less plant diversity on the landscape after high-intensity fires, especially in shrublands. And when fire returns to that landscape, it’s more likely “that system is going to continue to be a high-severity site, that’s going to continue to be a shrub field potentially indefinitely,” Richter said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It wasn’t always this way in California’s yellow pine mixed-conifer forests, Richter says. Historically, the fires that burned these forests at elevation were low- and moderate-intensity. “These weren’t really fierce, fierce fires with really tall flame lengths in the canopies of trees,” Richter said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Richter thinks of these less-intense fires as recurring events that “chew up” but don’t destroy understory fuels on the ground, thus preserving an array of plants after the fire is out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The study supports the idea that active management of forests, including reducing tree density and managing understory growth with prescribed fire and mechanical means, promotes ecosystem health. The study’s authors acknowledged the challenges to managing forests this way, including increased costs and legal opposition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, Richter said, “Our concern is that if these shrub fields continue to burn, that there will be an overall loss of understory plant diversity in these sites at a landscape level.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Fire, Rock Slides, and Floods: UN Report Details Growing Warming Threat in the Mountains",
"headTitle": "Fire, Rock Slides, and Floods: UN Report Details Growing Warming Threat in the Mountains | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>With ominous orange-gray smoke clouds seething on the western horizon, it’s easy to understand how Colorado’s highest city and other mountain communities are directly threatened by global warming. \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[pullquote align='right' citation='Heidi Steltzer, biologist at Fort Lewis College']‘Concern, commitment and action on climate change should not depend on which places, species or people are impacted. Instead, they should be motivated by compassion.’[/pullquote]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mountain snowpack is shrinking and melting earlier in the spring. Warmer and longer summers dry out vegetation and increase the threat of wildfires in western mountain forests, where the fire season has \u003ca href=\"https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/86268/longer-more-frequent-fire-seasons\">lengthened\u003c/a> by at least a month since 1979.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The growing wildfire risk is just part of an accelerating cycle of global warming impacts in the world’s mountain regions, according to a new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/25092019/ipcc-cryosphere-ocean-report-climate-change-sea-level-rise-greenland-antarctica\">report\u003c/a> that includes a \u003ca href=\"https://report.ipcc.ch/srocc/pdf/SROCC_FinalDraft_Chapter2.pdf\">section\u003c/a> focused on mountains for the first time in more than 20 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Snow cover duration has declined in nearly all regions, especially at lower elevations, on average by five days per decade,” the mountain chapter of the IPCC report says. On average across Western North America, the European Alps and High Mountain Asia, temperatures are warming by 0.54 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s melting glaciers and changing mountain river flows, disrupting plants and wildlife, and increasing the risk of extreme \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26092018/climate-change-mountains-landslide-hazard-thawing-permafrost-rockfall-extreme-weather-glaciers-global-warming\">rockslides\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08032019/avalanche-climate-change-risk-snow-storm-forecast-colorado-switzerland\">avalanches\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06082018/global-warming-climate-change-floods-california-oroville-dam-scientists\">mountain floods\u003c/a> caused by rain falling on snow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taken together, global warming impacts represent an existential threat to millions of people in the Andes, the Himalaya, the European Alps, and the U.S. Mountain West including Alaska, said \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/heidimountains\">Heidi Steltzer\u003c/a>, a biologist at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, and a lead author of the mountain chapter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Shrinking glaciers and snow harm Indigenous Peoples and rural communities greatly. Concern, commitment and action on climate change should not depend on which places, species or people are impacted. Instead, they should be motivated by compassion,” Steltzer said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Water Reliability \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Crested Butte, about 100 miles southwest of Leadville, hydrologist and physicist Rosemary Carroll studies how \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07062016/unabated-global-warming-threatens-west-snowpack-water-rocky-mountains-sierra-nevada-drought\">disruptions\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07062016/unabated-global-warming-threatens-west-snowpack-water-rocky-mountains-sierra-nevada-drought\">to the water cycle\u003c/a> will affect local ranchers and ski areas, as well as drinking and agricultural water supplies hundreds of miles away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The IPCC assessment found that global warming will change the timing and amount of runoff, “affecting water storage and delivery infrastructure around the world,” a finding backed by research focusing on the West.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A 2016 \u003ca href=\"https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016GL068798\">study\u003c/a> in six Western mountain ranges showed rising temperatures will shift the snow accumulation zone and runoff timing enough to have significant impacts on water cycles. And some towns in the Rockies and Sierra Nevada are at risk from \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06082018/global-warming-climate-change-floods-california-oroville-dam-scientists\">dangerous flash floods\u003c/a> as global warming brings rain, rather than snow, to some mountain regions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carroll pointed out her living room window to a craggy ridgeline where she measures how water from melted snow trickles through rocks and meadows down to the East River, on to the Gunnison River and finally into the mighty Colorado.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The new normal is that the snowpack is melting earlier and we have earlier runoff, and that’s a fact. There’s going to be less water for a given snowpack,” she said. Even in average snowfall years, global warming is reducing the amount of available water for irrigation and storage, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her research for the University of Nevada’s Desert Research Institute and the U.S. Department of Energy will help communities adapt as global warming disrupts flows from mountain streams. Around Crested Butte, the ski industry and local ranchers will feel the changes first.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But addressing those impacts isn’t as easy as just throwing a new report on the table. Translating science into action requires working with stakeholders from the start.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Ranchers know what’s happening, they know that things are shifting, but they’re afraid the policy will shift in a way that they will carry the burden of the change. Since they have most of the water, they fear they will have to give up the most, and that it won’t be equitable,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The states that get their water from the Colorado River are already restructuring \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31012019/colorado-river-water-crisis-climate-science-state-conservation-plans\">water-sharing agreements\u003c/a> to stave off shortages and trying to develop new storage plans to account for extreme wet and dry years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Goodbye to Glaciers\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Global warming will change nearly every mountain ecosystem, starting with the very visible meltdown of glaciers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the European Alps, \u003ca href=\"https://www.alpenverein.at/portal/news/aktuelle_news/2018/2018_04_06_gletscherbericht.php\">some glaciers retreated by as much 410 feet\u003c/a> last year — imagine the Empire State Building shrinking by a third. Globally, the world’s glaciers have lost 9 trillion tons of ice since 1961, raising sea level by about 1 inch, according to the \u003ca href=\"http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Glaciers_lose_nine_trillion_tonnes_of_ice_in_half_a_century\">European Space Agency\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As glaciers melt, they create a series of risks: newly formed meltwater lakes can burst through their banks, flooding towns and farms below. And as the ice dwindles, that will significantly change the timing and amount of water available for hydropower production and agriculture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along with disrupting ecosystems and downstream communities that rely on glacier meltwater, global warming in the mountains will cause emotional and cultural loss as cherished landscapes vanish. In Switzerland, people recently held a memorial service for the \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/matthias_huss/status/1176117412997062656\">disappearing Pizol Glacier\u003c/a> as a way of dealing with that grief, a sometimes overlooked component of climate resilience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"media media-element-container media-image_full\">\n\u003cp>The physical threats are real and growing, said Swiss glaciologist Matthias Huss.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If greenhouse gas emissions peak in the next few years and then start to decline, glaciers in the European Alps will lose two-thirds of their current ice. With continued high emissions, the glaciers will all but vanish, with only 5 percent of the current ice remaining, Huss and colleagues found in recent \u003ca href=\"https://www.the-cryosphere.net/13/1125/2019/\">study\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“\u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26092018/climate-change-mountains-landslide-hazard-thawing-permafrost-rockfall-extreme-weather-glaciers-global-warming\">An increase in rockfall events\u003c/a>, and flooding from glacier lakes, also due to more extreme weather events, is likely,” Huss said. “I think European countries are prepared, and they have the financial means to adapt. It will be much more difficult for developing countries to adapt to the challenges in mountain regions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Extreme storms that destroy forests and damage roads and railroad lines could also become more frequent in the world’s mountains, although climate models aren’t yet localized enough to project such changes accurately, the IPCC assessment concluded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It won’t be cheap to redesign and rebuild water infrastructure, Huss said. In some snow-dependent communities, the meltdown will also drive wrenching cultural and economic changes. But “one could also see this as a chance for major development toward a more sustainable way to live on our planet,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adapting Food Crops\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s what University of Colorado researcher Tsegay Wolde-Georgis was thinking when he led a \u003ca href=\"https://instaar.colorado.edu/news-events/instaar-news/apple-trees-in-atebes-cultivating-climate-resilience-in-an-ethiopian-villag/\">project\u003c/a> in the early 2000s to cultivate apple trees around Atebe, in the dry highlands of Ethiopia where he grew up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Diversifying local food supplies will help make the region more resilient to global warming, he said. The new IPCC assessment affirms that global warming is driving dangerous changes in mountain environments that threaten food supplies. But along with warnings, the world needs action, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Everything is getting more extreme, and there is seasonal confusion,” he said. But there is enough scientific and traditional knowledge to find on-the-ground projects and do them, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the apple orchard, he adapted a traditional permaculture technique, using water-filled clay pots to efficiently irrigate the young trees. At the same time, residents enhanced the water-holding capacity of deforested hillsides by building terraces and planting vegetation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such regenerative agriculture is crucial for food security in developing countries, said Wolde-Georgis, who works with the \u003ca href=\"https://instaar.colorado.edu/research/programs/consortium-for-capacity-building/\">Consortium for Capacity Building\u003c/a>, part of the University of Colorado’s \u003ca href=\"https://instaar.colorado.edu/\">Institute of Alpine and Arctic Research\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After decades of academic research and projects, he radiates the kind of practical wisdom that can help shape resilience to global warming. His eyes gleam as he recalls the look on a local priest’s face during the first apple harvest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was the first time in his life he tasted an apple. When we plant apples, it’s mitigation [of the climate impact], but at the same time, we are solving problems. We have to find something that’s doable on the ground,” he said. In four years, the farmers planted 1,400 apple trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, communities worked to restore watersheds by building terraces and replanting clear-cut hillsides. Wolde-Georgis said the work was successful. Streams that had been dry by the end of December now hold water through the end of May.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a larger scale, Wolde-Georgis helps build physical and information infrastructure to boost resilience, including new roads and railroads to help transport food when climate extremes cause crop failures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ethiopia and other developing countries also need more institutional science-based infrastructure to inform good governance across jurisdictional boundaries, he said. To meet the challenges ahead requires working in an atmosphere of trust and a spirit of collaboration, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Disrupting Plants\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab in Gothic, Colorado, David Inouye’s cabin near a patch of shimmering gold aspens is marked by wisps of chimney smoke. For nearly 50 years, he’s been recording plant and animal activity while other observers tally snowfall and snowmelt data day by day — a scientific deep dive into time and space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Compared to the 1970s, spring is coming earlier. There is more winter rain, and summers are longer and drier. It all adds up to disruption for mountain ecosystems, where most plants only have a few weeks to bloom. And the plants are tightly linked with pollinating insects in \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15062018/climate-change-impacts-pollen-pollination-flowers-bees-butterflies-europe-heat-wave-global-warming-research\">a delicately timed cycle\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The ecology of this altitude is driven largely by how much snow we get in the winter and when that snow melts,” Inouye said. “As the climate changes, we’re tending to get less snow and warmer and earlier springs. A paradoxical consequence is that we’re getting more frost damage,” he said. The effects ripple through the ecosystem as global warming disrupts plants and seed production, which, in turn, means less food for small mammals and birds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Graceful yellow glacier lilies are \u003ca href=\"https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/12-0255.1\">blooming 17 days earlier\u003c/a> than they did in the 1970s, but migrating hummingbirds that depend on the flower nectar aren’t keeping up. By the time they arrive, many of the plants have withered away, and if current trends continue, in two decades the hummingbirds will miss the first flowers entirely. Ecosystems could collapse as global warming continues to decouple \u003ca href=\"https://www.rmbl.org/article/science-story-june-2019/\">complex ecological relationships\u003c/a>, showing why global warming is a threat to biodiversity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another \u003ca href=\"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2012.01766.x\">study\u003c/a> documented how earlier spring snowmelt makes mountain daisies bloom earlier, when they are more susceptible to frost. The research showed how the frost damage reduces the amount of nectar for a species of butterfly that depends on that particular flower for feeding during the egg-laying season.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If they don’t get nectar, they can’t make eggs, and the population declines,” Inouye said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tipping Points\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The research at the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab helps connect the dots in complex ecosystems and how global warming can make them unravel, said lab executive director Ian Billick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What people don’t realize is that we’re changing multiple things at the same time. People don’t realize how drastically things are going to change,” he said. Massive disturbance events linked with global warming like the early 2000s bark beetle outbreak that killed trees across millions of acres will happen again and again. Multiple stressors are driving mountain ecosystems past tipping points, leading to fundamental change, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our agricultural productivity depends on these ecosystems functioning in a highly integrated way, so it’s like if you throw a screwdriver in the middle of an engine, the whole thing falls apart, and I think it’s like with ag, where these finely tuned things are going to fall apart.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The IPCC report represents only the tiny tip of a “massive global change iceberg,” said Steltzer, the Colorado biologist and lead author of the mountain chapter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Nine-tenths is what we haven’t seen, measured and documented. We know things are changing for which we have no peer-reviewed scientific articles, and things are changing too fast to keep up,” she said. “There’s no reason to wait to act. We know enough.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just this past winter, both Europe and parts of the Rockies experienced \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08032019/avalanche-climate-change-risk-snow-storm-forecast-colorado-switzerland\">unprecedented avalanche cycles\u003c/a> after record snowfalls, surprising scientists as well as public safety managers charged with keeping mountain roads open. Recently, mosquitoes that carry West Nile Virus have been appearing in the high mountains but remain largely untracked, along with other invasive species. And there are likely scores of other ecological cycles being disrupted that haven’t been studied at all, Inouye said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The IPCC assessment also concluded that forest fires are likely to increase in mountain areas where summers become warmer and drier. “Coastal ranges of California, the Blue Mountains of Australia, Mt. Kenya, and mountains on the fringes of the Mediterranean Sea, already subject to frequent fire episodes, would be severely affected,” the assessment said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A 2019 \u003ca href=\"https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019EF001210\">study\u003c/a> showed that the fivefold increase in the extent of California’s wildfires since the 1970s was “very likely driven by drying of fuels promoted by human‐induced warming.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Snow is decreasing, temperatures are warming, and mountains are changing in ways I never expected I’d live to see,” Steltzer said. “Policy-makers ask for data to show how bad it is. … Instead, they could ask how do we preserve the benefits of nature for each of us and all of us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"media media-element-container media-image_full\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"headline": "Fire, Rock Slides, and Floods: UN Report Details Growing Warming Threat in the Mountains",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>With ominous orange-gray smoke clouds seething on the western horizon, it’s easy to understand how Colorado’s highest city and other mountain communities are directly threatened by global warming. \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘Concern, commitment and action on climate change should not depend on which places, species or people are impacted. Instead, they should be motivated by compassion.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mountain snowpack is shrinking and melting earlier in the spring. Warmer and longer summers dry out vegetation and increase the threat of wildfires in western mountain forests, where the fire season has \u003ca href=\"https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/86268/longer-more-frequent-fire-seasons\">lengthened\u003c/a> by at least a month since 1979.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The growing wildfire risk is just part of an accelerating cycle of global warming impacts in the world’s mountain regions, according to a new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/25092019/ipcc-cryosphere-ocean-report-climate-change-sea-level-rise-greenland-antarctica\">report\u003c/a> that includes a \u003ca href=\"https://report.ipcc.ch/srocc/pdf/SROCC_FinalDraft_Chapter2.pdf\">section\u003c/a> focused on mountains for the first time in more than 20 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Snow cover duration has declined in nearly all regions, especially at lower elevations, on average by five days per decade,” the mountain chapter of the IPCC report says. On average across Western North America, the European Alps and High Mountain Asia, temperatures are warming by 0.54 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s melting glaciers and changing mountain river flows, disrupting plants and wildlife, and increasing the risk of extreme \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26092018/climate-change-mountains-landslide-hazard-thawing-permafrost-rockfall-extreme-weather-glaciers-global-warming\">rockslides\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08032019/avalanche-climate-change-risk-snow-storm-forecast-colorado-switzerland\">avalanches\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06082018/global-warming-climate-change-floods-california-oroville-dam-scientists\">mountain floods\u003c/a> caused by rain falling on snow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taken together, global warming impacts represent an existential threat to millions of people in the Andes, the Himalaya, the European Alps, and the U.S. Mountain West including Alaska, said \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/heidimountains\">Heidi Steltzer\u003c/a>, a biologist at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, and a lead author of the mountain chapter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Shrinking glaciers and snow harm Indigenous Peoples and rural communities greatly. Concern, commitment and action on climate change should not depend on which places, species or people are impacted. Instead, they should be motivated by compassion,” Steltzer said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Water Reliability \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Crested Butte, about 100 miles southwest of Leadville, hydrologist and physicist Rosemary Carroll studies how \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07062016/unabated-global-warming-threatens-west-snowpack-water-rocky-mountains-sierra-nevada-drought\">disruptions\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07062016/unabated-global-warming-threatens-west-snowpack-water-rocky-mountains-sierra-nevada-drought\">to the water cycle\u003c/a> will affect local ranchers and ski areas, as well as drinking and agricultural water supplies hundreds of miles away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The IPCC assessment found that global warming will change the timing and amount of runoff, “affecting water storage and delivery infrastructure around the world,” a finding backed by research focusing on the West.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A 2016 \u003ca href=\"https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016GL068798\">study\u003c/a> in six Western mountain ranges showed rising temperatures will shift the snow accumulation zone and runoff timing enough to have significant impacts on water cycles. And some towns in the Rockies and Sierra Nevada are at risk from \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06082018/global-warming-climate-change-floods-california-oroville-dam-scientists\">dangerous flash floods\u003c/a> as global warming brings rain, rather than snow, to some mountain regions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carroll pointed out her living room window to a craggy ridgeline where she measures how water from melted snow trickles through rocks and meadows down to the East River, on to the Gunnison River and finally into the mighty Colorado.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The new normal is that the snowpack is melting earlier and we have earlier runoff, and that’s a fact. There’s going to be less water for a given snowpack,” she said. Even in average snowfall years, global warming is reducing the amount of available water for irrigation and storage, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her research for the University of Nevada’s Desert Research Institute and the U.S. Department of Energy will help communities adapt as global warming disrupts flows from mountain streams. Around Crested Butte, the ski industry and local ranchers will feel the changes first.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But addressing those impacts isn’t as easy as just throwing a new report on the table. Translating science into action requires working with stakeholders from the start.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Ranchers know what’s happening, they know that things are shifting, but they’re afraid the policy will shift in a way that they will carry the burden of the change. Since they have most of the water, they fear they will have to give up the most, and that it won’t be equitable,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The states that get their water from the Colorado River are already restructuring \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31012019/colorado-river-water-crisis-climate-science-state-conservation-plans\">water-sharing agreements\u003c/a> to stave off shortages and trying to develop new storage plans to account for extreme wet and dry years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Goodbye to Glaciers\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Global warming will change nearly every mountain ecosystem, starting with the very visible meltdown of glaciers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the European Alps, \u003ca href=\"https://www.alpenverein.at/portal/news/aktuelle_news/2018/2018_04_06_gletscherbericht.php\">some glaciers retreated by as much 410 feet\u003c/a> last year — imagine the Empire State Building shrinking by a third. Globally, the world’s glaciers have lost 9 trillion tons of ice since 1961, raising sea level by about 1 inch, according to the \u003ca href=\"http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Glaciers_lose_nine_trillion_tonnes_of_ice_in_half_a_century\">European Space Agency\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As glaciers melt, they create a series of risks: newly formed meltwater lakes can burst through their banks, flooding towns and farms below. And as the ice dwindles, that will significantly change the timing and amount of water available for hydropower production and agriculture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along with disrupting ecosystems and downstream communities that rely on glacier meltwater, global warming in the mountains will cause emotional and cultural loss as cherished landscapes vanish. In Switzerland, people recently held a memorial service for the \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/matthias_huss/status/1176117412997062656\">disappearing Pizol Glacier\u003c/a> as a way of dealing with that grief, a sometimes overlooked component of climate resilience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"media media-element-container media-image_full\">\n\u003cp>The physical threats are real and growing, said Swiss glaciologist Matthias Huss.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If greenhouse gas emissions peak in the next few years and then start to decline, glaciers in the European Alps will lose two-thirds of their current ice. With continued high emissions, the glaciers will all but vanish, with only 5 percent of the current ice remaining, Huss and colleagues found in recent \u003ca href=\"https://www.the-cryosphere.net/13/1125/2019/\">study\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“\u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26092018/climate-change-mountains-landslide-hazard-thawing-permafrost-rockfall-extreme-weather-glaciers-global-warming\">An increase in rockfall events\u003c/a>, and flooding from glacier lakes, also due to more extreme weather events, is likely,” Huss said. “I think European countries are prepared, and they have the financial means to adapt. It will be much more difficult for developing countries to adapt to the challenges in mountain regions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Extreme storms that destroy forests and damage roads and railroad lines could also become more frequent in the world’s mountains, although climate models aren’t yet localized enough to project such changes accurately, the IPCC assessment concluded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It won’t be cheap to redesign and rebuild water infrastructure, Huss said. In some snow-dependent communities, the meltdown will also drive wrenching cultural and economic changes. But “one could also see this as a chance for major development toward a more sustainable way to live on our planet,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adapting Food Crops\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s what University of Colorado researcher Tsegay Wolde-Georgis was thinking when he led a \u003ca href=\"https://instaar.colorado.edu/news-events/instaar-news/apple-trees-in-atebes-cultivating-climate-resilience-in-an-ethiopian-villag/\">project\u003c/a> in the early 2000s to cultivate apple trees around Atebe, in the dry highlands of Ethiopia where he grew up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Diversifying local food supplies will help make the region more resilient to global warming, he said. The new IPCC assessment affirms that global warming is driving dangerous changes in mountain environments that threaten food supplies. But along with warnings, the world needs action, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Everything is getting more extreme, and there is seasonal confusion,” he said. But there is enough scientific and traditional knowledge to find on-the-ground projects and do them, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the apple orchard, he adapted a traditional permaculture technique, using water-filled clay pots to efficiently irrigate the young trees. At the same time, residents enhanced the water-holding capacity of deforested hillsides by building terraces and planting vegetation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such regenerative agriculture is crucial for food security in developing countries, said Wolde-Georgis, who works with the \u003ca href=\"https://instaar.colorado.edu/research/programs/consortium-for-capacity-building/\">Consortium for Capacity Building\u003c/a>, part of the University of Colorado’s \u003ca href=\"https://instaar.colorado.edu/\">Institute of Alpine and Arctic Research\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After decades of academic research and projects, he radiates the kind of practical wisdom that can help shape resilience to global warming. His eyes gleam as he recalls the look on a local priest’s face during the first apple harvest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was the first time in his life he tasted an apple. When we plant apples, it’s mitigation [of the climate impact], but at the same time, we are solving problems. We have to find something that’s doable on the ground,” he said. In four years, the farmers planted 1,400 apple trees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, communities worked to restore watersheds by building terraces and replanting clear-cut hillsides. Wolde-Georgis said the work was successful. Streams that had been dry by the end of December now hold water through the end of May.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a larger scale, Wolde-Georgis helps build physical and information infrastructure to boost resilience, including new roads and railroads to help transport food when climate extremes cause crop failures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ethiopia and other developing countries also need more institutional science-based infrastructure to inform good governance across jurisdictional boundaries, he said. To meet the challenges ahead requires working in an atmosphere of trust and a spirit of collaboration, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Disrupting Plants\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab in Gothic, Colorado, David Inouye’s cabin near a patch of shimmering gold aspens is marked by wisps of chimney smoke. For nearly 50 years, he’s been recording plant and animal activity while other observers tally snowfall and snowmelt data day by day — a scientific deep dive into time and space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Compared to the 1970s, spring is coming earlier. There is more winter rain, and summers are longer and drier. It all adds up to disruption for mountain ecosystems, where most plants only have a few weeks to bloom. And the plants are tightly linked with pollinating insects in \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15062018/climate-change-impacts-pollen-pollination-flowers-bees-butterflies-europe-heat-wave-global-warming-research\">a delicately timed cycle\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The ecology of this altitude is driven largely by how much snow we get in the winter and when that snow melts,” Inouye said. “As the climate changes, we’re tending to get less snow and warmer and earlier springs. A paradoxical consequence is that we’re getting more frost damage,” he said. The effects ripple through the ecosystem as global warming disrupts plants and seed production, which, in turn, means less food for small mammals and birds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Graceful yellow glacier lilies are \u003ca href=\"https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/12-0255.1\">blooming 17 days earlier\u003c/a> than they did in the 1970s, but migrating hummingbirds that depend on the flower nectar aren’t keeping up. By the time they arrive, many of the plants have withered away, and if current trends continue, in two decades the hummingbirds will miss the first flowers entirely. Ecosystems could collapse as global warming continues to decouple \u003ca href=\"https://www.rmbl.org/article/science-story-june-2019/\">complex ecological relationships\u003c/a>, showing why global warming is a threat to biodiversity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another \u003ca href=\"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2012.01766.x\">study\u003c/a> documented how earlier spring snowmelt makes mountain daisies bloom earlier, when they are more susceptible to frost. The research showed how the frost damage reduces the amount of nectar for a species of butterfly that depends on that particular flower for feeding during the egg-laying season.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If they don’t get nectar, they can’t make eggs, and the population declines,” Inouye said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tipping Points\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The research at the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab helps connect the dots in complex ecosystems and how global warming can make them unravel, said lab executive director Ian Billick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What people don’t realize is that we’re changing multiple things at the same time. People don’t realize how drastically things are going to change,” he said. Massive disturbance events linked with global warming like the early 2000s bark beetle outbreak that killed trees across millions of acres will happen again and again. Multiple stressors are driving mountain ecosystems past tipping points, leading to fundamental change, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our agricultural productivity depends on these ecosystems functioning in a highly integrated way, so it’s like if you throw a screwdriver in the middle of an engine, the whole thing falls apart, and I think it’s like with ag, where these finely tuned things are going to fall apart.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The IPCC report represents only the tiny tip of a “massive global change iceberg,” said Steltzer, the Colorado biologist and lead author of the mountain chapter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Nine-tenths is what we haven’t seen, measured and documented. We know things are changing for which we have no peer-reviewed scientific articles, and things are changing too fast to keep up,” she said. “There’s no reason to wait to act. We know enough.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just this past winter, both Europe and parts of the Rockies experienced \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08032019/avalanche-climate-change-risk-snow-storm-forecast-colorado-switzerland\">unprecedented avalanche cycles\u003c/a> after record snowfalls, surprising scientists as well as public safety managers charged with keeping mountain roads open. Recently, mosquitoes that carry West Nile Virus have been appearing in the high mountains but remain largely untracked, along with other invasive species. And there are likely scores of other ecological cycles being disrupted that haven’t been studied at all, Inouye said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The IPCC assessment also concluded that forest fires are likely to increase in mountain areas where summers become warmer and drier. “Coastal ranges of California, the Blue Mountains of Australia, Mt. Kenya, and mountains on the fringes of the Mediterranean Sea, already subject to frequent fire episodes, would be severely affected,” the assessment said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A 2019 \u003ca href=\"https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019EF001210\">study\u003c/a> showed that the fivefold increase in the extent of California’s wildfires since the 1970s was “very likely driven by drying of fuels promoted by human‐induced warming.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Snow is decreasing, temperatures are warming, and mountains are changing in ways I never expected I’d live to see,” Steltzer said. “Policy-makers ask for data to show how bad it is. … Instead, they could ask how do we preserve the benefits of nature for each of us and all of us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"media media-element-container media-image_full\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Overheated and Underpaid: A California Climate Change Story",
"headTitle": "Overheated and Underpaid: A California Climate Change Story | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is part of KQED Science’s ongoing coverage of the health impacts of extreme heat, which, driven by climate change, is increasingly impacting Californians. \u003c/em>\u003cem>Last year, reporter Molly Peterson gave sensors to 16 employees in order to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1934110/rising-heat-is-making-workers-sick\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">measure temperature and humidity inside their workplaces\u003c/a>. Here is an update on one of the workers, a man we’re identifying as “Brandon.” employer we haven’t named due to fear of retaliation.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His mornings all start the same.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An hour before daybreak, he makes himself a green juice: pineapple, celery, cactus. He’s 51, and lately, he’s been trying to get healthier. He gets behind the wheel of an old compact car for a quick commute to the warehouse where he drives a forklift.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A thin band of windows wraps around one corner of the building. That’s where the managers sit. Where Brandon works, it’s uninsulated, with plenty of metal — and there are no windows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote citation=\"'Brandon,' Inland Empire warehouse worker\"]‘It’s an inferno. It’s like hell. The people that are cool work inside the offices. But us, we work with the devil.’[/pullquote]He’s done this kind of work for almost a decade; it’s getting harder, and not just because of his age. “Yo pienso que mas caliente, mas caliente,” he says — “I think it’s getting hotter.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even in September, as summer fades into fall, the Inland Empire hits a hundred degrees. Since dawn the sun has pounded Brandon’s warehouse, with the metal containers at hundreds of loading docks, locked around the building like nursing piglets. They feed goods like kitchen mixers and patio furniture from overseas to consumers in California and beyond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While he works, out at the parking lot the heat bakes his car; there’s no air conditioning in there, either. When he clocks out, he drives another 20 minutes back home with the windows down, and he’s back where he started.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s only at that point, 10 or 12 hours after his green juice, that he finds respite. In a darkened corner of his apartment, he stands under a fan mounted on the wall, with a big grin on his face.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Right here. Oh, it’s fresh. It’s my cool area.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In this tiny, tidy apartment, he knows the enemy. He and his wife keep the window shades pulled down tight against the sun. He sways under the fan, then falls back onto the bed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel the difference,” he says. “I even tell my wife, don’t bother me, I’m grabbing some fresh air now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>‘It’s Like Hell’\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brandon’s right: It is getting hotter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to \u003ca href=\"https://cal-adapt.org/tools/extreme-heat/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Cal-Adapt\u003c/a>, which provides access to state scientific data, the temperature has hit 95 degrees about 50 days a year, on average, in the Inland Empire. In a couple of decades, even if greenhouse gas emissions level off, that number could almost double. If we keep dragging our feet on global warming, hot days in the Inland Empire could add up to more than four months a year by the end of the century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote]‘The heat is not asking people for their papers.’[/pullquote]For Brandon, heat’s already a real threat. Last year, when at the request of KQED he wore a sensor to work during July and August, he experienced heat above 90 degrees about 40% of the time, enough to make him sick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I felt bad twice a week, I got headaches,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It doesn’t help that Brandon has high blood pressure, a condition that makes it harder to sweat. Other chronic conditions people have also make sweating more difficult: asthma, heart and lung problems. So do some medications taken for those illnesses. Brandon himself takes a pill each morning for hypertension.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When it’s really bad, his company will give out bottles of water, he says. When the temperature spiked above 100 degrees last month, the company offered workers gum; Brandon’s head was aching, so he asked for aspirin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Employers are supposed to protect workers’ health and safety. But no federal rules limit heat indoors. There are no regulations, yet, in California either — no required rest breaks, water, or places to cool down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Employers only have to report the very worst cases of heat sickness, when someone dies or goes to the hospital for more than a day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Health researchers and workers like Brandon say falling ill from the heat is a lot more common, and more punishing, than the numbers show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The heat is ugly,” Brandon says. “It’s an inferno. It’s like hell. The people that are cool work inside the offices. But us, we work with the devil.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State lawmakers agree it’s too hot. Three years ago, the governor signed a law that requires the Division of Occupational Safety and Health to make a rule protecting workers from indoor heat. Under a proposal circulating now, if it’s not feasible to prevent hot conditions, employers have to limit workers’ exposure or offer them protective cooling gear to wear on the job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The rule was due in January, but state regulators may not finish it until next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All employees are covered by worker’s compensation insurance, according to Dr. Robert Harrison, who founded UC San Francisco’s occupational health clinic and formerly served on the state’s Occupational Safety & Health Standards Board\u003cstrong>.\u003c/strong> That means if workers get heat-sick, they can report their illness and go to a health care provider.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In practice, though, workers fear that if they get sick on the job, the boss might see them as a problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last October, Brandon had made it through most of the day, driving his forklift in and out of steel containers, moving pallets of electronics and boxes of kitchen goods. But he recognized that familiar feeling of heat building up in his body, and he knew he would soon be sick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He asked if he could leave to see his doctor. But a manager said no, the company’s policy was to call an ambulance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s a situation workers often try to avoid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>An Expensive Ambulance Ride\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ambulance trips like the one offered Brandon can cost workers money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doctors underdiagnose heat sickness. When workers report symptoms like headaches and nausea, a doctor might pin them on a pre-existing condition, with no linkage to heat. As a result, the diagnosis code might indicate an old ailment had simply flared up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"alignnone\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-1934253\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/11/KQED_Heat_graphic-674x1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"280\" height=\"498\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/11/KQED_Heat_graphic-674x1200.jpg 674w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/11/KQED_Heat_graphic-160x285.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/11/KQED_Heat_graphic-240x427.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/11/KQED_Heat_graphic-375x668.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/11/KQED_Heat_graphic-520x926.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/11/KQED_Heat_graphic.jpg 750w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 280px) 100vw, 280px\">An emergency room doctor blamed Brandon’s symptoms on hypertension. That ER visit cost him $300, and his health insurance didn’t cover the rest of the bill: $3,000 more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brandon says he talked with his employers about the bill, and he asked them to cover it. “It wasn’t my idea [to go to the ER], I was going to go to my doctor,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They turned him down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As of now, he hasn’t filed for worker’s compensation. From Brandon’s perspective, it’s a gamble. Insurers might deny his claim that heat sickness was a work-related injury, especially because the paperwork attributes it to a pre-existing condition. So he might not get paid. Meanwhile, he worries that the claim itself would put a target on his back, identifying him as a troublemaker with the bosses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pledging Allegiance, Feeling the Heat\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The business of moving goods through the Inland Empire keeps growing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Almost a century ago, this area was famous for oranges. Chinese, Japanese and Mexican workers earned pennies and breathed oily smoke from fires that kept the trees from freezing. During World War II, the Kaiser steel plant in Fontana where Brandon lives, employed thousands of union workers. It closed in the 1980s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nowadays the Inland Empire is rich in warehouse jobs. But they’re almost all nonunion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles together were the nation’s busiest; most of their cargo heads to Riverside and San Bernardino counties. On average, the region adds about a football field’s worth of warehouse space a day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jobs grow fast, here, too. Eighty-five thousand men and women now work in warehouses in the Inland Empire — mostly Latino, like Brandon. Some make as little as $12 an hour.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brandon says his company can always find someone to take his place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What can we do?” he says. “They tell us: ‘If you don’t like it here, there’s the door, you can walk out.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Low-wage and immigrant workers say they fear retaliation. When they complain about heat, when they get sick, when they ask for aspirin, and definitely when they file for worker’s compensation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A small American flag is clipped to the wall in Brandon’s kitchen, above the microwave. He’s a U.S. citizen; his naturalization ceremony was last year. For a long time he hoped pledging allegiance might help him get better conditions at work. He doesn’t think that anymore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If there are people who were born here, people who, because they were born here, know all their rights, maybe someone can listen to them,” he says. “If I put myself next to that person, they will listen more to him than to me. A hundred percent.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brandon stands well over 6 feet, and during heat season, he loses weight. What’s left is muscle — he’s a bear of a man.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You might see me like a bear, but there, they ignore you, they make you smaller than you are, they don’t pay attention,” Brandon says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Driving a forklift pays Brandon around $18 an hour, just about a \u003ca href=\"https://livingwage.mit.edu/metros/40140\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">living wage in this region\u003c/a>. The warehouse was sold last year, and the new owners cut his salary a buck.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“How long have I been working in the warehouse? Years. How long have I been in this country? Years. And it’s always the same.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brandon has also worked as a warehouse lumper, moving boxes by hand. He’s been a mover and worked in manufacturing. He knows heavy labor. He came to California from Michoacán, in Mexico, so he knows hot weather. Familiarity with heat and work isn’t enough. There are limits to how fast the human body can acclimate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even before people reach those limits, these conditions make work more dangerous. Heat makes people irritable. It causes more mistakes and accidents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The best insulation against heat is money. Money can buy air conditioning, or medical care. But as heat intensifies, that protection starts to thin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The heat is not asking people for their papers,” says Brandon. “The heat reaches everyone the same. Do you hear me? The heat is fucking us all over.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brandon says nobody has to tell workers when heat becomes unsafe. They’ve been trying to tell anyone who would listen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Look at the climate,” he says. “It’s changing, it’s getting hotter. But what are they doing about it? The people at the top, the people in charge, they’re not looking for a solution for us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "As part of KQED Science’s ongoing coverage of the health impacts of extreme heat, Molly Peterson checks in with 'Brandon,' an Inland Empire warehouse employee who frequently works in 90-degree heat indoors.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is part of KQED Science’s ongoing coverage of the health impacts of extreme heat, which, driven by climate change, is increasingly impacting Californians. \u003c/em>\u003cem>Last year, reporter Molly Peterson gave sensors to 16 employees in order to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1934110/rising-heat-is-making-workers-sick\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">measure temperature and humidity inside their workplaces\u003c/a>. Here is an update on one of the workers, a man we’re identifying as “Brandon.” employer we haven’t named due to fear of retaliation.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His mornings all start the same.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An hour before daybreak, he makes himself a green juice: pineapple, celery, cactus. He’s 51, and lately, he’s been trying to get healthier. He gets behind the wheel of an old compact car for a quick commute to the warehouse where he drives a forklift.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A thin band of windows wraps around one corner of the building. That’s where the managers sit. Where Brandon works, it’s uninsulated, with plenty of metal — and there are no windows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘It’s an inferno. It’s like hell. The people that are cool work inside the offices. But us, we work with the devil.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>He’s done this kind of work for almost a decade; it’s getting harder, and not just because of his age. “Yo pienso que mas caliente, mas caliente,” he says — “I think it’s getting hotter.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even in September, as summer fades into fall, the Inland Empire hits a hundred degrees. Since dawn the sun has pounded Brandon’s warehouse, with the metal containers at hundreds of loading docks, locked around the building like nursing piglets. They feed goods like kitchen mixers and patio furniture from overseas to consumers in California and beyond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While he works, out at the parking lot the heat bakes his car; there’s no air conditioning in there, either. When he clocks out, he drives another 20 minutes back home with the windows down, and he’s back where he started.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s only at that point, 10 or 12 hours after his green juice, that he finds respite. In a darkened corner of his apartment, he stands under a fan mounted on the wall, with a big grin on his face.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Right here. Oh, it’s fresh. It’s my cool area.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In this tiny, tidy apartment, he knows the enemy. He and his wife keep the window shades pulled down tight against the sun. He sways under the fan, then falls back onto the bed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel the difference,” he says. “I even tell my wife, don’t bother me, I’m grabbing some fresh air now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>‘It’s Like Hell’\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brandon’s right: It is getting hotter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to \u003ca href=\"https://cal-adapt.org/tools/extreme-heat/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Cal-Adapt\u003c/a>, which provides access to state scientific data, the temperature has hit 95 degrees about 50 days a year, on average, in the Inland Empire. In a couple of decades, even if greenhouse gas emissions level off, that number could almost double. If we keep dragging our feet on global warming, hot days in the Inland Empire could add up to more than four months a year by the end of the century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>For Brandon, heat’s already a real threat. Last year, when at the request of KQED he wore a sensor to work during July and August, he experienced heat above 90 degrees about 40% of the time, enough to make him sick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I felt bad twice a week, I got headaches,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It doesn’t help that Brandon has high blood pressure, a condition that makes it harder to sweat. Other chronic conditions people have also make sweating more difficult: asthma, heart and lung problems. So do some medications taken for those illnesses. Brandon himself takes a pill each morning for hypertension.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When it’s really bad, his company will give out bottles of water, he says. When the temperature spiked above 100 degrees last month, the company offered workers gum; Brandon’s head was aching, so he asked for aspirin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Employers are supposed to protect workers’ health and safety. But no federal rules limit heat indoors. There are no regulations, yet, in California either — no required rest breaks, water, or places to cool down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Employers only have to report the very worst cases of heat sickness, when someone dies or goes to the hospital for more than a day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Health researchers and workers like Brandon say falling ill from the heat is a lot more common, and more punishing, than the numbers show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The heat is ugly,” Brandon says. “It’s an inferno. It’s like hell. The people that are cool work inside the offices. But us, we work with the devil.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State lawmakers agree it’s too hot. Three years ago, the governor signed a law that requires the Division of Occupational Safety and Health to make a rule protecting workers from indoor heat. Under a proposal circulating now, if it’s not feasible to prevent hot conditions, employers have to limit workers’ exposure or offer them protective cooling gear to wear on the job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The rule was due in January, but state regulators may not finish it until next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All employees are covered by worker’s compensation insurance, according to Dr. Robert Harrison, who founded UC San Francisco’s occupational health clinic and formerly served on the state’s Occupational Safety & Health Standards Board\u003cstrong>.\u003c/strong> That means if workers get heat-sick, they can report their illness and go to a health care provider.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In practice, though, workers fear that if they get sick on the job, the boss might see them as a problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last October, Brandon had made it through most of the day, driving his forklift in and out of steel containers, moving pallets of electronics and boxes of kitchen goods. But he recognized that familiar feeling of heat building up in his body, and he knew he would soon be sick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He asked if he could leave to see his doctor. But a manager said no, the company’s policy was to call an ambulance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s a situation workers often try to avoid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>An Expensive Ambulance Ride\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ambulance trips like the one offered Brandon can cost workers money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doctors underdiagnose heat sickness. When workers report symptoms like headaches and nausea, a doctor might pin them on a pre-existing condition, with no linkage to heat. As a result, the diagnosis code might indicate an old ailment had simply flared up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"alignnone\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-1934253\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/11/KQED_Heat_graphic-674x1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"280\" height=\"498\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/11/KQED_Heat_graphic-674x1200.jpg 674w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/11/KQED_Heat_graphic-160x285.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/11/KQED_Heat_graphic-240x427.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/11/KQED_Heat_graphic-375x668.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/11/KQED_Heat_graphic-520x926.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/11/KQED_Heat_graphic.jpg 750w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 280px) 100vw, 280px\">An emergency room doctor blamed Brandon’s symptoms on hypertension. That ER visit cost him $300, and his health insurance didn’t cover the rest of the bill: $3,000 more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brandon says he talked with his employers about the bill, and he asked them to cover it. “It wasn’t my idea [to go to the ER], I was going to go to my doctor,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They turned him down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As of now, he hasn’t filed for worker’s compensation. From Brandon’s perspective, it’s a gamble. Insurers might deny his claim that heat sickness was a work-related injury, especially because the paperwork attributes it to a pre-existing condition. So he might not get paid. Meanwhile, he worries that the claim itself would put a target on his back, identifying him as a troublemaker with the bosses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pledging Allegiance, Feeling the Heat\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The business of moving goods through the Inland Empire keeps growing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Almost a century ago, this area was famous for oranges. Chinese, Japanese and Mexican workers earned pennies and breathed oily smoke from fires that kept the trees from freezing. During World War II, the Kaiser steel plant in Fontana where Brandon lives, employed thousands of union workers. It closed in the 1980s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nowadays the Inland Empire is rich in warehouse jobs. But they’re almost all nonunion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles together were the nation’s busiest; most of their cargo heads to Riverside and San Bernardino counties. On average, the region adds about a football field’s worth of warehouse space a day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jobs grow fast, here, too. Eighty-five thousand men and women now work in warehouses in the Inland Empire — mostly Latino, like Brandon. Some make as little as $12 an hour.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brandon says his company can always find someone to take his place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What can we do?” he says. “They tell us: ‘If you don’t like it here, there’s the door, you can walk out.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Low-wage and immigrant workers say they fear retaliation. When they complain about heat, when they get sick, when they ask for aspirin, and definitely when they file for worker’s compensation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A small American flag is clipped to the wall in Brandon’s kitchen, above the microwave. He’s a U.S. citizen; his naturalization ceremony was last year. For a long time he hoped pledging allegiance might help him get better conditions at work. He doesn’t think that anymore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If there are people who were born here, people who, because they were born here, know all their rights, maybe someone can listen to them,” he says. “If I put myself next to that person, they will listen more to him than to me. A hundred percent.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brandon stands well over 6 feet, and during heat season, he loses weight. What’s left is muscle — he’s a bear of a man.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You might see me like a bear, but there, they ignore you, they make you smaller than you are, they don’t pay attention,” Brandon says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Driving a forklift pays Brandon around $18 an hour, just about a \u003ca href=\"https://livingwage.mit.edu/metros/40140\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">living wage in this region\u003c/a>. The warehouse was sold last year, and the new owners cut his salary a buck.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“How long have I been working in the warehouse? Years. How long have I been in this country? Years. And it’s always the same.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brandon has also worked as a warehouse lumper, moving boxes by hand. He’s been a mover and worked in manufacturing. He knows heavy labor. He came to California from Michoacán, in Mexico, so he knows hot weather. Familiarity with heat and work isn’t enough. There are limits to how fast the human body can acclimate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even before people reach those limits, these conditions make work more dangerous. Heat makes people irritable. It causes more mistakes and accidents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The best insulation against heat is money. Money can buy air conditioning, or medical care. But as heat intensifies, that protection starts to thin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The heat is not asking people for their papers,” says Brandon. “The heat reaches everyone the same. Do you hear me? The heat is fucking us all over.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brandon says nobody has to tell workers when heat becomes unsafe. They’ve been trying to tell anyone who would listen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Look at the climate,” he says. “It’s changing, it’s getting hotter. But what are they doing about it? The people at the top, the people in charge, they’re not looking for a solution for us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Slashing Emissions and Saving Money, Penn State Could Be A Model for U.S. Cities",
"headTitle": "Slashing Emissions and Saving Money, Penn State Could Be A Model for U.S. Cities | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>In the struggle to end global warming, one community in central Pennsylvania is having remarkable success. It’s growing, with tens of thousands of people, yet its greenhouse emissions have been dropping dramatically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps most amazing: Those reductions have paid for themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is not your typical town — it’s Penn State University. But in many ways, it’s just like any other town or small city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve got 600 major buildings here, over 22 million square feet,” says Rob Cooper, Penn State’s senior director of engineering and energy. “We have our own water system, our own wastewater plant.” Most buildings are heated by steam from two gas-burning plants, delivered through miles of underground pipes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About 14,000 people live on campus. Roughly 65,000 people work or take classes here. Tens of thousands more show up to watch football games.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like most U.S. cities, this enterprise runs largely on fossil fuels, releasing hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon dioxide every year. The planet-warming gas comes from the steam plants, from power stations far away that supply electricity, from the cars that people drive to campus and from aircraft that faculty members take to conferences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Penn State has \u003ca href=\"http://sustainability.psu.edu/climate-action\">calculated\u003c/a> those emissions, year by year, over the past 25 years and laid them out on a graph. It tells a startling — and hopeful — story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Twenty years ago, the line was going up sharply. The university was growing, with more people and more buildings. It was burning more and more coal and gas — just like the rest of America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, in 2004, the line suddenly changed direction. It started falling like a rock rolling down a mountain. And it has been falling ever since, even though the university is growing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1948583 alignright\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/Screen-Shot-2019-10-04-at-10.41.52-AM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"791\" height=\"575\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/Screen-Shot-2019-10-04-at-10.41.52-AM.png 791w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/Screen-Shot-2019-10-04-at-10.41.52-AM-160x116.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/Screen-Shot-2019-10-04-at-10.41.52-AM-768x558.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 791px) 100vw, 791px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So how did Penn State succeed when the rest of the country has struggled to reduce its greenhouse emissions?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It started, according to several old-timers on campus, with a few students, faculty members and administrators who wanted to make the campus a greener place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the mid-1990s, when Penn State’s greenhouse emissions were still soaring, biology professor \u003ca href=\"https://bio.psu.edu/directory/cfu1\">Christopher Uhl\u003c/a> helped to organize a small \u003ca href=\"http://personal.psu.edu/cfu1/CUhlpersonalwebsite/greenpsu.shtml\">environmental movement\u003c/a> on campus. It focused on the university’s own operations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students calculated greenhouse emissions from specific buildings, looked at technical alternatives and gave the university mostly \u003ca href=\"https://p2infohouse.org/ref/17/16964.pdf\">poor grades\u003c/a> for its environmental performance. “In a sense, we’re using the university culture,” Uhl says. “It’s data that will speak to an academic institution, not, you know, ‘You \u003cem>should\u003c/em> do this.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we unveiled these different reports, we would meet on the the steps of Old Main, which is like this big center of the university,” he adds. “Lots of people showed up. The press was there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It put the university under pressure. And as it happened, the activists had some allies deep inside the university administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They were engineers and maintenance staff at the university’s Office of Physical Plant, people who typically go unnoticed until something breaks. They were led by a retired Navy officer named Ford Stryker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I always cared about environmental issues,” says Stryker. “We’d seen a lot of evidence that global warming was a real thing, and we were concerned about it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stryker pulled off a classic bureaucratic move. He persuaded the university president to declare “environmental stewardship” an official priority. It gave him leverage with other parts of the administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He got Penn State’s budget and finance offices to set up a revolving fund to pay for upgrades that cut greenhouse emissions. These were loans that had to be paid back, with interest. “It took a while to get the finance guys to agree,” Stryker says with a chuckle. “We had to demonstrate that we were actually saving money.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This, in fact, is what reversed that rising line on the graph of greenhouse emissions: a whole bunch of projects that cut the university’s demand for energy. Most of them paid for themselves within 10 years through lower energy bills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of these projects are surprisingly low-tech, like tuning up heating and air conditioning systems, measuring air flow and temperature, making sure enough air is flowing to keep people comfortable but not so much that extra steam is needed to keep everyone warm. “You don’t open the door of your house on a zero-degree day, right? We don’t want to do that, either,” says John Deffenbaugh, the engineer in charge of the program that gives Penn State’s buildings regular checkups.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’d be surprised what you find when you tune up a building’s HVAC system,” says Cooper, the head of of engineering and energy. “It’s one of the shortest paybacks. It’s consistently three to five years [to recoup the costs] on every building that we go into.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Penn State also switched the fuel in its central heating plant from coal to natural gas, which releases less carbon dioxide when burned. Engineers installed energy-saving motors and windows whenever they could justify spending the extra money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, with the cost of solar power falling sharply, Penn State signed a \u003ca href=\"https://news.psu.edu/story/586711/2019/09/06/impact/penn-state-lightsource-bp-break-ground-largest-solar-project\">deal\u003c/a> to buy electricity from a new 500-acre solar farm in Pennsylvania’s Franklin County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every time we looked at [solar power] before, the economics weren’t there,” says Andrew Gutberlet, Penn State’s manager of engineering services. “We could not get solar power, or any renewable power, for less than what we were buying it for off the grid. Until now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Penn State’s greenhouse emissions are now down by a third, compared with the peak in 2004. In a few years, with solar power rolling in, they will likely be down by almost 50%. (For comparison, total carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels in the U.S. peaked in 2007 and have since fallen by 12%.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many other universities are on the same path. Some have promised to eliminate greenhouse emissions entirely by 2050. American University, in Washington, D.C., \u003ca href=\"https://www.american.edu/about/sustainability/carbon-neutrality.cfm\">announced\u003c/a> last year that it is already “carbon neutral.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Penn State’s efforts, however, are particularly notable. The university is huge, it has documented its emissions carefully, and it has not resorted to “carbon offsets” that cancel out emissions by capturing carbon dioxide elsewhere, such as by planting trees. Plus, it’s doing this on a tight budget.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In principle, any city could follow Penn State’s example. As Gutberlet puts it: “We are demonstrating that this can be done.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Its experience, however, also offers two notes of caution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First, Penn State isn’t a regular city. “We are the creators of the heating energy and the consumers of the heating energy. We can take a holistic view of the entire process,” Gutberlet says. The university also can afford to take the long view, making decisions that take 10 years to pay off. Many homeowners and businesses can not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Second, cutting emissions in half is good, but it’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/03/11/688876374/its-2050-and-this-is-how-we-stopped-climate-change\">not enough\u003c/a> to stop global warming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Penn State actually has a more ambitious goal: an 80% cut in greenhouse emissions by 2050. Some people on campus are pushing to cut those emissions to zero.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Will they actually meet that goal? “We need to!” says Shelley McKeague, the person in Penn State’s administration who’s responsible for monitoring the university’s greenhouse emissions. “Do we have a concrete plan to get there? We do not, and the reality is, the country doesn’t either.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re looking at lots of possibilities, Cooper says. More solar power, new ways to store the clean power so it’s available when needed. Hydrogen-powered fuel cells. Super-efficient buildings. A massive reconstruction of the heating system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have options in front of us,” he says. “We just don’t know which ones we’ll pull the trigger on yet.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=How+Penn+State+Is+Cutting+Greenhouse+Emissions+In+Half+%E2%80%94+And+Saving+Money&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In the struggle to end global warming, one community in central Pennsylvania is having remarkable success. It’s growing, with tens of thousands of people, yet its greenhouse emissions have been dropping dramatically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps most amazing: Those reductions have paid for themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is not your typical town — it’s Penn State University. But in many ways, it’s just like any other town or small city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve got 600 major buildings here, over 22 million square feet,” says Rob Cooper, Penn State’s senior director of engineering and energy. “We have our own water system, our own wastewater plant.” Most buildings are heated by steam from two gas-burning plants, delivered through miles of underground pipes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About 14,000 people live on campus. Roughly 65,000 people work or take classes here. Tens of thousands more show up to watch football games.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like most U.S. cities, this enterprise runs largely on fossil fuels, releasing hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon dioxide every year. The planet-warming gas comes from the steam plants, from power stations far away that supply electricity, from the cars that people drive to campus and from aircraft that faculty members take to conferences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Penn State has \u003ca href=\"http://sustainability.psu.edu/climate-action\">calculated\u003c/a> those emissions, year by year, over the past 25 years and laid them out on a graph. It tells a startling — and hopeful — story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Twenty years ago, the line was going up sharply. The university was growing, with more people and more buildings. It was burning more and more coal and gas — just like the rest of America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, in 2004, the line suddenly changed direction. It started falling like a rock rolling down a mountain. And it has been falling ever since, even though the university is growing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1948583 alignright\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/Screen-Shot-2019-10-04-at-10.41.52-AM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"791\" height=\"575\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/Screen-Shot-2019-10-04-at-10.41.52-AM.png 791w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/Screen-Shot-2019-10-04-at-10.41.52-AM-160x116.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/Screen-Shot-2019-10-04-at-10.41.52-AM-768x558.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 791px) 100vw, 791px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So how did Penn State succeed when the rest of the country has struggled to reduce its greenhouse emissions?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It started, according to several old-timers on campus, with a few students, faculty members and administrators who wanted to make the campus a greener place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the mid-1990s, when Penn State’s greenhouse emissions were still soaring, biology professor \u003ca href=\"https://bio.psu.edu/directory/cfu1\">Christopher Uhl\u003c/a> helped to organize a small \u003ca href=\"http://personal.psu.edu/cfu1/CUhlpersonalwebsite/greenpsu.shtml\">environmental movement\u003c/a> on campus. It focused on the university’s own operations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students calculated greenhouse emissions from specific buildings, looked at technical alternatives and gave the university mostly \u003ca href=\"https://p2infohouse.org/ref/17/16964.pdf\">poor grades\u003c/a> for its environmental performance. “In a sense, we’re using the university culture,” Uhl says. “It’s data that will speak to an academic institution, not, you know, ‘You \u003cem>should\u003c/em> do this.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we unveiled these different reports, we would meet on the the steps of Old Main, which is like this big center of the university,” he adds. “Lots of people showed up. The press was there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It put the university under pressure. And as it happened, the activists had some allies deep inside the university administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They were engineers and maintenance staff at the university’s Office of Physical Plant, people who typically go unnoticed until something breaks. They were led by a retired Navy officer named Ford Stryker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I always cared about environmental issues,” says Stryker. “We’d seen a lot of evidence that global warming was a real thing, and we were concerned about it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stryker pulled off a classic bureaucratic move. He persuaded the university president to declare “environmental stewardship” an official priority. It gave him leverage with other parts of the administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He got Penn State’s budget and finance offices to set up a revolving fund to pay for upgrades that cut greenhouse emissions. These were loans that had to be paid back, with interest. “It took a while to get the finance guys to agree,” Stryker says with a chuckle. “We had to demonstrate that we were actually saving money.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This, in fact, is what reversed that rising line on the graph of greenhouse emissions: a whole bunch of projects that cut the university’s demand for energy. Most of them paid for themselves within 10 years through lower energy bills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of these projects are surprisingly low-tech, like tuning up heating and air conditioning systems, measuring air flow and temperature, making sure enough air is flowing to keep people comfortable but not so much that extra steam is needed to keep everyone warm. “You don’t open the door of your house on a zero-degree day, right? We don’t want to do that, either,” says John Deffenbaugh, the engineer in charge of the program that gives Penn State’s buildings regular checkups.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’d be surprised what you find when you tune up a building’s HVAC system,” says Cooper, the head of of engineering and energy. “It’s one of the shortest paybacks. It’s consistently three to five years [to recoup the costs] on every building that we go into.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Penn State also switched the fuel in its central heating plant from coal to natural gas, which releases less carbon dioxide when burned. Engineers installed energy-saving motors and windows whenever they could justify spending the extra money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, with the cost of solar power falling sharply, Penn State signed a \u003ca href=\"https://news.psu.edu/story/586711/2019/09/06/impact/penn-state-lightsource-bp-break-ground-largest-solar-project\">deal\u003c/a> to buy electricity from a new 500-acre solar farm in Pennsylvania’s Franklin County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every time we looked at [solar power] before, the economics weren’t there,” says Andrew Gutberlet, Penn State’s manager of engineering services. “We could not get solar power, or any renewable power, for less than what we were buying it for off the grid. Until now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Penn State’s greenhouse emissions are now down by a third, compared with the peak in 2004. In a few years, with solar power rolling in, they will likely be down by almost 50%. (For comparison, total carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels in the U.S. peaked in 2007 and have since fallen by 12%.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many other universities are on the same path. Some have promised to eliminate greenhouse emissions entirely by 2050. American University, in Washington, D.C., \u003ca href=\"https://www.american.edu/about/sustainability/carbon-neutrality.cfm\">announced\u003c/a> last year that it is already “carbon neutral.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Penn State’s efforts, however, are particularly notable. The university is huge, it has documented its emissions carefully, and it has not resorted to “carbon offsets” that cancel out emissions by capturing carbon dioxide elsewhere, such as by planting trees. Plus, it’s doing this on a tight budget.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In principle, any city could follow Penn State’s example. As Gutberlet puts it: “We are demonstrating that this can be done.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Its experience, however, also offers two notes of caution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First, Penn State isn’t a regular city. “We are the creators of the heating energy and the consumers of the heating energy. We can take a holistic view of the entire process,” Gutberlet says. The university also can afford to take the long view, making decisions that take 10 years to pay off. Many homeowners and businesses can not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Second, cutting emissions in half is good, but it’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/03/11/688876374/its-2050-and-this-is-how-we-stopped-climate-change\">not enough\u003c/a> to stop global warming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Penn State actually has a more ambitious goal: an 80% cut in greenhouse emissions by 2050. Some people on campus are pushing to cut those emissions to zero.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Will they actually meet that goal? “We need to!” says Shelley McKeague, the person in Penn State’s administration who’s responsible for monitoring the university’s greenhouse emissions. “Do we have a concrete plan to get there? We do not, and the reality is, the country doesn’t either.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re looking at lots of possibilities, Cooper says. More solar power, new ways to store the clean power so it’s available when needed. Hydrogen-powered fuel cells. Super-efficient buildings. A massive reconstruction of the heating system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have options in front of us,” he says. “We just don’t know which ones we’ll pull the trigger on yet.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=How+Penn+State+Is+Cutting+Greenhouse+Emissions+In+Half+%E2%80%94+And+Saving+Money&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Century-Old Records Show Bird Species Have Seriously Declined in a Hotter Mojave Desert",
"headTitle": "Century-Old Records Show Bird Species Have Seriously Declined in a Hotter Mojave Desert | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>It’s easy to imagine deserts as barren landscapes. Hot, punishing and absent of life. When we do think of life in the desert, it’s often cacti, snakes or other reptiles that come to mind. But turn your attention skyward, you’ll see birds play a role in desert ecosystems as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote]A new study finds climate change has caused a decline in the populations of 39 bird species compared to those surveyed by groundbreaking field biologist Joseph Grinnell. The common raven was the only species whose population increased over the last century.[/pullquote]Desert birds help pollinate flowers and disperse seeds, control insect outbreaks, and keep rodent populations in check. They also fill the silence with the sound of their calls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As UC Berkeley ecologist Steven Beissinger puts it: “A desert without birds is half empty. A desert without birds is a quiet place.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For 15 years, Beissinger and his colleagues at Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology have been\u003ca href=\"http://mvz.berkeley.edu/Grinnell/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> studying changes\u003c/a> in wildlife populations across California’s diverse landscapes. Their research found that nearly 30 percent of the 135 bird species that once flourished in the Mojave Desert have suffered significant declines over the past century. And more than 40 percent fewer species were observed, on average, across individual fields sites when compared with surveys from the museum’s archives — meaning even more birds have disappeared in pockets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/09/30/1908791116\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">study\u003c/a> published this week in \u003cem>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences\u003c/em> links the disappearance of Mojave’s desert birds to heat stress from climate change, and helps explain why some species are more vulnerable than others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Mojave occupies nearly 50,000 square miles, mostly in southeastern California and Nevada, and it’s considered to be North America’s driest desert.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1948511\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1948511\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_5-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_5-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_5-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_5-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_5-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_5-1200x900.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_5-1920x1440.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_5.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sunrise in the Mojave Desert, where average temperatures have increased roughly 2 degrees Celsius over the last century. \u003ccite>(Eric Riddell/UC Berkeley)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Over the last 100 years, average temperatures in the Mojave have risen about 2 degrees Celsius. The extra heat means birds require more water to keep their core body temperatures low enough to survive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Simply put, what we’ve found is that birds don’t have enough water to keep themselves cool anymore,” said Eric Riddell, a physiological ecologist at UC Berkeley and the study’s lead author.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not all species were affected equally. The American kestrel, prairie falcon, western meadowlark and violet-green swallow were among those whose populations have declined most. Populations of canyon wren, verdin, blue-gray gnatcatcher and ruby-crowned kinglet were more stable. The common raven was the only species whose population increased over the last century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>More Water Needed = Bigger Decline\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Birds lower their temperature through a process of evaporative cooling, akin to perspiration in humans. But instead of sweating moisture, birds expel it in their breath. As they breath, moisture evaporates off their throats, releasing excess body heat and cooling them down. This cooling can be sped up by panting (similar to dogs) or vibrating their throat muscles in a gesture called gular fluttering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Riddell says different species need different amounts of water to meet the demands of evaporative cooling. This need for water is determined by characteristics like size, shape, feather density and color.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1948513\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1948513\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_10-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_10-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_10-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_10-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_10-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_10-1200x900.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_10-1920x1440.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_10.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A violet-green swallow in the California desert. Larger insectivores have been hit hard by hotter conditions in the Mojave. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Sean Peterson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In general, Riddell says, larger birds will need more water to keep cool, as will darker birds, whose feathers absorb more heat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To understand the relationship between climate change and bird decline, Riddell created computational models, or “virtual birds,” to measure how the water demand of different species changed with the temperature increases of the last century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we found was that the more water that a certain species needed to cool off, the more that that species has declined over the last hundred years,” Riddell said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the species most affected were the larger insectivores and carnivorous birds, like hawks and raptors, which get most of their water not by drinking, but from what they eat. And those types of birds have particularly high cooling requirements, Riddell says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In hotter climates, these species will need to eat more to stay cool. An insectivore, for example, might need to catch 70 more bugs per day to fulfill its water demand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1948490\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1948490\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_12-800x618.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"618\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_12-800x618.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_12-160x124.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_12-768x593.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_12-1020x788.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_12-1200x927.png 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_12-1920x1482.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An increased need to hunt means some birds will face more exposure to the hotter climate. \u003ccite>(Eric Riddell/UC Berkeley)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The increased need to hunt and forage means these species must expel more energy and face even more exposure to sun and heat. The end result is heat stress.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Riddell say birds that rely on seeds for their diet typically get their water by drinking from springs or pools found in desert oases. While the Mojave has been getting drier with climate change, the continued presence of at least some surface water appears to have mitigated population declines in certain herbivore species.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What 100 Year-Old Field Notes Tell Us\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Riddell and Beissinger say the insights gained from their research would not be possible without the work of groundbreaking field biologist \u003ca href=\"http://mvz.berkeley.edu/Grinnell.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Joseph Grinnell\u003c/a>, the first director of Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, who headed the institution from 1908 until his death in 1939. Surveys of birds and mammals conducted by Grinnell and his colleagues, along with meticulously kept field field notes, have given researchers a baseline from which to measure changes over the past century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beissinger says he recognizes this cache as a “rare opportunity,” considering how many climate change studies must rely on data just three or four decades old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These field notebooks would be sort of like an (inventory) of what life was like in California and the West,” Beissigner said. “[Grinnell] recognized that the value of this would likely, as he wrote, not be known for a century … and that the student of the future would have an opportunity to see what the original faunal conditions were like in California. And we were that student of the future.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Riddell says that a lot of climate change research is focused on forecasting the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we sit around and we talk about the effects of climate change, we’re often focused on the future, and we rarely think about what’s happened in the last hundred years,” he said. “We think that these birds are going to experience this in the future. This sort of lethal wall that they can’t get past and they’re all going to essentially drop from the sky. But what our research has shown is that even the climate change that’s already occurred is too hot for these birds and too much for them to deal with.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The goal, Riddell says, is to better understand how and why climate change is affecting bird and other wildlife populations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Riddell says some birds may be able to adapt. For example, there’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.pnas.org/content/114/49/12976\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">evidence to suggest\u003c/a> that some species may be shifting their nesting periods to earlier in the year in response to warming temperatures.\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Getting smaller is another way birds can combat heat stress. Smaller birds, Riddell says, will need less water to keep themselves cool. But, he says, there’s a limit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We found, depending on the climate scenario, that birds would have to shrink by as much as 35 to 50 percent over the next century, which is just not possible.” With deserts getting hotter and desert-like conditions becoming more common in western North America, he expects bird populations will continue to decline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So that means that when we go out to the Mojave or Joshua Tree or the Sonoran Desert, that over the next century we can expect to see far fewer birds as we’re walking around in the desert environment.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Over the past century, 39 species of birds in the Mojave Desert have suffered major population declines. A new study links the disappearance of desert birds to heat stress from climate change.",
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"description": "Over the past century, 39 species of birds in the Mojave Desert have suffered major population declines. A new study links the disappearance of desert birds to heat stress from climate change.",
"title": "Century-Old Records Show Bird Species Have Seriously Declined in a Hotter Mojave Desert | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>It’s easy to imagine deserts as barren landscapes. Hot, punishing and absent of life. When we do think of life in the desert, it’s often cacti, snakes or other reptiles that come to mind. But turn your attention skyward, you’ll see birds play a role in desert ecosystems as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Desert birds help pollinate flowers and disperse seeds, control insect outbreaks, and keep rodent populations in check. They also fill the silence with the sound of their calls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As UC Berkeley ecologist Steven Beissinger puts it: “A desert without birds is half empty. A desert without birds is a quiet place.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For 15 years, Beissinger and his colleagues at Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology have been\u003ca href=\"http://mvz.berkeley.edu/Grinnell/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> studying changes\u003c/a> in wildlife populations across California’s diverse landscapes. Their research found that nearly 30 percent of the 135 bird species that once flourished in the Mojave Desert have suffered significant declines over the past century. And more than 40 percent fewer species were observed, on average, across individual fields sites when compared with surveys from the museum’s archives — meaning even more birds have disappeared in pockets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/09/30/1908791116\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">study\u003c/a> published this week in \u003cem>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences\u003c/em> links the disappearance of Mojave’s desert birds to heat stress from climate change, and helps explain why some species are more vulnerable than others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Mojave occupies nearly 50,000 square miles, mostly in southeastern California and Nevada, and it’s considered to be North America’s driest desert.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1948511\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1948511\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_5-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_5-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_5-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_5-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_5-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_5-1200x900.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_5-1920x1440.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_5.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sunrise in the Mojave Desert, where average temperatures have increased roughly 2 degrees Celsius over the last century. \u003ccite>(Eric Riddell/UC Berkeley)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Over the last 100 years, average temperatures in the Mojave have risen about 2 degrees Celsius. The extra heat means birds require more water to keep their core body temperatures low enough to survive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Simply put, what we’ve found is that birds don’t have enough water to keep themselves cool anymore,” said Eric Riddell, a physiological ecologist at UC Berkeley and the study’s lead author.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not all species were affected equally. The American kestrel, prairie falcon, western meadowlark and violet-green swallow were among those whose populations have declined most. Populations of canyon wren, verdin, blue-gray gnatcatcher and ruby-crowned kinglet were more stable. The common raven was the only species whose population increased over the last century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>More Water Needed = Bigger Decline\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Birds lower their temperature through a process of evaporative cooling, akin to perspiration in humans. But instead of sweating moisture, birds expel it in their breath. As they breath, moisture evaporates off their throats, releasing excess body heat and cooling them down. This cooling can be sped up by panting (similar to dogs) or vibrating their throat muscles in a gesture called gular fluttering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Riddell says different species need different amounts of water to meet the demands of evaporative cooling. This need for water is determined by characteristics like size, shape, feather density and color.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1948513\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1948513\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_10-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_10-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_10-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_10-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_10-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_10-1200x900.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_10-1920x1440.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_10.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A violet-green swallow in the California desert. Larger insectivores have been hit hard by hotter conditions in the Mojave. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Sean Peterson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In general, Riddell says, larger birds will need more water to keep cool, as will darker birds, whose feathers absorb more heat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To understand the relationship between climate change and bird decline, Riddell created computational models, or “virtual birds,” to measure how the water demand of different species changed with the temperature increases of the last century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we found was that the more water that a certain species needed to cool off, the more that that species has declined over the last hundred years,” Riddell said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the species most affected were the larger insectivores and carnivorous birds, like hawks and raptors, which get most of their water not by drinking, but from what they eat. And those types of birds have particularly high cooling requirements, Riddell says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In hotter climates, these species will need to eat more to stay cool. An insectivore, for example, might need to catch 70 more bugs per day to fulfill its water demand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1948490\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1948490\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_12-800x618.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"618\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_12-800x618.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_12-160x124.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_12-768x593.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_12-1020x788.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_12-1200x927.png 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/IMG_12-1920x1482.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An increased need to hunt means some birds will face more exposure to the hotter climate. \u003ccite>(Eric Riddell/UC Berkeley)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The increased need to hunt and forage means these species must expel more energy and face even more exposure to sun and heat. The end result is heat stress.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Riddell say birds that rely on seeds for their diet typically get their water by drinking from springs or pools found in desert oases. While the Mojave has been getting drier with climate change, the continued presence of at least some surface water appears to have mitigated population declines in certain herbivore species.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What 100 Year-Old Field Notes Tell Us\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Riddell and Beissinger say the insights gained from their research would not be possible without the work of groundbreaking field biologist \u003ca href=\"http://mvz.berkeley.edu/Grinnell.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Joseph Grinnell\u003c/a>, the first director of Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, who headed the institution from 1908 until his death in 1939. Surveys of birds and mammals conducted by Grinnell and his colleagues, along with meticulously kept field field notes, have given researchers a baseline from which to measure changes over the past century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beissinger says he recognizes this cache as a “rare opportunity,” considering how many climate change studies must rely on data just three or four decades old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These field notebooks would be sort of like an (inventory) of what life was like in California and the West,” Beissigner said. “[Grinnell] recognized that the value of this would likely, as he wrote, not be known for a century … and that the student of the future would have an opportunity to see what the original faunal conditions were like in California. And we were that student of the future.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Riddell says that a lot of climate change research is focused on forecasting the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we sit around and we talk about the effects of climate change, we’re often focused on the future, and we rarely think about what’s happened in the last hundred years,” he said. “We think that these birds are going to experience this in the future. This sort of lethal wall that they can’t get past and they’re all going to essentially drop from the sky. But what our research has shown is that even the climate change that’s already occurred is too hot for these birds and too much for them to deal with.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The goal, Riddell says, is to better understand how and why climate change is affecting bird and other wildlife populations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Riddell says some birds may be able to adapt. For example, there’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.pnas.org/content/114/49/12976\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">evidence to suggest\u003c/a> that some species may be shifting their nesting periods to earlier in the year in response to warming temperatures.\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Getting smaller is another way birds can combat heat stress. Smaller birds, Riddell says, will need less water to keep themselves cool. But, he says, there’s a limit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We found, depending on the climate scenario, that birds would have to shrink by as much as 35 to 50 percent over the next century, which is just not possible.” With deserts getting hotter and desert-like conditions becoming more common in western North America, he expects bird populations will continue to decline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So that means that when we go out to the Mojave or Joshua Tree or the Sonoran Desert, that over the next century we can expect to see far fewer birds as we’re walking around in the desert environment.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>California’s last two fire seasons were brutal. As the Legislature struggles to fund fire \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1948013/california-lawmakers-plans-to-protect-homes-from-wildfire-fall-short\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">safety proposals\u003c/a>, and agencies spend more on firefighting crews, a team of scientists is proposing a novel solution: extinguishing fires before they start.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is something we do with vaccines all the time,” said Eric Appel, materials scientist at Stanford. “You have high-risk populations and you vaccinate them against the disease in the first place. As with many things, prevention is cheaper, easier and more effective than treatment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Appel is senior author on a recent \u003ca href=\"https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1907855116\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">study\u003c/a> published in \u003cem>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences\u003c/em>, reporting on the first field trials of a long-acting, environmentally benign fire retardant that he hopes will reshape the way fires are prevented and fought in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Most people think that fires just sort of start willy nilly anywhere in the forest. But it turns out that that’s not really true.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The study found that most wildfires start in the same locations, and that the retardant will protect an area for months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So what that means,” Appel says, “is that you would only need to treat a very small amount of land in order to prevent a majority of fires.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Spark of An Idea\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For co-author Jesse Acosta, adjunct professor of Natural Resource Management at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, a moment of inspiration came years ago, as he stood in the sweltering heat of Hawaii, working for the U.S. Forest Service in a Smokey Bear costume, trying to convince people to care about fire prevention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I don’t know if it was the actual discomfort of the suit that made me think about things differently, or if it was some sort of late-night epiphany,” said the former Fire Prevention Forester, “but it became very clear to me very quickly that [outreach] was not effective in terms of preventing fires.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Likely, it was both, but it would take a move to Connecticut and a chance meeting with a colleague for the building blocks of a new approach to fall into place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the time, \u003ca href=\"http://www.supramolecularbiomaterials.com/\">Eric Appel\u003c/a>, now a materials scientist at Stanford University, was studying medical drug delivery at MIT, \u003c/span>“answering the question of ‘H\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ow do we keep these drug molecules stable and get them where they need to go and keep them where they need to be?'”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answer lead to the development of a “hydrogel” \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">made of\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">inexpensive, renewable and benign materials that could deliver medications in a human body and keep them stable over time. For example, an early application allowed people with diabetes to receive a single injection that supplied insulin over six months.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hydrogels themselves may seem an unlikely hero: They’re pale, shapeless blobs reminiscent of thick shampoo or mayonnaise. You mix them up in buckets, foregoing a lab coat for rubber boots. But to Appel, their beauty lies in the thoughtfulness of their design.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The gels we’re making are sophisticated and scalable. They form from simple components,” said Appel. “And they function like molecular Velcro,” meaning they can change their properties to allow them to be sprayed easily from a needle or nozzle.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Acosta was aware of Appel’s hydrogels and thought about what might happen if you replaced medications with a “molecular cargo” of flame retardants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It was around midnight when it finally dawned on me to use these hydrogels,” Acosta said\u003cstrong>,\u003c/strong> pointing out the many commonalities shared between what makes something safe for the human body and what makes something environmentally benign. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Let’s wrap up fire retardant in these hydrogels and see if they are able to stick to fuels and persist through weather.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://youtu.be/ilhFV7DIbxo\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Out of the Lab and Into the Fire\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After this unlikely series of events, Appel, Acosta and collaborators received funding through Stanford’s \u003ca href=\"https://woods.stanford.edu/research/realizing-environmental-innovation-program\">Realizing Environmental Innovation Program\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Appel and his collaborators began working with Cal Fire to identify where fires start each year. They found fires reproducibly start year-after-year in the same places, calculating that 84 percent of wildfires in California in the last 10 years have started at the same high-risk roadside spots or near utilities infrastructure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Following the success of a\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003ca href=\"https://static1.squarespace.com/static/52f83177e4b045fae914ddf2/t/584257b446c3c4f2f7d665e2/1480742837825/Yu_Appel_PNAS.pdf\">pilot study\u003c/a> on small piles of pine shavings, this new study tests hydrogel performance on a larger scale. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They treated plots of native grass 10 feet long and 10 feet wide with their product and set both those and untreated control plots alight, watching how they burned. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“T\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">hey just explode,” Appel said of the control plots. “It’s a pyromaniac’s best afternoon.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Appel and Acosta also wanted to address a major shortcoming of current retardants — that they are not meant to persist long beyond their initial application.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, much of the millions of tons of retardant that planes drop onto fires each year are \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">rendered useless by subsequent dumps of water onto active fire-lines. Even heavy dews and fogs, common along the California coast, can decrease the retardants’ efficiency.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The hydrogel, by contrast, stays at full potency and continues delivering fire protection over months of the traditional fire season. The hydrogels also stand up to dew, fog, and moderate rain, although they are intentionally designed to wash away at the start of the wetter fall months.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can put 20,000 gallons of this on an area for prevention, or 1 million gallons of the traditional formulation after a fire starts,” said study lead author Anthony Yu, a Ph.D. student in materials science and engineering at Stanford, in a media release.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The New Reality of Fire in California\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Acosta, a policy of suppression and a cultural view that fire is villainous has pitted the country against a future where extreme fires are guaranteed. This is due to a massive buildup of fuel — dead trees, brush and chaparral — in an ecosystem that has historically required fires as a natural part of the landscape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every fire we fight, every fire that happens, has the potential to be the Mendocino Complex or the Thomas Fire or the Carr Fire or the Ferguson Fire.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the economic costs of fighting fires have become enormous. Last year the federal government spent \u003ca href=\"https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_documents/SuppCosts.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">$3 billion\u003c/a> to put out blazes. Local agencies are also strapped. Fighting fires and defending one hot, 4-mile stretch along Highway 118 in Ventura County costs an average of $5.5 million annually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The true importance of hydrogels, Acosta says, extends beyond their use as a long-term, environmentally benign treatment. By stopping fires from ever starting, it pushes the balance of power further into our favor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We can stop fighting these catastrophic fires in June and July, Acosta said, “and fight them on our terms with prescribed burns in cooler, wetter weather and during times when we have more money freed up for fighting fires.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the next week, crews will apply the long-term fire retardant to some of Highway 118 and two other stretches of road in San Diego County. These will be the first large projects of a company formed to promote the retardant, which is now sold as Fortify. Appel and Yu are listed as inventors on the Fortify patent. Appel is Chief Technical Advisor for the new company, Ladera Tech. Jesse Acosta is Chief Business Officer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wes Bolsen, president and CEO of \u003ca href=\"https://www.ladera.tech/team\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ladera\u003c/a>, estimates roadside treatments will cost Cal Fire and the California Department of Transportation between $20,000 and $200,000, depending on the mileage and other factors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bolsen says utilities have also expressed interest in the retardant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Projects such as this may signal the first drop in a flood of new tools and methods aimed at developing a more holistic approach to accommodating fires in the state. Acosta feels hopeful because ultimately everyone he has worked with — from politicians to firefighters to loggers — are working toward a common goal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These new technological advances,” he said, “are giving us the power to make new and better decisions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One example of this is that Appel and Yu hope that their retardant won’t just help put out fires. The researchers hope products like this will help start controlled burns. Not only can it be used as a tool to limit the area burned, it can protect rare plants within it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If they’re out in an area, you can’t just burn through because you might damage those plants,” said Appel. “So these materials can actually be used to provide sort of a protective layer around those plants.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>California’s last two fire seasons were brutal. As the Legislature struggles to fund fire \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1948013/california-lawmakers-plans-to-protect-homes-from-wildfire-fall-short\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">safety proposals\u003c/a>, and agencies spend more on firefighting crews, a team of scientists is proposing a novel solution: extinguishing fires before they start.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is something we do with vaccines all the time,” said Eric Appel, materials scientist at Stanford. “You have high-risk populations and you vaccinate them against the disease in the first place. As with many things, prevention is cheaper, easier and more effective than treatment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Appel is senior author on a recent \u003ca href=\"https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1907855116\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">study\u003c/a> published in \u003cem>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences\u003c/em>, reporting on the first field trials of a long-acting, environmentally benign fire retardant that he hopes will reshape the way fires are prevented and fought in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Most people think that fires just sort of start willy nilly anywhere in the forest. But it turns out that that’s not really true.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The study found that most wildfires start in the same locations, and that the retardant will protect an area for months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So what that means,” Appel says, “is that you would only need to treat a very small amount of land in order to prevent a majority of fires.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Spark of An Idea\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For co-author Jesse Acosta, adjunct professor of Natural Resource Management at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, a moment of inspiration came years ago, as he stood in the sweltering heat of Hawaii, working for the U.S. Forest Service in a Smokey Bear costume, trying to convince people to care about fire prevention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I don’t know if it was the actual discomfort of the suit that made me think about things differently, or if it was some sort of late-night epiphany,” said the former Fire Prevention Forester, “but it became very clear to me very quickly that [outreach] was not effective in terms of preventing fires.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Likely, it was both, but it would take a move to Connecticut and a chance meeting with a colleague for the building blocks of a new approach to fall into place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the time, \u003ca href=\"http://www.supramolecularbiomaterials.com/\">Eric Appel\u003c/a>, now a materials scientist at Stanford University, was studying medical drug delivery at MIT, \u003c/span>“answering the question of ‘H\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ow do we keep these drug molecules stable and get them where they need to go and keep them where they need to be?'”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answer lead to the development of a “hydrogel” \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">made of\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">inexpensive, renewable and benign materials that could deliver medications in a human body and keep them stable over time. For example, an early application allowed people with diabetes to receive a single injection that supplied insulin over six months.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hydrogels themselves may seem an unlikely hero: They’re pale, shapeless blobs reminiscent of thick shampoo or mayonnaise. You mix them up in buckets, foregoing a lab coat for rubber boots. But to Appel, their beauty lies in the thoughtfulness of their design.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The gels we’re making are sophisticated and scalable. They form from simple components,” said Appel. “And they function like molecular Velcro,” meaning they can change their properties to allow them to be sprayed easily from a needle or nozzle.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Acosta was aware of Appel’s hydrogels and thought about what might happen if you replaced medications with a “molecular cargo” of flame retardants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It was around midnight when it finally dawned on me to use these hydrogels,” Acosta said\u003cstrong>,\u003c/strong> pointing out the many commonalities shared between what makes something safe for the human body and what makes something environmentally benign. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Let’s wrap up fire retardant in these hydrogels and see if they are able to stick to fuels and persist through weather.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\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/ilhFV7DIbxo'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/ilhFV7DIbxo'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Out of the Lab and Into the Fire\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After this unlikely series of events, Appel, Acosta and collaborators received funding through Stanford’s \u003ca href=\"https://woods.stanford.edu/research/realizing-environmental-innovation-program\">Realizing Environmental Innovation Program\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Appel and his collaborators began working with Cal Fire to identify where fires start each year. They found fires reproducibly start year-after-year in the same places, calculating that 84 percent of wildfires in California in the last 10 years have started at the same high-risk roadside spots or near utilities infrastructure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Following the success of a\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003ca href=\"https://static1.squarespace.com/static/52f83177e4b045fae914ddf2/t/584257b446c3c4f2f7d665e2/1480742837825/Yu_Appel_PNAS.pdf\">pilot study\u003c/a> on small piles of pine shavings, this new study tests hydrogel performance on a larger scale. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They treated plots of native grass 10 feet long and 10 feet wide with their product and set both those and untreated control plots alight, watching how they burned. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“T\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">hey just explode,” Appel said of the control plots. “It’s a pyromaniac’s best afternoon.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Appel and Acosta also wanted to address a major shortcoming of current retardants — that they are not meant to persist long beyond their initial application.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, much of the millions of tons of retardant that planes drop onto fires each year are \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">rendered useless by subsequent dumps of water onto active fire-lines. Even heavy dews and fogs, common along the California coast, can decrease the retardants’ efficiency.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The hydrogel, by contrast, stays at full potency and continues delivering fire protection over months of the traditional fire season. The hydrogels also stand up to dew, fog, and moderate rain, although they are intentionally designed to wash away at the start of the wetter fall months.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can put 20,000 gallons of this on an area for prevention, or 1 million gallons of the traditional formulation after a fire starts,” said study lead author Anthony Yu, a Ph.D. student in materials science and engineering at Stanford, in a media release.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The New Reality of Fire in California\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Acosta, a policy of suppression and a cultural view that fire is villainous has pitted the country against a future where extreme fires are guaranteed. This is due to a massive buildup of fuel — dead trees, brush and chaparral — in an ecosystem that has historically required fires as a natural part of the landscape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every fire we fight, every fire that happens, has the potential to be the Mendocino Complex or the Thomas Fire or the Carr Fire or the Ferguson Fire.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the economic costs of fighting fires have become enormous. Last year the federal government spent \u003ca href=\"https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_documents/SuppCosts.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">$3 billion\u003c/a> to put out blazes. Local agencies are also strapped. Fighting fires and defending one hot, 4-mile stretch along Highway 118 in Ventura County costs an average of $5.5 million annually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The true importance of hydrogels, Acosta says, extends beyond their use as a long-term, environmentally benign treatment. By stopping fires from ever starting, it pushes the balance of power further into our favor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We can stop fighting these catastrophic fires in June and July, Acosta said, “and fight them on our terms with prescribed burns in cooler, wetter weather and during times when we have more money freed up for fighting fires.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the next week, crews will apply the long-term fire retardant to some of Highway 118 and two other stretches of road in San Diego County. These will be the first large projects of a company formed to promote the retardant, which is now sold as Fortify. Appel and Yu are listed as inventors on the Fortify patent. Appel is Chief Technical Advisor for the new company, Ladera Tech. Jesse Acosta is Chief Business Officer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wes Bolsen, president and CEO of \u003ca href=\"https://www.ladera.tech/team\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ladera\u003c/a>, estimates roadside treatments will cost Cal Fire and the California Department of Transportation between $20,000 and $200,000, depending on the mileage and other factors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bolsen says utilities have also expressed interest in the retardant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Projects such as this may signal the first drop in a flood of new tools and methods aimed at developing a more holistic approach to accommodating fires in the state. Acosta feels hopeful because ultimately everyone he has worked with — from politicians to firefighters to loggers — are working toward a common goal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These new technological advances,” he said, “are giving us the power to make new and better decisions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One example of this is that Appel and Yu hope that their retardant won’t just help put out fires. The researchers hope products like this will help start controlled burns. Not only can it be used as a tool to limit the area burned, it can protect rare plants within it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If they’re out in an area, you can’t just burn through because you might damage those plants,” said Appel. “So these materials can actually be used to provide sort of a protective layer around those plants.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Scientists are searching for pockets of ecological resistance in the face of climate change, places that seem to be warming less quickly than others due to unique natural conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The hope is that as the earth continues to get hotter, these “climate refugia” could serve as strongholds for plants and animals\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/climate\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1947420\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo-1020x1019.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"240\" height=\"240\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo-1020x1019.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo-160x160.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo-800x799.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo-768x767.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo.png 1116w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\">\u003c/a>For a decade, scientists have been studying this phenomenon in a steep mountain valley in the Sierra Nevada. \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/depo/index.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Devils Postpile National Monument\u003c/a> is known for its distinct geologic formations, where the crumbling columns of rock from an ancient lava bed resemble, well, a pile of posts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when Deanna Dulen began working there almost 20 years ago, she noticed something else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was even colder than I ever anticipated,” said Dulen, who is now superintendent of the monument. The chill was especially noticeable on the floor of the valley, which was colder than the peaks thousands of feet above it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s the opposite of what you’d expect,” she said. “Usually you expect as you go up in elevation, it will be getting colder.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='medium' align='left' citation=\"Toni Lynn Morelli, Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center\"]‘I feel like it gives people some hope. Or at least something positive to focus on.’[/pullquote]Dulen began working with several scientists to investigate. After installing dozens of temperature sensors around the valley, they discovered it undergoes “cold air pooling,” a phenomenon that keeps a mass of cool air sitting on the valley floor for about half the day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It happens thanks to the Postpile’s special topography. The valley is aligned north-south, surrounded by high granite walls, which block the sunlight and cast huge shadows across the valley floor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the morning it stays shadier in the valley much later, and then it gets shadier earlier in the afternoon,” Dulen said. “That shade helps to make it cooler.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cold air also gets trapped, especially in the Soda Springs meadow, where the granite walls come together at one end, leaving only a narrow opening for the air to escape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Essentially that cold air bottlenecks up,” Dulen said. In the early morning, the meadow can be 18 degrees cooler than locations just a few hundred feet above.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dulen and her colleagues realized that this effect could prove particularly important in a warming climate. From her time working in Alaska, Dulen knew about “paleoclimate refugia,” the spots that remained relatively free of ice during the last ice age, allowing plants and animals to endure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1948174\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1948174\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/soda-springs-shadow-web-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/soda-springs-shadow-web-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/soda-springs-shadow-web-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/soda-springs-shadow-web-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/soda-springs-shadow-web-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/soda-springs-shadow-web-1200x675.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/soda-springs-shadow-web.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The high valley walls around Soda Springs meadow cast deep shadows, keeping it cooler. \u003ccite>(Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Devils Postpile could be a modern “climate refugia,” she thinks, where plants and animals would be somewhat buffered from the effects of rising temperatures. That’s especially important for mountain meadow habitat, which supports a huge number of Sierra Nevada species.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re very concerned about the impacts of a warming climate,” said Dulen. “We have a very high concentration of biodiversity here. We actually have 400 species of plants in just 800 acres; a hundred species of birds.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dulen says knowing where climate refugia are can help land managers conserve them. The park service is looking at protecting Soda Springs meadow by keeping out invasive species and making sure the forests around it don’t become overgrown and fire-prone. She may also have to defend against “conifer encroachment,” where pine trees invade mountain meadows in search of water in a hotter, drier climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1948173\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1948173\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Deanna-Dulen-800x688.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"688\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Deanna-Dulen-800x688.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Deanna-Dulen-160x138.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Deanna-Dulen-768x660.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Deanna-Dulen-1020x877.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Deanna-Dulen-1200x1031.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Deanna-Dulen.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Devils Postpile Superintendent Deanna Dulen. \u003ccite>(Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Dulen says knowing where climate refugia are can help land managers conserve them. The park service is looking at protecting Soda Springs meadow by keeping out invasive species and making sure the forests around it don’t become overgrown and fire-prone. She may also have to defend against “conifer encroachment,” where pine trees invade mountain meadows in search of water in a hotter, drier climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s no easy answers, but it’s the challenge that we’ve been called to do, and it’s part of working for the National Park Service,” she said. “Parks are living labs for understanding our natural world and how to become better stewards so we can have this for our generation and future generations of all species.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dulen is hopeful their efforts will become a model for finding other climate refugia. Initiatives are already underway in Acadia National Park in Maine, where researchers have mapped climate havens for 30 different plants and animals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s urgency in identifying these places so we can protect them,” said \u003ca href=\"https://eco.umass.edu/people/adjunct-faculty/morelli-toni-lyn/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Toni Lyn Morelli\u003c/a>, who led the work in Acadia and is a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey at the \u003ca href=\"https://necsc.umass.edu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center\u003c/a> in Massachusetts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Given how fast the climate is changing, though, scientists believe refugia can protect plants and animals for only so long.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We know there are clearly limits,” she said. “In one sense, this is just buying time for us as a society to come up with better solutions and stop climate change.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Morelli says, climate refugia could be an important strategy for land managers to lessen climate impacts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel like it gives people some hope. Or at least something positive to focus on. I think climate change is really hard to think about and to be experiencing. And it’s especially hard for natural resource managers to be responsible for.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is part of KQED Science’s partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 300 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Scientists are searching for pockets of ecological resistance in the face of climate change, places that seem to be warming less quickly than others due to unique natural conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The hope is that as the earth continues to get hotter, these “climate refugia” could serve as strongholds for plants and animals\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/climate\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1947420\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo-1020x1019.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"240\" height=\"240\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo-1020x1019.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo-160x160.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo-800x799.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo-768x767.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo.png 1116w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\">\u003c/a>For a decade, scientists have been studying this phenomenon in a steep mountain valley in the Sierra Nevada. \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/depo/index.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Devils Postpile National Monument\u003c/a> is known for its distinct geologic formations, where the crumbling columns of rock from an ancient lava bed resemble, well, a pile of posts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when Deanna Dulen began working there almost 20 years ago, she noticed something else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was even colder than I ever anticipated,” said Dulen, who is now superintendent of the monument. The chill was especially noticeable on the floor of the valley, which was colder than the peaks thousands of feet above it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s the opposite of what you’d expect,” she said. “Usually you expect as you go up in elevation, it will be getting colder.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Dulen began working with several scientists to investigate. After installing dozens of temperature sensors around the valley, they discovered it undergoes “cold air pooling,” a phenomenon that keeps a mass of cool air sitting on the valley floor for about half the day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It happens thanks to the Postpile’s special topography. The valley is aligned north-south, surrounded by high granite walls, which block the sunlight and cast huge shadows across the valley floor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the morning it stays shadier in the valley much later, and then it gets shadier earlier in the afternoon,” Dulen said. “That shade helps to make it cooler.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cold air also gets trapped, especially in the Soda Springs meadow, where the granite walls come together at one end, leaving only a narrow opening for the air to escape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Essentially that cold air bottlenecks up,” Dulen said. In the early morning, the meadow can be 18 degrees cooler than locations just a few hundred feet above.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dulen and her colleagues realized that this effect could prove particularly important in a warming climate. From her time working in Alaska, Dulen knew about “paleoclimate refugia,” the spots that remained relatively free of ice during the last ice age, allowing plants and animals to endure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1948174\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1948174\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/soda-springs-shadow-web-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/soda-springs-shadow-web-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/soda-springs-shadow-web-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/soda-springs-shadow-web-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/soda-springs-shadow-web-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/soda-springs-shadow-web-1200x675.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/soda-springs-shadow-web.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The high valley walls around Soda Springs meadow cast deep shadows, keeping it cooler. \u003ccite>(Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Devils Postpile could be a modern “climate refugia,” she thinks, where plants and animals would be somewhat buffered from the effects of rising temperatures. That’s especially important for mountain meadow habitat, which supports a huge number of Sierra Nevada species.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re very concerned about the impacts of a warming climate,” said Dulen. “We have a very high concentration of biodiversity here. We actually have 400 species of plants in just 800 acres; a hundred species of birds.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dulen says knowing where climate refugia are can help land managers conserve them. The park service is looking at protecting Soda Springs meadow by keeping out invasive species and making sure the forests around it don’t become overgrown and fire-prone. She may also have to defend against “conifer encroachment,” where pine trees invade mountain meadows in search of water in a hotter, drier climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1948173\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1948173\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Deanna-Dulen-800x688.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"688\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Deanna-Dulen-800x688.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Deanna-Dulen-160x138.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Deanna-Dulen-768x660.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Deanna-Dulen-1020x877.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Deanna-Dulen-1200x1031.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Deanna-Dulen.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Devils Postpile Superintendent Deanna Dulen. \u003ccite>(Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Dulen says knowing where climate refugia are can help land managers conserve them. The park service is looking at protecting Soda Springs meadow by keeping out invasive species and making sure the forests around it don’t become overgrown and fire-prone. She may also have to defend against “conifer encroachment,” where pine trees invade mountain meadows in search of water in a hotter, drier climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s no easy answers, but it’s the challenge that we’ve been called to do, and it’s part of working for the National Park Service,” she said. “Parks are living labs for understanding our natural world and how to become better stewards so we can have this for our generation and future generations of all species.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dulen is hopeful their efforts will become a model for finding other climate refugia. Initiatives are already underway in Acadia National Park in Maine, where researchers have mapped climate havens for 30 different plants and animals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s urgency in identifying these places so we can protect them,” said \u003ca href=\"https://eco.umass.edu/people/adjunct-faculty/morelli-toni-lyn/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Toni Lyn Morelli\u003c/a>, who led the work in Acadia and is a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey at the \u003ca href=\"https://necsc.umass.edu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center\u003c/a> in Massachusetts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Given how fast the climate is changing, though, scientists believe refugia can protect plants and animals for only so long.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We know there are clearly limits,” she said. “In one sense, this is just buying time for us as a society to come up with better solutions and stop climate change.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Morelli says, climate refugia could be an important strategy for land managers to lessen climate impacts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel like it gives people some hope. Or at least something positive to focus on. I think climate change is really hard to think about and to be experiencing. And it’s especially hard for natural resource managers to be responsible for.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is part of KQED Science’s partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 300 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Youth Climate Activists Block the Entrance to Chevron HQ in San Ramon",
"headTitle": "Youth Climate Activists Block the Entrance to Chevron HQ in San Ramon | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>About 200 climate activists rallied in front of Chevron’s corporate headquarters in San Ramon. The protesters urged the oil company to get off fossil fuels by 2025.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>High school and middle school students of color from across the Bay Area led this action. They call themselves \u003ca href=\"http://youthvsapocalypse.org/\">Youth vs. Apocalypse\u003c/a> and maintain the company is jeopardizing their future. That’s why, they say, they’re demanding a rapid shift away from carbon-intensive energy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Chevron is a billion-dollar company that is poisoning our communities,” said Isha Clarke, an organizer and a junior from MetWest High in Oakland. “Their refineries are in low-income communities of color. We are here to tell them that you cannot keep killing our planet. And you can’t keep doing it in a way that completely disrespects people of color and low-income people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She says Chevron disproportionately pollutes places like Richmond, a city that is home to more than 200,000 people. U.S. Census \u003ca href=\"https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/richmondcityvirginiacounty\">figures\u003c/a> indicate that nearly half of them are black. Chevron operates a 2,900-acre refinery there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Around 8:30 a.m. adults from the Sunrise Movement and other environmental groups hastily erected garden boxes and mockups of oil derricks. They moved the organic planter beds in front of the parking lot entrance to “represent true solutions, not ones that destroy the planet,” organizers said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1948158 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39313_Chevron_003-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39313_Chevron_003-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39313_Chevron_003-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39313_Chevron_003-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39313_Chevron_003-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39313_Chevron_003-1200x800.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39313_Chevron_003.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At 9:00 a.m. the students arrived on a black bus, carrying banners and protest signs, to lead the action.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They need to be accountable,” said Seray Cemre Gönen, a senior at California High School, a public school in San Ramon. “They’ve known that climate change exists for 40 years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1948156 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39323_Chevron_013-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39323_Chevron_013-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39323_Chevron_013-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39323_Chevron_013-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39323_Chevron_013-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39323_Chevron_013-1200x799.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39323_Chevron_013.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On its Facebook \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/events/391260904922285/\">page\u003c/a>, the activist group says the company must “stop using their influence to harm frontline communities and our future.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group is also pushing Gov. Gavin Newsom to “hold Chevron accountable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Around 10:00 a.m., the company invited Clarke, Gönen, and two other students inside to talk with representatives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We spoke truth to power, and however they take that, is how they take it,” Clarke said afterward. “We will continue to push for radical action.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Ten years ago we probably would have heard them say climate change is not real,” she said. “Now they’re being forced to, at least, show or pretend that they are taking steps towards being better. We got their cards and we definitely will be contacting them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1948160\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1948160 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39318_Chevron_008-800x548.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"548\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39318_Chevron_008-800x548.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39318_Chevron_008-160x110.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39318_Chevron_008-768x526.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39318_Chevron_008-1020x699.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39318_Chevron_008-1200x823.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39318_Chevron_008.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Seray Cemre Gönen (left), and Sarah Goody. (Lindsey Moore/KQED) \u003ccite>(Lindsey Moore/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Sean Comey, a spokesman for Chevron, met with the students. He said the company believes that climate change is real and that human activity contributes to it, “including the use of some of our products.” Comey said that the company is taking action to address climate change by investing in technology and low-carbon business opportunities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He added that the company disagrees with the protesters on how quickly Chevron should transition away from fossil fuels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are open to a dialogue with people from a variety of viewpoints, including them,” he said. “We’re hoping events like this will drive an honest dialogue about how we balance the needs of the world for energy to fuel economic development and rising standards of living with protecting the environment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can read more about the company’s stance on climate change on their website \u003ca href=\"https://www.chevron.com/corporate-responsibility/climate-change\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Union of Concerned Scientists’ latest \u003ca href=\"https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2018/10/gw-accountability-scorecard18-Chevron.pdf\">assessment\u003c/a> of how leading fossil fuel companies are addressing climate change, the group found Chevron continues a pattern of misrepresenting climate science in its public statements, holding leadership positions in trade and industry groups that spread climate disinformation and “avoids doing its part to bring about a world free from carbon pollution.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Union gave Chevron a score of “egregious” for its public statements on climate change. The company “downplayed the role of human activity and the need to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases, stressed uncertainties regarding climate impacts, and continued to insist that only global climate action is constructive or effective.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, the group also found that Chevron “responded to pressure by improving its disclosures of global warming emissions and political contributions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company, one of the largest oil companies in the world, \u003ca href=\"https://www.chevron.com/stories/chevron-reports-fourth-quarter-net-income-of-3-7-billion-annual-earnings-of-14-8-billion\">made\u003c/a> $14.8 billion in net earnings in 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Friday’s action took place during several days of protests across the region, and a week after a worldwide youth climate strike. Organizers for Youth vs. Apocalypse \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1947584/live-blog-bay-area-climate-strike\">led\u003c/a> the march in San Francisco a week ago that snarled traffic in the financial district and completely shut down a stretch of Market St. On Wednesday, climate activists and artists \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1948027/climate-activists-artists-take-over-san-franciscos-wall-street-west\">created\u003c/a> murals in front of San Francisco’s largest financial institutions.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>About 200 climate activists rallied in front of Chevron’s corporate headquarters in San Ramon. The protesters urged the oil company to get off fossil fuels by 2025.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>High school and middle school students of color from across the Bay Area led this action. They call themselves \u003ca href=\"http://youthvsapocalypse.org/\">Youth vs. Apocalypse\u003c/a> and maintain the company is jeopardizing their future. That’s why, they say, they’re demanding a rapid shift away from carbon-intensive energy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Chevron is a billion-dollar company that is poisoning our communities,” said Isha Clarke, an organizer and a junior from MetWest High in Oakland. “Their refineries are in low-income communities of color. We are here to tell them that you cannot keep killing our planet. And you can’t keep doing it in a way that completely disrespects people of color and low-income people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She says Chevron disproportionately pollutes places like Richmond, a city that is home to more than 200,000 people. U.S. Census \u003ca href=\"https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/richmondcityvirginiacounty\">figures\u003c/a> indicate that nearly half of them are black. Chevron operates a 2,900-acre refinery there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Around 8:30 a.m. adults from the Sunrise Movement and other environmental groups hastily erected garden boxes and mockups of oil derricks. They moved the organic planter beds in front of the parking lot entrance to “represent true solutions, not ones that destroy the planet,” organizers said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1948158 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39313_Chevron_003-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39313_Chevron_003-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39313_Chevron_003-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39313_Chevron_003-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39313_Chevron_003-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39313_Chevron_003-1200x800.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39313_Chevron_003.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At 9:00 a.m. the students arrived on a black bus, carrying banners and protest signs, to lead the action.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They need to be accountable,” said Seray Cemre Gönen, a senior at California High School, a public school in San Ramon. “They’ve known that climate change exists for 40 years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1948156 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39323_Chevron_013-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39323_Chevron_013-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39323_Chevron_013-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39323_Chevron_013-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39323_Chevron_013-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39323_Chevron_013-1200x799.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39323_Chevron_013.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On its Facebook \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/events/391260904922285/\">page\u003c/a>, the activist group says the company must “stop using their influence to harm frontline communities and our future.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group is also pushing Gov. Gavin Newsom to “hold Chevron accountable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Around 10:00 a.m., the company invited Clarke, Gönen, and two other students inside to talk with representatives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We spoke truth to power, and however they take that, is how they take it,” Clarke said afterward. “We will continue to push for radical action.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Ten years ago we probably would have heard them say climate change is not real,” she said. “Now they’re being forced to, at least, show or pretend that they are taking steps towards being better. We got their cards and we definitely will be contacting them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1948160\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1948160 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39318_Chevron_008-800x548.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"548\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39318_Chevron_008-800x548.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39318_Chevron_008-160x110.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39318_Chevron_008-768x526.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39318_Chevron_008-1020x699.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39318_Chevron_008-1200x823.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/RS39318_Chevron_008.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Seray Cemre Gönen (left), and Sarah Goody. (Lindsey Moore/KQED) \u003ccite>(Lindsey Moore/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Sean Comey, a spokesman for Chevron, met with the students. He said the company believes that climate change is real and that human activity contributes to it, “including the use of some of our products.” Comey said that the company is taking action to address climate change by investing in technology and low-carbon business opportunities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He added that the company disagrees with the protesters on how quickly Chevron should transition away from fossil fuels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are open to a dialogue with people from a variety of viewpoints, including them,” he said. “We’re hoping events like this will drive an honest dialogue about how we balance the needs of the world for energy to fuel economic development and rising standards of living with protecting the environment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can read more about the company’s stance on climate change on their website \u003ca href=\"https://www.chevron.com/corporate-responsibility/climate-change\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Union of Concerned Scientists’ latest \u003ca href=\"https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2018/10/gw-accountability-scorecard18-Chevron.pdf\">assessment\u003c/a> of how leading fossil fuel companies are addressing climate change, the group found Chevron continues a pattern of misrepresenting climate science in its public statements, holding leadership positions in trade and industry groups that spread climate disinformation and “avoids doing its part to bring about a world free from carbon pollution.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Union gave Chevron a score of “egregious” for its public statements on climate change. The company “downplayed the role of human activity and the need to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases, stressed uncertainties regarding climate impacts, and continued to insist that only global climate action is constructive or effective.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, the group also found that Chevron “responded to pressure by improving its disclosures of global warming emissions and political contributions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company, one of the largest oil companies in the world, \u003ca href=\"https://www.chevron.com/stories/chevron-reports-fourth-quarter-net-income-of-3-7-billion-annual-earnings-of-14-8-billion\">made\u003c/a> $14.8 billion in net earnings in 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Friday’s action took place during several days of protests across the region, and a week after a worldwide youth climate strike. Organizers for Youth vs. Apocalypse \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1947584/live-blog-bay-area-climate-strike\">led\u003c/a> the march in San Francisco a week ago that snarled traffic in the financial district and completely shut down a stretch of Market St. On Wednesday, climate activists and artists \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1948027/climate-activists-artists-take-over-san-franciscos-wall-street-west\">created\u003c/a> murals in front of San Francisco’s largest financial institutions.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"imageAlt": "KQED The California Report",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareport",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 8
},
"link": "/californiareport",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/26099305-72af-4542-9dde-ac1807fe36d5/kqed-s-the-california-report",
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}
},
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"id": "californiareportmagazine",
"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-California-Report-Magazine-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareportmagazine",
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"order": 10
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/tag/tcrmag/feed/podcast"
}
},
"city-arts": {
"id": "city-arts",
"title": "City Arts & Lectures",
"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.cityarts.net/",
"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
"subscribe": {
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/City-Arts-and-Lectures-p692/",
"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
"id": "closealltabs",
"title": "Close All Tabs",
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"info": "Close All Tabs breaks down how digital culture shapes our world through thoughtful insights and irreverent humor.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/CAT_2_Tile-scaled.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"order": 1
},
"link": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"id": "code-switch-life-kit",
"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"meta": {
"site": "radio",
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"link": "/radio/program/code-switch-life-kit",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubnByLm9yZy9yc3MvcG9kY2FzdC5waHA_aWQ9NTEwMzEy",
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},
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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}
},
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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},
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"id": "freakonomics-radio",
"title": "Freakonomics Radio",
"info": "Freakonomics Radio is a one-hour award-winning podcast and public-radio project hosted by Stephen Dubner, with co-author Steve Levitt as a regular guest. It is produced in partnership with WNYC.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
"rss": "https://feeds.feedburner.com/freakonomicsradio"
}
},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
"info": "Hosted by Terry Gross, \u003cem>Fresh Air from WHYY\u003c/em> is the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues. One of public radio's most popular programs, Fresh Air features intimate conversations with today's biggest luminaries.",
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"link": "/radio/program/fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/381444908/podcast.xml"
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"here-and-now": {
"id": "here-and-now",
"title": "Here & Now",
"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510051/podcast.xml"
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/series/423302056/hidden-brain",
"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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},
"how-i-built-this": {
"id": "how-i-built-this",
"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510313/podcast.xml"
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
"meta": {
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/2p3Fifq96nw9BPcmFdIq0o?si=39209f7b25774f38",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/6c3dd23c-93fb-4aab-97ba-1725fa6315f1/hyphenaci%C3%B3n",
"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC2275451163"
}
},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"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. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Masters-of-Scale-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
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"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"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>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
"subscribe": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
"meta": {
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"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?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1567098962",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/0OLWoyizopu6tY1XiuX70x",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-Our-Watch-p1436229/",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/show/on-our-watch",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510360/podcast.xml"
}
},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/otm",
"meta": {
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"source": "wnyc"
},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
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