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"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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"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": "‘The heat is not asking people for their papers.’",
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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": "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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"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": "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.",
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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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"title": "New Fire Retardant Acts Like 'Vaccine' Against Wildfires",
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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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"title": "Where Animals and Plants Might Survive Climate Change",
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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": "‘There’s No Ambiguity. It Will Be Gone.’ How California's Animals Will Feel the Warming Climate",
"headTitle": "‘There’s No Ambiguity. It Will Be Gone.’ How California’s Animals Will Feel the Warming Climate | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp class=\"has-drop-cap\">A blue copper butterfly perches waist height on a buckwheat blossom blooming in the cloud dunes near Bodega Bay. In the thick fog its gossamer wings are folded, keeping its sky-blue hues to itself and the milk-white flower. Normally found at higher elevations in California’s Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountains, this colony of blue coppers exists in this chilly coastal prairie because of the low clouds that drip with moisture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo.png\">\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=\"245\" height=\"245\" 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: 245px) 100vw, 245px\">\u003c/a>If the fog belt burns off permanently, this butterfly population will become extinct. “There’s no ambiguity. It will be gone,” said Arthur Shapiro, an evolution and ecology professor at University of California, Davis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heat is threatening animals around the world. At a time when scientists are certain that human greenhouse gas emissions are warming ocean waters and raising temperatures, however, they are still sorting out how turning up the thermostat is affecting the specific ecosystems that plants and animals rely on – including the coastal fogs so critical to redwoods, these blue coppers and a host of other species. Researchers are also raising questions about the impacts of an additional 8 degrees Fahrenheit on California’s inland species, from the Central Valley to the Sierra Nevada. While there is little doubt that changes in climate are shifting the habitats of virtually every living being on Earth, an examination of Northern California, one of the most biologically diverse places on the planet because of its mix of habitats, illustrates the challenges of trying to predict the future for evolving species.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clearly there will be losers. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report found that around 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades, more than ever before in human history.\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>But there may also be winners, at least temporarily. As scientists wrestle with the impacts of global temperatures already 2.7 degrees hotter than pre-industrial levels, they are entering a phase of scientific inquiry without parallels, said Shapiro: “Climate change is leading to environments that have no analog in our modern world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947884\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1947884\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Cassins_Auklet-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Cassin’s auklet on the Farallon Island \u003ccite>(Duncan Wright, Wikimedia Commons)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In the San Francisco Bay Area, the effects of climate change on local species begin at sea. Like oceans around the world, the Pacific has warmed by as much as a half-degree Fahrenheit every decade since 1910. For Cassin’s auklets, the results have been devastating. These chunky fist-sized birds are common in the waters around the Farallon Islands. During the winter of 2014 more than 1,200 young Cassin’s auklets washed up dead – and tens of thousands are thought to have starved, said Shaye Wolf, a climate change scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. An enormous slog of warm water had developed off the Pacific coast. Known as the Blob, this marine heat wave caused massive die-offs and a 30 percent drop in the population of humpback whales.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The warming waters hit Cassin’s auklets, along with many other seabirds and marine mammals, through their food supply. The auklets feed on krill and copepods, small crustaceans found in most of the world’s oceans. Scientists believe the over-heated waters drastically reduced the numbers of the shrimp-like krill, depriving the birds of a dietary mainstay. Warm waters also drew southern copepods north. And while Cassin’s auklets will eat them, they are less nutritious than their fat northern counterparts, “a kind of junk food,” said Wolf.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists detected \u003ca href=\"https://baynature.org/2019/09/12/review-of-the-pacific-warm-blob-sequel-not-yet-a-phenomena-like-the-original/\">another heat wave developing this summer\u003c/a> in the same area of the previous Blob, this one already 4 degrees Celsius above normal in places. With warmer waters leading to less food, Cassin’s auklets suffered an alarming breeding failure this summer. “Parents abandoned nests and chicks just starved,” Wolf said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"has-drop-cap\">Warming waters are also taking a toll on salmon, threatening these cold-loving fish in several ways. Chinook, the largest of the salmon family, live in both ocean water and freshwater at different stages of their lifecycle. They are extremely resilient and have adapted to some of the warming, said Lisa Crozier, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration salmon researcher and lead author of a July \u003ca href=\"https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0217711\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">study\u003c/a> published in \u003cem>PLOS One\u003c/em>. Still, Chinook, already listed as a federally endangered species, are stressed by warmer temperatures in the Sacramento and other rivers. That makes them susceptible to parasites and disease. If stream temperatures rise beyond 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above the pre-industrial era all bets are off, Crozier said. Chinook salmon in the Central Valley may be the first of the many salmon species to blink out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In inland California, butterflies at various elevations have shown mixed responses to record-setting temperatures. During the state’s five-year drought, researchers found the number of butterfly species and individuals observed per year increased at lower elevations but decreased at higher elevations. A 2018 \u003ca href=\"https://climatechangeresponses.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40665-018-0039-x\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">study\u003c/a> documented those at sea level reversing long-term declines, while butterflies in the Sierra Nevada were severely harmed, said Shapiro, the UC Davis professor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Butterflies generally do not do well in warm, wet winters, he said. During the drought, species at low elevation sites benefitted from hot sunny days and cold nights with minimal humidity. But the drought reduced the high-elevation snowpack that helps overwintering butterflies survive until spring. It may also have caused them to emerge earlier in the season, which could have put them out of sync with the flowers and other resources they depend upon. When ecosystems warm to the extent that they are no longer capable of supporting these and other species, “it’s bye bye,” Shapiro said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"has-drop-cap\">How animals will respond is not always straightforward. When \u003ca href=\"https://www.pointblue.org/employee_bios/jay-roberts/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Jay Roberts, a Point Blue forest ecologist\u003c/a>, began a study of birds in the Sierra he assumed the five-year drought that killed 147 million trees would be analogous to the climate conditions predicted to occur in the future. He expected to find negative effects to the dusky flycatchers, golden-crowned kinglets and others among the 45 species he monitored. Instead, his \u003ca href=\"https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/eap.1848\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">research\u003c/a> documented an overall abundance of birds. Nearly half of the species responded positively to higher temperatures; only 20 percent declined. As climate change continues to increase temperatures, Roberts believes many species may benefit, especially if it is coupled with an increase in precipitation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We can’t conclude this trend will continue, Roberts said, but the birds’ response to a drastic shift in temperature over a very few years demonstrates that they are resilient. Like other species in the Sierra, birds have evolved to adjust to disturbances that include drought and fire. “These responses are in their DNA,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, if some of the effects of heat on animals are counterintuitive, the general results are not. Of the state’s 300 at-risk species, those already gone include two populations of the Bay Checkerspot butterfly. \u003ca href=\"http://www.climateassessment.ca.gov/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment\u003c/a> predicts temperatures will climb another 5 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. Glaciers will continue to melt. In the San Francisco area, where sea level is already 8 inches higher than a century ago, the 2018 assessment projects it will rise an additional 4.5 feet by 2100 – and possibly as much as 9 feet along the California coast. Northern California farmers will face water shortages of up to 16 percent in some regions. Winter storms will likely become more intense in a boom-bust cycle with very wet and very dry years. And in the Sierra Nevada, the snowpack will decline by two-thirds over the next century and temperatures will increase up to 9 degrees Fahrenheit, according to an assessment led by David Ackerly, a biology professor at University of California, Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As scientists continue to document the sometimes surprising ways that animals respond to heat, blue coppers will continue to lay eggs and nibble on buckwheat as caterpillars before spreading their bright blue wings as butterflies. But for how long? These are uncharted times in a hot and entirely novel climate regime.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This \u003ca href=\"https://baynature.org/2019/09/20/theres-no-ambiguity-it-will-be-gone-how-animals-will-feel-the-warming-climate/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">story\u003c/a> originally appeared in \u003ca href=\"https://baynature.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bay Nature\u003c/a>. It is republished here as part of \u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/climate\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">KQED Science’s\u003c/a> partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"author-name\">\u003cem>Based in the northern Sierra Nevada, \u003ca href=\"https://www.janebraxtonlittle.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jane Braxton Little\u003c/a> is an independent journalist covering science and natural resource issues for publications that include Scientific American, National Geographic, Audubon, Discover, High Country News and, with this story, Bay Nature.\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp class=\"has-drop-cap\">A blue copper butterfly perches waist height on a buckwheat blossom blooming in the cloud dunes near Bodega Bay. In the thick fog its gossamer wings are folded, keeping its sky-blue hues to itself and the milk-white flower. Normally found at higher elevations in California’s Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountains, this colony of blue coppers exists in this chilly coastal prairie because of the low clouds that drip with moisture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo.png\">\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=\"245\" height=\"245\" 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: 245px) 100vw, 245px\">\u003c/a>If the fog belt burns off permanently, this butterfly population will become extinct. “There’s no ambiguity. It will be gone,” said Arthur Shapiro, an evolution and ecology professor at University of California, Davis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heat is threatening animals around the world. At a time when scientists are certain that human greenhouse gas emissions are warming ocean waters and raising temperatures, however, they are still sorting out how turning up the thermostat is affecting the specific ecosystems that plants and animals rely on – including the coastal fogs so critical to redwoods, these blue coppers and a host of other species. Researchers are also raising questions about the impacts of an additional 8 degrees Fahrenheit on California’s inland species, from the Central Valley to the Sierra Nevada. While there is little doubt that changes in climate are shifting the habitats of virtually every living being on Earth, an examination of Northern California, one of the most biologically diverse places on the planet because of its mix of habitats, illustrates the challenges of trying to predict the future for evolving species.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clearly there will be losers. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report found that around 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades, more than ever before in human history.\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>But there may also be winners, at least temporarily. As scientists wrestle with the impacts of global temperatures already 2.7 degrees hotter than pre-industrial levels, they are entering a phase of scientific inquiry without parallels, said Shapiro: “Climate change is leading to environments that have no analog in our modern world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947884\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1947884\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Cassins_Auklet-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Cassin’s auklet on the Farallon Island \u003ccite>(Duncan Wright, Wikimedia Commons)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In the San Francisco Bay Area, the effects of climate change on local species begin at sea. Like oceans around the world, the Pacific has warmed by as much as a half-degree Fahrenheit every decade since 1910. For Cassin’s auklets, the results have been devastating. These chunky fist-sized birds are common in the waters around the Farallon Islands. During the winter of 2014 more than 1,200 young Cassin’s auklets washed up dead – and tens of thousands are thought to have starved, said Shaye Wolf, a climate change scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. An enormous slog of warm water had developed off the Pacific coast. Known as the Blob, this marine heat wave caused massive die-offs and a 30 percent drop in the population of humpback whales.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The warming waters hit Cassin’s auklets, along with many other seabirds and marine mammals, through their food supply. The auklets feed on krill and copepods, small crustaceans found in most of the world’s oceans. Scientists believe the over-heated waters drastically reduced the numbers of the shrimp-like krill, depriving the birds of a dietary mainstay. Warm waters also drew southern copepods north. And while Cassin’s auklets will eat them, they are less nutritious than their fat northern counterparts, “a kind of junk food,” said Wolf.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists detected \u003ca href=\"https://baynature.org/2019/09/12/review-of-the-pacific-warm-blob-sequel-not-yet-a-phenomena-like-the-original/\">another heat wave developing this summer\u003c/a> in the same area of the previous Blob, this one already 4 degrees Celsius above normal in places. With warmer waters leading to less food, Cassin’s auklets suffered an alarming breeding failure this summer. “Parents abandoned nests and chicks just starved,” Wolf said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"has-drop-cap\">Warming waters are also taking a toll on salmon, threatening these cold-loving fish in several ways. Chinook, the largest of the salmon family, live in both ocean water and freshwater at different stages of their lifecycle. They are extremely resilient and have adapted to some of the warming, said Lisa Crozier, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration salmon researcher and lead author of a July \u003ca href=\"https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0217711\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">study\u003c/a> published in \u003cem>PLOS One\u003c/em>. Still, Chinook, already listed as a federally endangered species, are stressed by warmer temperatures in the Sacramento and other rivers. That makes them susceptible to parasites and disease. If stream temperatures rise beyond 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above the pre-industrial era all bets are off, Crozier said. Chinook salmon in the Central Valley may be the first of the many salmon species to blink out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In inland California, butterflies at various elevations have shown mixed responses to record-setting temperatures. During the state’s five-year drought, researchers found the number of butterfly species and individuals observed per year increased at lower elevations but decreased at higher elevations. A 2018 \u003ca href=\"https://climatechangeresponses.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40665-018-0039-x\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">study\u003c/a> documented those at sea level reversing long-term declines, while butterflies in the Sierra Nevada were severely harmed, said Shapiro, the UC Davis professor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Butterflies generally do not do well in warm, wet winters, he said. During the drought, species at low elevation sites benefitted from hot sunny days and cold nights with minimal humidity. But the drought reduced the high-elevation snowpack that helps overwintering butterflies survive until spring. It may also have caused them to emerge earlier in the season, which could have put them out of sync with the flowers and other resources they depend upon. When ecosystems warm to the extent that they are no longer capable of supporting these and other species, “it’s bye bye,” Shapiro said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"has-drop-cap\">How animals will respond is not always straightforward. When \u003ca href=\"https://www.pointblue.org/employee_bios/jay-roberts/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Jay Roberts, a Point Blue forest ecologist\u003c/a>, began a study of birds in the Sierra he assumed the five-year drought that killed 147 million trees would be analogous to the climate conditions predicted to occur in the future. He expected to find negative effects to the dusky flycatchers, golden-crowned kinglets and others among the 45 species he monitored. Instead, his \u003ca href=\"https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/eap.1848\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">research\u003c/a> documented an overall abundance of birds. Nearly half of the species responded positively to higher temperatures; only 20 percent declined. As climate change continues to increase temperatures, Roberts believes many species may benefit, especially if it is coupled with an increase in precipitation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We can’t conclude this trend will continue, Roberts said, but the birds’ response to a drastic shift in temperature over a very few years demonstrates that they are resilient. Like other species in the Sierra, birds have evolved to adjust to disturbances that include drought and fire. “These responses are in their DNA,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, if some of the effects of heat on animals are counterintuitive, the general results are not. Of the state’s 300 at-risk species, those already gone include two populations of the Bay Checkerspot butterfly. \u003ca href=\"http://www.climateassessment.ca.gov/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment\u003c/a> predicts temperatures will climb another 5 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. Glaciers will continue to melt. In the San Francisco area, where sea level is already 8 inches higher than a century ago, the 2018 assessment projects it will rise an additional 4.5 feet by 2100 – and possibly as much as 9 feet along the California coast. Northern California farmers will face water shortages of up to 16 percent in some regions. Winter storms will likely become more intense in a boom-bust cycle with very wet and very dry years. And in the Sierra Nevada, the snowpack will decline by two-thirds over the next century and temperatures will increase up to 9 degrees Fahrenheit, according to an assessment led by David Ackerly, a biology professor at University of California, Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As scientists continue to document the sometimes surprising ways that animals respond to heat, blue coppers will continue to lay eggs and nibble on buckwheat as caterpillars before spreading their bright blue wings as butterflies. But for how long? These are uncharted times in a hot and entirely novel climate regime.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This \u003ca href=\"https://baynature.org/2019/09/20/theres-no-ambiguity-it-will-be-gone-how-animals-will-feel-the-warming-climate/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">story\u003c/a> originally appeared in \u003ca href=\"https://baynature.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bay Nature\u003c/a>. It is republished here as part of \u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/climate\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">KQED Science’s\u003c/a> partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"author-name\">\u003cem>Based in the northern Sierra Nevada, \u003ca href=\"https://www.janebraxtonlittle.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jane Braxton Little\u003c/a> is an independent journalist covering science and natural resource issues for publications that include Scientific American, National Geographic, Audubon, Discover, High Country News and, with this story, Bay Nature.\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Michael Mann’s work as a press critic began in earnest a decade ago. Ahead of the 2009 international climate-change summit in Copenhagen, hackers stole email correspondence between Mann and other climate scientists from a computer server at the University of East Anglia. Climate-change deniers used portions of the emails, freed from context, to attack the credibility of Mann, whose “hockey stick” graph charting the rapid rise of the Earth’s\u003cbr>\ntemperature since industrialization would become an emblem of the climate fight. Coverage of what news outlets called “Climategate” saved space for Mann’s critics; such choices emphasized conflict out of all proportion with the scientific consensus on a warming planet. In \u003ci>The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars\u003c/i>, his 2012 book, Mann called such false balance and sympathetic framing “a sweet victory for climate change deniers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo.png\">\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>Though multiple investigations upheld the integrity of Mann’s research, such vindication took years. Mann has vigorously contested misinformation concerning his work and climate science \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/search?q=(reporter%20OR%20reporters%20OR%20journalist%20OR%20journalists)%20(from%3Amichaelemann)&src=typed_query\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">on social media\u003c/a> as well as in the courts. In 2011, Mann filed \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20160905215806/http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/03/28/ClimateGuy.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a defamation claim\u003c/a> in a British Columbia court against the Frontier Center for Public Policy (FCPP), a Canadian think-tank, and Tim Ball, a former geography professor, after Ball suggested in an interview that Mann should be imprisoned. In June, the FCPP settled with Mann and \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20190609170116/https://fcpp.org/retraction-and-apology-to-michael-mann/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">apologized\u003c/a> for its characterization of his work. Last month, after Ball’s lawyers cited their client’s poor health and his website’s low ranking, a judge \u003ca href=\"https://www.bccourts.ca/jdb-txt/sc/19/15/2019BCSC1580.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">dismissed the case\u003c/a>, for delays he attributed to Mann. (The judge also noted the two parties’ “dramatically different opinions on climate change,” which the court did not address.) Mann then took to Twitter to counter climate-denial sites that spun the dismissal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mann, a climatologist who directs the Penn State Earth System Science Center, spoke with CJR last week, one day after \u003ci>The New Yorker\u003c/i> published a widely derided climate-change column by Jonathan Franzen. (Writing in her “Heated” newsletter, journalist Emily Atkin called Franzen’s take “the most brilliantly unintentional fossil fuel industry propaganda I’ve ever read.”) Mann talked about the lessons learned by newsrooms since “Climategate,” and the new pitfalls that await reporters covering the planet’s most important story. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>This year marks a decade since news coverage of what many news outlets called “Climategate.” What gains have journalists made in their coverage of climate science and global warming since then?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ve seen a pretty dramatic move away from the false balance that we used to see, where every news story about climate change had to have a contrarian, a climate-change denier, representing the other side—as if there’s equal weight on the side of science and science denial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, I think there are other problems that we’re seeing crop up in media coverage of this issue. [Franzen’s piece is] emblematic of a trend toward doomist framing; my worry is it leads people down a path of despair and hopelessness and inaction, which actually leads us to the same place as outright climate-change denialism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’re also seeing a tendency to emphasize personal responsibility and choice over systemic change. \u003ci>The New York Times\u003c/i>, in the space of a month or two, had a half-dozen articles touting the importance of individuals. \u003ci>The problem is us and our eating habits, our travel habits\u003c/i>. Again, I think this may not be intentional, but it is actually playing into a deflection campaign that is being used by fossil-fuel interests, trying to emphasize the role of individuals to take the pressure off regulation of industry and systemic changes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s impossible now to deny that climate change is happening. The fossil-fuel industry has essentially give up on their campaign to deny the reality of climate change. So instead they’re focused on this kinder, gentler form of denialism. This is the new climate war, and we need to recognize that it’s being waged and understand that it’s every bit as dangerous as the old climate war—the old-fashioned, outright denial of the science. In some ways, it has the veneer of credibility. It seems reasonable to many people. And that makes it, to some extent, even more pernicious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>There’s a tension in climate communication between alerting people and alarming them. How do you spur people to action without paralyzing them with fear?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is a fine line there. We have to convey both urgency and agency. Yes, we have an urgent problem; you could call it a crisis or an emergency, if you’d like. But we can do something about it. Urgency and agency have to go hand-in-hand. Only now are we seeing the sort of action that needs to be mobilized to shift us away from the business-as-usual paradigm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The reality is that different people are going to be motivated by different things, and some amount of concern and even fear can motivate—we know that, psychologists have established that. But it can also elicit other, disabling instinctual reactions—paralysis and disengagement. Different people are going to respond differently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a logical fallacy, right? It’s like, \u003ci>Look, we still have the problem, so it’s not working.\u003c/i> And Franzen, in essence, in his latest article, to me, is doing this. He’s saying, \u003ci>Look, it hasn’t worked, so this isn’t going to work, so let’s adapt to the changes that are coming. \u003c/i>To me, it was unambiguous that that was his message. I don’t think that sort of messaging is helpful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Franzen’s case, I was actually \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/1170847152060477440\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">contacted by a fact-checker\u003c/a> to check a fact in the article, and I pointed out that it was wrong. When you look at model projections, and there’s an average and then there’s a spread, the estimate is that there’s an equal likelihood that the reality is above and below that spread. He had implied it was one-sided—that somehow the average is systematically underestimating the warming. He got that wrong. I pointed that out, and the error persists in the piece that appeared.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/1170851084111425538?s=20\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t think it’s accidental that the errors that I’m talking about, the misrepresentations of the science, are systematically in the direction that paints an overly sort of gloomy, doomist picture. It’s exactly what climate-change deniers do in the opposite direction. They always cherry-pick the model projections and observations to understate the threat of climate change. Here, the doomists, in my view, are doing the same thing in the opposite direction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>How would you characterize your interactions with journalists? \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Personally, I find journalists to be a very thoughtful lot, and even though many of them don’t have training in physical science, I’ve always found it fairly easy to communicate the science to them and to help them frame it in ways that the general public can understand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The extent to which we still have some problems and challenges has less to do with journalists and more to do with management and editorial staff. The business model sort of favors clickbait and exaggeration. Some of the nuance and some of the key scientific framing are lost, and what you have is a more biased article that exaggerates the science in one way or another, that favors the sort of “\u003ca href=\"https://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/climate-research-media-focus-whiplash/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">whiplash effect\u003c/a>” that Andy Revkin has talked about: \u003ci>Climate change is a hoax\u003c/i>, or \u003ci>Climate change is far worse than we thought\u003c/i>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>You have about as many Twitter followers as CJR—\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>—and more than many news outlets. You curate a lot of reporting and criticism concerning the climate crisis and the environmental changes of a warming planet. How do you engage that audience responsibly?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I need some humility, I’ll look at how many followers Miley Cyrus has. [\u003ci>Editor’s note: She has 43.9 million.\u003c/i>]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not necessarily an objective measure of the intellectual contribution you’re making to the public discourse. And I recognize that. And, I guess, I feel like I’ve been given this great privilege of having a fairly large following, and I have a responsibility to use it responsibly. I do my best to do that, but I’m a human being.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Social media is often about the moment, the here-and-now, the hot take. We respond to impulses, to individual events. We’re less good at seeing things in broader context. I try to be aware of that, and I try to control my impulses. If something makes me really angry and I want to react, I’ll try to catch myself. I try to be as constructive as I can. I try to provide what I feel is important context to news articles and commentary that will help people see the climate crisis more broadly, and more deeply.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>You responded on social media to misinformation published about your court case against Tim Ball. After I saw your responses, I realized hadn’t seen any coverage from actual news outlets. Is there some conclusion about the press to draw from that?\u003c/b>\u003cb> \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’d say in a phrase, \u003ci>Fool me once\u003c/i>. I think the journalism community learned its lesson from the so-called “Climategate” affair. Climate-change deniers and the organizations that front for the fossil-fuel industry did a very good job at putting huge amounts of pressure on journalists to cover this fake story. Eventually, the mainstream media took the bait, because, well, \u003ci>If there’s this much smoke\u003c/i>. Of course, it took a while for the various investigations to play out. Ultimately, when they did, what we saw was: there was no fire. The only wrongdoing was the theft of the emails. There was no indiscretion on the part of the scientists. The denial machine sort of lost its credibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, I think it’s now a damp squib, but [climate-change deniers] generated a solid week or so of noise and distraction, and I actually think it folds into something larger. Right now, we’re seeing \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16092019/trollbot-twitter-climate-change-attacks-disinformation-campaign-mann-mckenna-greta-targeted\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">an uptick in online climate-denial trolling\u003c/a> and bot armies being deployed to promote misinformation and disinformation. We see that in attacks on folks like Greta Thunberg, who’s become the figurehead of the youth climate movement. OPEC declared the movement “perhaps the greatest threat to our industry.” There’s all this ire and vitriol that’s been directed her way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This has happened in the past. “Climategate” was intended to distract the public and policymakers going into the Copenhagen summit, back in December 2009. I think we’ve seen an uptick in denialist trolling and bot armies in the lead-up \u003ca href=\"https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">to this UN summit\u003c/a>. I’ve seen other people comment on that; I think there’s clear recognition that there’s a ramping-up of this disinformation machine right now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This \u003ca href=\"https://www.cjr.org/covering_climate_now/michael-mann-climategate-franzen.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">story\u003c/a> originally appeared in \u003ca href=\"https://www.cjr.org/covering_climate_now/michael-mann-climategate-franzen.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Columbia Journalism Review\u003c/a>. It is republished here as part of \u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/climate\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">KQED Science’s\u003c/a> partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Michael Mann’s work as a press critic began in earnest a decade ago. Ahead of the 2009 international climate-change summit in Copenhagen, hackers stole email correspondence between Mann and other climate scientists from a computer server at the University of East Anglia. Climate-change deniers used portions of the emails, freed from context, to attack the credibility of Mann, whose “hockey stick” graph charting the rapid rise of the Earth’s\u003cbr>\ntemperature since industrialization would become an emblem of the climate fight. Coverage of what news outlets called “Climategate” saved space for Mann’s critics; such choices emphasized conflict out of all proportion with the scientific consensus on a warming planet. In \u003ci>The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars\u003c/i>, his 2012 book, Mann called such false balance and sympathetic framing “a sweet victory for climate change deniers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo.png\">\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>Though multiple investigations upheld the integrity of Mann’s research, such vindication took years. Mann has vigorously contested misinformation concerning his work and climate science \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/search?q=(reporter%20OR%20reporters%20OR%20journalist%20OR%20journalists)%20(from%3Amichaelemann)&src=typed_query\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">on social media\u003c/a> as well as in the courts. In 2011, Mann filed \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20160905215806/http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/03/28/ClimateGuy.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a defamation claim\u003c/a> in a British Columbia court against the Frontier Center for Public Policy (FCPP), a Canadian think-tank, and Tim Ball, a former geography professor, after Ball suggested in an interview that Mann should be imprisoned. In June, the FCPP settled with Mann and \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20190609170116/https://fcpp.org/retraction-and-apology-to-michael-mann/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">apologized\u003c/a> for its characterization of his work. Last month, after Ball’s lawyers cited their client’s poor health and his website’s low ranking, a judge \u003ca href=\"https://www.bccourts.ca/jdb-txt/sc/19/15/2019BCSC1580.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">dismissed the case\u003c/a>, for delays he attributed to Mann. (The judge also noted the two parties’ “dramatically different opinions on climate change,” which the court did not address.) Mann then took to Twitter to counter climate-denial sites that spun the dismissal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mann, a climatologist who directs the Penn State Earth System Science Center, spoke with CJR last week, one day after \u003ci>The New Yorker\u003c/i> published a widely derided climate-change column by Jonathan Franzen. (Writing in her “Heated” newsletter, journalist Emily Atkin called Franzen’s take “the most brilliantly unintentional fossil fuel industry propaganda I’ve ever read.”) Mann talked about the lessons learned by newsrooms since “Climategate,” and the new pitfalls that await reporters covering the planet’s most important story. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>This year marks a decade since news coverage of what many news outlets called “Climategate.” What gains have journalists made in their coverage of climate science and global warming since then?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ve seen a pretty dramatic move away from the false balance that we used to see, where every news story about climate change had to have a contrarian, a climate-change denier, representing the other side—as if there’s equal weight on the side of science and science denial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, I think there are other problems that we’re seeing crop up in media coverage of this issue. [Franzen’s piece is] emblematic of a trend toward doomist framing; my worry is it leads people down a path of despair and hopelessness and inaction, which actually leads us to the same place as outright climate-change denialism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’re also seeing a tendency to emphasize personal responsibility and choice over systemic change. \u003ci>The New York Times\u003c/i>, in the space of a month or two, had a half-dozen articles touting the importance of individuals. \u003ci>The problem is us and our eating habits, our travel habits\u003c/i>. Again, I think this may not be intentional, but it is actually playing into a deflection campaign that is being used by fossil-fuel interests, trying to emphasize the role of individuals to take the pressure off regulation of industry and systemic changes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s impossible now to deny that climate change is happening. The fossil-fuel industry has essentially give up on their campaign to deny the reality of climate change. So instead they’re focused on this kinder, gentler form of denialism. This is the new climate war, and we need to recognize that it’s being waged and understand that it’s every bit as dangerous as the old climate war—the old-fashioned, outright denial of the science. In some ways, it has the veneer of credibility. It seems reasonable to many people. And that makes it, to some extent, even more pernicious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>There’s a tension in climate communication between alerting people and alarming them. How do you spur people to action without paralyzing them with fear?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is a fine line there. We have to convey both urgency and agency. Yes, we have an urgent problem; you could call it a crisis or an emergency, if you’d like. But we can do something about it. Urgency and agency have to go hand-in-hand. Only now are we seeing the sort of action that needs to be mobilized to shift us away from the business-as-usual paradigm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The reality is that different people are going to be motivated by different things, and some amount of concern and even fear can motivate—we know that, psychologists have established that. But it can also elicit other, disabling instinctual reactions—paralysis and disengagement. Different people are going to respond differently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a logical fallacy, right? It’s like, \u003ci>Look, we still have the problem, so it’s not working.\u003c/i> And Franzen, in essence, in his latest article, to me, is doing this. He’s saying, \u003ci>Look, it hasn’t worked, so this isn’t going to work, so let’s adapt to the changes that are coming. \u003c/i>To me, it was unambiguous that that was his message. I don’t think that sort of messaging is helpful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Franzen’s case, I was actually \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/1170847152060477440\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">contacted by a fact-checker\u003c/a> to check a fact in the article, and I pointed out that it was wrong. When you look at model projections, and there’s an average and then there’s a spread, the estimate is that there’s an equal likelihood that the reality is above and below that spread. He had implied it was one-sided—that somehow the average is systematically underestimating the warming. He got that wrong. I pointed that out, and the error persists in the piece that appeared.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>I don’t think it’s accidental that the errors that I’m talking about, the misrepresentations of the science, are systematically in the direction that paints an overly sort of gloomy, doomist picture. It’s exactly what climate-change deniers do in the opposite direction. They always cherry-pick the model projections and observations to understate the threat of climate change. Here, the doomists, in my view, are doing the same thing in the opposite direction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>How would you characterize your interactions with journalists? \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Personally, I find journalists to be a very thoughtful lot, and even though many of them don’t have training in physical science, I’ve always found it fairly easy to communicate the science to them and to help them frame it in ways that the general public can understand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The extent to which we still have some problems and challenges has less to do with journalists and more to do with management and editorial staff. The business model sort of favors clickbait and exaggeration. Some of the nuance and some of the key scientific framing are lost, and what you have is a more biased article that exaggerates the science in one way or another, that favors the sort of “\u003ca href=\"https://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/climate-research-media-focus-whiplash/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">whiplash effect\u003c/a>” that Andy Revkin has talked about: \u003ci>Climate change is a hoax\u003c/i>, or \u003ci>Climate change is far worse than we thought\u003c/i>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>You have about as many Twitter followers as CJR—\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>—and more than many news outlets. You curate a lot of reporting and criticism concerning the climate crisis and the environmental changes of a warming planet. How do you engage that audience responsibly?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I need some humility, I’ll look at how many followers Miley Cyrus has. [\u003ci>Editor’s note: She has 43.9 million.\u003c/i>]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not necessarily an objective measure of the intellectual contribution you’re making to the public discourse. And I recognize that. And, I guess, I feel like I’ve been given this great privilege of having a fairly large following, and I have a responsibility to use it responsibly. I do my best to do that, but I’m a human being.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Social media is often about the moment, the here-and-now, the hot take. We respond to impulses, to individual events. We’re less good at seeing things in broader context. I try to be aware of that, and I try to control my impulses. If something makes me really angry and I want to react, I’ll try to catch myself. I try to be as constructive as I can. I try to provide what I feel is important context to news articles and commentary that will help people see the climate crisis more broadly, and more deeply.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>You responded on social media to misinformation published about your court case against Tim Ball. After I saw your responses, I realized hadn’t seen any coverage from actual news outlets. Is there some conclusion about the press to draw from that?\u003c/b>\u003cb> \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’d say in a phrase, \u003ci>Fool me once\u003c/i>. I think the journalism community learned its lesson from the so-called “Climategate” affair. Climate-change deniers and the organizations that front for the fossil-fuel industry did a very good job at putting huge amounts of pressure on journalists to cover this fake story. Eventually, the mainstream media took the bait, because, well, \u003ci>If there’s this much smoke\u003c/i>. Of course, it took a while for the various investigations to play out. Ultimately, when they did, what we saw was: there was no fire. The only wrongdoing was the theft of the emails. There was no indiscretion on the part of the scientists. The denial machine sort of lost its credibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, I think it’s now a damp squib, but [climate-change deniers] generated a solid week or so of noise and distraction, and I actually think it folds into something larger. Right now, we’re seeing \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16092019/trollbot-twitter-climate-change-attacks-disinformation-campaign-mann-mckenna-greta-targeted\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">an uptick in online climate-denial trolling\u003c/a> and bot armies being deployed to promote misinformation and disinformation. We see that in attacks on folks like Greta Thunberg, who’s become the figurehead of the youth climate movement. OPEC declared the movement “perhaps the greatest threat to our industry.” There’s all this ire and vitriol that’s been directed her way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This has happened in the past. “Climategate” was intended to distract the public and policymakers going into the Copenhagen summit, back in December 2009. I think we’ve seen an uptick in denialist trolling and bot armies in the lead-up \u003ca href=\"https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">to this UN summit\u003c/a>. I’ve seen other people comment on that; I think there’s clear recognition that there’s a ramping-up of this disinformation machine right now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This \u003ca href=\"https://www.cjr.org/covering_climate_now/michael-mann-climategate-franzen.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">story\u003c/a> originally appeared in \u003ca href=\"https://www.cjr.org/covering_climate_now/michael-mann-climategate-franzen.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Columbia Journalism Review\u003c/a>. It is republished here as part of \u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/climate\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">KQED Science’s\u003c/a> partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "want-to-prevent-californias-katrina-grow-a-marsh",
"title": "Want to Prevent California’s Katrina? Grow a Marsh",
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"content": "\u003cp class=\"has-drop-cap\">Something is amiss on Sherman Island, a whale-shaped swath of farm and grazing land at the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. If you don’t know what ails the place, it might be hard to pinpoint the problem. The island, in the Sacramento Delta, is roughly 16 square miles. Its asphalt roads, cracked and sagging at the edges, look like cheese melted over a lumpy pizza. The telephone\u003cbr>\npoles, many of them kept erect by taut guy-wires, stand conspicuously at non-right angles. The landscape feels Dr. Seussian—a wacky, slightly absurdist version of farmland, right down to the exaggerated industrial backdrop: a steady stream of cars driving past on State Highway 160, which traverses the island; steaming smokestacks from the power plant across the river; the Antioch Bridge arcing dramatically over the San Joaquin River; enormous wind turbines turning lazily on a hill to the northwest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo.png\">\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=\"251\" height=\"251\" 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: 251px) 100vw, 251px\">\u003c/a>What’s wrong?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re standing 10 feet below sea level,” Bryan Brock, an engineer with California’s Department of Water Resources, told me during a visit in May. Brock, who has a white-blond goatee sprouting from his chin like tuft grass, evinced supreme calm as he explained: “None of these people realize it driving past, but they’re below sea level. And that’s a problem.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The land here, and hundreds of thousands of acres elsewhere in the Delta, began to sink in the late 1800s as people started draining the region’s vast wetlands. As they walled off rivers and created dry islands from what was previously soggy marsh, they discovered incredibly rich soil. In contrast to other fertile regions like Iowa, where topsoil two feet deep was considered bounteous when farmers began plowing it in the 19th century, Delta peat soils—created over thousands of years, by wetland plants growing and dying and not quite decomposing—could be 50 feet deep. No one foresaw that this very bounty—soil rich with organic material—would, over time, become a curse of sorts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>River and marsh bottoms typically have low oxygen levels, which slows the decomposition of organic material that collects there. That organic material contains copious amounts of carbon. Once the waterlogged Delta soils dried out, microbes began to consume the organic detritus, transforming it into gas. Millions of tons of solid ground started going up into the air as microbial exhaust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the land began to sink.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In some places, including parts of Sherman Island, the land has now subsided 25 feet since the late 1800s—and continues to sink between half an inch and 1.5 inches yearly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These “islands” aren’t really islands at all anymore, Brock told me, but empty bathtubs whose bottoms are receding. The deepening cauldrons, now sitting well below sea level, are creating a situation that grows more precarious with each passing year. The more the islands sink, the greater the pressure on the aging mounded dirt levees that keep the water back, and the greater the likelihood that they’ll fail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This situation, called subsidence, worries the California Department of Water Resources and many others, not just because farmers could lose pasture and farmland, but because much of the water that irrigates the Central Valley, and that many Californians depend on for drinking water, is pumped through a sprawling network of canals from the Delta. A large enough breach of those levees—especially if it affected many of the Delta’s 57 islands simultaneously—could hamper the flow of fresh water to the Central Valley, leaving huge swaths of the state without usable water for months, even years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brock describes the mechanics of the threat as the “big gulp.” Water in the 1,100-square-mile Delta—nearly the size of Rhode Island—sits at sea level. Only the pressure of the fresh water flowing down the leveed Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers prevents salt water from the San Francisco Bay from pushing inland. If many levees fail at once, the fresh water that otherwise keeps the salt water away would rush to fill all those empty bathtubs. Brackish water from San Francisco Bay would then flow inland. The water used to irrigate the Central Valley and its $17 billion agricultural economy, and the drinking water for about 25 million people, could become salty and unusable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s Katrina on steroids,” Dennis Baldocchi, a professor of biometeorology at UC Berkeley who studies the Delta, told me. “We’re a $4 trillion economy. Think of shutting down water for 30 million Californians.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because the region is prone to earthquakes—and because faults pass right through the Delta region—an earthquake that could trigger a catastrophic levee failure, defined as 20 islands flooding at once, has a 62 percent chance of occurring in the next two decades if subsidence isn’t addressed, DWR’s own analysis suggests. The event would likely incur tens of billions of dollars’ worth of damage and could take a year-and-a-half to repair. Nor is the flooding of Delta islands unprecedented. When Jones Tract, a Delta island, flooded in 2004, the damage cost $90 million to fix. In earlier times, several islands that were inundated were simply abandoned: Google Maps reveals lakes—the Mildred Tract, Franks Tract— where farmland once existed, discernible by the ring-shaped remains of levees rising, like coral atolls, from the Delta water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not paying attention,” Baldocchi told me; the disaster-in-waiting, he asserts, has not drawn the concern it deserves. Action to address the problem has been stymied for years by, in part, the sheer number and variety of agencies, sometimes with competing agendas, operating in the Delta. Interagency rivalry and distrust have yielded what Ray Seed, a UC Berkeley professor of environmental engineering and an expert on the Delta, once described as a “60- to 70-year stalemate” in which “we will all lose together.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s truly a wicked problem,” agrees Campbell Ingram, head of the Delta Conservancy, a state agency tasked with ecosystem restoration in the area. Yet for the first time in his 13-plus years working on the issue, he says, the majority of stakeholders now concur that the subsidence issue needs to be addressed urgently. “We’re kind of in this weird space where we simultaneously can’t \u003cem>prevent\u003c/em> the Delta from failing, and we can’t \u003cem>allow\u003c/em> it to fail,” he adds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One solution is for the landowners, with some state funding, to keep repairing the levees, building them higher and wider. But as sea levels rise and the islands continue to subside, the costs of fortifying and maintaining the structures may exceed the value of the land and agricultural production behind them, says Alf Brandt, counsel to the State Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon. For some of the deepest islands, the conclusion of that cost-benefit analysis already looks unfavorable, he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For decades, DWR has been working on another more ecosystem-based fix. Since the 1990s, the agency has experimentally re-flooded pieces of land in the Delta, with the goal of reestablishing wetlands like those that created the soil in the first place. The reasoning is that once wet, the land will stop losing carbon and the sinking will come to a halt. Even if that doesn’t entirely resolve the problem, Ingram says, it prevents the situation from getting worse. And over the long term, marsh plants may, through photosynthesis, capture enough carbon from the atmosphere that the ground begins rising again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s through this last mechanism—plants’ ability to pull carbon from the atmosphere—that a project originally conceived to protect California’s water infrastructure has, over the years, evolved into something more interdisciplinary, and of potentially greater importance. Although they can produce powerful greenhouse gases, wetlands can also sequester and store immense quantities of carbon. Policymakers have historically ignored these places in discussions about greenhouse gas emissions, but that’s now changing as they come to appreciate the huge stores of carbon that wetlands already contain—and the large quantities of greenhouse gases they release when destroyed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An expanding body of research has prompted land managers to consider, for the first time, creating wetland carbon credits that might be traded in carbon markets. In California, at least, efforts to address one worsening disaster could enable prevention of another. Mounting anxiety over global heating may be what spurs creation of carbon credits that, by providing funding for Delta wetland restoration, also produce badly needed funds to protect California’s water infrastructure. “It would have been great to have done this 30 or 40 years ago,” Kristopher Tjernell, deputy director of DWR’s Integrated Watershed Management Program, told me. “But you know, it wasn’t ripe. And it’s ripe now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"has-drop-cap\">“Blue carbon” refers to carbon momentarily trapped—or slowed down, really—in waterlogged ecosystems. Because the microbes that break down carbon in wet conditions work much more slowly than those in more aerated environs and through different biochemical pathways, wetland ecosystems can accumulate and store far more carbon per acre than forests and savannas can. Scientists have known this in a roundabout way for a long time: After all, the coal and oil deposits that have fueled civilization since the Industrial Revolution come from ancient marsh and marine ecosystems that, after accumulating huge quantities of carbon, were buried and fossilized over millions of years. Fossil fuels, you might say, are an aged form of blue carbon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Historically, policymakers and scientists have been daunted by the many variables involved in calculating the amount of carbon held in wetlands and, more broadly, in the web of living things we call the biosphere, according to Stephen Crooks, cofounder of Silvestrum Climate associates in San Francisco. It’s far more complicated than quantifying how much comes out of smokestacks and tailpipes, he says: “It was seen as more challenging and somewhat scary to include.” But the omission has always been, in his view, untenable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Worldwide, about 450 million tons of carbon dioxide enter the atmosphere yearly from wetland degradation—destroyed mangrove forests, drained marshes, and smothered seagrass beds. That’s equal to the yearly human-caused greenhouse gas emissions of France, the U.K., or California. “When your emissions are the size of California’s economy and you weren’t counting it,” he told me, “that’s a very big surprise.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wetland ecosystems comprise just 5 to 8 percent of the planet’s land area but contain between 20 and 30 percent of the world’s soil carbon. “When you destroy a wetland, you can release thousands of years of carbon in just a few decades,” Crooks says. On the flip side, by preserving wetlands, you can protect millennia’s worth of accumulated carbon with, in theory, relatively little effort. The Sacramento Delta, the largest estuary along the western edge of the Americas, has become a test case for this idea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Delta may have once held the largest freshwater wetland carbon reserves on the West Coast. Since it was drained over a century ago, it has released an amount of carbon equal to one-quarter of California’s forests—all the redwoods, pines, and oaks in the nation’s third-largest state, according to Baldocchi and his colleagues. And it’s still emitting carbon. Although it comprises less than 1 percent of the state’s cropland, every year the Delta releases a quantity of carbon equal to one-quarter of all plant-related agriculture—all the tractors, plows, and combine harvesters operated in the state. “I’ve been making measurements my whole career, and I’ve never seen fluxes as large as what’s happening from these peat soils,” Baldocchi told me. The near-term goal in the Delta, and in any degraded wetland really, is to stop subsidence and emissions. The longer-term goal is to reverse them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crossing over the blue-gray San Joaquin River on the Antioch Bridge, you can just glimpse the glittering wetlands to the west on Sherman Island. They’re easy to miss at 60 miles an hour. But as I stood with Brock on a wooden walkway a few feet above them in May, the low roar of the semi-industrial landscape—cars speeding over the bridge and boats motoring by on the other side of the levee—receded as I watched birds flit acrobatically among the rustling tule reeds and dragonflies hover over the dark water. The wetlands, hemmed in as they are by levees, roads, and fields of grazing cows, look remarkably healthy. They represent the implementation phase of DWR’s ongoing project, which seeks to shore up the threatened levees by creating wetlands on their subsided “bathtub” sides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Isn’t it beautiful,” Brock said, looking out over the reeds. “Sometimes nature can do things better than humans.” Which is not to say the DWR restoration project was as easy as opening the floodgates and watching the cattails return. Before water was allowed back, he explained, the land had to be carefully sculpted to ensure the optimal water depth for marsh plants to grow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brock’s predecessors created the first experimental wetlands, on nearby Twitchell Island, in the 1990s. Not only did bringing water back halt the loss of carbon from the soil and stop subsidence, experts discovered, but the wetland plants grew so rapidly that, as they died and left tangled masses of roots and stalks, they raised the elevation of ground at an average rate of 4 centimeters per year. A common assertion among soil scientists is that an inch of topsoil takes a century to accumulate, maybe longer. But these wetland plants were turning carbon dioxide into solid earth at a rate observable by humans from one year to the next.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even so, given the magnitude of the subsidence problem, that rate of soil accretion can seem sorely inadequate. It will take roughly 150 years to get the most sunken areas of these islands back to sea level, Baldocchi told me. “People have trouble thinking in 100-year time scales,” he said. “We can’t get bored with these projects in 15 years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet the long-term time frame doesn’t mean we have to wait till the end for the project to bear fruit. Campbell Ingram of the Delta Conservancy emphasizes the importance of “stopping increased risk”—of halting subsidence. What’s key to understand, he says, is that the risk of levee breach does not increase linearly with subsidence, but exponentially. So by halting subsidence, you prevent the ballooning probability of catastrophic failure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And if the ground regains just a few feet over the years, the risk of catastrophe declines non-linearly as well. Meaning you don’t need to grow the ground back to sea level to dramatically reduce the possibility of a calamitous breach. Some modeling suggests that just gaining half the lost ground back—about 50 to 75 years as opposed to 150—could bring the likelihood of widespread failure to nearly zero.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even so, the major challenge facing the project is how to reach a scale of wetland restoration that’s meaningful for the greater Delta. DWR has so far flooded about 1,700 acres in four separate wetlands. But altogether there are about 250,000 acres of deeply subsided land in the Delta, most of it owned by farmers. So success depends in part on convincing farmers to forgo cash crops and flood their land instead, something that’s unlikely to happen without adequate monetary incentive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ideally, Ingram says, the state would pay farmers to convert cropland to wetland. (There is also an intermediate option, a wetland that sustains a crop: rice in flooded fields. In experiments, rice paddies stopped subsidence, but they didn’t reverse it.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California does have a relatively new program, called the Healthy Soils Initiative, whereby state money goes to farmers who implement practices thought to benefit soil health. It’s a model of what’s possible, Ingram says, but regrettably no such program exists for Delta wetlands. Marsh provides critical habitat for various species, so other income sources for farmers might include duck clubs or federal and state programs that pay for creation of endangered-animal habitat. But for now Ingram is betting on carbon markets, particularly California’s cap-and-trade system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want to get to a point where a farmer wakes up and says, ‘I can earn more flooding my land than growing corn,’” Ingram told me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Established in 2006 by the law AB32, the cap-and-trade system seeks to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions by harnessing market forces. The state establishes an upper limit on greenhouse gas pollution—the cap—and then gives polluters a certain number of allowances to emit the offending gases. The quantity of allowances given out declines over time, forcing polluters to either clean up their operations or to purchase allowances from polluters who have a surfeit. Polluters can also buy a certain number of offset carbon credits from projects that either prevent the emission of greenhouse gases or remove them from the atmosphere. This is where restored Delta marshes might come in—as a source of offset credits for purchase.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ingram and Steve Deverel—one of the scientists who, when with USGS, conducted the original pilot projects on reversing subsidence in the Delta and is now with the consulting firm Hydrofocus—developed a Delta wetland carbon protocol that the American Carbon Registry approved in 2017. Meaning that they can sell offsets in the voluntary carbon market.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Approval for the state’s cap-and-trade system, where offset credits now trade for roughly double the rate seen on the voluntary market and might actually compete with earnings from crops, is likely a year-and-a-half away, Ingram says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And these are complicated carbon offsets. Freshwater wetland plants can pull carbon from the atmosphere at a spectacular rate—about 5.7 tons per acre per year in the Delta—but freshwater wetlands also emit the greenhouse gas methane, which has about 30 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. According to Baldocchi, the warming caused by the methane released from Delta wetlands about equals, in the short term, the cooling potential of the carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"entry-content\">\n\u003cp>Why go through all the trouble, then, if we end up right where we started? Think of it as preventive medicine. By re-flooding one acre of peatland in the Sacramento Delta, you prevent between 10 and 20 tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere—via the organic material that microbes would have turned into gas if the land remained dry. That’s equivalent to between two and four years of driving your average car. In addition, you prevent worsening of the subsidence problem and its threat to the state’s water supply.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lisamarie Windham-Myers, a scientist with USGS, thinks she may eventually be able to improve the climate-cooling potential of these wetlands by emulating what happens in certain marshes that \u003cem>don’t\u003c/em> produce greenhouse gases. Saltwater and brackish marshes don’t release nearly as much methane as freshwater wetlands, she explains. That’s because ocean water contains sulfate, which changes the biochemical pathways available to microbes that break down organic material. With sulfate present, instead of creating methane as a byproduct, microbes produce sulfide, which isn’t a greenhouse gas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Windham-Myers studies the Suisun marshes, not far from Sherman Island. She’s found that even trace amounts of sulfate in the water prevent those counterproductive methane emissions. In Suisun, the sulfate comes from the small quantity of seawater that pushes into the system from San Francisco Bay. But even freshwater systems, she emphasizes, can contain trace amounts of sulfate—or iron, which also prevents methane production. In fact, she has observed that methane emissions from different parts of the restored DWR wetlands vary greatly, likely because of how water moves through them—carrying tiny concentrations of sulfate or iron to some areas, but not to others. Once scientists better understand such dynamics, they may be able to control the flow of water through resurrected wetlands in a way that limits methane, increases the net climate benefit, and raises the value of the carbon credit sold against restored Delta wetlands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The role of hydrology is definitely emerging as a knob we can turn,” Windham-Myers told me. “Let’s fine-tune these wetlands to make them as amazing as possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This \u003ca href=\"https://baynature.org/article/want-to-prevent-californias-katrina-grow-a-marsh/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">story\u003c/a> originally appeared in \u003ca href=\"https://baynature.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bay Nature\u003c/a>. It is republished here as part of \u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/climate\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">KQED Science’s\u003c/a> partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Moises Velasquez-Manoff is Bay Nature’s senior editor and the author of An Epidemic of Absence.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp class=\"has-drop-cap\">Something is amiss on Sherman Island, a whale-shaped swath of farm and grazing land at the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. If you don’t know what ails the place, it might be hard to pinpoint the problem. The island, in the Sacramento Delta, is roughly 16 square miles. Its asphalt roads, cracked and sagging at the edges, look like cheese melted over a lumpy pizza. The telephone\u003cbr>\npoles, many of them kept erect by taut guy-wires, stand conspicuously at non-right angles. The landscape feels Dr. Seussian—a wacky, slightly absurdist version of farmland, right down to the exaggerated industrial backdrop: a steady stream of cars driving past on State Highway 160, which traverses the island; steaming smokestacks from the power plant across the river; the Antioch Bridge arcing dramatically over the San Joaquin River; enormous wind turbines turning lazily on a hill to the northwest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo.png\">\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=\"251\" height=\"251\" 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: 251px) 100vw, 251px\">\u003c/a>What’s wrong?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re standing 10 feet below sea level,” Bryan Brock, an engineer with California’s Department of Water Resources, told me during a visit in May. Brock, who has a white-blond goatee sprouting from his chin like tuft grass, evinced supreme calm as he explained: “None of these people realize it driving past, but they’re below sea level. And that’s a problem.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The land here, and hundreds of thousands of acres elsewhere in the Delta, began to sink in the late 1800s as people started draining the region’s vast wetlands. As they walled off rivers and created dry islands from what was previously soggy marsh, they discovered incredibly rich soil. In contrast to other fertile regions like Iowa, where topsoil two feet deep was considered bounteous when farmers began plowing it in the 19th century, Delta peat soils—created over thousands of years, by wetland plants growing and dying and not quite decomposing—could be 50 feet deep. No one foresaw that this very bounty—soil rich with organic material—would, over time, become a curse of sorts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>River and marsh bottoms typically have low oxygen levels, which slows the decomposition of organic material that collects there. That organic material contains copious amounts of carbon. Once the waterlogged Delta soils dried out, microbes began to consume the organic detritus, transforming it into gas. Millions of tons of solid ground started going up into the air as microbial exhaust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the land began to sink.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In some places, including parts of Sherman Island, the land has now subsided 25 feet since the late 1800s—and continues to sink between half an inch and 1.5 inches yearly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These “islands” aren’t really islands at all anymore, Brock told me, but empty bathtubs whose bottoms are receding. The deepening cauldrons, now sitting well below sea level, are creating a situation that grows more precarious with each passing year. The more the islands sink, the greater the pressure on the aging mounded dirt levees that keep the water back, and the greater the likelihood that they’ll fail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This situation, called subsidence, worries the California Department of Water Resources and many others, not just because farmers could lose pasture and farmland, but because much of the water that irrigates the Central Valley, and that many Californians depend on for drinking water, is pumped through a sprawling network of canals from the Delta. A large enough breach of those levees—especially if it affected many of the Delta’s 57 islands simultaneously—could hamper the flow of fresh water to the Central Valley, leaving huge swaths of the state without usable water for months, even years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brock describes the mechanics of the threat as the “big gulp.” Water in the 1,100-square-mile Delta—nearly the size of Rhode Island—sits at sea level. Only the pressure of the fresh water flowing down the leveed Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers prevents salt water from the San Francisco Bay from pushing inland. If many levees fail at once, the fresh water that otherwise keeps the salt water away would rush to fill all those empty bathtubs. Brackish water from San Francisco Bay would then flow inland. The water used to irrigate the Central Valley and its $17 billion agricultural economy, and the drinking water for about 25 million people, could become salty and unusable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s Katrina on steroids,” Dennis Baldocchi, a professor of biometeorology at UC Berkeley who studies the Delta, told me. “We’re a $4 trillion economy. Think of shutting down water for 30 million Californians.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because the region is prone to earthquakes—and because faults pass right through the Delta region—an earthquake that could trigger a catastrophic levee failure, defined as 20 islands flooding at once, has a 62 percent chance of occurring in the next two decades if subsidence isn’t addressed, DWR’s own analysis suggests. The event would likely incur tens of billions of dollars’ worth of damage and could take a year-and-a-half to repair. Nor is the flooding of Delta islands unprecedented. When Jones Tract, a Delta island, flooded in 2004, the damage cost $90 million to fix. In earlier times, several islands that were inundated were simply abandoned: Google Maps reveals lakes—the Mildred Tract, Franks Tract— where farmland once existed, discernible by the ring-shaped remains of levees rising, like coral atolls, from the Delta water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not paying attention,” Baldocchi told me; the disaster-in-waiting, he asserts, has not drawn the concern it deserves. Action to address the problem has been stymied for years by, in part, the sheer number and variety of agencies, sometimes with competing agendas, operating in the Delta. Interagency rivalry and distrust have yielded what Ray Seed, a UC Berkeley professor of environmental engineering and an expert on the Delta, once described as a “60- to 70-year stalemate” in which “we will all lose together.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s truly a wicked problem,” agrees Campbell Ingram, head of the Delta Conservancy, a state agency tasked with ecosystem restoration in the area. Yet for the first time in his 13-plus years working on the issue, he says, the majority of stakeholders now concur that the subsidence issue needs to be addressed urgently. “We’re kind of in this weird space where we simultaneously can’t \u003cem>prevent\u003c/em> the Delta from failing, and we can’t \u003cem>allow\u003c/em> it to fail,” he adds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One solution is for the landowners, with some state funding, to keep repairing the levees, building them higher and wider. But as sea levels rise and the islands continue to subside, the costs of fortifying and maintaining the structures may exceed the value of the land and agricultural production behind them, says Alf Brandt, counsel to the State Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon. For some of the deepest islands, the conclusion of that cost-benefit analysis already looks unfavorable, he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For decades, DWR has been working on another more ecosystem-based fix. Since the 1990s, the agency has experimentally re-flooded pieces of land in the Delta, with the goal of reestablishing wetlands like those that created the soil in the first place. The reasoning is that once wet, the land will stop losing carbon and the sinking will come to a halt. Even if that doesn’t entirely resolve the problem, Ingram says, it prevents the situation from getting worse. And over the long term, marsh plants may, through photosynthesis, capture enough carbon from the atmosphere that the ground begins rising again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s through this last mechanism—plants’ ability to pull carbon from the atmosphere—that a project originally conceived to protect California’s water infrastructure has, over the years, evolved into something more interdisciplinary, and of potentially greater importance. Although they can produce powerful greenhouse gases, wetlands can also sequester and store immense quantities of carbon. Policymakers have historically ignored these places in discussions about greenhouse gas emissions, but that’s now changing as they come to appreciate the huge stores of carbon that wetlands already contain—and the large quantities of greenhouse gases they release when destroyed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An expanding body of research has prompted land managers to consider, for the first time, creating wetland carbon credits that might be traded in carbon markets. In California, at least, efforts to address one worsening disaster could enable prevention of another. Mounting anxiety over global heating may be what spurs creation of carbon credits that, by providing funding for Delta wetland restoration, also produce badly needed funds to protect California’s water infrastructure. “It would have been great to have done this 30 or 40 years ago,” Kristopher Tjernell, deputy director of DWR’s Integrated Watershed Management Program, told me. “But you know, it wasn’t ripe. And it’s ripe now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"has-drop-cap\">“Blue carbon” refers to carbon momentarily trapped—or slowed down, really—in waterlogged ecosystems. Because the microbes that break down carbon in wet conditions work much more slowly than those in more aerated environs and through different biochemical pathways, wetland ecosystems can accumulate and store far more carbon per acre than forests and savannas can. Scientists have known this in a roundabout way for a long time: After all, the coal and oil deposits that have fueled civilization since the Industrial Revolution come from ancient marsh and marine ecosystems that, after accumulating huge quantities of carbon, were buried and fossilized over millions of years. Fossil fuels, you might say, are an aged form of blue carbon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Historically, policymakers and scientists have been daunted by the many variables involved in calculating the amount of carbon held in wetlands and, more broadly, in the web of living things we call the biosphere, according to Stephen Crooks, cofounder of Silvestrum Climate associates in San Francisco. It’s far more complicated than quantifying how much comes out of smokestacks and tailpipes, he says: “It was seen as more challenging and somewhat scary to include.” But the omission has always been, in his view, untenable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Worldwide, about 450 million tons of carbon dioxide enter the atmosphere yearly from wetland degradation—destroyed mangrove forests, drained marshes, and smothered seagrass beds. That’s equal to the yearly human-caused greenhouse gas emissions of France, the U.K., or California. “When your emissions are the size of California’s economy and you weren’t counting it,” he told me, “that’s a very big surprise.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wetland ecosystems comprise just 5 to 8 percent of the planet’s land area but contain between 20 and 30 percent of the world’s soil carbon. “When you destroy a wetland, you can release thousands of years of carbon in just a few decades,” Crooks says. On the flip side, by preserving wetlands, you can protect millennia’s worth of accumulated carbon with, in theory, relatively little effort. The Sacramento Delta, the largest estuary along the western edge of the Americas, has become a test case for this idea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Delta may have once held the largest freshwater wetland carbon reserves on the West Coast. Since it was drained over a century ago, it has released an amount of carbon equal to one-quarter of California’s forests—all the redwoods, pines, and oaks in the nation’s third-largest state, according to Baldocchi and his colleagues. And it’s still emitting carbon. Although it comprises less than 1 percent of the state’s cropland, every year the Delta releases a quantity of carbon equal to one-quarter of all plant-related agriculture—all the tractors, plows, and combine harvesters operated in the state. “I’ve been making measurements my whole career, and I’ve never seen fluxes as large as what’s happening from these peat soils,” Baldocchi told me. The near-term goal in the Delta, and in any degraded wetland really, is to stop subsidence and emissions. The longer-term goal is to reverse them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crossing over the blue-gray San Joaquin River on the Antioch Bridge, you can just glimpse the glittering wetlands to the west on Sherman Island. They’re easy to miss at 60 miles an hour. But as I stood with Brock on a wooden walkway a few feet above them in May, the low roar of the semi-industrial landscape—cars speeding over the bridge and boats motoring by on the other side of the levee—receded as I watched birds flit acrobatically among the rustling tule reeds and dragonflies hover over the dark water. The wetlands, hemmed in as they are by levees, roads, and fields of grazing cows, look remarkably healthy. They represent the implementation phase of DWR’s ongoing project, which seeks to shore up the threatened levees by creating wetlands on their subsided “bathtub” sides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Isn’t it beautiful,” Brock said, looking out over the reeds. “Sometimes nature can do things better than humans.” Which is not to say the DWR restoration project was as easy as opening the floodgates and watching the cattails return. Before water was allowed back, he explained, the land had to be carefully sculpted to ensure the optimal water depth for marsh plants to grow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brock’s predecessors created the first experimental wetlands, on nearby Twitchell Island, in the 1990s. Not only did bringing water back halt the loss of carbon from the soil and stop subsidence, experts discovered, but the wetland plants grew so rapidly that, as they died and left tangled masses of roots and stalks, they raised the elevation of ground at an average rate of 4 centimeters per year. A common assertion among soil scientists is that an inch of topsoil takes a century to accumulate, maybe longer. But these wetland plants were turning carbon dioxide into solid earth at a rate observable by humans from one year to the next.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even so, given the magnitude of the subsidence problem, that rate of soil accretion can seem sorely inadequate. It will take roughly 150 years to get the most sunken areas of these islands back to sea level, Baldocchi told me. “People have trouble thinking in 100-year time scales,” he said. “We can’t get bored with these projects in 15 years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet the long-term time frame doesn’t mean we have to wait till the end for the project to bear fruit. Campbell Ingram of the Delta Conservancy emphasizes the importance of “stopping increased risk”—of halting subsidence. What’s key to understand, he says, is that the risk of levee breach does not increase linearly with subsidence, but exponentially. So by halting subsidence, you prevent the ballooning probability of catastrophic failure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And if the ground regains just a few feet over the years, the risk of catastrophe declines non-linearly as well. Meaning you don’t need to grow the ground back to sea level to dramatically reduce the possibility of a calamitous breach. Some modeling suggests that just gaining half the lost ground back—about 50 to 75 years as opposed to 150—could bring the likelihood of widespread failure to nearly zero.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even so, the major challenge facing the project is how to reach a scale of wetland restoration that’s meaningful for the greater Delta. DWR has so far flooded about 1,700 acres in four separate wetlands. But altogether there are about 250,000 acres of deeply subsided land in the Delta, most of it owned by farmers. So success depends in part on convincing farmers to forgo cash crops and flood their land instead, something that’s unlikely to happen without adequate monetary incentive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ideally, Ingram says, the state would pay farmers to convert cropland to wetland. (There is also an intermediate option, a wetland that sustains a crop: rice in flooded fields. In experiments, rice paddies stopped subsidence, but they didn’t reverse it.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California does have a relatively new program, called the Healthy Soils Initiative, whereby state money goes to farmers who implement practices thought to benefit soil health. It’s a model of what’s possible, Ingram says, but regrettably no such program exists for Delta wetlands. Marsh provides critical habitat for various species, so other income sources for farmers might include duck clubs or federal and state programs that pay for creation of endangered-animal habitat. But for now Ingram is betting on carbon markets, particularly California’s cap-and-trade system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want to get to a point where a farmer wakes up and says, ‘I can earn more flooding my land than growing corn,’” Ingram told me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Established in 2006 by the law AB32, the cap-and-trade system seeks to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions by harnessing market forces. The state establishes an upper limit on greenhouse gas pollution—the cap—and then gives polluters a certain number of allowances to emit the offending gases. The quantity of allowances given out declines over time, forcing polluters to either clean up their operations or to purchase allowances from polluters who have a surfeit. Polluters can also buy a certain number of offset carbon credits from projects that either prevent the emission of greenhouse gases or remove them from the atmosphere. This is where restored Delta marshes might come in—as a source of offset credits for purchase.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ingram and Steve Deverel—one of the scientists who, when with USGS, conducted the original pilot projects on reversing subsidence in the Delta and is now with the consulting firm Hydrofocus—developed a Delta wetland carbon protocol that the American Carbon Registry approved in 2017. Meaning that they can sell offsets in the voluntary carbon market.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Approval for the state’s cap-and-trade system, where offset credits now trade for roughly double the rate seen on the voluntary market and might actually compete with earnings from crops, is likely a year-and-a-half away, Ingram says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And these are complicated carbon offsets. Freshwater wetland plants can pull carbon from the atmosphere at a spectacular rate—about 5.7 tons per acre per year in the Delta—but freshwater wetlands also emit the greenhouse gas methane, which has about 30 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. According to Baldocchi, the warming caused by the methane released from Delta wetlands about equals, in the short term, the cooling potential of the carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"entry-content\">\n\u003cp>Why go through all the trouble, then, if we end up right where we started? Think of it as preventive medicine. By re-flooding one acre of peatland in the Sacramento Delta, you prevent between 10 and 20 tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere—via the organic material that microbes would have turned into gas if the land remained dry. That’s equivalent to between two and four years of driving your average car. In addition, you prevent worsening of the subsidence problem and its threat to the state’s water supply.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lisamarie Windham-Myers, a scientist with USGS, thinks she may eventually be able to improve the climate-cooling potential of these wetlands by emulating what happens in certain marshes that \u003cem>don’t\u003c/em> produce greenhouse gases. Saltwater and brackish marshes don’t release nearly as much methane as freshwater wetlands, she explains. That’s because ocean water contains sulfate, which changes the biochemical pathways available to microbes that break down organic material. With sulfate present, instead of creating methane as a byproduct, microbes produce sulfide, which isn’t a greenhouse gas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Windham-Myers studies the Suisun marshes, not far from Sherman Island. She’s found that even trace amounts of sulfate in the water prevent those counterproductive methane emissions. In Suisun, the sulfate comes from the small quantity of seawater that pushes into the system from San Francisco Bay. But even freshwater systems, she emphasizes, can contain trace amounts of sulfate—or iron, which also prevents methane production. In fact, she has observed that methane emissions from different parts of the restored DWR wetlands vary greatly, likely because of how water moves through them—carrying tiny concentrations of sulfate or iron to some areas, but not to others. Once scientists better understand such dynamics, they may be able to control the flow of water through resurrected wetlands in a way that limits methane, increases the net climate benefit, and raises the value of the carbon credit sold against restored Delta wetlands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The role of hydrology is definitely emerging as a knob we can turn,” Windham-Myers told me. “Let’s fine-tune these wetlands to make them as amazing as possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This \u003ca href=\"https://baynature.org/article/want-to-prevent-californias-katrina-grow-a-marsh/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">story\u003c/a> originally appeared in \u003ca href=\"https://baynature.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bay Nature\u003c/a>. It is republished here as part of \u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/climate\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">KQED Science’s\u003c/a> partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Moises Velasquez-Manoff is Bay Nature’s senior editor and the author of An Epidemic of Absence.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Former Governor Jerry Brown is continuing his international statesmanship on climate change, even out of office. He’s leading a new \u003ca href=\"https://news.berkeley.edu/2019/09/23/uc-berkeley-former-gov-jerry-brown-partner-with-china-to-spur-climate-action/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">research partnership\u003c/a> between UC Berkeley and Tsinghua University in China.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California-China Climate Institute, launched Monday, Sept. 23, will focus on research and information-sharing about clean transportation, climate policy and adaptation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown first began meeting with Chinese officials as governor to urge action on climate change, especially after President Trump announced he intends to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED’s Lauren Sommer spoke with Brown about what he hopes to accomplish outside of government channels. The following has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Working with China on climate change was something you started while you were governor. What are you hoping this Institute will do?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It will open doors with China at a time when they’re being closed throughout the American-China overall relationship. And the door opening will be in terms of climate change, dialogue, joint research, working together on a problem that, no matter what other problems exist, this one is shared by the Chinese, by the Americans, by everyone in the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We have a common danger, and because of my work with China and my work as governor, I felt that continuing through the University of California with the top climate man in China at Tsinghua University would be a good next step in my work to reduce climate emissions and work toward a more sustainable world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>And what have you heard from that University and from the Chinese government? What would they really like to partner with California and this Institute on in particular?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We have technical exchanges on cap-and-trade, carbon pricing, appliance and building efficiency, battery storage, zero emission vehicles. Those are all policies that California is pursuing, as well as China. And we need to mutually strive to do much, much more. California is doing more than most places in the world, but it isn’t even a fraction of what it will take to get to net zero carbon emissions. Same with China, they’re still growing their emissions. So even though there’s a lot of good things going on, good research, some good laws and regulations, we need to step up our ambition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s the point of the Institute, to bring trained scientists, policy leaders and other people who can have some impact together and work first on the subject matter, but to push against the climate deniers, President Trump and the Republicans or whomever, who are denying the facts and are working, although they may not know it, to actually cause great damage that will result in suffering and death for untold numbers of people in the world. So this is a matter of utmost significance to China, to California, to the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>China is the top emitter of carbon in the world and certainly it’s a country that still relies on coal power. Do you think an institute like this could actually make a measurable difference in global emissions?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I can’t tell you, because it hasn’t happened yet, but I’m certainly going to push for quicker retirement of coal, quicker adoption of zero emission vehicle standards. So that California’s own effort in these regards can also prosper. I don’t want to be isolated in California, but I like the fact that the largest country in the world, China, has California-style automobile emissions standards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>China is burning a lot of coal. America still gets 40% of its electric power from coal. So we’ve all got a lot to do and rather than point fingers and cursing the darkness, I want to shed some light and work together with China at the state level, but also at the national level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You mentioned President Trump and the relationship he’s had with China through trade tariffs and trade wars recently. What has your dialogue been like with China? Do you feel like the door is still open?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is open and our dialogue’s been positive, but we’re not dealing with the South China Sea or intellectual property or cyber intrusion or whatever all the different issues are. We’re dealing with the overarching common danger of climate change and we’ll continue to do that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Is there a reason not to leave this for government channels? Is there a reason to do it this way?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, if you want to make me governor or president, I can do it through official channels, but pending that, I’m going to work through the University. It’s a venerable institution that has the brightest people in the world connected to it. And certainly UC Berkeley and Tsinghua in Beijing are real powerhouses and I’m going to do my best to direct some of that power at reducing carbon emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Is there something that this Institute, because it’s through universities, can do that maybe governments can’t?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re a little more intellectually honest. Politicians are not known for their depth or, in many cases, for their candor. Hopefully we can do better on both those accounts through working with university people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Your administration worked on climate change quite a bit. What was the biggest impediment or what was the biggest challenge to getting things done in California?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inertia. The way it is, the way we are. We are talking about a fossil fuel civilization, from the development of coal and oil. This has driven mass prosperity and driven major population increase. Now what we’re talking about is changing the basis of our civilization to renewable energy, to elegant kinds of manufacturing and living so that we get on the side of nature and not create the kind of awful negative feedback that we’re doing today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The last few years haven’t dissuaded you from working on an issue like this?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t think we have enough evidence for total despair, but we don’t have enough evidence that we should be overly optimistic. Yes, there are dark clouds, with the heat-trapping gasses going up, I think, last year by more than ever in atmosphere. So yeah, time is running out and the dangers are real.\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>Former Governor Jerry Brown is continuing his international statesmanship on climate change, even out of office. He’s leading a new \u003ca href=\"https://news.berkeley.edu/2019/09/23/uc-berkeley-former-gov-jerry-brown-partner-with-china-to-spur-climate-action/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">research partnership\u003c/a> between UC Berkeley and Tsinghua University in China.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California-China Climate Institute, launched Monday, Sept. 23, will focus on research and information-sharing about clean transportation, climate policy and adaptation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown first began meeting with Chinese officials as governor to urge action on climate change, especially after President Trump announced he intends to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED’s Lauren Sommer spoke with Brown about what he hopes to accomplish outside of government channels. The following has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Working with China on climate change was something you started while you were governor. What are you hoping this Institute will do?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It will open doors with China at a time when they’re being closed throughout the American-China overall relationship. And the door opening will be in terms of climate change, dialogue, joint research, working together on a problem that, no matter what other problems exist, this one is shared by the Chinese, by the Americans, by everyone in the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We have a common danger, and because of my work with China and my work as governor, I felt that continuing through the University of California with the top climate man in China at Tsinghua University would be a good next step in my work to reduce climate emissions and work toward a more sustainable world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>And what have you heard from that University and from the Chinese government? What would they really like to partner with California and this Institute on in particular?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We have technical exchanges on cap-and-trade, carbon pricing, appliance and building efficiency, battery storage, zero emission vehicles. Those are all policies that California is pursuing, as well as China. And we need to mutually strive to do much, much more. California is doing more than most places in the world, but it isn’t even a fraction of what it will take to get to net zero carbon emissions. Same with China, they’re still growing their emissions. So even though there’s a lot of good things going on, good research, some good laws and regulations, we need to step up our ambition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s the point of the Institute, to bring trained scientists, policy leaders and other people who can have some impact together and work first on the subject matter, but to push against the climate deniers, President Trump and the Republicans or whomever, who are denying the facts and are working, although they may not know it, to actually cause great damage that will result in suffering and death for untold numbers of people in the world. So this is a matter of utmost significance to China, to California, to the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>China is the top emitter of carbon in the world and certainly it’s a country that still relies on coal power. Do you think an institute like this could actually make a measurable difference in global emissions?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I can’t tell you, because it hasn’t happened yet, but I’m certainly going to push for quicker retirement of coal, quicker adoption of zero emission vehicle standards. So that California’s own effort in these regards can also prosper. I don’t want to be isolated in California, but I like the fact that the largest country in the world, China, has California-style automobile emissions standards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>China is burning a lot of coal. America still gets 40% of its electric power from coal. So we’ve all got a lot to do and rather than point fingers and cursing the darkness, I want to shed some light and work together with China at the state level, but also at the national level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You mentioned President Trump and the relationship he’s had with China through trade tariffs and trade wars recently. What has your dialogue been like with China? Do you feel like the door is still open?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is open and our dialogue’s been positive, but we’re not dealing with the South China Sea or intellectual property or cyber intrusion or whatever all the different issues are. We’re dealing with the overarching common danger of climate change and we’ll continue to do that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Is there a reason not to leave this for government channels? Is there a reason to do it this way?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, if you want to make me governor or president, I can do it through official channels, but pending that, I’m going to work through the University. It’s a venerable institution that has the brightest people in the world connected to it. And certainly UC Berkeley and Tsinghua in Beijing are real powerhouses and I’m going to do my best to direct some of that power at reducing carbon emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Is there something that this Institute, because it’s through universities, can do that maybe governments can’t?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re a little more intellectually honest. Politicians are not known for their depth or, in many cases, for their candor. Hopefully we can do better on both those accounts through working with university people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Your administration worked on climate change quite a bit. What was the biggest impediment or what was the biggest challenge to getting things done in California?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inertia. The way it is, the way we are. We are talking about a fossil fuel civilization, from the development of coal and oil. This has driven mass prosperity and driven major population increase. Now what we’re talking about is changing the basis of our civilization to renewable energy, to elegant kinds of manufacturing and living so that we get on the side of nature and not create the kind of awful negative feedback that we’re doing today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The last few years haven’t dissuaded you from working on an issue like this?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t think we have enough evidence for total despair, but we don’t have enough evidence that we should be overly optimistic. Yes, there are dark clouds, with the heat-trapping gasses going up, I think, last year by more than ever in atmosphere. So yeah, time is running out and the dangers are real.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "These Trees Survived California’s Drought and That’s Giving Scientists Hope for Climate Change",
"headTitle": "These Trees Survived California’s Drought and That’s Giving Scientists Hope for Climate Change | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>When California’s historic five-year drought finally relented a few years ago, the tally of dead trees in the Sierra Nevada was higher than almost anyone expected: 129 million. Most are still standing, the dry patches dotting the mountainsides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo.png\">\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=\"209\" height=\"209\" 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: 209px) 100vw, 209px\">\u003c/a>But some trees did survive the test of heat and drought. Now, scientists are racing to collect them and other species around the globe in the hope that these “climate survivors” may have a natural advantage, allowing them to cope with a warming world a bit better than others in their species.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the north shore of Lake Tahoe, Patricia Maloney, a UC Davis forest and conservation biologist, hunts for these survivors. Most people focus on the dead trees, their brown pine needles standing out against the glittering blue of the lake. But Maloney tends not to notice them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I look for the good,” she said. “Like in people, you look for the good, not the bad. I do the same in forest systems.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maloney studies sugar pines, a tree John Muir once called the “king” of conifers. “They have these huge, beautiful cones,” Maloney said. “They’re stunning trees.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sugar pines on these slopes endured some of the worst water stress in the region. Winter snowpack melts earliest on south-facing slopes, leaving the trees with little soil moisture over the summer. That opens the door for the trees’ tiny nemesis, which would deal the fatal blow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"left\" citation=\"Steve Palumbi, Stanford\"]‘Evolution is a tool that we can bring to bear in helping us get through this future.’[/pullquote]“Here you have some really good mountain pine beetle galleries,” Maloney said, as she peeled the bark off a dead sugar pine to \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR5O48zsbnc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">show winding channels eaten into the wood\u003c/a>. “Like little beetle highways.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pine beetle outbreaks are a normal occurrence in the Sierra. As the beetles try to bore into the bark, pine trees can usually fight them off by spewing a sticky, gummy resin, entrapping the insects. But trees need water to make resin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The tank ran dry, and they weren’t able to mobilize any sort of resin,” Maloney said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But next to this dead tree, Maloney points to one towering above, with healthy green pine needles. Somehow, it was able to fight the beetles off and survive the drought. As she’s found more and more of these survivors, Maloney has studied them, trying to figure out what their secret is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we found is that the ones that were green, like this one, were more water-use efficient than their dead counterparts,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947800\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 515px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-1947800\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/pine-beetle-800x666.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"515\" height=\"429\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/pine-beetle-800x666.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/pine-beetle-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/pine-beetle-768x639.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/pine-beetle.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 515px) 100vw, 515px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mountain pine beetle larvae leave holes in sugar pine bark after emerging. \u003ccite>(Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In other words, the survivors had an innate ability to do more with less.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Individual members of any species can vary dramatically, something tied to genetic differences. That diversity comes in handy when environmental conditions change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The drought, heat and beetle outbreaks in recent years put extreme pressure on sugar pines, creating a natural experiment that weeded out all but the toughest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think what we’re seeing is contemporary natural selection,” Maloney said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, she’s trying to ensure their descendents survive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside a greenhouse at her Tahoe City field station, Maloney showed off a sea of young green trees in their own containers. These 10,000 sugar pine seedlings grew from seeds Maloney and her team collected from 100 of the surviving sugar pines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the next year, these young trees will be replanted around Lake Tahoe, both on national forest and private land. The hope is the trees, due to their genetics, will be better able to handle a warming climate, more extreme droughts and more frequent beetle outbreaks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These survivors matter,” Maloney said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She plans to study the genetics of these trees as they grow, research that could help in other climate-threatened forests.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947799\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1947799\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/patricia-maloney-800x481.jpg\" alt=\"Patricia Maloney next to a dead sugar pine on Lake Tahoe.\" width=\"800\" height=\"481\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/patricia-maloney-800x481.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/patricia-maloney-160x96.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/patricia-maloney-768x462.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/patricia-maloney-1020x613.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/patricia-maloney-1200x721.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/patricia-maloney.jpg 1900w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Patricia Maloney next to a dead sugar pine on Lake Tahoe. \u003ccite>(Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Coral Survivors\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maloney’s not alone in searching for species that can handle the warming climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Steve Palumbi, a biology professor at Stanford University, has been \u003ca href=\"https://vimeo.com/259609055\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">looking for coral that can handle heat\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Evolution is a tool that we can bring to bear in helping us get through this future,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Coral reefs are bleaching and dying as oceans warm, so Palumbi is growing surviving corals in the hope they can build new reefs, full of “super corals.” Reefs aren’t just tourist attractions, he says. They’re also biodiversity hotspots that protect coastlines from flooding by absorbing wave energy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If it gives us another decade, if it gives us another two generations, that’ll be good, we’ll take it,” he said. “I see these next 80 years as the time where we have to save as much as possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But beyond that, it gets trickier, given the rate the climate is changing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The question in the future is: When the environment changes and it changes really fast, can these populations keep up? How fast can they adapt? How much help will they give us in keeping those ecosystems going?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Palumbi says, ultimately, the best solution for these species is for humans to curb emissions of heat-trapping gases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the meantime, scientists are trying to buy them a little more time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When California’s historic five-year drought finally relented a few years ago, the tally of dead trees in the Sierra Nevada was higher than almost anyone expected: 129 million. Most are still standing, the dry patches dotting the mountainsides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo.png\">\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=\"209\" height=\"209\" 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: 209px) 100vw, 209px\">\u003c/a>But some trees did survive the test of heat and drought. Now, scientists are racing to collect them and other species around the globe in the hope that these “climate survivors” may have a natural advantage, allowing them to cope with a warming world a bit better than others in their species.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the north shore of Lake Tahoe, Patricia Maloney, a UC Davis forest and conservation biologist, hunts for these survivors. Most people focus on the dead trees, their brown pine needles standing out against the glittering blue of the lake. But Maloney tends not to notice them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I look for the good,” she said. “Like in people, you look for the good, not the bad. I do the same in forest systems.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maloney studies sugar pines, a tree John Muir once called the “king” of conifers. “They have these huge, beautiful cones,” Maloney said. “They’re stunning trees.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sugar pines on these slopes endured some of the worst water stress in the region. Winter snowpack melts earliest on south-facing slopes, leaving the trees with little soil moisture over the summer. That opens the door for the trees’ tiny nemesis, which would deal the fatal blow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“Here you have some really good mountain pine beetle galleries,” Maloney said, as she peeled the bark off a dead sugar pine to \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR5O48zsbnc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">show winding channels eaten into the wood\u003c/a>. “Like little beetle highways.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pine beetle outbreaks are a normal occurrence in the Sierra. As the beetles try to bore into the bark, pine trees can usually fight them off by spewing a sticky, gummy resin, entrapping the insects. But trees need water to make resin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The tank ran dry, and they weren’t able to mobilize any sort of resin,” Maloney said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But next to this dead tree, Maloney points to one towering above, with healthy green pine needles. Somehow, it was able to fight the beetles off and survive the drought. As she’s found more and more of these survivors, Maloney has studied them, trying to figure out what their secret is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we found is that the ones that were green, like this one, were more water-use efficient than their dead counterparts,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947800\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 515px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-1947800\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/pine-beetle-800x666.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"515\" height=\"429\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/pine-beetle-800x666.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/pine-beetle-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/pine-beetle-768x639.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/pine-beetle.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 515px) 100vw, 515px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mountain pine beetle larvae leave holes in sugar pine bark after emerging. \u003ccite>(Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In other words, the survivors had an innate ability to do more with less.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Individual members of any species can vary dramatically, something tied to genetic differences. That diversity comes in handy when environmental conditions change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The drought, heat and beetle outbreaks in recent years put extreme pressure on sugar pines, creating a natural experiment that weeded out all but the toughest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think what we’re seeing is contemporary natural selection,” Maloney said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, she’s trying to ensure their descendents survive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside a greenhouse at her Tahoe City field station, Maloney showed off a sea of young green trees in their own containers. These 10,000 sugar pine seedlings grew from seeds Maloney and her team collected from 100 of the surviving sugar pines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the next year, these young trees will be replanted around Lake Tahoe, both on national forest and private land. The hope is the trees, due to their genetics, will be better able to handle a warming climate, more extreme droughts and more frequent beetle outbreaks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These survivors matter,” Maloney said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She plans to study the genetics of these trees as they grow, research that could help in other climate-threatened forests.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947799\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1947799\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/patricia-maloney-800x481.jpg\" alt=\"Patricia Maloney next to a dead sugar pine on Lake Tahoe.\" width=\"800\" height=\"481\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/patricia-maloney-800x481.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/patricia-maloney-160x96.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/patricia-maloney-768x462.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/patricia-maloney-1020x613.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/patricia-maloney-1200x721.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/patricia-maloney.jpg 1900w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Patricia Maloney next to a dead sugar pine on Lake Tahoe. \u003ccite>(Lauren Sommer/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Coral Survivors\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maloney’s not alone in searching for species that can handle the warming climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Steve Palumbi, a biology professor at Stanford University, has been \u003ca href=\"https://vimeo.com/259609055\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">looking for coral that can handle heat\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Evolution is a tool that we can bring to bear in helping us get through this future,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Coral reefs are bleaching and dying as oceans warm, so Palumbi is growing surviving corals in the hope they can build new reefs, full of “super corals.” Reefs aren’t just tourist attractions, he says. They’re also biodiversity hotspots that protect coastlines from flooding by absorbing wave energy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If it gives us another decade, if it gives us another two generations, that’ll be good, we’ll take it,” he said. “I see these next 80 years as the time where we have to save as much as possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But beyond that, it gets trickier, given the rate the climate is changing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The question in the future is: When the environment changes and it changes really fast, can these populations keep up? How fast can they adapt? How much help will they give us in keeping those ecosystems going?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Palumbi says, ultimately, the best solution for these species is for humans to curb emissions of heat-trapping gases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the meantime, scientists are trying to buy them a little more time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Bay Area Joins Worldwide Youth Climate Strike",
"headTitle": "Bay Area Joins Worldwide Youth Climate Strike | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>3:24 p.m. \u003c/em>It’s as yet unclear just how many kids and adults participated in the youth climate strike today. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/environment/live/2019/sep/20/climate-strike-global-change-protest-sydney-melbourne-london-new-york-nyc-school-student-protest-greta-thunberg-rally-live-news-latest-updates\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Guardian \u003c/a>says “millions of people from Sydney to Manila, Dhaka to London and New York” joined in. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.smh.com.au/national/global-climate-strike-live-australian-school-students-march-in-protest-of-climate-change-20190920-p52t70.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sydney Morning Herald \u003c/a>reports more than 300,000 schoolchildren and college students took to the streets in Australia, alone. There were 270,000 in Berlin, says \u003ca href=\"https://www.ft.com/content/5dedd106-3391-33ff-ba2f-24ace1a914d6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Financial Times\u003c/a>. Organizers in London estimated more than 100,000, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/climate/global-climate-strike.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The New York Times\u003c/a>. In New York, Mayor Bill De Blasio \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/NYCMayor/status/1175118915317436417\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">tweeted 60,000 and counting\u003c/a>. Greta Thunberg, who addressed a crowd in Battery Park, put the figure \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1175142660283273218\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">considerably higher\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here in the Bay Area, Bay City News is reporting “tens of thousands” joined the demonstrations, from Cupertino, Los Altos, Palo Alto, Richmond, Fremont, Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco and dozens of other communities. So far, no violent incidents or arrests have been reported.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New York excused students from school in order to participate; most Bay Area school systems did not. Despite that distinct lack of permission, the kids filling Market Street were curb to curb, says our reporter Kevin Stark. They targeted, among other stops on the protest route, the offices of Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein; Amazon and PG&E; and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What they had on their minds: Earth is warming, with the 10 hottest years on record all having occurred since 1998. Exposure to extreme heat is increasing, hurricanes and flooding are more intense, and wildfires are increasingly burning out of control. The world’s scientists say it’s only going to get worse if we don’t substantially reduce the planet-warming gases released by the burning of fossil fuels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since we’ve been talking to young people about this issue, their message has been fairly consistent: We are children, and you are adults. And on this issue, you have \u003cem>really\u003c/em> let us down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People aren’t listening to the scientists and what they’re trying to tell you about the Earth,” said Annabelle, 10 years old, in front of PG&E today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s just so many things we can see happening, and it’s so, kind of terrifying to see how so many of the people in power really don’t believe it and are denying it,” said Ariel Skolnick, 15, who walked out of Berkeley High School.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are fighting for our future, and we’re not going to let people sit around and destroy our planet,” said 12-year-old Samara Ixchelnuo-Pelayo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kevin Stark followed these young protesters around all day, and we asked him what it felt like out there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Most of the day, the students are all leading this thing,” Stark said. “And they’re kind of fierce. They’re angry, and they’re frustrated, but they feel like they have this sense of power. Market Street is completely shut down; from Seventh to First streets, it’s full of students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Then I go to the Ferry Building, and I see this line of two or three dozen students getting soft-serve. And it just kind of landed for me: They’re out there pushing for us, adults, to do something, and making this huge statement. But here they are, getting ice cream, Because these are \u003cem>kids\u003c/em>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More climate actions are planned next week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>1:36 p.m\u003c/em>. More climate-related news from California today. California and 22 other states filed suit to prevent the Trump administration from revoking California’s authority to set more stringent standards on greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles than those put in place by the federal government.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>1:28 p.m. \u003c/em>Here’s Associated Press on the day’s events, around the world:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>A wave of climate change protests swept the globe Friday, with hundreds of thousands of young people sending a message to leaders headed for a U.N. summit: The warming world can’t wait for action. Marches, rallies and demonstrations were held from Canberra to Kabul and Cape Town to New York.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The “Global Climate Strike” events ranged from a gathering of about two dozen activists in Seoul using LED flashlights to send Morse code messages calling for action to rescue the earth to Australia demonstrations that organizers estimated were the country’s largest protests since the Iraq War began in 2003. In New York, where public schools excused students with parental permission, tens of thousands of mostly young people rallied and marched through lower Manhattan. And in Paris, teenagers and kids as young as 10 traded classrooms for the streets. Marie-Lou Sahai, 15, skipped school because “the only way to make people listen is to protest.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The protests were partly inspired by the activism of Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who has staged weekly “Fridays for Future” demonstrations for a year, urging world leaders to step up efforts against climate change. “It’s such a victory,” Thunberg told The Associated Press in an interview in New York. “I would never have predicted or believed that this was going to happen, and so fast — and only in 15 months.”\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>12:48 p.m.\u003c/em> Next stop on the protest schedule was PG&E.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">The \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/ClimateStrike?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#ClimateStrike\u003c/a>, passing under the \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/KQED?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@KQED\u003c/a> offices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They were blasting out ‘Wake Up’ by \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/arcadefire?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@arcadefire\u003c/a>: “Children wake up / Hold your mistake up / Before they turn the summer into dust” \u003ca href=\"https://t.co/1BDQvyzqKr\">pic.twitter.com/1BDQvyzqKr\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>— Carly Severn (@TeacupInTheBay) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/TeacupInTheBay/status/1175136727154823168?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 20, 2019\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\">https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED is temporarily PG&E’s next door neighbor, so our intrepid reporter Molly Peterson took the elevator downstairs to interview kids who were making their displeasure at the adult world loudly known. She spoke with Wren, 9, and Annabelle, 10. Annabelle carried a sign that said “Why should I go to school if you won’t listen to the educated?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She explained it this way: “People aren’t listening to the scientists and what they’re trying to tell you about the earth,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leo, 12, said he was advocating for the Green New Deal. He said his class had been discussing climate change and the need for renewable energy. Is there anyone doing something on the issue that he admires? “Greta Thunberg. I think she’s really important and all the things she’s done.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">San Francisco’s \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/ClimateStrike?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#ClimateStrike\u003c/a> just made it to Beale St. right in front of PG&E’s HQ.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Youth-led protestors are chanting “PG&E no more greed, we should own our energy.” 🌎 \u003ca href=\"https://t.co/zkCyWsyETR\">pic.twitter.com/zkCyWsyETR\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>— Chris Cox (@chriscoxrox) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/chriscoxrox/status/1175132127295197184?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 20, 2019\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\">https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>12:30 p.m.\u003c/em> The protest hit Amazon Go’s office in San Francisco …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1947717\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-protest-san-francisco-amazon-1020x1360.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"308\" height=\"411\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-protest-san-francisco-amazon-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-protest-san-francisco-amazon-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-protest-san-francisco-amazon-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-protest-san-francisco-amazon-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-protest-san-francisco-amazon-900x1200.jpg 900w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-protest-san-francisco-amazon-1920x2560.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-protest-san-francisco-amazon.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 308px) 100vw, 308px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>12:07 p.m.\u003c/em> Some climate news out of Sacramento today. In an effort to align California’s $700 million dollar-plus pension investment portfolio with its climate action policy, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/9.20.19-Climate-EO-N-19-19.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">executive order\u003c/a> directing the Department of Finance to create a climate-driven investment plan. The order aims to shift the state’s investments toward carbon-neutral and clean energy technologies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the heels of the federal government’s efforts this week to strip California’s authority over state emissions standards, Newsom also signed two bills aimed to reduce tailpipe pollution from trucks and other heavy-duty vehicles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s what Newsom said in a statement:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the face of the White House’s inaction on climate change, California is stepping up and leading the way. Our state is proof that you can reach some of the strongest climate goals in the world while also achieving record economic growth. How we meet this moment will define our state – and country – for decades to come, just as the willemergence of the internet defined our economy over the past few decades. We have to get ahead of this and align our state investments, our purchasing power and our transportation and housing policies to be ready to meet this moment head-on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>11:40 a.m.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Found the front of the march, passing Grant and O’Farrell now… \u003ca href=\"https://t.co/kLya5exRxY\">pic.twitter.com/kLya5exRxY\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>— Kevin Stark (@StarkKev) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/StarkKev/status/1175109858254700545?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 20, 2019\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\">https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947681\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 463px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-1947681\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-strike-1-1020x765.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"463\" height=\"347\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-strike-1-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-strike-1-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-strike-1-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-strike-1-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-strike-1-1200x900.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-strike-1-1920x1440.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-strike-1.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 463px) 100vw, 463px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">7th and Market in San Francisco \u003ccite>(Steph Lister/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">From the \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/Climatestrike?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Climatestrike\u003c/a> in San Francisco. \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/SFSU?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#SFSU\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://t.co/QjF9sckoAf\">pic.twitter.com/QjF9sckoAf\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>— Sustainable SF State (@sustainsfstate) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/sustainsfstate/status/1175109352019001344?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 20, 2019\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\">https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1947696\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/bay-area-climate-strike-4-1020x765.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"448\" height=\"336\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/bay-area-climate-strike-4-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/bay-area-climate-strike-4-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/bay-area-climate-strike-4-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/bay-area-climate-strike-4-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/bay-area-climate-strike-4-1200x900.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/bay-area-climate-strike-4-1920x1440.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/bay-area-climate-strike-4.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 448px) 100vw, 448px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>11:09 a.m\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Students chanting “Dianne Feinstein listen to us. We are the people, you work for us” \u003ca href=\"https://t.co/N7r4kB3AmA\">pic.twitter.com/N7r4kB3AmA\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>— Kevin Stark (@StarkKev) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/StarkKev/status/1175106287933116416?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 20, 2019\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\">https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>10:54 a.m. \u003c/em> Thousands of students have taken over Market street, KQED’s Kevin Stark reports, and Muni buses are lined up and sitting idle. Lots of youth “facilitators” and “coordinators” are leading contingents from Bay Area middle and high schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">A little scene from 7th towards Market from the SF \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/climatemarch?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#climatemarch\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://t.co/wGQ4Vw1Nuv\">pic.twitter.com/wGQ4Vw1Nuv\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>— Kevin Stark (@StarkKev) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/StarkKev/status/1175104942270373889?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 20, 2019\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\">https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>10:28 a.m. Berkeley High walkout\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some 400 Berkeley High School students were expected to walk out today. This morning, a group gathered in the park across school while a brass band played. The contingent was headed into San Francisco via BART for the main rally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sophomore Ariel Skolnick, 15, held a trio of signs, including one that read “Stop Denying Our Earth is Dying.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s just so many things we can see happening, and it’s so, kind of terrifying to see how so many of the people in power really don’t believe it and are denying it,” she said. “And it’s up to us, the youth, to try to make as much of a change as we can and try to get our voices out there as much as possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I want them to know that we are the future and we’re doing what we can to make sure that our future is going to be able to happen.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>10:10 a.m. MUNI problems in San Francisco\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unrelated to the climate strike, MUNI \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/sfmta_muni/status/1175085628750364672\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">went down\u003c/a> this morning due to a PG&E power outage. Some service has returned, the SFMTA reports:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/sfmta_muni/status/1175085628750364672\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>9:48 a.m. Art Build at UC Berkeley\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947672\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1947672\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/UC-Berkeley-climate-strike-1020x765.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/UC-Berkeley-climate-strike-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/UC-Berkeley-climate-strike-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/UC-Berkeley-climate-strike-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/UC-Berkeley-climate-strike-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/UC-Berkeley-climate-strike-1200x900.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/UC-Berkeley-climate-strike-1920x1440.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/UC-Berkeley-climate-strike.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lindsay Puddicombe and her 19-month-old daughter Maude at UC Berkeley \u003ccite>( Kate Wolffe/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Students, faculty and families are gathered at UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza to paint cardboard signs as part of an Art Build sponsored by Students for Climate Action, a coalition of university groups on campus, KQED’s Kate Wolffe reports.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While kids and adults painted away, climate group gave “teach ins” to educate the crowd about how to build a zero waste sustainable future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lindsay Puddicombe was there to paint signs with her 19-month-old daughter. One action they’ve taken to reduce their carbon footprint is to forgo eating meat or meat byproducts. “We try to do our part as best … we can. You know, it’s her future.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>9:33 a.m. On the protest itinerary\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E, which has made all kinds of news for not being prepared, is getting prepared — the company is an official destination on today’s protest itinerary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947658\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 403px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1947658\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/PGE-climate-strike-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"403\" height=\"303\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/PGE-climate-strike-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/PGE-climate-strike-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/PGE-climate-strike-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/PGE-climate-strike-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/PGE-climate-strike-1200x900.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/PGE-climate-strike-1920x1440.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/PGE-climate-strike.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 403px) 100vw, 403px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Outside PG&E headquarters in San Francisco. \u003ccite>(Bianca Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Other protests are planned at Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office, Amazon, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, among other places. Here is the official \u003ca href=\"https://www.bayareaclimatestrike.net/march\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">march route\u003c/a> in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>9:15 a.m.\u003c/em> On Twitter, the climate strike hashtag is \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/climatestrike?src=hashtag_click\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">#climatestrike\u003c/a>. The first thing that came up for us was this \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/TEDTalks/status/1175077155748769793\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">TED Talk\u003c/a> from Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist who ignited the global climate action youth movement by walking out of school a little over a year ago as a protest against inaction on climate change by the Swedish government.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/TEDTalks/status/1175077155748769793\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>8:49 a.m. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>Med students want meeting with Pelosi\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>12-year-old: we’re not going to let people sit around and destroy our planet\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>KQED’s Kevin Stark reports there are roughly 40 to 50 doctors, medical students and activists — all wearing white lab coats and carrying signs — that have entered the federal building in San Francisco to try and speak with Nancy Pelosi. They’re going through security, not forcing their way in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Colin Baylen, 30, who attends UCSF, said the group wants Pelosi to know that “We need to take action now because this is a health emergency and it’s going to impact all of our health.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Update 10:00 a.m. Monday, Sept. 23: \u003c/strong>The group, California Climate Health Now, met with Pelosi’s staff to discuss the need to reduce emissions in order to protect public health, according to Ashley McClure, one of the group’s organizers. The meeting was previously scheduled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group also met with staff members from both California senators and Representative Barbara Lee, D-Oakland. In an email, McClure said that the goal was “to share our grave concern for human health if climate change continues unabated.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our message to the electeds is that climate change is a medical emergency and needs to be framed as such in the American discourse,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California Climate Health Now is coalition of medical doctors and health professionals. Altogether, 34 medical professionals participated Friday, including 24 physicians, 8 UCSF medical students, 1 UC Berkeley public health professor, and 1 UC Berkeley nurse practitioner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Original post 9:45 a.m. Friday, Sept. 10:\u003c/strong>Outside the federal building, Stark also spoke with Samara Ixchelnuo-Pelayo, 12, who was taking off school today. “We are fighting for our future and we’re not going to let people sit around and destroy our planet,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Speaking of K-12 students, Bay Area school districts are not necessarily on board with them missing class today. The San Francisco Chronicle \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/education/article/Bay-Area-school-districts-won-t-excuse-students-14453720.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reports\u003c/a> San Francisco, Oakland and other districts are not excusing students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As a district we do not condone these walkouts and we asked our instructors to work the information into their curriculum if at all possible and talk about it with the students during the day,” said a spokesperson for San Jose Unified School District.\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>\u003cem>3:24 p.m. \u003c/em>It’s as yet unclear just how many kids and adults participated in the youth climate strike today. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/environment/live/2019/sep/20/climate-strike-global-change-protest-sydney-melbourne-london-new-york-nyc-school-student-protest-greta-thunberg-rally-live-news-latest-updates\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Guardian \u003c/a>says “millions of people from Sydney to Manila, Dhaka to London and New York” joined in. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.smh.com.au/national/global-climate-strike-live-australian-school-students-march-in-protest-of-climate-change-20190920-p52t70.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sydney Morning Herald \u003c/a>reports more than 300,000 schoolchildren and college students took to the streets in Australia, alone. There were 270,000 in Berlin, says \u003ca href=\"https://www.ft.com/content/5dedd106-3391-33ff-ba2f-24ace1a914d6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Financial Times\u003c/a>. Organizers in London estimated more than 100,000, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/climate/global-climate-strike.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The New York Times\u003c/a>. In New York, Mayor Bill De Blasio \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/NYCMayor/status/1175118915317436417\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">tweeted 60,000 and counting\u003c/a>. Greta Thunberg, who addressed a crowd in Battery Park, put the figure \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1175142660283273218\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">considerably higher\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here in the Bay Area, Bay City News is reporting “tens of thousands” joined the demonstrations, from Cupertino, Los Altos, Palo Alto, Richmond, Fremont, Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco and dozens of other communities. So far, no violent incidents or arrests have been reported.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New York excused students from school in order to participate; most Bay Area school systems did not. Despite that distinct lack of permission, the kids filling Market Street were curb to curb, says our reporter Kevin Stark. They targeted, among other stops on the protest route, the offices of Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein; Amazon and PG&E; and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What they had on their minds: Earth is warming, with the 10 hottest years on record all having occurred since 1998. Exposure to extreme heat is increasing, hurricanes and flooding are more intense, and wildfires are increasingly burning out of control. The world’s scientists say it’s only going to get worse if we don’t substantially reduce the planet-warming gases released by the burning of fossil fuels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since we’ve been talking to young people about this issue, their message has been fairly consistent: We are children, and you are adults. And on this issue, you have \u003cem>really\u003c/em> let us down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People aren’t listening to the scientists and what they’re trying to tell you about the Earth,” said Annabelle, 10 years old, in front of PG&E today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s just so many things we can see happening, and it’s so, kind of terrifying to see how so many of the people in power really don’t believe it and are denying it,” said Ariel Skolnick, 15, who walked out of Berkeley High School.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are fighting for our future, and we’re not going to let people sit around and destroy our planet,” said 12-year-old Samara Ixchelnuo-Pelayo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kevin Stark followed these young protesters around all day, and we asked him what it felt like out there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Most of the day, the students are all leading this thing,” Stark said. “And they’re kind of fierce. They’re angry, and they’re frustrated, but they feel like they have this sense of power. Market Street is completely shut down; from Seventh to First streets, it’s full of students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Then I go to the Ferry Building, and I see this line of two or three dozen students getting soft-serve. And it just kind of landed for me: They’re out there pushing for us, adults, to do something, and making this huge statement. But here they are, getting ice cream, Because these are \u003cem>kids\u003c/em>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More climate actions are planned next week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>1:36 p.m\u003c/em>. More climate-related news from California today. California and 22 other states filed suit to prevent the Trump administration from revoking California’s authority to set more stringent standards on greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles than those put in place by the federal government.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>1:28 p.m. \u003c/em>Here’s Associated Press on the day’s events, around the world:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>A wave of climate change protests swept the globe Friday, with hundreds of thousands of young people sending a message to leaders headed for a U.N. summit: The warming world can’t wait for action. Marches, rallies and demonstrations were held from Canberra to Kabul and Cape Town to New York.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The “Global Climate Strike” events ranged from a gathering of about two dozen activists in Seoul using LED flashlights to send Morse code messages calling for action to rescue the earth to Australia demonstrations that organizers estimated were the country’s largest protests since the Iraq War began in 2003. In New York, where public schools excused students with parental permission, tens of thousands of mostly young people rallied and marched through lower Manhattan. And in Paris, teenagers and kids as young as 10 traded classrooms for the streets. Marie-Lou Sahai, 15, skipped school because “the only way to make people listen is to protest.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The protests were partly inspired by the activism of Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who has staged weekly “Fridays for Future” demonstrations for a year, urging world leaders to step up efforts against climate change. “It’s such a victory,” Thunberg told The Associated Press in an interview in New York. “I would never have predicted or believed that this was going to happen, and so fast — and only in 15 months.”\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>12:48 p.m.\u003c/em> Next stop on the protest schedule was PG&E.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">The \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/ClimateStrike?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#ClimateStrike\u003c/a>, passing under the \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/KQED?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@KQED\u003c/a> offices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They were blasting out ‘Wake Up’ by \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/arcadefire?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@arcadefire\u003c/a>: “Children wake up / Hold your mistake up / Before they turn the summer into dust” \u003ca href=\"https://t.co/1BDQvyzqKr\">pic.twitter.com/1BDQvyzqKr\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>— Carly Severn (@TeacupInTheBay) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/TeacupInTheBay/status/1175136727154823168?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 20, 2019\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\">https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED is temporarily PG&E’s next door neighbor, so our intrepid reporter Molly Peterson took the elevator downstairs to interview kids who were making their displeasure at the adult world loudly known. She spoke with Wren, 9, and Annabelle, 10. Annabelle carried a sign that said “Why should I go to school if you won’t listen to the educated?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She explained it this way: “People aren’t listening to the scientists and what they’re trying to tell you about the earth,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leo, 12, said he was advocating for the Green New Deal. He said his class had been discussing climate change and the need for renewable energy. Is there anyone doing something on the issue that he admires? “Greta Thunberg. I think she’s really important and all the things she’s done.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">San Francisco’s \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/ClimateStrike?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#ClimateStrike\u003c/a> just made it to Beale St. right in front of PG&E’s HQ.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Youth-led protestors are chanting “PG&E no more greed, we should own our energy.” 🌎 \u003ca href=\"https://t.co/zkCyWsyETR\">pic.twitter.com/zkCyWsyETR\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>— Chris Cox (@chriscoxrox) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/chriscoxrox/status/1175132127295197184?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 20, 2019\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\">https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>12:30 p.m.\u003c/em> The protest hit Amazon Go’s office in San Francisco …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1947717\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-protest-san-francisco-amazon-1020x1360.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"308\" height=\"411\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-protest-san-francisco-amazon-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-protest-san-francisco-amazon-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-protest-san-francisco-amazon-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-protest-san-francisco-amazon-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-protest-san-francisco-amazon-900x1200.jpg 900w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-protest-san-francisco-amazon-1920x2560.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-protest-san-francisco-amazon.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 308px) 100vw, 308px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>12:07 p.m.\u003c/em> Some climate news out of Sacramento today. In an effort to align California’s $700 million dollar-plus pension investment portfolio with its climate action policy, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/9.20.19-Climate-EO-N-19-19.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">executive order\u003c/a> directing the Department of Finance to create a climate-driven investment plan. The order aims to shift the state’s investments toward carbon-neutral and clean energy technologies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the heels of the federal government’s efforts this week to strip California’s authority over state emissions standards, Newsom also signed two bills aimed to reduce tailpipe pollution from trucks and other heavy-duty vehicles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s what Newsom said in a statement:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the face of the White House’s inaction on climate change, California is stepping up and leading the way. Our state is proof that you can reach some of the strongest climate goals in the world while also achieving record economic growth. How we meet this moment will define our state – and country – for decades to come, just as the willemergence of the internet defined our economy over the past few decades. We have to get ahead of this and align our state investments, our purchasing power and our transportation and housing policies to be ready to meet this moment head-on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>11:40 a.m.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Found the front of the march, passing Grant and O’Farrell now… \u003ca href=\"https://t.co/kLya5exRxY\">pic.twitter.com/kLya5exRxY\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>— Kevin Stark (@StarkKev) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/StarkKev/status/1175109858254700545?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 20, 2019\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\">https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947681\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 463px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-1947681\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-strike-1-1020x765.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"463\" height=\"347\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-strike-1-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-strike-1-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-strike-1-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-strike-1-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-strike-1-1200x900.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-strike-1-1920x1440.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/climate-strike-1.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 463px) 100vw, 463px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">7th and Market in San Francisco \u003ccite>(Steph Lister/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">From the \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/Climatestrike?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Climatestrike\u003c/a> in San Francisco. \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/SFSU?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#SFSU\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://t.co/QjF9sckoAf\">pic.twitter.com/QjF9sckoAf\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>— Sustainable SF State (@sustainsfstate) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/sustainsfstate/status/1175109352019001344?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 20, 2019\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\">https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1947696\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/bay-area-climate-strike-4-1020x765.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"448\" height=\"336\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/bay-area-climate-strike-4-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/bay-area-climate-strike-4-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/bay-area-climate-strike-4-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/bay-area-climate-strike-4-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/bay-area-climate-strike-4-1200x900.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/bay-area-climate-strike-4-1920x1440.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/bay-area-climate-strike-4.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 448px) 100vw, 448px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>11:09 a.m\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Students chanting “Dianne Feinstein listen to us. We are the people, you work for us” \u003ca href=\"https://t.co/N7r4kB3AmA\">pic.twitter.com/N7r4kB3AmA\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>— Kevin Stark (@StarkKev) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/StarkKev/status/1175106287933116416?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 20, 2019\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\">https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>10:54 a.m. \u003c/em> Thousands of students have taken over Market street, KQED’s Kevin Stark reports, and Muni buses are lined up and sitting idle. Lots of youth “facilitators” and “coordinators” are leading contingents from Bay Area middle and high schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">A little scene from 7th towards Market from the SF \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/climatemarch?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#climatemarch\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://t.co/wGQ4Vw1Nuv\">pic.twitter.com/wGQ4Vw1Nuv\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>— Kevin Stark (@StarkKev) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/StarkKev/status/1175104942270373889?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 20, 2019\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\">https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>10:28 a.m. Berkeley High walkout\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some 400 Berkeley High School students were expected to walk out today. This morning, a group gathered in the park across school while a brass band played. The contingent was headed into San Francisco via BART for the main rally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sophomore Ariel Skolnick, 15, held a trio of signs, including one that read “Stop Denying Our Earth is Dying.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s just so many things we can see happening, and it’s so, kind of terrifying to see how so many of the people in power really don’t believe it and are denying it,” she said. “And it’s up to us, the youth, to try to make as much of a change as we can and try to get our voices out there as much as possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I want them to know that we are the future and we’re doing what we can to make sure that our future is going to be able to happen.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>10:10 a.m. MUNI problems in San Francisco\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unrelated to the climate strike, MUNI \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/sfmta_muni/status/1175085628750364672\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">went down\u003c/a> this morning due to a PG&E power outage. Some service has returned, the SFMTA reports:\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>9:48 a.m. Art Build at UC Berkeley\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947672\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1947672\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/UC-Berkeley-climate-strike-1020x765.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/UC-Berkeley-climate-strike-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/UC-Berkeley-climate-strike-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/UC-Berkeley-climate-strike-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/UC-Berkeley-climate-strike-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/UC-Berkeley-climate-strike-1200x900.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/UC-Berkeley-climate-strike-1920x1440.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/UC-Berkeley-climate-strike.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lindsay Puddicombe and her 19-month-old daughter Maude at UC Berkeley \u003ccite>( Kate Wolffe/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Students, faculty and families are gathered at UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza to paint cardboard signs as part of an Art Build sponsored by Students for Climate Action, a coalition of university groups on campus, KQED’s Kate Wolffe reports.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While kids and adults painted away, climate group gave “teach ins” to educate the crowd about how to build a zero waste sustainable future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lindsay Puddicombe was there to paint signs with her 19-month-old daughter. One action they’ve taken to reduce their carbon footprint is to forgo eating meat or meat byproducts. “We try to do our part as best … we can. You know, it’s her future.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>9:33 a.m. On the protest itinerary\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E, which has made all kinds of news for not being prepared, is getting prepared — the company is an official destination on today’s protest itinerary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1947658\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 403px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1947658\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/PGE-climate-strike-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"403\" height=\"303\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/PGE-climate-strike-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/PGE-climate-strike-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/PGE-climate-strike-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/PGE-climate-strike-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/PGE-climate-strike-1200x900.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/PGE-climate-strike-1920x1440.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/PGE-climate-strike.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 403px) 100vw, 403px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Outside PG&E headquarters in San Francisco. \u003ccite>(Bianca Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Other protests are planned at Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office, Amazon, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, among other places. Here is the official \u003ca href=\"https://www.bayareaclimatestrike.net/march\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">march route\u003c/a> in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>9:15 a.m.\u003c/em> On Twitter, the climate strike hashtag is \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/climatestrike?src=hashtag_click\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">#climatestrike\u003c/a>. The first thing that came up for us was this \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/TEDTalks/status/1175077155748769793\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">TED Talk\u003c/a> from Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist who ignited the global climate action youth movement by walking out of school a little over a year ago as a protest against inaction on climate change by the Swedish government.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>8:49 a.m. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>Med students want meeting with Pelosi\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cem>12-year-old: we’re not going to let people sit around and destroy our planet\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>KQED’s Kevin Stark reports there are roughly 40 to 50 doctors, medical students and activists — all wearing white lab coats and carrying signs — that have entered the federal building in San Francisco to try and speak with Nancy Pelosi. They’re going through security, not forcing their way in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Colin Baylen, 30, who attends UCSF, said the group wants Pelosi to know that “We need to take action now because this is a health emergency and it’s going to impact all of our health.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Update 10:00 a.m. Monday, Sept. 23: \u003c/strong>The group, California Climate Health Now, met with Pelosi’s staff to discuss the need to reduce emissions in order to protect public health, according to Ashley McClure, one of the group’s organizers. The meeting was previously scheduled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group also met with staff members from both California senators and Representative Barbara Lee, D-Oakland. In an email, McClure said that the goal was “to share our grave concern for human health if climate change continues unabated.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our message to the electeds is that climate change is a medical emergency and needs to be framed as such in the American discourse,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California Climate Health Now is coalition of medical doctors and health professionals. Altogether, 34 medical professionals participated Friday, including 24 physicians, 8 UCSF medical students, 1 UC Berkeley public health professor, and 1 UC Berkeley nurse practitioner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Original post 9:45 a.m. Friday, Sept. 10:\u003c/strong>Outside the federal building, Stark also spoke with Samara Ixchelnuo-Pelayo, 12, who was taking off school today. “We are fighting for our future and we’re not going to let people sit around and destroy our planet,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Speaking of K-12 students, Bay Area school districts are not necessarily on board with them missing class today. The San Francisco Chronicle \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/education/article/Bay-Area-school-districts-won-t-excuse-students-14453720.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reports\u003c/a> San Francisco, Oakland and other districts are not excusing students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As a district we do not condone these walkouts and we asked our instructors to work the information into their curriculum if at all possible and talk about it with the students during the day,” said a spokesperson for San Jose Unified School District.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "EPA Set to End California Authority Over Car Emissions",
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"content": "\u003cp>The Trump administration is poised to revoke California’s authority to set tailpipe emission standards, asserting that only the federal government has the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fuel economy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bloomberg is \u003ca href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-17/epa-to-unveil-plan-to-yank-california-s-car-emissions-authority\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reporting\u003c/a> the administration’s plan “leaves intact California’s power to regulate smog-forming pollutants from autos and other sources.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Conservative and free-market groups have been asked to attend a formal announcement of the rollback set for Wednesday afternoon at Environmental Protection Agency headquarters in Washington.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gloria Bergquist, spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said Tuesday that her group was among those invited to the event featuring EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The move comes after the Justice Department recently opened an antitrust investigation into a deal between California and four automakers for tougher pollution and related mileage requirements than those sought by President Donald Trump. Trump also has sought to relax Obama-era federal mileage standards nationwide, weakening a key effort by his Democratic predecessor to slow climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Top California officials and environmental groups pledged legal action to stop the rollback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California won’t ever wait for permission from Washington to protect the health and safety of children and families,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom, in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said in a statement that the administration “has put a target on California’s back, and sought only to score political points by attacking our state.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The White House declined to comment Tuesday, referring questions to EPA. EPA’s press office did not respond to a phone message and email seeking comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler told the National Automobile Dealers Association on Tuesday that the Trump administration would move “in the very near future” to take steps toward establishing one nationwide set of fuel-economy standards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We embrace federalism and the role of the states, but federalism does not mean that one state can dictate standards for the nation,” he said, adding that higher fuel economy standards would hurt consumers by increasing the average sticker price of new cars and requiring automakers to produce more electric vehicles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Word of the pending announcement came as Trump traveled to California on Tuesday for an overnight trip that includes GOP fundraising events near San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California’s authority to set its own, tougher emissions standards goes back to a waiver issued by Congress during passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970. The state has long pushed automakers to adopt more fuel-efficient passenger vehicles that emit less pollution. A dozen states and the District of Columbia also follow California’s fuel economy standards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said Tuesday that the Trump administration’s action will hurt both U.S. automakers and American families. He said California would fight the administration in federal court.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You have no basis and no authority to pull this waiver,” Becerra, a Democrat, said in a statement, referring to Trump. “We’re ready to fight for a future that you seem unable to comprehend.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the White House “has abdicated its responsibility to the rest of the world on cutting emissions and fighting global warming.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California won’t ever wait for permission from Washington to protect the health and safety of children and families,” said Newsom, a Democrat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The deal struck in July between California and four of the world’s largest automakers — Ford, Honda, BMW and Volkswagen — bypassed the Trump administration’s plan to freeze emissions and fuel economy standards adopted under Obama at 2021 levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The four automakers agreed with California to reduce emissions by 3.7% per year starting with the 2022 model year, through 2026. That compares with 4.7% yearly reductions through 2025 under the Obama standards. Emissions standards are closely linked with fuel economy requirements because vehicles pollute less if they burn fewer gallons of fuel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. transportation sector is the nation’s biggest single source of planet-warming greenhouse gasses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wheeler said Tuesday: “California will be able to keep in place and enforce programs to address smog and other forms of air pollution caused by motor vehicles.” But fuel economy has been one of the key regulatory tools the state has used to reduce harmful emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Environmentalists condemned the Trump administration’s expected announcement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Everyone wins when we adopt strong clean car standards as our public policy,” said Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense Fund. “Strong clean car standards give us healthier air to breathe, help protect us from the urgent threat of climate change and save Americans hundreds of dollars a year in gas expenses.”\u003cbr>\n___\u003cbr>\nAssociated Press writer Adam Beam contributed to this report from Sacramento, California.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The Trump administration is poised to revoke California’s authority to set tailpipe emission standards, asserting that only the federal government has the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fuel economy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bloomberg is \u003ca href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-17/epa-to-unveil-plan-to-yank-california-s-car-emissions-authority\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reporting\u003c/a> the administration’s plan “leaves intact California’s power to regulate smog-forming pollutants from autos and other sources.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Conservative and free-market groups have been asked to attend a formal announcement of the rollback set for Wednesday afternoon at Environmental Protection Agency headquarters in Washington.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gloria Bergquist, spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said Tuesday that her group was among those invited to the event featuring EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The move comes after the Justice Department recently opened an antitrust investigation into a deal between California and four automakers for tougher pollution and related mileage requirements than those sought by President Donald Trump. Trump also has sought to relax Obama-era federal mileage standards nationwide, weakening a key effort by his Democratic predecessor to slow climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Top California officials and environmental groups pledged legal action to stop the rollback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California won’t ever wait for permission from Washington to protect the health and safety of children and families,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom, in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said in a statement that the administration “has put a target on California’s back, and sought only to score political points by attacking our state.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The White House declined to comment Tuesday, referring questions to EPA. EPA’s press office did not respond to a phone message and email seeking comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler told the National Automobile Dealers Association on Tuesday that the Trump administration would move “in the very near future” to take steps toward establishing one nationwide set of fuel-economy standards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We embrace federalism and the role of the states, but federalism does not mean that one state can dictate standards for the nation,” he said, adding that higher fuel economy standards would hurt consumers by increasing the average sticker price of new cars and requiring automakers to produce more electric vehicles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Word of the pending announcement came as Trump traveled to California on Tuesday for an overnight trip that includes GOP fundraising events near San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California’s authority to set its own, tougher emissions standards goes back to a waiver issued by Congress during passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970. The state has long pushed automakers to adopt more fuel-efficient passenger vehicles that emit less pollution. A dozen states and the District of Columbia also follow California’s fuel economy standards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said Tuesday that the Trump administration’s action will hurt both U.S. automakers and American families. He said California would fight the administration in federal court.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You have no basis and no authority to pull this waiver,” Becerra, a Democrat, said in a statement, referring to Trump. “We’re ready to fight for a future that you seem unable to comprehend.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the White House “has abdicated its responsibility to the rest of the world on cutting emissions and fighting global warming.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California won’t ever wait for permission from Washington to protect the health and safety of children and families,” said Newsom, a Democrat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The deal struck in July between California and four of the world’s largest automakers — Ford, Honda, BMW and Volkswagen — bypassed the Trump administration’s plan to freeze emissions and fuel economy standards adopted under Obama at 2021 levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The four automakers agreed with California to reduce emissions by 3.7% per year starting with the 2022 model year, through 2026. That compares with 4.7% yearly reductions through 2025 under the Obama standards. Emissions standards are closely linked with fuel economy requirements because vehicles pollute less if they burn fewer gallons of fuel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. transportation sector is the nation’s biggest single source of planet-warming greenhouse gasses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wheeler said Tuesday: “California will be able to keep in place and enforce programs to address smog and other forms of air pollution caused by motor vehicles.” But fuel economy has been one of the key regulatory tools the state has used to reduce harmful emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Environmentalists condemned the Trump administration’s expected announcement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Everyone wins when we adopt strong clean car standards as our public policy,” said Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense Fund. “Strong clean car standards give us healthier air to breathe, help protect us from the urgent threat of climate change and save Americans hundreds of dollars a year in gas expenses.”\u003cbr>\n___\u003cbr>\nAssociated Press writer Adam Beam contributed to this report from Sacramento, California.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "A New Beginning for Climate Reporting",
"headTitle": "A New Beginning for Climate Reporting | KQED",
"content": "\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>KQED has joined Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen climate coverage. Here, you’ll find stories about science, culture, laws and solutions. These are stories about the central task of our time: how to reshape human life to live in cooperation with Earth. \u003c/strong>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Could it be that the press, especially the U.S. press, is finally waking up to the climate story?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s been 30 years since Bill McKibben rang the warning bells about the threat of man-made climate change—first in a piece in The New Yorker, and then in his book, “The End of Nature.” For most of that time, the response from most quarters of the media, especially in the U.S., has been either silence or, worse, getting the story wrong. Reporters and their news organizations sidelined climate stories as too technical or too political or too depressing. Spun by the fossil-fuel industry and vexed by their own business problems, media outlets often leaned on a false balance between the views of genuine scientists and those of paid corporate mouthpieces. The media’s minimization of the looming disaster is one of our great journalistic failures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is heartening, then, to report that the press may at last be waking up to the defining story of our time. At the end of April, the \u003ci>Columbia Journalism Review\u003c/i> and \u003ci>The Nation\u003c/i> launched Covering Climate Now, a project aimed at encouraging news organizations, here and abroad, to raise their game when it comes to climate coverage. We weren’t going to tell people what to write or broadcast; we just wanted them to do more coverage, and to do it better. \u003ci>Close the gap\u003c/i>, we urged them, \u003ci>between the size of the story and the ambition of your efforts. Try it for a week, then report back on what you learned\u003c/i>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We had a hunch that there was a critical mass of reporters and news outlets that wanted to do more climate coverage, and hoped that by highlighting that critical mass, we could also help to grow it. That’s exactly what has happened. Our initiative has been embraced by more than 250 news outlets from across the US and around the world—big outlets and small, print and digital, TV and radio—with a combined audience of well over 1 billion people. Their response has been amazing, and gratifying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We believe that Covering Climate Now is the biggest effort ever undertaken to organize the world’s press around a single topic. (You’ll find a list of partners \u003ca href=\"https://www.coveringclimatenow.org/partners\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here\u003c/a>, and you can follow all of us on Twitter at #CoveringClimateNow.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our week of focused climate coverage began yesterday and will continue through next Monday, September 23, the day of the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York. \u003cem>(KQED’s coverage will continue through September 27.)\u003c/em> And there’s more to come after this week is over; the climate story is not going away, so neither are we. We’ll be talking to our newsroom partners about what they learned this week, what they need to continue the momentum, what they can learn from one another, and where we go from here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-1947420\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo-800x799.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"244\" height=\"243\" srcset=\"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-160x160.png 160w, 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-1020x1019.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo.png 1116w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 244px) 100vw, 244px\">\u003c/a>We are thrilled that Covering Climate Now has flourished. Yet what has also become clear in the five months since we began this effort is the enormous amount of work that remains to be done in order for the media to get this story right. In talking with dozens of reporters, producers, editors, we’ve learned a lot about the ambitions that newsrooms have for improving their climate coverage, but we’ve also seen where roadblocks remain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the scientists have been telling us with increasing urgency, humanity’s window to transform our world is shrinking fast. Transforming the news media is fundamental to achieving that goal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What misconceptions remain? What’s keeping newsrooms from doing more? Here are some roadblocks that stood out in our conversations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>We Don’t Know Where to Start\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of our most sobering conversations came during a meeting inside one of the world’s biggest news organizations, with a group of people asked by their boss to improve their climate coverage. These people were eager to embrace our project and had the resources to do it. But they had no idea how to begin: Where do we come up with story ideas? Who should our sources be? Can you help us think this through? Their response stunned us, given the size of the newsroom around us, but it reminded us early on in this process that in many cases, we’re starting from scratch. \u003ca href=\"https://www.cjr.org/special_report/climate-change-media.php\">We’ve written before\u003c/a>, critically, about why this should not be the case, about how the media’s avoidance of the climate story has been an epic fail. Going forward, our focus will be on helping this newsroom, and others like it, get better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Our Viewers Will Think We’re Activists\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many journalists and news executives continue to see climate coverage as political, and worry that more coverage will be seen as activism. We heard it from numerous newsrooms, and not just in those places where climate-denying politicians still hold sway. We think this concern distorts what newsgathering is about. Journalism has always been about righting wrongs, holding the powerful to account, calling out lies. It is in our best traditions to shine a light on our most vexing problems, in order to help fix them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>It’s Too Late; The Problem is Too Big for Us To Make Any Difference\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Good journalism often makes things happen, though not always on the timeline we’d like—if at all. The public doesn’t respond; readers feel powerless; entrenched players outmaneuver reporters. That is part of how it works, too. But few reporters would still do the work if they believed it made no difference. It’s our journalistic responsibility to convey what is happening and why, as well as who is trying to fix it, and how. That’s our job as storytellers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Readers Will Find This Depressing and Tune Out\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>News organizations that have embraced climate coverage find that audiences—particularly younger viewers, listeners, and readers—are, in fact, enormously engaged in the coverage. They may get angry or energized or organized by climate stories, but they don’t tune them out. It is a strange time when journalism’s leaders argue against covering a subject that’s undeniably important simply because they’re worried their audience may find it challenging. Is this really where you want your newsroom to be?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>We’re Already Pulling Our Weight\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are a number of media outlets—not enough, but a number—that already are producing excellent climate coverage. (Our lead media partner, \u003ci>The Guardian,\u003c/i> is at the top of that list.) But others declined to join this effort because they didn’t see how it would help them; they already know the climate story, and believe they are covering it aggressively. We found those responses disappointing. This is a chance for big media organizations to lead, and to help others along. The climate story stretches across all journalistic beats; it demands that we dismantle the usual siloes. Covering it well may require a bit of cooperation and collaboration that is antithetical to how we usually work. Take this on as a problem that is bigger than your own newsroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of these challenges are surmountable. Throughout this week, you’ll hear from hundreds of newsrooms that have overcome them. Two hundred and fifty media organizations, more than 1 billion people. Those are big numbers. And they are just the beginning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"page\" title=\"Page 2\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"layoutArea\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"column\">\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story originally appeared in \u003ca href=\"https://www.cjr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Columbia Journalism Review\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.thenation.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Nation\u003c/a>. It is republished here as part of KQED’s partnership with Covering Climate Now, \u003c/em>\u003cem>a global \u003c/em>\u003cem>collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to \u003c/em>\u003cem>strengthen coverage of the climate story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation’s environment correspondent, has covered climate change since 1989. His books include “On Bended Knee: The Press And The Reagan Presidency,” “Earth Odyssey: Around The World In Search Of Our Environmental Future,” and “HOT: Living Through The Next Fifty Years On Earth.” Kyle Pope is the editor and publisher of Columbia Journalism Review.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "KQED has joined Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets, to bring you stories about the central task of our time: how to reshape human life to live in cooperation with Earth. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>KQED has joined Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen climate coverage. Here, you’ll find stories about science, culture, laws and solutions. These are stories about the central task of our time: how to reshape human life to live in cooperation with Earth. \u003c/strong>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Could it be that the press, especially the U.S. press, is finally waking up to the climate story?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s been 30 years since Bill McKibben rang the warning bells about the threat of man-made climate change—first in a piece in The New Yorker, and then in his book, “The End of Nature.” For most of that time, the response from most quarters of the media, especially in the U.S., has been either silence or, worse, getting the story wrong. Reporters and their news organizations sidelined climate stories as too technical or too political or too depressing. Spun by the fossil-fuel industry and vexed by their own business problems, media outlets often leaned on a false balance between the views of genuine scientists and those of paid corporate mouthpieces. The media’s minimization of the looming disaster is one of our great journalistic failures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is heartening, then, to report that the press may at last be waking up to the defining story of our time. At the end of April, the \u003ci>Columbia Journalism Review\u003c/i> and \u003ci>The Nation\u003c/i> launched Covering Climate Now, a project aimed at encouraging news organizations, here and abroad, to raise their game when it comes to climate coverage. We weren’t going to tell people what to write or broadcast; we just wanted them to do more coverage, and to do it better. \u003ci>Close the gap\u003c/i>, we urged them, \u003ci>between the size of the story and the ambition of your efforts. Try it for a week, then report back on what you learned\u003c/i>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We had a hunch that there was a critical mass of reporters and news outlets that wanted to do more climate coverage, and hoped that by highlighting that critical mass, we could also help to grow it. That’s exactly what has happened. Our initiative has been embraced by more than 250 news outlets from across the US and around the world—big outlets and small, print and digital, TV and radio—with a combined audience of well over 1 billion people. Their response has been amazing, and gratifying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We believe that Covering Climate Now is the biggest effort ever undertaken to organize the world’s press around a single topic. (You’ll find a list of partners \u003ca href=\"https://www.coveringclimatenow.org/partners\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here\u003c/a>, and you can follow all of us on Twitter at #CoveringClimateNow.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our week of focused climate coverage began yesterday and will continue through next Monday, September 23, the day of the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York. \u003cem>(KQED’s coverage will continue through September 27.)\u003c/em> And there’s more to come after this week is over; the climate story is not going away, so neither are we. We’ll be talking to our newsroom partners about what they learned this week, what they need to continue the momentum, what they can learn from one another, and where we go from here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-1947420\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo-800x799.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"244\" height=\"243\" srcset=\"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-160x160.png 160w, 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-1020x1019.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/09/Covering-Climate-Now-Logo.png 1116w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 244px) 100vw, 244px\">\u003c/a>We are thrilled that Covering Climate Now has flourished. Yet what has also become clear in the five months since we began this effort is the enormous amount of work that remains to be done in order for the media to get this story right. In talking with dozens of reporters, producers, editors, we’ve learned a lot about the ambitions that newsrooms have for improving their climate coverage, but we’ve also seen where roadblocks remain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the scientists have been telling us with increasing urgency, humanity’s window to transform our world is shrinking fast. Transforming the news media is fundamental to achieving that goal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What misconceptions remain? What’s keeping newsrooms from doing more? Here are some roadblocks that stood out in our conversations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>We Don’t Know Where to Start\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of our most sobering conversations came during a meeting inside one of the world’s biggest news organizations, with a group of people asked by their boss to improve their climate coverage. These people were eager to embrace our project and had the resources to do it. But they had no idea how to begin: Where do we come up with story ideas? Who should our sources be? Can you help us think this through? Their response stunned us, given the size of the newsroom around us, but it reminded us early on in this process that in many cases, we’re starting from scratch. \u003ca href=\"https://www.cjr.org/special_report/climate-change-media.php\">We’ve written before\u003c/a>, critically, about why this should not be the case, about how the media’s avoidance of the climate story has been an epic fail. Going forward, our focus will be on helping this newsroom, and others like it, get better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Our Viewers Will Think We’re Activists\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many journalists and news executives continue to see climate coverage as political, and worry that more coverage will be seen as activism. We heard it from numerous newsrooms, and not just in those places where climate-denying politicians still hold sway. We think this concern distorts what newsgathering is about. Journalism has always been about righting wrongs, holding the powerful to account, calling out lies. It is in our best traditions to shine a light on our most vexing problems, in order to help fix them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>It’s Too Late; The Problem is Too Big for Us To Make Any Difference\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Good journalism often makes things happen, though not always on the timeline we’d like—if at all. The public doesn’t respond; readers feel powerless; entrenched players outmaneuver reporters. That is part of how it works, too. But few reporters would still do the work if they believed it made no difference. It’s our journalistic responsibility to convey what is happening and why, as well as who is trying to fix it, and how. That’s our job as storytellers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Readers Will Find This Depressing and Tune Out\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>News organizations that have embraced climate coverage find that audiences—particularly younger viewers, listeners, and readers—are, in fact, enormously engaged in the coverage. They may get angry or energized or organized by climate stories, but they don’t tune them out. It is a strange time when journalism’s leaders argue against covering a subject that’s undeniably important simply because they’re worried their audience may find it challenging. Is this really where you want your newsroom to be?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>We’re Already Pulling Our Weight\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are a number of media outlets—not enough, but a number—that already are producing excellent climate coverage. (Our lead media partner, \u003ci>The Guardian,\u003c/i> is at the top of that list.) But others declined to join this effort because they didn’t see how it would help them; they already know the climate story, and believe they are covering it aggressively. We found those responses disappointing. This is a chance for big media organizations to lead, and to help others along. The climate story stretches across all journalistic beats; it demands that we dismantle the usual siloes. Covering it well may require a bit of cooperation and collaboration that is antithetical to how we usually work. Take this on as a problem that is bigger than your own newsroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of these challenges are surmountable. Throughout this week, you’ll hear from hundreds of newsrooms that have overcome them. Two hundred and fifty media organizations, more than 1 billion people. Those are big numbers. And they are just the beginning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"page\" title=\"Page 2\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"layoutArea\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"column\">\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story originally appeared in \u003ca href=\"https://www.cjr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Columbia Journalism Review\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.thenation.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Nation\u003c/a>. It is republished here as part of KQED’s partnership with Covering Climate Now, \u003c/em>\u003cem>a global \u003c/em>\u003cem>collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to \u003c/em>\u003cem>strengthen coverage of the climate story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation’s environment correspondent, has covered climate change since 1989. His books include “On Bended Knee: The Press And The Reagan Presidency,” “Earth Odyssey: Around The World In Search Of Our Environmental Future,” and “HOT: Living Through The Next Fifty Years On Earth.” Kyle Pope is the editor and publisher of Columbia Journalism Review.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"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.",
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"mindshift": {
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"order": 12
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"onourwatch": {
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
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"possible": {
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"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.possible.fm/",
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"source": "Possible"
},
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"pri-the-world": {
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"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
"title": "Radiolab",
"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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},
"reveal": {
"id": "reveal",
"title": "Reveal",
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