This week on Facebook I asked my friends to ask my anything about climate change. I was pleased to get some really interesting questions! One friend told me I should share the product of this exercise somehow. So here it is.
My post:
I don't know why but it suddenly occurred to me that some of you might have questions about climate change that you are afraid to ask. I don't have all the answers, but I've been working or lurking in this field for 9 yrs* and might be able to dig up answers where I don't have them. So-- please -- ask me anything about climate change! What do you want to know?
(* I later realized it's been 10 years and spare change, but who's counting.)
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| Photo by cogdogblog © CC BY 2.0 |
Q1.
Have we really reached the “can’t turn back now” stage?
And another related question: How close is earth to the tipping point?
Q2.
What is one small item I should stock in my emergency kit that I may have forgotten? (A question from a friend in the SF Bay Area.)
Q3.
Is it bad that I’m rooting for a little sea level rise to wash away the ugly condos between our house and the Hudson River?
Q4.
What is one concrete activist goal we could get involved to help make happen, right now?
Q5.
Is massive reforestation a viable means of stopping global warming? I've seen these projects that plant millions of trees in a day...
Q6.
Regarding the dairy (not meat) side of things: what are the differing effects of grass-fed vs. conventional dairy and what effect will the increased farming of cashews and almonds (as dairy alternatives) have on the environment? (Note: I'm parsing this as a pasture versus feedlot versus nut tree question.)
Q7.
What are your thoughts on Project Drawdown's effort to comprehensively quantify greenhouse gas mitigation measures?
Q8.
How much of a difference does individual water consumption for showers (not stuff like lawn watering) make in California? I've heard lots of people fretting about how we need to take shorter showers due to droughts, but I'm personally not sure how much difference my few gallons of shower water make, compared to people are still growing almonds and rice in climates that cannot support it...
Q9.
What's a scientific answer to whether veganism & vegetarianism are better for the planet?
Q10.
The San Francisco MTC is planning for a 3 foot sea level rise by 2050: how likely is 3 feet to come sooner? (I'm reading this as "how likely is San Francisco to have higher than three feet sea level rise by 2050?")
Q11.
What do you think poses the greatest existential threat, climate change or the singularity?
Q12. How long till thermohaline circulation stops?
Q13. What's the best estimate for how much methane is held as hydrates that are at risk of melting?
Q1.
Have we really reached the “can’t turn back now” stage?
And:
How close is earth to the tipping point?
First question:
Yes and no. Yes, in that there is no "stopping" climate change, that train has left the station. We didn't realize how much heat was being absorbed by the oceans, nor how long it looks like it might take the oceans to return to the temperature we are used to. The trajectory in which Earth returns to pre-industrial temperature ranges is measured in many hundreds of years, maybe a thousand years, taking into account the slow way the ocean warms and cools. So, there is no "turning back" in the sense of we have departed from the historical norms for the foreseeable future. However, the Earth might return to balance someday if we do everything we can to SLOW climate change. If we don't do anything, Earth will become Venus. My understanding is that the point at which Earth will inevitably become Venus has not been reached yet.
Awesome short (7 minute) video by expert climate communicator Katharine Hayhoe on this question "It's too late to do anything about climate change.... right?" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv7zFAdZ6LI
Second question:
Good question! See my answer to a similar question above. We don't know how close we are to making it inevitable that Earth becomes Venus, but all the tipping points in nature that scientists have pointed to as signals of doom are happening faster than expected.
Also, the tipping point that is rarely talked about that you might want to learn about is ocean acidification. We can't fight it, and when the oceans acidify to a certain threshold -- that's it. As one scientist put it (privately) to me: "game over."
Q2.
What is one small item I should stock in my emergency kit that I may have forgotten?
For Bay Area people something I did for my emergency kit was get a geological map showing me where the nearest bedrock area is to my home. I think the Bay Area is more at risk of catastrophic earthquake than catastrophic extreme events from climate change. Things will happen, but it will take the shape of Highway 37 being rendered inaccessible for long periods of time, downtown SF being kayak-able during a King Tide, maybe an extra super hot day here and there, but not hurricanes and storm surge or wildfire that takes out all of Oakland or something like that.
Follow-up question from another Bay Area friend:
How does one use bedrock location information in an emergency? Is it where to go to avoid aftershocks?
Bingo
Also it's not prone to subduction or liquefaction. So much of the Bay Area is built on fill, you really should know if you are living on fill or bedrock. Check it out.
I can't remember how I dug up the map I put in my emergency kit - it's been a few years - but this looks promising: https://earthquake.usgs.gov/hazards/urban/sfbay/soiltype/
Q3.
Is it bad that I’m rooting for a little sea level rise to wash away the ugly condos between our house and the Hudson River?
You are entitled to your fantasies! I like the idea of people kayaking around downtown San Francisco. Highway 1 between SF and the airport will be a kayak park someday, in one engineering firm's vision in a design competition held by BCDC in 2009. http://www.aiacc.org/.../rising-tides-international.../
Q4.
What is one concrete activist goal we could get involved to help make happen, right now?
Something that surprised me that I learned last week in a presentation on voter behavior at the National Adaptation Forum was that voters who care about the environment tend to NOT VOTE. So right now my answer for you is -- make sure you are registered and tell your friends to get registered or update their registration to vote, and educate yourself on how things on the ballot might affect climate change and how people on the ballot talk about climate change. Fight for access to the vote for disenfranchised people, fight to make voting day a holiday, fight attempts to roll back access to the vote. Teach your kids basic civics (I expect you do). Make voting a part of your core values and tell your friends why you care about it. I'm also hearing from climate scientists that VOTE is their #1 recommended action for people to take if they are scared about climate change.
This friend wanted to know what else she could do...
My other suggestions are along the same lines of civic activism -- let your elected officials know that you support climate action, send them thank you notes when they take unpopular stands on climate change, and if you know anybody living in places dominated by politicians who claim to be climate skeptics tell them to do the same. If the people lead the leaders will follow, etc.
Also, in my humble opinion, fighting income inequality and trying to establish a universal basic income will do a f*-load more for vulnerable populations in terms of giving them options to make good choices for themselves than any new-fangled technology (or old-fangled technology). Yes we need to upgrade and decarbonize our infrastructure but people need to be empowered to get out of harm's way.
She added:
I wasn't thinking about technology so much as about policies like the carbon fee proposed in this book: Being the Change by Peter Kalmus
I follow Peter Kalmus on Twitter, but I haven't read his book. What does he propose in terms of a carbon fee? I know that many smart people talk about the need for a carbon fee or tax, some say it's inevitable. If we "internalized the externalities," or baked into the price of things their actual cost including the cost to the environment, it would give the right price signals for a less climate-changey future. It's just not at all politically viable in the U.S. right now. So companies need to impose this fee on themselves to give the right signals to the consumer. And if companies did bake the cost to the environment into their prices, the shock to low-income people would be terrible. So even if companies were inclined to do this, it would need to be done with some public entity providing relief to the worst off, or it would effectively be a regressive tax. If we had decent, affordable public transit in the U.S. it wouldn't be so bad, but imagine if all the non-rich people suddenly couldn't put gas in their cars.
She replied:
I'll have to go back and read his proposal but I thought it made sense. He proposed a carbon fee which would be redistributed to citizens as a dividend, so that it would not function as a regressive tax.
It's a funny thing what working in government does to your ability to have faith in government to do something that complicated without screwing over poor people & immigrants somehow. But yeah, in theory, it sounds like a good plan.
Q5.
Is massive reforestation a viable means of stopping global warming? I've seen these projects that plant millions of trees in a day...
Good question. (1) "Stopping" global warming isn't an option anymore, sadly. (2) Planting trees can help, depending on where they are planted, what kind of tree, and what kind of maintenance support there is. It's an expensive fix but it is the only geoengineering measure that removes CO2 without creating new uncertainties and disruption. (3) For most of the Earth the superior option is restoring rangeland/prairie and encouraging kelp farming. Resources on that topic linked here: https://pacificadaptation.blogspot.com/2019/02/grasslands-kelp-trees-my-parking-lot-of.html
Q6.
Regarding the dairy (not meat) side of things: what are the differing effects of grass-fed vs. conventional dairy and what effect will the increased farming of cashews and almonds (as dairy alternatives) have on the environment? (Note: I'm parsing this as a pasture versus feedlot versus nut tree question.)
You are listening to the sound of my head silently imploding and exploding with ideas of how to respond to your question. My main question when it comes to ag is how is the farmer using water, not what is the carbon footprint of the product. That is my California bias. So you've got the water question and the carbon footprint question. Your farmer might do great managing water and replenishing the groundwater and keeping the water footprint low, and then manage the cattle waste poorly so the farm is a big methane emitter. "Permanent" crops like nut trees have their water impact and their carbon footprint, more the former than the latter (in my bystander understanding), but if lucrative nut trees replace open rangeland (cattle pastures, for example), that has a carbon footprint. Then you've got the question of what happens if we regulate dairy farmers out of existence in the U.S. and thereby offshore the water and carbon impacts by buying dairy from less-regulated places. And you probably know that most of California's almonds are sold to China for almond milk, so that's how those natural resources come back into California, as cash, not a replacement for dairy (yet). OVERALL my thoughts on both dairy and nut tree farming boil down to the importance of getting farmers good climate info in a timely manner. There's nothing we can do about the hunger for almond milk in China but we can incent good water management practices (remote sensor-driven irrigation and the like) and help decarbonize farm infrastructure (which the CA Air Resources Board is working on in the San Joaquin Valley). I have other thoughts but I'll leave these thoughts here and see if my brain spits out anything more cogent.
Grazing can be done really well, in a way that fosters land restoration and native plant growth, and it can be done very destructively. Feedlot farming can do great on the greenhouse gas mitigation front and do horrible things to the land and water around it. There are good reasons to do both grazing and feedlot approaches, it's not a simple equation. My go-to orgs for these questions are CalCAN (http://calclimateag.org/) and...
...CAFF (https://www.caff.org/programs/sustainability/)
Also the problem is cow burps not farts, as you may know. People are looking at this seaweed Asparagopsis taxiformis as a possible solution. https://www.technologyreview.com/.../how-seaweed-could.../
Q7.
What are your thoughts on Project Drawdown's effort to comprehensively quantify greenhouse gas mitigation measures?
Yes, Project Drawdown has a good list. The organization was created by people from the "Green MBA" program in the Presidio. They favor innovation and market solutions, so that's a bias to be aware of. But I really like Jon Foley, who left the Cal Academy to head up Project Drawdown. He might make it a real organization that does more than publish one book.
Q8.
How much of a difference does individual water consumption for showers (not stuff like lawn watering) make in California? I've heard lots of people fretting about how we need to take shorter showers due to droughts, but I'm personally not sure how much difference my few gallons of shower water make, compared to people are still growing almonds and rice in climates that cannot support it...
It's a question of return on investment. When irrigating crops, that water comes back to ground water directly, has benefits for birds & other wildlife, and also translates to $$ for the California economy. So it's a relatively good investment of water compared to lawns (if only grass cuttings could be sold) and extra long showers (the water from which has to be treated, which is an additional cost). There is only so much fresh water, as I'm sure you know, so we need to invest every drop as wisely as possible. The WORST is the way we use treated drinking water to flush toilets. Toilets should be flushed with grey water & at low flow/high efficiency. In the future that is going to have to be mandated.
Confession: I have a 5 min shower timer and I have never used it. I shower every other day so I say I get a few minutes extra. I also can't deal with the smell & etc. from letting urine sit in my toilet, so I flush every time. I'm no poster child. We should all take shorter/fewer showers and "if it's yellow let it mellow." Also whoever can should collect rainwater in barrels to use in their home and if you have land keep as much of it permeable (not paved) as possible.
Another friend responded:
My understanding is it's much less wasteful, gallon for gallon, to use water if it eventually goes down the drain, because that will end up at the water treatment plant for more uses before out to sea. So it's good to cut down on car-washing and lawn-watering, but baths/showers, less so.
Car washing and lawn watering THEORETICALLY recharges ground water, so it isn't wasted water. However because we have such impermeable surfaces around our living areas in cities that car/lawn water tends not to spread and sink but go into drainage pipes that take it right to the sea, untreated. So it is more polluting of the sea than water that goes down the drain. But if you had a nice place with bioswales and other features that slowed, spread, and sunk the car/lawn water, then you are doing the local groundwater a favor, returning tap water to the land.
A really interesting project is trying to capture water that goes down storm drains (like car/lawn water), treating it, and returning it to the tap rather than letting it run to the sea. Los Angeles could supply all of its water needs from storm water if it could capture the water in storm drains (from rain in the mountains) -- so I believe LA is trying out some "internet of water" sensors to capture and store storm drain runoff during and after storms. Someday all the storm drain water might need to be captured and at least turned into grey water for use in toilets and other appropriate grey water uses.
Q9.
What's a scientific answer to whether veganism & vegetarianism are better for the planet?
Any food can be healthy or not-- for you and the planet-- including meat. I'm just talking about environmental/physical health here (not ethical health, which is between you and your gods and ancestors, not a matter of public policy). Science doesn't say "go vegetarian" or "go vegan" - what it does say is it's good to reduce the meat in your diet, for lots of reasons. I just learned that among marine animals farmed mussels have the lowest carbon footprint/g protein, which surprised me. I would have guessed wild salmon. Poultry is the lowest of land animals (link attached to where I got that). Now, if you are more concerned about pollution from farming, that goes to the farming practice/ size of enterprise more than the type of meat, I think. Another surprising thing I heard from an ag researcher recently is that small family farms that get big are the WORST for bad environmental practices. Big farms that started out big are prepared for and responsive to regulations. Small farms that get big are not. Anyway, the impact of our food choices on the planet is a very important, complex question. Source for GHG per gram of protein by food type - https://ourworldindata.org/.../greenhouse-gas-emissions...
More on that, if you can get institutional access to a behind-a-paywall article - https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/.../fee.1822
And the source for the farmed mussels being lowest in carbon footprint/g protein - http://seafoodco2.dal.ca/
Specifically this graph:
https://twitter.com/SarahEMyhre/status/1123294443862257664
This relevant article just came out yesterday [April 30, 2019]. It has a lot of the same info I linked to above but put in a very stylish and user-friendly layout (if you have access to the NYT) - https://www.nytimes.com/.../climate-change-food-eating...
Q10.
The San Francisco MTC is planning for a 3 foot sea level rise by 2050: how likely is 3 feet to come sooner? (I'm reading this as "how much sea level rise is San Francisco going to see by 2050?")
MTC is using a controversial projection that uses a probabilistic model (if they are using the California state guidance). They are hedging on the side of caution, using a high estimate for the worst case scenario. Personally, I think it's a good idea. The head of climate change for SF PUC is not so sure it's a good idea to overengineer at this point. The high estimate came from a paper on a particular ice shelf melting in Antarctica (DeConto and Pollard 2016). That ice shelf paper used ONE model of climate change projections and ONE model of ice behavior. Since that paper came out the scientists have done more work and gotten peer feedback and moderated their estimates. I'm attaching the guidance that I believe MTC is basing their planning on: http://www.opc.ca.gov/.../rising-seas-in-california-an...
Here's the DeConto and Pollard (2016) paper that put everyone's neck hairs on end: http://www.documentcloud.org/.../2823837-DeConto-Pollard...
Here's an article on how DeConto and Pollard stepped back their alarming prediction: https://www.theatlantic.com/.../sea-level-rise.../579478/
And on the other hand, this article just came out - https://www.independent.co.uk/.../ross-ice-shelf...
The long and the short is that of all the climate change-driven models out there the ones modeling ice behavior are the newest and least tested. We are building blind at this point, hoping we don't under-engineer.
My friend replied:
16 feet!! That would be bad for countries with large coastal populations and major port cities ... and maybe advantageous to those that don't. Is there anything unclassified that deals with the geopolitical scenarios that might result?
Low-lying island nations have been pointing out the existential threat posed to them by sea level rise for over a decade now. I believe the Maldives has purchased land and is beginning the move process. Indonesia is in the news lately because they are starting the process of moving their capital from Java, which is sinking.There is lots of open discussion about climate refugees from future sea level rise. Bangladesh is a particular concern. All the major populated river deltas in Southeast Asia are particular concerns. The U.S. Naval Atlantic Fleet is run out of Norfolk, VA, that has been preparing for sea level rise for a long time now (though it isn't discussed very clearly/openly as a climate change problem). Turns out sea level rise isn't like filling a bathtub, sea levels rise differently in different places, and Virginia is like ground zero for the fastest sea level rise on any U.S. coast. So our military has had it on its radar for a long time. Pick a location and Google it plus "sea level rise" and you'll find lots out there written about geopolitical implications.
Q11.
What do you think poses the greatest existential threat, climate change or the singularity?
I'm guessing you are joking but in case you aren't I don't know, since I don't really believe in the singularity, but just cuz I don't believe in it doesn't mean it won't end the world
My friend conceded:
I've been reading about the singularity and becoming convinced it will happen in some form or another, though I don't think we really know how it will happen or when. Climate change is a lot more predictable.
Q12.
How long till thermohaline circulation stops?
Oh god I hope not soon, jeez. The impact of climate change on ocean dynamics is almost as little understood as the melting of land ice at the poles (compared to impact on temperature and land processes associated with it). For sure people are studying it but I haven't run across anything that projects a timeline on the thermohaline.
This is a nice juicy link-rich article on the topic from last year, which should give you some idea of how much we know about this problem https://insideclimatenews.org/.../atlantic-ocean...
Q13.
What's the best estimate for how much methane is held as hydrates that are at risk of melting? (Note: hydrates = ice crystals containing another element or compound. Methane hydrates = ice crystals containing methane molecules. See the
U.S. Department of Energy methane hydrate explainer, it has a good graphic.)
First, I'm not an oceanographer or permafrost specialist, so I wouldn't know if there was new hot research on this topic emerging. I follow a lot of ocean and cryosphere/polar scientists on Twitter (it's a special interest of mine, the loss of ice-based animals and cultures), but I don't know if anyone I follow is researching under-ocean/permafrost-trapped methane at risk of release through melting. I'm sure I've seen something about the estimated amount of methane in play here (and it's a lot, like a lot a lot) but the real question is what is the real probability of it being released, which nobody knows. What I *do* know is the ocean science course I took (Intro to the Marine Environment at Laney College, taught by a guy who cared a lot about students understanding climate change impacts on the ocean) thought that the hype about the methane at the bottom of the ocean being released and causing catastrophic sudden climate change was waaaaay overblown. He believed it was NOT the thing we should be worrying about. Now, the methane being released from permafrost is another thing, and I just saw a new report show up on my radar yesterday about this. Let me go dig it out of the internet. -- BY THE WAY FOR THE UNINITIATED -- Methane is a super-charged greenhouse gas. Although it dissipates much faster than CO2, it is far more dangerous in terms of its heat-trapping potential. It's roughly 30 times more dangerous than CO2.
OK here it is, an opinion piece that came out in Nature on Tuesday [April 30, 2019] about what research is needed on the question of greenhouse gases/permafrost. It includes an estimate of how much carbon is held in permafrost as compared to the atmosphere (twice as much in permafrost). https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01313-4
And here is a Twitter thread recommended by my favorite paleoecologist on permafrost - doesn't say much on the question of methane but it explains the melting process we are seeing in the tundra - https://twitter.com/queenofpeat/status/1123561998820806656
I haven't read this yet but it looks competently written - the source has been cited by people I deem credible - https://www.seeker.com/.../heres-what-scientists-know...
MORE ON METHANE - I didn't remember that it is much more potent initially - 80+ times more potent than CO2 after release - https://www.edf.org/.../methane-other-important...
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