A Striking Similarity

First - I know. I've totally been feeling guilty about the fact that I haven't posted in almost two months. Not because of a lack of interesting things to post but because I've been working on a story for Newsweek, due out in February (more on that later). It took up a lot of that two months; the rest of my free time was taken up by baking these beauties:

But the cookies have long been devoured, a new semester has begun and I'm getting back in the saddle with a 9am class called Energy and Climate Change. 

So far, it's been an overview of climate change in context of the earth's history and we started with something our professor called "The Great Oxygen Catastrophe". This is a pretty simplified version of the actual events but I think it covers the basics.

3.5 billion years ago, blue-green cyanobacteria evolved on earth. These little organisms were capable of photo-synthesis and, as part of that process, they released oxygen into the atmosphere as waste. Keep in mind that, prior to this, there were no loose oxygen molecules bouncing around in earth's atmosphere - it was all absorbed immediately by other molecules.

Over the next billion or so years, as these cyanobacteria were giving off oxygen, it was still being taken up by all those other molecules, like iron - which created rust - or hydrogen - to create hydrogen peroxide. The earth was, essentially, a giant oxygen vacuum, sucking up all the oxygen.

As the earth began to cool and change - with fewer volcanoes spewing hydrogen and much of the iron already saturated - more oxygen molecules were left untethered, free-wheeling around the atmosphere. This is somewhere between .75 and 2 billion years ago (give or take a few days). But oxygen was toxic to much of earth's anaerobic residents and they were almost entirely wiped out - meaning these cyanobacteria basically caused one of the most significant extinction events in earth's history. 

Maybe you see where this is going?

Fast forward to, oh, say the modern era. In what could be seen as a striking similarity, there's a relatively new population of creatures on the planet that have been steadily increasing their emissions of carbon dioxide for the past 150-200 years. For a while, the earth was absorbing all those CO2 molecules without too much trouble but it's starting to reach a saturation point. The result could be another of the most significant extinction events in earth's history.

It's an interesting parallel. Andrew Revkin had this to say about it on his blog, Dot Earth:

"...you could step back and say there's not much of a difference between our carbon bins and that oxygen outburst. Except those mats of photosynthesizing slime weren't looking up at the sky, measuring and marveling at what they'd done. Through science, we are. With awareness comes responsibility, at least in theory. I'm pretty sure cyanobacteria are not self-aware."

We, as a species, have an opportunity to do something different. We're not pre-programmed to continue down the same path mindlessly. We can change the current course, reduce emissions, try to undo some of the damage we've done. In other words, we've evolved beyond the level of cyanobacteria - maybe it's time to act like we have. 

Do You Want Your Receipt?

I'm thoroughly enjoying this fellowship but it can sometimes be a real downer. There's dying species and acidification of the ocean, rising sea levels - there's a sense that some scary stuff lies ahead and not a lot of obvious solutions in the works.

And every now and then, we learn something totally terrifying, like the day that Michael SanClements came to our seminar. He's an ecologist affiliated with the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. In 2011, he decided to go two weeks without creating any plastic waste, a challenge that was way harder than he'd ever expected. He blogged his experience for grist.org - an environmental website - and then that blog became the foundation for a book called Plastic Purge: How To Use Less Plastic, Eat Better, Keep Toxins Out Of Your Body, and Help Save The Sea Turtles!

What he found was that we use a helluva lot more plastic than we probably realize. It's in everything, some good - like medical supplies - and some bad - like plastic water bottles. While we benefit tremendously from many plastic products, there are some obvious problems - like the damage plastic does to the environment. And then there's the other problem of what's IN plastics, the chemicals that make them up.

By now, most people have heard of a substance called BPA. That's the acronym for bisphenol-A, which Mike defines in his book as "...an industrial chemical used in the production of hard, clear plastics." It showed up in everything from reusable water bottles to the linings of metal food cans to baby toys to cosmetics. In short, it was everywhere.

BPA is what's called an endocrine disrupter - these are chemicals that may have an effect on the body's endocrine system, which regulates our hormones. Research suggests endocrine disrupters can have adverse effects on development, reproduction and immunity - just to name a few. There are all kinds of other things that BPA may contribute to as well - Mike goes into those in detail in his book.

So here's this potentially dangerous chemical that's present in all kinds of things we use in our everyday lives and there's not a whole lot of regulation. The FDA and EPA haven't done much, aside from requiring plastics makers to remove BPA from baby bottles and sippy cups. And there are a lot of companies that have removed BPA from their products - like Nalgene, which makes hard plastic water bottles, and ConAgra Foods - under pressure from consumers.

But you can avoid BPA, right? Switch to glass and BPA-free containers and steer clear of foods that use lots of plastic packaging. Easy peasy. This is where the terrifying part comes in. BPA is actually found - in really high quantities - in something you handle all the time: receipts.

Receipts that use BPA technology have 250 to 1000 times more of the chemical than the amount found in a can of food, according to one study. And unlike the other items on the list of BPA-infused products, you're generally not putting these in your mouth - you're just touching them, briefly, but long enough to absorb quite a bit through your skin. 

So, no. I don't want my receipt. And if you insist on it, please don't be surprised when I pick it up with a pair of tweezers.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Last week's election left me a little despondent. It will likely put Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) - a vehement disbeliever in climate change - at the head of the Committee on the Environment and Public Works. There's also a good chance that Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) - another climate change denier - will be leading the Subcommittee on Science and Space. And then there's the House, where an anti-science sentiment has become ever more pervasive, including among several Republican members of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. 

Now, I honestly don't care if it's Republicans or Democrats on these committees. I might disagree about a particular policy idea but if it's scientifically sound, I'd say it's probably at least worth checking out. However, the problem here is that these committees are being run by people who don't even believe in science. Which is mind-blowing. I'm not saying they have to understand physics or quantum mechanics or all the ins and outs of geomorphology - but they should be willing to listen to the facts as presented and trust that scientists aren't trying to trick them or perpetrate some sort of massive hoax. 

The sheer ignorance on display here - whether real or politically calculated - is beyond embarrassing. 

But, luckily, this week has also brought some good news, at least on the international front. The US and China just announced that they've both committed to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. Since the two countries are responsible for approximately 45% of global emissions, this is a really big deal. 

By 2025, the US said it would emit 26% to 28% below 2005 emission levels. China, for its part, will work to cap emissions by 2030, if not sooner (and sooner is what many climate scientists and environmentalists would like to see - they worry 2030 is too late). It's not a done deal yet - the wto countries still have to sign a formal agreements - but it signals that both sides are willing to make cuts, invest in new technology and embrace more efficient energy sources. And, if the globe's two biggest polluters are finally going to take action, that could encourage others - like India - to follow suit.

The US can easily meet this goal IF there is cooperation from Congress. After this last election, that's a big if. Under President Obama, the Environmental Protection Agency had already mandated 30% cuts in carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants by 2030. But now, with both the House and Senate firmly in the hands of politicians who don't believe in climate change, there's a good chance those regulations - along with other environmental policies - will be weakened.

That could make it much harder to follow through on this agreement. Talk about embarrassing. 

Playing Cards

Roger Pielke, Jr. is a professor of environmental studies at CU-Boulder. He helped found the school's Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. He's also the author of several books and he's a particularly polarizing figure in the world of climate change.

ThinkProgress - a liberal-leaning political blog had this to say about him:

Roger Pielke, Jr. is the single most disputed and debunked person in the entire realm of people who publish regularly on disasters and climate change.

Foreign Policy Magazine included him in their list of controversial climate scientists:

For his work questioning certain graphs presented in IPCC reports, Pielke has been accused by some of being a climate change "denier." Meanwhile, for his work on adaptation, he has been accused by others of being an "alarmist."

Given the way people talk about him, I half-expected red, glowing eyes or a forked tongue when he came to speak at our weekly seminar. Neither proved true - he was a perfectly affable guy who had some pretty interesting things to say, starting with a great explanation of the difference between climate and weather. It's something that a lot of people don't understand, including me, and his example was one of the best I've heard, so I'm going to attempt to replicate it here:

Think of a regular deck of 52 playing cards, like one you'd use for a game of blackjack. 

Each possible hand - and there are a lot of them - represents a weather event. Sunny and 70. Cloudy with gusts of wind. Steady drizzle all day. 

A blackjack - that is a hand totaling 21 - is an extreme weather event, like a hurricane or a tornado. 

Together, all those weather events - that universe of all the possible hands that can be dealt - are equivalent to climate. 

With those standard 52 cards, the card players (scientists and, to a lesser degree, us) have a pretty good idea of how things are going to play out. The make-up of hands (the weather) may vary tremendously - you might get three great hands in a row and then go on a horrible losing streak - but overall, there's pretty good information on where you'll be after you play every hand possible.

So now let's say that something changes in the deck - the climate - and another card is added. That card represents a new element (i.e. increased greenhouse gases). But we don't know how the deck has been changed, so (unless we are VERY good card players) we're not going to see how that card alters the game for a long time. 

That's what's happening now. The deck has been altered but we still don't know what the implications will be in the long-term. It will take decades of data before we have that information - we can't just base it off of recent weather events. A few cold winters (i.e. bad hands) does not indicate an overall cooling trend.

And for another helpful explanation, check out this video from a Norwegian television series about taking a dog for a walk.

Ok, so now we have a better grasp of climate and weather (I think). 

Pielke also talked about extreme weather (which would be the equivalent of a 21 on blackjack), like hurricanes and tornadoes. Claims that these extreme weather events are due to climate change aren't backed up by the facts. Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show the power and frequency of hurricanes have actually declined by 20% since the early 1900s. You can't look at those numbers and draw the conclusion that climate change means stronger, more frequent hurricanes - the evidence just isn't there. We have to keep playing our card game to see what information comes out of it - more hurricanes? Fewer hurricanes? Drought? Sharknadoes? We'll have to watch how the game evolves.

Activists were none too pleased by Pielke's arguments - leading to claims like the ones above, calling him a denier. However, Pielke does believe climate change is happening and that humans are contributing to it. His argument is that using extreme weather events as a way to illustrate climate change is incorrect. There are far better ways to make this point, namely temperature, precipitation and sea level - all of which are measurements that we can take daily over long periods of time to see what the overall trends are and what we can expect going forward. But those aren't as exciting and they don't grab the public's attention in the same way. 

Activists, understandably, want people to take action now. Tying hurricanes and other extreme weather events to climate change provides a concrete way of saying, "Look how dangerous this all is - we need to do something!" But it seems like it's important to present the facts - to play with the hand they've been dealt, if you will. Otherwise, they risk losing the public's trust when their opponents can show they've been pushing bad information. And that will make it much harder to accomplish anything, now or in the future. 

Fire On The Mountain

The sun wasn't yet up and I was standing in a grassy field, next to a rickety row of white tents and plastic banquet tables stacked with sugary baked goods and cold Egg McMuffins. About 60 men (and a handful of women) in puffy jackets, cargo pants and bright yellow, flame-resistant shirts milled about, drinking coffee and trying to stay warm. Parked around us were about 20 trucks, four-wheel drive vehicles and fire engines, one of which had a giant map tacked to it.

Yesterday, I was at my very first prescribed burn and it was fantastic. I'll admit - the morning started off a little slow. "Be here for the 7am briefing," they said. It started at 8am and lasted 10 minutes. The burn didn't start until 10am - which left almost two hours to kill in the 38 degree, breezy morning air before seeing any action. But it was totally worth the wait.

A prescribed burn is a deliberate use of fire by the US Forest Service or other land management agencies (in this case, Boulder County) to improve forest health and reduce the amount of fuel that can otherwise contribute to an extreme wildfire event. 

This particular burn took place in one of Boulder County's Open Spaces - an area known as Heil Valley Ranch. It's north of Boulder, nestled into one of the many canyons along the Front Range as you drive along Highway 36. The ranch belonged to a family at one point but, as the owners have gotten older, they've sold off chunks of the property to the county, which now owns over 5000 acres. It's a gorgeous spot - the foothills are covered in grasses and ponderosa pines and if you look down the valley to the south, you can see Bear Peak rising above the Flatiron Mountains. 

A little bit of background here: for about a century, there was a general belief in the US that fires were a really bad idea. That led to a policy of complete fire suppression - basically, don't let anything burn and if it does catch fire, put it out ASAP. It was something of a misguided notion - we've since come to realize that fire is necessary to this landscape, just as important as rain. Fire's necessary to keep forests healthy, both for the trees and for the other plants and animals that live in this ecosystem and, in the end, regular smaller fires - coming every 20 years or so - can prevent huge, catastrophic fires from roaring through.

Unfortunately, we didn't really get that so, during that century of fire suppression, A LOT of trees grew. A lot a lot. On Heil Valley Ranch, there were as many as 3000 trees per acre. The healthy number is somewhere closer to 70 or 80 per acre. So you've got unhealthy forests that are absolutely choked with trees - forests that are more prone to disease, where other native species are crowded out and where, if a fire does start, it can quickly climb up into the tops of the trees - what's known as a crown fire - and get out of control. 

So, before the county could even think about doing a prescribed burn here, they had to get in there and start thinning out the trees. Cutting them down, spacing them out, removing dead and dying trees - trying to restore some semblance of what these forests would look like naturally. This is an incredibly labor-intensive process. Forest management teams have to get into the forest where there are no roads, cut down trees and haul that stuff out to places where it can be burned - much of this is done by hand. Ultimately, though, if it's done right, a fire here - whether prescribed or natural - will move more slowly, crawling along the ground and consuming grasses and seedlings and leaving mature, healthy trees behind.

Now - back to the burn. The county has prepped about 150 acres that they were hoping to burn over a three to five day period. They may not get it all done this year - doing a successful prescribed burn relies heavily on a wide variety of conditions - temperature, humidity, how much moisture is in the vegetation, wind, air quality. Everything has to be monitored very carefully and if one of these conditions changes, that can mean shutting the whole operation down, or only doing parts of it, leaving the rest for another year.

Yesterday morning was really cold and the wind was already kicking up a bit, making the burn bosses question whether the burn could even happen. But after running a test fire, conditions seemed favorable and they continued. Firefighters, using what are called drip torches (they contain a mix of diesel and gasoline - a less flammable, flammable mixture), incrementally lit grasses and scrub on fire. 

That fire spread and, if all looked like it was going ok, they took a few steps back and lit up some more fuel. The wind was at their backs, so the flames and smoke moved away from them toward the poor firefighters on the other side of the fire, who (aside from trying to avoid smoke inhalation) were watching closely to make sure no fire escaped or got out of control.

From where we media types were standing, we could only see smoke at first - big black plumes rising into the morning sky. Every now and then, you'd catch a glimpse of a bright orange, high-reaching flame. As the fire got closer, it was mesmerizing. Flames rapidly consumed grasses, stumps and and low-lying shrubs. They ran up the sides of healthy trees, burning off lower, dead branches and turning pine needles into spots of fluorescent orange before they curled into ash. What's cool is that these older trees are meant to withstand fire - their thick bark protects them, flaking off in places - and the fire would really only lick their outer edges before moving on to more combustible fuels.

And man, was it hot. From fifteen feet off, you could feel the heat - which was nice, given how cold I'd been all morning. From ten feet, I was wishing I didn't have so many layers on. At five feet, I could feel the skin on my face tightening and the moisture evaporating from my lips. I can only imagine how toasty it was for the people actually walking around in it, wearing heavy protective layers.

All in all, a pretty neat way to spend a morning and some good insight into how involved forest management is and how careful these guys are during this burn process. They'll be up there for several more days, burning more acreage and then making sure that everything is out once they've finished.