climate change

Western Solar Energy Plan update

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It’s past time for a follow-up to Sharon’s post on the BLM’s western solar plan.  The final plan was released at the end of August.   The BLM says it received 162 formal protests during that 30-day protest period that are being reviewed (but apparently won’t release the names of the parties, unlike the Forest Service objection process).

A number of conservation groups have protested the failure to protect the integrity of the Old Spanish National Historic Trail. Lynn County, Nevada, just southeast of Reno, is concerned the proposed plan will “result in fiscal impacts as it will be left to deal with speculative solar applications in inappropriate areas.”  Apparently, the Western Congressional Caucus doesn’t like it because it “risks taking lands offline for purposes other than solar use, limiting the potential for mining, grazing and public access.”  And, of course, enviros are unhappy, too.

According to the BLM,

“It would make over 31 million acres of public lands across 11 western states available for potential solar development, driving development closer to transmission lines or on previously disturbed lands and avoiding protected lands, sensitive cultural resources and important wildlife habitat.

Steering project proposals away from areas where they may conflict with other resources or uses will help ensure responsible development, speed the permitting process, and provide greater predictability to the solar energy industry.”

That sounds like good planning.  However, a scientist says that, instead, “It makes available to solar areas that are ecologically sensitive, areas that include sensitive species. It stands to significantly impact and alter ecosystems across the Great Basin and Mojave Desert.”  The federally threatened desert tortoise is a particular concern.

The Center for Biological Diversity would have opted for an alternative that prioritized already developed or degraded areas on public lands and rooftop solar on structures.  There seems to be some debate about whether it is necessary to essentially plow up the desert in order to install solar facilities.  But things may be different in Wyoming, where local conservationists see this as additional protection for big game habitat.

And then there’s some “sensitive cultural resources” that got missed.

There are also questions about how responsive the BLM will be to site-specific concerns that arise when more information is available for a proposed project.  We have an early example of that with the Rough Hat Clark Solar Project in Nevada.  According to E & E news, “The Bureau of Land Management is paving the way for a major solar power project to be built in a valley west of Las Vegas despite the objections of environmental groups that have petitioned the agency to protect the region.”

This is obviously a very large-scale planning effort, where it is not possible to identify more localized issues (though it seems like there was local knowledge that was provided by the public that might have been incorporated). The total acreage “available” is admittedly much greater than what is needed, so presumably further “unavailability” is expected and will be provided as future projects are considered.  As a Wyoming representative of the Wilderness Society put it, “The implementation is going to matter.”  A final decision is expected by the end of the year.

“Conserving and Restoring Terrestrial Wildlife Habitat Connectivity and Corridors in the United States”

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Center for Large Landscape Conservation

 

One of the hills I died on near the end of my Forest Service career was an attempt to get national forest planning to coordinate with future plans for adjacent ownerships to provide for wildlife habitat connectivity among them, including local government planning and land trust conservation easements.  I thought the Forest Service could play a leadership role in coordinating this.  The response I got was that anything to do with private lands was a “third rail” that they didn’t want to go near.  This sounds different.

On October 21, a Department of Agriculture memo announced “a Department-wide effort to support connectivity of wildlife habitat on working landscapes through the management of National Forests and voluntary conservation assistance on private agricultural lands.”  Specifically, a new Secretary’s Memorandum directs USDA agencies to:

  • Incorporate consideration of terrestrial wildlife habitat connectivity and corridors into relevant planning processes, programs, and assessments.
  • Improve the coordination, compatibility, and delivery of USDA planning processes and programs to improve outcomes for terrestrial wildlife connectivity.
  • Increase inter-jurisdictional coordination with states, tribes and other federal departments.
  • Coordinate within USDA to implement the actions outlined in this memo, with the goal of improved delivery of USDA programs and outcomes for terrestrial connectivity.

Needless to say, I like the recognition in the first bullet that planning, specifically recognized later to include “FS land management planning,” is important to a desired outcome that requires designing bridges connecting multiple owners; otherwise, the result may be bridges to nowhere or with missing spans.

The memo recognizes that “A recent revolution in animal tracking, remote sensing, and computational analysis is improving the prioritization of conservation and restoration actions.”  It also notes, “The agency’s 2012 planning rule, which governs land management planning across these lands, included requirements for evaluating, maintaining, or restoring connectivity” (my contribution to posterity).  The directive includes a specific proposal related to forest planning:

  • Improving planning through Forest Service analytic tools, including a Climate Risk Viewer that identifies climate change-driven risks to key resources, such as corridors and connectivity, as well as migration corridor tool development among the National Forest System, Research Stations, and partners.

Because “Federal lands often serve as anchor points for wildlife, but most of the country’s wildlife reside on private lands,” much of the emphasis may be on supporting private land conservation.  However, “this collaboration will build on the crucial connection between public lands and the private lands around them.”  (Or at least to the extent that a Secretary’s memo can accomplish anything.)

Dont’ miss Climate Week

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Not my specialty, but since there seems to be some interest in climate change here, I wanted to make sure we didn’t let this week pass us by.

Here are the statements of the Forest Service and Interior Department.  The Forest Service says:

“It is abundantly clear that our nation’s forests and grasslands have a big role to play in helping build a more climate-resilient nation but are also threatened by climate impacts. Our forests and grasslands need adaptive management solutions to foster resilience and sustain lasting ecological, economic and social benefits in a rapidly changing climate.

Climate change is threatening the Forest Service’s ability to fulfill its mission. Warming temperatures and changing precipitation patterns in the Western U.S. are already contributing to changes in wildland fire frequency, severity and size. In the East, changing climate conditions are contributing to more frequent and severe floods and droughts, changes in pests and diseases, and shifting habitat suitability for economically and culturally important tree species. These changes are expected to become more profound in the coming years.”

It goes on to talk about the various agency programs that address climate change.  USDI talks about specific projects funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law “to improve the nation’s natural infrastructure.”

“Projects selected will advance the three pillars of the Restoration and Resilience Framework: building climate resilience and addressing climate change impacts; restoring healthy lands and waters; and enhancing communities’ quality of life.”

Both notably focus on adaptation rather than mitigation through emphasis on renewable energy.

 

Humility, Misinformation and Climate Discourse

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Matt Burgess, a prof at CU in Boulder,  wrote a guest post on Lee Jussim’s Unsafe Science Substack that might be of interest. You also might be interested in Matt’s “How polarization will destroy itself”

The title is “Both sides should separate misinformation from reasoned debate about climate change policy.” His bottom line is:

Stick to Facts

Progressives turn people off by dismissing reasoned criticism of climate policies as “denial” or “fossil-fuel misinformation”. Conservatives make it too easy to dismiss their reasoned criticisms of climate policies as climate change denial, when they also amplify actual climate change denial uncritically.  Both sides would have the best chance of persuading people if they rigorously seek out and then stick to the facts, and jettison both pseudoscience and ad-hominem attacks.1

I think that many “facts” are in more dispute than Matt does, but that’s not necessarily a problem. We don’t seem to have difficulties discussing the nuances here at TSW.

My favorite part was this footnote:

Lee here. While I generally endorse Matt’s emphasis on sticking to facts and avoiding ad hominem, this final sentence is actually an empirical question. Do facts persuade people more than ad hominem attacks? I do not know. Also, persuade people of what? There is the truth of the claim, the integrity and decency of the claimant versus accuser, trust and credibility afforded to academia and experts, and more. The effectiveness of ad hominem for persuading people of different things might itself vary depending on the outcome. Secondarily, avoiding pseudoscience and misinformation is not that easy. Although some things are clearly pseudoscience (e.g., astrology) and others science (e.g., astronomy), there is no hard, clear line between pseudoscience and science, and misinformation is little more than being wrong — and people are wildly overconfident about wrong beliefs all the time. Avoiding misinformation in science and politics often means doing a deep dive into source credibility, references, and alternative sources or reporting, and most of us don’t usually have time for all that. And if you don’t, you really are in no position to stick to the facts because you do not have them, in which case, the best approach may be epistemic humility — avoiding making strong claims altogether when you really have neither the expertise nor have done the deep dive necessary to do so.

I’d only add that when you do have the expertise, and have done the deep dive, you can still be humble.  It’s really easy to be humble when you’ve worked in many places and seen many things, including the unpredicted and unpredictable.

Zeke Lunder on the Shelly Fire and Carbon Credits

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Zeke Lunder had an interesting series of tweets on the Shelly Fire about one of our favorite topics, carbon credits, dry forests, and dead trees.

I couldn’t help but think “don’t some groups effectively believe the same thing?” Leaving trees alone gives you most carbon benefits, assuming away the whole wildfire/dead tree problem in dry forests. Isn’t the concept the same? Not allowing tree cutting in overstocked dry forests does not actually help with carbon,  it can lead to more intense and destructive wildfire behavior, and impact the use of beneficial fire in neighboring forests.  The concept is “leaving trees alone is always good for carbon” and the mechanisms are federal MOG policy and the carbon credit markets.  It seems to me if the concept is wrong, it doesn’t matter what the mechanism is. Except, yes, more people make money via carbon credits, monitoring and accounting.

For example, from the Sierra Club:

BREAKING: Today, President Biden announced a plan to protect old-growth forests across the country
The Biden admin released a plan to protect old-growth forests. This is essential for achieving permanent protection, but we must do more.

Anyway, back to Zeke’s thread, I excerpted enough to give you a taste, but reading his whole thread is best.

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This looks good on paper. But promising to ‘further enhanc(e) conservation values and climate resilience for all who inhabit and visit this vast landscape’ while adopting a forest management strategy which aims to maximize the amount of carbon (fuel) on the site seems absurd. 5/xImage
Much of the landscape in the 40,000 acres recently placed into conservation easements here has not burned for 70 years or more, and as a result is covered with extremely over-stocked, sick forests. Yet carbon pirates like EFMI hawk them as ‘Undervalued Carbon Assets’. 6/xefmi.com/why-invest/

Conservation groups, carbon bankers, and industrial timberland owners all face an existential challenge: How can you maintain conifer forests in fire-prone landscapes without re-introducing mixed-severity fire at scale? (You can’t). Map shows fire history adjacent to EFM lands. 7/xImage
You can’t sell dry forests as a ‘tool to decarbonize infestment portfolios’ unless you are willing to do the work of making them fire resilient again. Any many of us who work in the woods are not sure this is even possible at this point. #YourCarbonIsGettingSmoked 8/x Image
The presence of overstocked private timberlands on the margins of the backcountry ends out being a huge obstacle to letting beneficial lightning fires burn out there. The impacts of the carbon nerds’ shenanigans extends well beyond the boundaries of their (stolen) lands. 9/x

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Pinyon Plain Uranium Mine on the Kaibab

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A uranium ore pile is the first to be mined at the Energy Fuels Inc. uranium Pinyon Plain Mine Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024, near Tusayan, Ariz. The mine began operation in January in the heart of northern Arizona after decades of regulatory battles. | Ross D. Franklin, Associated Press

For those of you not following the energy-climate biz, the fact that tech folks want to do bigtime AI means that they are thinking they need nuclear.  Our Northern Virginia TSW folks can attest to the growth of data centers. And many folks think that depending on other countries for supply is suboptimal.   So here’s an op-ed by a fellow who visited such a mine on the Kaibab National Forest.  I was surprised by the 17 acre footprint.  There’s no doubt that the footprint of nuclear is smaller than wind and solar, plus new transmission also happening on federal lands. Meanwhile, the Admin is “protecting” more land from energy development of all kinds. I think energy needs a cohesive strategy..

Uranium mines, which provide the fuel for nuclear power, were plentiful in the American Southwest until the late 20th century. Once most American uranium mines closed due to heavy regulation, we began exporting uranium mining and production to Russia and Kazakhstan, among other countries with lower environmental standards.

But recently, Congress passed a bipartisan bill banning Russian uranium imports — which is good news for those who want to expand uranium mining in the U.S. at sites such as the Pinyon Plain Mine, which began operation in January in Arizona after decades of regulatory battles. The mine’s ore is processed at the White Mesa Mill in Blanding, Utah.

Unfortunately, Pinyon Plain is still battling environmental groups that have substantially delayed projects like these through intense litigation. They’ve claimed the mine is too close to the Grand Canyon and that it poses serious threats to the people and environment nearby. They are pressuring Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs to close the mine even though Hobbs has called it “probably the most regulated mine in the entire country.”

We discussed Energy Fuels in this post.  The Grand Canyon Trust folks are not fans of uranium mining nor the White Mesa Mill’s recycling or waste disposal (depending on your point of view) efforts. From this story:

For years, the Energy Fuels White Mesa Mill in Blanding was the only operating uranium mill in the United States. Last week, the company announced it has commenced production at the facility and at two other locations in Utah and/or Arizona. Energy Fuels is also preparing two mines in Colorado and Wyoming to begin uranium production within one year. The company stated it has commenced production due to increased prices, supportive government policies from the Biden Administration, and an enhanced interest in securing domestic supply.

And

Irina Tsukerman, a member of the American Bar Association, Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources (SEER), said she believes domestic interest in uranium mining may now have bipartisan support due to increased trust in our country’s ability to regulate the industry and ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

“Utah is one of the few states that harbors most of the uranium in the US,” she said. “It aligns with the goals of both parties: environmental concerns, energy independence, and support for United States security… It simply works, and when something simply works there won’t be much room for political bickering.”

Maybe not, but I think there will be plenty of room for litigation, as always ;).

Anyway, back to the op-ed.

Driving up to the mine on a warm June afternoon, I was struck by what a small area the mine occupies. The mine sits in a natural clearing of trees in the Kaibab National Forest, occupying a 17-acre plot of land. I wondered how this blip on a map could hold enough energy to power the state of Arizona for a full year with carbon-free energy, as the mine’s owner, Energy Fuels, claims.

After a safety briefing, two of the 35 miners who work at Pinyon Plain accompanied me on an elevator descending 1,400 feet below the surface. (That’s roughly equivalent to the height of the Empire State Building.) Once underground, I saw how information about the mine shared by some environmental groups was wildly exaggerated or, in some cases, flat-out wrong. What I saw was an operation that had countless measures in place to protect the safety of those working there and to prevent harm to the surrounding environment.

Underground, I spoke with many of the miners, who were immensely proud to provide clean energy for the country and ensure its production in and for America. I learned the truth about uranium’s radioactivity: that a lifelong uranium miner is exposed to less radiation than an airline pilot, and I even held uranium in my hand. I saw how the mine’s natural geological protections have been supplemented with carefully crafted technological systems to prevent any opportunity for water contamination.

But most of all, I was struck by how small-scale an operation it was, especially when compared to the immense size of the Grand Canyon, which itself is a 40-minute drive from the mine.

Enough protection for the environment and worker safety? I don’t know. I don’t think Benji Backer (the author) knows.  Grand Canyon Trust folks don’t want it to exist, so they may know but will always tell us that it’s not enough.  I guess we have to depend on the regulators, both the state and feds, and unions.

Weekend Reading: Three Climate Attribution and Impacts Posts

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For those of us with a long weekend and possibly more time for reading, here are three thoughtful pieces by knowledgeable climate folks.

My personal opinion is that I believe something is going on climate-wise, affected by greenhouse gases, irrigation, changes in surface reflection, and many other things humans do or don’t do (and likely some we are not currently aware of).  I also think that a mix of folks with good intentions and grifters of all kinds have jumped on the climate bandwagon, with varying end results in mind.  And I think that better understanding of the various elements of science and practice around mitigation and adaptation (more light and less heat) will ultimately make our world better, as we jointly confront whatever lies ahead.  And I wonder about the tendency for solutions in this space to become both top-down, and stick-y rather that carrot-y.  This does not build trust IMHO.

1) Ricardo Simonds on his direct experience of the Brazilian flood disaster.  Here are a few tables of interest.. also look for his Katherine Hepburn vs. Walter Brennan analogy, probably particularly meaningful to those of a certain age..

As I wrote,

The cast of characters in a disaster is well established, comprised of components and their associated drivers. Any natural disaster is comprised of three components: the hazard, exposure and vulnerability. Each component in turn is affected, or motivated, by drivers.

I recently posted about flooding in Brazil in May, 2024, that left almost 600,000 people displaced, 77,000 rescued, 800 injured and 169 dead (see official data here). It’s a terrible tragedy that has mobilized the nation.

If the Brazilian landslides were a movie and the disasters causes were personified by actors, the Oscars would nominate best actresses and supporting actors. While the media and science activism overwhelmingly promote climate change at the lead actress in every single weather disaster, many times the lead actor is vulnerability or exposure.

The media always tells you climate change is Katherine “Climate” Hepburn (most lead actress Oscars of all time) when climate is often Walter Brennan (most supporting actor Oscars of all time). Never heard of Brennan? That’s my point.

Here’s a few of the many interesting tables in his post-  for those of you who don’t follow this stuff, Swiss Re is a reinsurance group (insures insurers), and is one of the world’s largest. SCS are “severe convective storms”:

If you’re interested in talking with friends over the weekend about trends and attribution, Ricardo posted this Table 12.12 on page 1856 Chapter 12 of IPPC AR6.  Because Ricardo’s post is about landslides, he circled those, but the whole table is interesting.

 

The whole piece is worth a read for sure.  Let me know if there’s a paywall, I’m a subscriber to his Substack.

 

2) Roger Pielke, Jr. is starting a series on extreme events and climate change, which looks to be interesting, including the discussion.

It is now a ubiquitous cultural ritual to blame any and every weather event on climate change. Those hot days? Climate change. That hurricane? Climate change. The flood somewhere that I saw on social media? Climate change.

As he goes through, he wants folks to get more specific and meaningful.  What the stories mean is that “increasing GHGs in the atmosphere have made this event more likely”; but Roger starts back with IPCC definitions.  Maybe it seems like a trivial detail, but short hands for complicated concepts can be misleading.

Climate refers to a “statistical description”1 of the climate system, defined as:

The global system consisting of five major components: the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the lithosphere and the biosphere and the interactions between them. The climate system changes in time under the influence of its own internal dynamics and because of external forcings such as volcanic eruptions, solar variations, orbital forcing, and anthropogenic forcings such as the changing composition of the atmosphere and land-use change.

The climate system. Source: NRC 2005. HT Pielke Sr. Note that the sun, volcanoes, human activities are all defined to be outside the climate system.

The climate system is complicated, but at a high level, we can get our brain around it (above). There is a deeper discussion to be had about why the climate research community decided that people are not included as part of the “climate system,” but let’s leave that for another day.2

Looking forward to that one.

As to detection, he has an interesting thought experiment.

Also, “deck change” cannot be used to attribute the cause of receiving an ace in a single hand. If you know that you have a stacked deck with one additional ace, then you can say with certainty that the odds of receiving at least one ace in your next hand increased from 14.8% to 15.3%.

Did that increase of 0.5% increase cause the ace to appear in your most recent hand?

After 329 hands, you can be 90% confident that the greater number of aces that you received over those hands than you would have expected from an unstacked deck are due to the addition of the extra ace.

A final point for today — The thought experiment described today is a pure statistical example. Dealing two cards from a deck does not remotely describe how weather occurs on planet Earth.

Weather can be characterized statistically, but weather does not occur as a result of simple statistical processes.8 Weather is the the integrated result of at least: dynamical, thermodynamical, chaotic, societal, biospheric, cryospheric, lithospheric, oceanic, vulcanological, solar, and, yes, stochastic processes.

 

3) Patrick Brown tries to clarify language about climate change impacts  in this post .

When the IPCC says “decreasing,” (sometimes) they mean in comparison to what otherwise they would have modeled to occur (and given how complex human/agricultural/environmental interactions are,  I would take such models with several grains of salt), not (as we might commonly use the term) decreased from the past.   Decreasing crop yields compared to the past (observable decreases in something measured regularly on this planet) are very different in real life than overall increases with the increase smaller than what might have been without  (modeled) climate change. Now, I am not against the use of models, but they are not the same thing as observations.

This seems like a very important point. Here’s a piece of his post.

Take, for example, the statement, “Climate change is decreasing crop yields.” This could mean that we are seeing crop yields decrease over time, and this trend is being driven by climate change (left side), or it could mean that crop yields are increasing over time, but they would have been increasing faster if the climate wasn’t changing (right side).

So, which is it? For crop yields, the situation is much more like the right side than the left side. However, the IPCC repeatedly states in its reports that climate change is “decreasing” crop yields, misleadingly conveying the message that the situation is more like the left side.

Climate change impacts on agriculture have been calculated to make up the largest negative societal impact of climate change as quantified in the social cost of carbon, while heat impacts on mortality represent the second largest. So, how does the IPCC report on mortality associated with heat? In its technical summary (B.5.3), the IPCC reports that,

“Increasing temperatures and heatwaves have increased mortality and morbidity (very high confidence).”

Most readers will interpret this to mean that heat deaths are increasing relative to the past (they will infer a direction of trend). But only those who read the technical chapters will understand that only a direction of impact is being reported because there you will read that heat deaths are decreasing over time:

“Heat-attributable mortality fractions have declined over time in most countries owing to general improvements in health care systems, increasing prevalence of residential air conditioning, and behavioural changes. These factors, which determine the susceptibility of the population to heat, have predominated over the influence of temperature change.”

This type of conflation is ubiquitous in climate change impact reporting. In addition to crop yields and heat mortality, I have previously drawn attention to this issue in the context of global wildfire, emissions, hunger, and climate-sensitive diseases like malaria.

What Patrick doesn’t mention in this post is that people who deal with observations (like many of us) tend to read something like “climate is decreasing crop yields” and look around and see that in the meaning of “decreased from the past” it doesn’t appear to be true.   Without digging into the technical chapters, we’ll just think “they don’t know what they’re talking about.”  For myself, I have this crazy idea that we should try as much as we can for people observing the real world, and the people modeling it, to try to get on the same page.  What a simple clause to add, “decreased from where it would be modeled to be without climate change.”

 

How are Climate and Finance Interrelated and How Should They Be: Research Institutions and Insurance Markets

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I’ll propose Friedman’s law: The further people are from a location where a problem occurs, the less likely they are to understand it, and to view the problem through the lens of their own values, needs and philosophies- which may further their own goals, but not actually solve the initial problem.

I’ve also noticed a general tendency for forest policy to become more overrun by people and disciplines from outside our traditional communities.  I try to welcome these new folks with grace.  They bring interesting and novel ideas, energy, enthusiasm and sometimes lots of political pull and funding to get things done.  I’m concerned, though,  that our world of trees and people is becoming more abstract, controlled non-locally, and financialized (since, say, Hayfork doesn’t have a big presence in the financial sector, the latter two tend to go together).  Just yesterday I was on a phone call with some folks who thought that current investments in federal lands were not going to be “enough” and we need to have “durable financial mechanisms” to support federal land management, possibly including using federal lands for offsets.   Like I said, they might be right.  But I think we should be able to engage with local people, elected officials and practitioners and before the policy ideas become hardened.  That is,  groups go to their buds in Congress, who happen to be partisan, so when local people respond negatively (especially those who are of the Other Party), political lines are drawn and defended when they don’t need to be.  Perhaps we need more mechanisms to encourage discussions between these different communities.. local people and and practitioners, traditional forest users, interest groups and scientists,  and the new philanthropy, political and academic folks, earlier in discussions of policy options.

Anyway, today I have two stories that focus on financialization and climate, and how that affects, in turn,  research priorities and insurance rates.

Forest Science is Too Focused on Climate and Climate Finance; Nature Editorial

What’s interesting about this Nature open source editorial is how it internationalizes our own field of forest policy.

It has a pretty weird headline, though, “forestry social science is failing the needs of people who need it most”: way to blame the victim, Nature!  No, big scientific institutions are more interested in climate modeling than in solving today’s problems.  They allow scientists to prioritize, design, and fund and publish research without feedback from people.  But a full scale redesign of research governance is not what Nature has in mind..

The review is far from the first to highlight that research that should aim to benefit all stakeholders instead focuses on areas that are priorities for the governments of high-income countries. This is an important and timely reminder. It should not be difficult for the researchers involved in the world’s largest scientific networks — the IPCC for climate and IPBES for biodiversity — to create a shared agenda for the study of forests that extends beyond climate change and climate finance. And, given the need for such action, funders should respond positively to such a proposal.

Earth’s forests have the potential to benefit people everywhere. Researchers, policymakers and funders must ensure that everyone’s needs are taken into account.

There are actually plenty of forest social scientists around, though they are chronically underfunded, at least in the US.  There’s a difference between the people at IPCC and IPBES “aiming” to benefit all stakeholders and developing an agenda with stakeholders.  But perhaps the questions and solutions would then be local,  and not international.  Anyway, it’s fascinating to think about how over time the ideas of “climate” and “biodiversity” have changed the locus of inquiry (to international), changed who counts as experts and which disciplines, what questions are asked and what data is used (satellites) and so on.  Meanwhile, I hope social scientists are studying the non-powerline sources of wildfire ignitions  with the idea of understanding and reducing them.  So much more valuable than studies like “impacts of climate change in 2070 on beer production.”

Who’s Running and Supporting the Climate Insurance Scam?

Some of us simple people wonder what all the recent wildfire-but-not-really insurance drama is about.  Yes, climate change can increase risks.  But is there any reason to think that these increases won’t be gradual such that past pay-out history will gradually change, and insurers can still use history to set rates? Not to speak of the fact that for wildfires, the USG and philanthropists are spending zillions on the technology of detection and response, which will conceivably have some kind of effect.

And in my hood, hail is bigger than other risks to home and auto owners, and so far there isn’t a climate signal to hail.  So the stories don’t seem to add up.  I’ve found in my experience, that when claims are made that don’t seem to parse out logically, that there is usually politics of some kind involved, and too many efforts to understand might make you unpopular in certain quarters.

Anyway, there’s a professor named Jessica Weinkle who works at the coastal end of the climate/insurance drama biz, and she often has insights that are applicable to wildfire insurance, the bogus maps,  and all that.  The financial part of her analysis in this Breakthrough Substack article is over my head, but somehow I am not trusting of the financial industry.  Perhaps all the vitriol directed at the oil and gas industry is a magician’s trick to divert us from looking at what the financial folks are up to.  Like most folks, I use oil and gas products daily, and they are important for, among other things, fire suppression; but derivatives could go away tomorrow and I wouldn’t miss them.

Here’s an excerpt:

Last fall, Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, and Ron Wyden (D-OR), who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, announced an investigation into the ways in which insurance companies are managing “mounting risks from climate change.”

The senators foresaw climate change leading to a systemic financial crisis as rising insurance costs put heavy pressure on the mortgage market. “A widescale decline in coastal and wildland-urban interface (WUI) community property values would present a systemic risk to the U.S. economy,” they noted, “similar to what occurred in the 2007-2008 mortgage meltdown.”

The senators’ evidence for this looming catastrophe?

Insurers’ own climate change risk models.

Whitehouse and Wyden’s insurance investigations come after a series of hearings last summer that kicked off with a familiar character: Carney, along with Robert Litterman, a former asset manager and member of government advisory groups on climate related financial risk. Both argued that climate change is causing increasing frequency and intensity of weather extremes and losses creating risks to financial stability. Both argued for managing emission to control losses. For his part, Litterman, referenced his work as chairman for the development of a report of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on managing climate risk. The report, of course, made ample use of Bloomberg funded modeling projects.

In a later interview about the investigation, Whitehouse zeroed in on climate risk and financial risk. “There’s a core underlying reason for the insurance problems that Florida’s experiencing right now and for the risks it faces,” Whitehouse said. “And that is the persistent failure to deal with the problem of climate change.”

This is wrong. The underlying problem is the failure of policymakers to inspire a critical debate about urban development and risk mitigation—and about the misguided investor risk perceptions that may be inflating insurance costs.

Food for thought.

The Importance of Open Disagreement to Science, and Why Mean Tweeters Like Mann are Missing in Forest Science

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The Mann trial was supposed to be  part of Roundup #2, but as you can see below, I got a bit carried away.

I read an op-ed this week by Loolwa Khazzoom, who said:

We are all pieces of a highly complex puzzle. When we listen instead of project, discuss instead of argue, and have a goal of learning instead of winning – approaching dialogue with an attitude of curiosity and discovery – we can benefit from the unique life experience and thought process that we each bring to the table.

Which is my belief as well. Otherwise I wouldn’t spend so much time on The Smokey Wire and similar efforts. Also this week, I followed along on the highly entertaining podcast Climate Change on Trial presented by the Unreported Story Society. I think it’s safe to say that Michael Mann, the climate scientist and plaintiff in the defamation lawsuit against two bloggers, Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg, would not agree with that statement on the utility of listening and “approaching dialogue with an attitude of curiosity and discovery.”

At first, I thought the trial was a bit ridiculous. As if what two random bloggers wrote could actually defame Mann any more than a cursory examination of his Twitter feed, and that that would effect his financial remuneration in terms of research grants. Were they kidding? Then it turned out that this defamation biz had been going on for 12 years (!), and no one knows who is paying Mann’s court fees. My view is that in a just world, the jury would have awarded the past 12 years of legal fees to Steyn and Simberg. Of course, as a random blogger myself, maybe I’m being too sensitive. But it was OK, I guess, because according to the Hill, these guys are “right-wing” bloggers and I’m not.

So, at first, I was glad that scientists in our forest fields generally don’t behave that way. And I wondered if a podcast on some of our fuels treatment court cases with key parts being reenacted would be as entertaining. But as we delved into the Mann Tweets and emails, I wondered “how could that level of meanness be tolerated?” and “why was it OK for him to do what most of us would never consider doing?,” and “whose job is it to keep our convos civil, if anyone?”

The story of how all this developed was fascinating, at least to me. For those of you who don’t know, Mann was famous for the hockey stick graph, splicing together various measures of past temperatures including our very own tree rings. When someone asked for the data, he was unwilling to part with it, at least at the beginning. He clearly wasn’t a fan of FOIA either, forwarding a message to others to delete emails. The release of the Climategate emails was not a good moment for him.  If you were to ask him, I’m sure that he saw these as efforts to impugn climate science, and (thus, naturally, to him) he became combative in its (his own) defense.  It became a “good guys vs. bad guys” thing, with him, naturally, on the self-defined “good guys” side.

At the same time, you or I could also say that science should stand up to independent scrutiny, and that if someone wants the original data, they should be able to access it. I don’t think that that would be a big problem in forest science world. So what happened here? Perhaps Mann felt that the stakes were so high, it makes usual scientific practices and conduct obsolete. Some of us might say that that correlates at .99 with his self-interest, so.. But on the other hand, billions of dollar have been spent on climate science and Mann is just one of millions of climate scientists around the world, so the hockey stick is not all that important at the end of the day. But that’s today, and perhaps not when the posts were posted.

I started to think “what went wrong here?” and “are there lessons for us in less-favored and financed disciplines to learn?” Many of us belong to scientific and professional societies, universities and agencies, with codes of conduct that incorporate ideas like collegiality and respectful communications.

Dr. Curry (she of Mann’s so-called “slept her way to the top” email to Gavin Schmidt at NASA) drafted a complaint which she never sent:

“This defamation is affecting my academic reputation and my ability to conduct business. I note that I am far from the only person being attacked and libeled by Dr. Mann.
Penn State Policy AD47 (General Standards of Professional Ethics) states that professors have obligations as members of the “community of scholars” and are required to “respect and defend” free inquiry by other members of the community and to show “due respect” for the opinions of others:

IV.As colleagues, professors have obligations that derive from common membership in the community of scholars. They respect and defend the free inquiry of their associates. In the exchange of criticism and ideas they show due respect for the opinions of others.

“The policy also states that researchers are required to be “open-minded when evaluating the work of others” even if that may “contradict their own findings”:

III…. As open-minded researchers, when evaluating the work of others, they must recognize the responsibility to allow publication of theories or experiments that may contradict their own findings, as only by free inquiry and dissemination of all facts will the fruits of the labor of the whole community be allowed to mature.

Policy HR64 says (my bold) that faculty members have “special obligations” as persons of learning and as educators and are obliged to “exercise appropriate restraint” and “to show
respect for the opinions of others” Faculty members are citizens, members of learned professions, and representatives of this University. When the faculty member speaks or writes as a citizen, the faculty member shall be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but the special position in the community held by the faculty member imposes special obligations. As a person of learning and an educator, the faculty member is expected to remember that the public may judge the profession and institution by his/her utterances. Hence, the faculty member agrees at all times to be accurate, to exercise appropriate restraint, to show respect for the opinions of others, and to make every effort to indicate that he/she is not an institutional spokesperson.”

Curry didn’t send it to Penn State because, as she says in her post .

“after all, the damage to my career was already done and I wasn’t clear where this would lead or whether it would have any effect.”

I wonder how Mann could have acted against these rules for so long with no one calling him on it.  I wonder if the folks he emailed (work emails) ever said, “hey, I’m not interested in gossip about our colleagues’ sex lives”,” or “maybe you should tone it down on  Twitter” or “I’m not sure we should try to evade FOIAs and delete emails.” From the court records, it sounded like a few people did.  If more had done so, could this all have turned out differently?

And how did he get awards from prestigious organizations for “science communication?” Was anyone reading his Tweets?

“I am truly humbled to receive the Stephen Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communications,” said Mann. “While none of us can fill the very large shoes Steve left behind, we can honor his legacy by doing our best to inform the public discourse over human-caused climate change in an objective, clear and effective manner.”

I don’t blame Mann for all of this.   People don’t always behave well when left to their own devices. This is a fact of human nature. That is why we have laws, law enforcement, codes of conduct and enforcement protocols.  It is the role of institutions to enforce their own rules.  And yet they apparently are not, at least in certain cases.

***********

Having listened to the podcast of the case, I was amused by this NPR story:

In a D.C. courtroom, a trial is wrapping up this week with big stakes for climate science. One of the world’s most prominent climate scientists is suing a right-wing author and a policy analyst for defamation.

The case comes at a time when attacks on scientists are proliferating, says Peter Hotez, professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology at Baylor College of Medicine. Even as misinformation about scientists and their work keeps growing, Hotez says scientists haven’t yet found a good way to respond.

“The reason we’re sort of fumbling at this is it’s unprecedented. And there is no roadmap,” he says.

**********

Imran Ahmed, chief executive at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, says any response has to include social media companies, as that’s where attacks on scientists happen every day. Research finds that social media platforms can encourage the spread of scientific and medical misinformation.

Hotez says he and Mann are working on an upcoming project, collaborating on what they see as overlap in attacks on climate science and biomedicine and how to counter it.

Was NPR even in the room? I guess you don’t have to actually observe things when you can just ask your friends what they think.

With all due respect to Hotez and Mann, having discussions and disagreeing is what science is about in the pursuit of truth; actually even outside of “science,” as in Khazzoom’s quote at the top of this post.  Characterizing people who disagree as “attackers” with “disinformation” who need to be throttled down is bad for discourse, bad for the public trust (yes, that public, the ones who vote for research budgets) and bad for science.  I’m curious as to why, of all the disciplines and subdisciplines in science and engineering, only these two fields (climate and Covid) seem to have this problem highlighted? Perhaps they have bought into a form of politics-science mutualism.  In the same way that a phone call changed the views of the virologists and led to the Proximal Origins paper on Covid origins, in the Mann case a discussion with the President of Penn State led the inquiry team to change its findings on censuring Mann.  Where disciplinary self-interest, institutional self-protection and larger world politics meet.. is probably not a good place for the rest of us, nor for any truth to come out.  And it’s definitely not “science.”

Aren’t we fortunate that we don’t have these issues in forest science? Do we manage it better, are the stakes so low no one cares for high quasi-political drama, or are we just lucky as to the character of our scientists? What do you think?

Energy News II: LNG Exports and Met Co-location of Renewables Idea

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LNG Exports

I guess the big news is the Admin’s LNG export infrastructure pause. I think the Admin’s reasoning was climate-related, or at least related to desires of certain climate activist types.  The Admin claimed that the analysis was out of date. Which I think is true, since there has been a war in Ukraine and hopeful a general reduction in Russian LNG exports to them.  Except that those need to be replaced by someone or something.  In the absence of our contribution, would that mean that worldwide supply would go down, which means Russia could make more money.. and our European allies trust us less.  This is all pretty obvious, but what I hadn’t heard in most of the coverage was that if exports are cut off, then it’s a boon to our own domestic gas prices (so will we use more?), and a boon to chemical industries who will make more profits (and produce more? with environmental implications?).  Thanks to Doomberg for that additional information.  Who knows? This seems to me like silly season fire hose flailing to get support from certain quarters (the Bill McKibben/John Podesta/random activists nexus), seemingly more of a political symbolic gesture than actually reducing emissions.  And yet.. wars use a great deal of carbon, so wouldn’t we want to starve Russia of profits?

I guess there are two questions in my mind: 1) will restricting exports have any net impacts on carbon emissions?  2) will restricting exports actually cause more carbon to be emitted due to the actions of other countries? (e.g. continuing to fund war, firing up coal plants)?

The industry association Eurogas was quick to condemn the move:

“Europe is committed to phase out its dependency on Russian gas in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and has tied this shift to its 2050 climate goals. In achieving both, imports of US LNG have increased by both volume and importance, and have helped to stabilise gas and electricity prices for European consumers. However, current volumes of LNG coming from the US still leave a supply gap, for which we must continue to increase imports, rather than scale them back, as has been put forward by some interests in the US’ governing institutions.

If additional US LNG export capacities don’t materialise it would risk increasing and prolonging the global supply imbalance. This would inevitably prolong the period of price volatility in Europe and could lead to price increases with the consequent implications that would have for economic turmoil and social impact.”

Now if Europe has economic and social turmoil, it’s possible that they might elect folks who don’t care about energy transitions that much and reduce efforts.. so there’s another potential impact.

So glad, I’m not involved in any EIS’s for these…it’s not clear to me what’s “reasonably foreseeable”.

Musician Has Federal Lands Co-Location Idea

Interesting idea of musician Met: Co-locating O&G and renewables on federal land. 

The idea began a little over two years ago with researchers at Planet Reimagined, a climate-focused nonprofit co-founded by Met. He said they mapped the federally leased oil-and-gas land and then worked with someone from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to determine the photovoltaic potential and the annual wind speeds on those leases. “There’s so much opportunity,” Met said.

New renewable generation can be built more quickly and cheaply on these sites, Met said. For instance, wind and solar applications could reuse the environmental site data collected for the original oil-and-gas project’s approval, cutting years off the environmental assessment process, he said. Sites often already have infrastructure including roads and power grid connections, reducing building costs and time.

Co-locating also avoids adding to the competition for land between conservation, agriculture, renewables, industry and other uses. It can also help transition the business of small, mom-and-pop oil-and-gas producers, their communities and their workers. Independent operators with a median of 12 employees produced 83% of U.S. oil and 90% of its gas in 2019, according to the latest data available from the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

Now I don’t remember seeing electric lines to O&G rigs and production equipment out on federal land, which seems like it could be a problem.  So I asked a person online who is familiar with the industry (and if TSW readers know more, please help out.)

The great majority of Federal O&G leases are in remote areas and most are probably are not connected to the grid. The drilling rigs have their own electric generation equipment, which moves on with the rig after the well is drilled. Most production equipment do not require electric service. However some centralized facilities serve multiple wellsites, and those sites generally source their electrical need from small onsite generators, or if they happen to be near a municipal infrastructure, they will connect to local utility lines. In many cases, production equipment can operate on a small amount of electricity produced by a small solar panel with battery backup. The point being, not much electricity is required for the average operating site.

It seems like it might be a good idea, but we run into the need for those pesky and expensive transmission lines again.  Perhaps building them along existing roads would not be so bad.  Anyway, it’s a novel and interesting  idea from an unusual source.