Climate

Klamath

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Until about a year ago, the valley above used to be called Iron Gate Lake. But the dam (far right) was removed to restore salmon to this stretch of the Klamath River in northern California. Four dams have been removed recently, and in May the local tribes began their traditional calls for the salmon to return. I believe the valley will now revert to its traditional name K’účasčas (or Fall Creek).

The Klamath is an important waterway, and there’s long been battles over its use. Above and below Klamath Falls in Oregon there are wildlife refuges for birds, but maybe 75% of the wetlands were lost when the water was diverted for agriculture. When traveling around Lava Beds and Tule Lake my car choked on clouds of locusts, and I saw few birds as the lower refuge was virtually dry.

Dams don’t increase the amount of water at all, but they do control when it is released and how it’s used. Besides the diversion of water into farms and factories, dams obviously block salmon, and the lowest remaining dam (near the CA-OR border) has a fish ladder that the salmon are unable to climb. Another problem the dams cause is warming the water in artificial lakes, which increases algae and disrupts the salmon’s cool water lifecycle.

Removing the dams is a step in the right direction, but the huge Klamath watershed still has a significant number of dams. The Klamath tributaries include the Salmon, Shasta and Trinity rivers and many creeks, with various artificial lakes. Logging and mining have also diminished the salmon, but I was able to find a delicious local steelhead fillet in Trinidad Head about an hour south of the mouth of the Klamath.

The even more serious and growing problem is wildfires. This year I drove along the Klamath through the forests to the sea. Much of the trip traveled through badly burned forests. The forests were noticeably healthier in tribal lands, where there is greater diversity of tree species due to less logging. In the middle of the trip, I saw the sign below in Happy Camp California on the banks of the Klamath, but surveying the damage, I was not a happy camper. The climate crisis is already devastating our public lands, despite all our efforts to protect them. We must stop burning so much carbon.

August Climate Issue

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Our carbon-polluted climate is warming at unprecedented speed as we recklessly burn more carbon, supposedly for our convenience. But we foolishly ignore the many costs, including border security, air pollution, flooding, infrastructure, mental health, rising seas, and food security. August recognizes both National Wellness and Immunization Month, so let’s consider how climate change affects the spread of disease.

Higher temperatures cause droughts which force some animals to try to move into our communities to survive. Bats and rats are in more frequent contact with humans in part due to climate change, and some of them carry diseases like Covid. Also, the decline of certain species in the wild prompts illegal wildlife trafficking of the remaining rare animals, again increasing the odds of disease transmission from animals to humans.

Floods are increasing as snow melts earlier and rainfall concentrates more heavily in certain areas, despite more drought elsewhere. This can overwhelm storm drains or water treatment plants and contaminate water used for drinking, livestock or irrigation. Bacterial infections and gastrointestinal disorders have been increasing as we cook our climate with carbon.

As the atmosphere warms, tropical diseases and bugs are moving into higher latitudes and altitudes for longer periods. More mosquitoes and ticks in the US bring more diseases, especially in summer, to areas previously protected by colder seasons. This increases costs of illness, mitigation, and treatment.

Our current administration is removing any mention of the climate crisis from government websites, as if ignoring a problem can somehow solve it. But at the same time, we have outbreaks of diarrhea, rising cases of West Nile, Dengue Fever, Lyme Disease and Valley Fever, all exacerbated by the climate crisis, even as the Center for Disease Control is subject to massive budget cuts.

Disease prevention is often much less expensive than medical treatment. Tracking and treating a measles case can cost over 400 times as much as a vaccine would have cost, for example. So cutting the CDC budget is penny-wise and pound-foolish. Choosing costly carbon pollution that makes us ill, instead of choosing cleaner, cheaper alternatives, isn’t even penny-wise.

Ice Cream

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July is National Ice Cream Month, so let’s talk about cattle, cost, drought, and methane.

Carbon pollution raises temperatures and increases drought. Excess heat makes it much more difficult to produce ice cream. Dairy cattle require copious water to drink and for their feed. Heat stress makes them drink more and hurts their health and fertility. Dairy farmers need to invest in barns with cooling equipment to make cows more comfortable. All this makes ice cream more expensive.

Cows also produce methane. Some dairy farmers are trying to reduce this greenhouse gas, but the process also makes dairy products more expensive.

Some folks are concerned about the cost of stopping carbon pollution, but doing nothing will cost far more. Here are some other ice cream ingredients at risk.

  • Banana crops lost due to fungi thriving in warmer weather.
  • Blueberry drought in Maine.
  • Chocolate hurt by longer dry seasons.
  • Peach crops lost in unseasonal freezes due to increasingly volatile weather.
  • Peanut yields decreasing with heat.

Here are some basic foods at risk.

  • Chickens & turkeys have been dying in heat waves.
  • Coffee, especially premium Arabica, has been hit by heat and resulting fungus.
  • Corn & wheat affected by floods & heatwaves and become less nutritious.
  • Orange crops in Florida hurt by hurricanes & insect-borne diseases exacerbated by climate change.
  • Potatoes hurt by less reliable water.
  • Rice yields fall with heat.
  • Tea grows in a narrow climate band, and moving plantations is difficult.
  • Tomato yields dropping due to heat.

Here are some fancier foods at risk.

  • Avocados need water and growers are encroaching on butterfly habitats.
  • Chilies more expensive due to drought.
  • French cheese production is down due to shorter cattle grazing shorter seasons.
  • Grapes ripen too quickly under heat to make good wine.
  • Italian olive oil prices are up sharply due to climate change.
  • Lime prices up sharply due to drought & flooding.
  • Lobster pushed out of their natural habitats by warming waters.
  • Shellfish threatened by acidification, rising toxicity.
  • Snow crabs decimated by billions in marine heatwaves off Alaska.

I could go on, as the foods affected increase every year. Extreme weather events, wildfires and pests more frequently wipe out crops globally. Our quality of life decreases as the abundance of life is reduced by climate change.

Frog Soup

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We celebrate both the ocean and the great outdoors in June. So, let’s talk about how our global temperature will continue rising uncontrollably for the foreseeable future.

The US burned more fossil fuels than any other country, polluting our atmosphere with excess carbon pollution and increasingly trapping more heat near the planet surface every year. The rate of warming is accelerating, and every decade is now over 1/2º F higher than the last, already over 10 times faster than natural warming after an ice age. And we have chosen to ignore it and keep burning more fossil fuels.

Our polar ice caps and ice age glaciers are melting. The Arctic Ocean will be free of ice at least one day in late summer within a few years—likely 2027 to 2030–, and without the reflective ice to keep the surface cool, the ocean surface temperature will soar. As our oceans warm and surface ice melts, the water expands, raising the sea level globally. Warmer waters kill coral reefs, disrupt ocean currents, cause toxic algae blooms, and create acidified, deoxygenated dead zones. This will cause many fisheries to collapse.

Still, from day to day we may not notice the change in climate. The earth still spins causing distinct weather patterns in the northern and southern hemispheres. The earth’s axis still tilts, and our planet still orbits the sun unevenly, causing the seasons. So our meteorologists still focus on the daily highs and lows, precipitation forecasts, and seasonal patterns, lulling us into familiar comfort.

But make no mistake. Like frogs in a pot, we are slowly cooking instead of jumping into action to save ourselves.

Our Crazy Climate

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May is mental health awareness month, so let’s take a moment to consider how the climate crisis is driving us crazy.

Direct immediate impact

Carbon pollution causes more frequent and severe disasters, diseases and heat related deaths. The mental stress of evacuation and losing a home to a wildfire or flood is severe and far worse when lives are lost. Even small changes in our climate can cause diseases to spread into new zones, which causes fear and again lives. Especially among children, elderly, poor and outdoor workers, heat waves kill. Each life lost cascades into communities, causing depression, grief, guilt, isolation, regret and trauma.

Long term impact

The gradual and cumulative loss of our environment diminishes our quality of life. Our global temperature rise is manmade, ongoing, uncontrolled, and unprecedented since we evolved from apes. The coral reefs I dove in my youth are mostly dead now, and with them much of the abundance, beauty and diversity of marine life is disappearing or gone forever. Billions of humans rely on fish in our diet, now threatened by the climate crisis America chooses to ignore. Snowpack loss takes away both our winter recreation and breaks downstream ecosystems. More drought kills more crops and cattle. Excess heat endangers our forests and restricts our time outdoors.

Most Americans are anxious about our future, especially as our past inaction means that our climate will continue to worsen for the rest of our lives. So far this year, I’ve described how our climate crisis is driving mass migration, worsening public health, flooding cities, and increasingly costing our economy. And I’ve got seven more months to discuss other effects.

Band-aid Solutions

17% of Americans are taking prescription medication for their mental health. That’s roughly equivalent to the population of New England, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. While treating anxiety and depression with drugs helps individuals, medication doesn’t solve the climate crisis.

The political party currently in charge actively suppresses climate education and science and has withdrawn from international climate commitments and cooperation. Neither confusing the public intentionally, denying the threat, enriching those who contribute to it, nor lying about the self-evident truth does anything to solve the climate crisis.

Real Solutions

Do something. Instead of being confused by misinformation, inaction, or just taking drugs, consciously choose to change your carbon footprint. You can’t save life on earth by yourself, but you can eat more locally grown vegetables, take fewer carbon-burning trips and buy locally produced goods and services. You may not own a media monster, but you can talk about the crazy weather with people you meet. You may not be a billionaire ballroom donor, but you can vote. All you must do is make an effort.

Ultimately, all we have is each other. If we communicate more, have more empathy, and try to understand each other better, then together we are all stronger. Individually, we may not have much, so we must make do with what we have. While one deranged man may believe that he alone can solve our problems, that’s wrong. When most of us understand and want to do something, then we can cooperate and get something really done. We the People have the real power. You should use yours to do good.

Cost of Doing Nothing

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Some folks think switching to electric vehicles and renewable energy would be inconvenient and costly. But they’re not considering the cost of inaction. Doing nothing puts us on the path for high carbon emissions. Let’s consider just one predicted consequence: a ten foot (3 meter) sea level rise. We don’t know when exactly, but melting ice and warming seas are accelerating rapidly. And the seas will continue rising until we fix our carbon pollution problem.

Much of the most expensive real estate in the US is just above sea level in places like California, Florida and New York, so let’s consider just a few examples.

  • San Francisco International Airport runway 10R ends at about seven feet above sea level.
    • So much for the convenience of flying.
  • Highway 101 south of the airport is often between zero and ten feet above sea level.
    • Even a super-duty pickup truck can’t drive through that.
  • Miles of sea walls are being built in places like Foster City California to protect against a three foot sea level rise, but other vulnerable Bay Area cities are doing far less.
    • If you pay taxes for a sea wall, but the neighboring town does not, where will you move?
  • Many farms in the Sacramento Delta are already below sea level, behind levees first built by Chinese laborers in the 1850s. California is working on a tunnel there to protect and transport freshwater, but the intakes are around Hood California, elevation 7-10 feet.
    • We’re going to need a longer tunnel.
  • The traffic tunnels in Manhattan are just around sea level, and they can be closed in advance of storm surges. For now, they can be reopened after the storm passes. But lower Manhattan lies around five feet above sea level.
    • Maybe New York City will be renamed New Atlantis?
  • Miami is around six feet above sea level, but its fresh water aquifer lies between 2-6 feet through porous rock below the flat land.
    • No more beach is bad enough, but no fresh water?
  • Critical systems at Turkey Point nuclear power plant near Biscayne Bay are at 20 feet elevation, so you might think a ten foot rise would still be safe. But the hurricane surge in 1992 was 16 feet, and storms are getting bigger and more powerful.
    • Anyone remember Fukushima?

We already have a housing affordability problem. What will happen when some lowlands disappear? Well, tens of millions of Americans may have to move by the end of the century, driving up costs in inland areas. That seems inconvenient and costly.

And infrastructure is just one of many different problems being caused by our carbon pollution (see January, February and March). April is supposed to be Financial Literacy month, but our government has stopped even discussing the coming crisis, let alone funding research, mitigation or prevention. Seems pretty stupid to ignore the costly consequences of doing nothing about the climate crisis.