Disruptive climate change is pushing two great carbon-reduction imperatives.  The first is to dramatically reduce emissions of heat-trapping carbon pollution through a clean energy revolution, a rapid transition to non-fossil energy sources such as sun and wind. But even if we stop the growth of carbon in the atmosphere, science tells us we have already crossed the danger line.  We must begin actively reducing carbon concentrations that have escalated since humanity moved to fossil-fueled economies nearly three centuries ago.  We must ally with the natural power of plant photosynthesis to absorb carbon in vegetation and soils, a biocarbon revolution to match the clean energy revolution.

The biocarbon revolution will be driven by public policy, none more important than policies of the federal government.  There is virtually no branch of the federal government where opportunities could not be uncovered.  A starting place is to line out five federal biocarbon policy principles through which substantial biocarbon storage could be realized:

#1. Channel carbon revenues to biocarbon preserving/building activities.

While no one expects immediate passage of federal climate policy, a number of congressional leaders are teeing up proposals. Sens. Barbara Boxer and Sen. Bernie Sanders have one developing vehicle, and Rep. Henry Waxman, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Rep. Earl Blumenauer and Sen. Brian Schatz have another.  The carbon tax tool is ascendant, while cap-and-trade is in disfavor.  This eliminates markets for carbon offsetting. Early markets have channeled carbon revenues to forest and farm biocarbon investments. But offsets inherently balance against a current carbon emission, so at best they result in carbon-neutral performance. To actually reduce carbon concentrations we need carbon-negative performance.  The shift to carbon tax proposals opens the opportunity to support carbon-negative projects with carbon revenues. Those could include:

• Carbon-preserving and building activities on federal lands, including those managed by the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Parks Service and Department of Defense
• Significant build-up of land conservation programs run by USDA, Department of Interior and NOAA
• Scientific research efforts to resolve uncertainties around best practices for biocarbon accumulation
• Investments in making urban areas greener.

#2. Incorporate explicit biocarbon goals in federal land conservation granting programs.

A number of programs provide financial support to private landowners to enhance natural benefits including water supply and quality and biodiversity.  The USDA offers the Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP), Conservation Reserve Program, Conservation Security Program, Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program; Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, Grasslands Reserve Program and Forest Legacy Program. NOAA offers the Coastal and Estuarine Land Conservation Program.  The Land and Water Conservation Fund at Department of Interior is another significant effort.  Those programs should all incorporate an explicit carbon metric, which would drive funding to biocarbon-building projects.  At this point the best model for this, perhaps the only, is the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service EQIP program in Oregon.

One legislative vehicle that proposed an incentives program for private landowners to build carbon on their properties was H.R. 2880 introduced in 2009 into the 111^th Congress by Rep. Kurt Schrader and others.  It provides a model for direct biocarbon-building supports outside of an offset program.

#3. Incorporate consideration of green infrastructure alternatives in federal granting programs.

Green infrastructure, using natural features instead of hard options – protecting coasts with wetlands rather seawalls, capturing stormwater with urban forests rather than pipes – saves taxpayers lots of money.  Savings can range from 15-80 percent, with reduced costs in the the one-quarter to one-third range, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) studies show.[1]  Green infrastructure is also a win for biocarbon storage.  Its potential should be evaluated in relevant federal granting programs.

One good example is the EPA program to enforce water quality rules.  The agency provides billions to local governments to correct problems such as combined sewer overflows.  EPA strongly supports green infrastructure, but does not require that it be considered.  The Department of Housing and Urban Development is another agency with a strong green infrastructure promotion effort, but does not include explicit requirements to consider it, for example in the Community Development Block Grant Program.  The Federal Emergency Management Agency disburses massive funds to rebuild from disasters without any green infrastructure criteria. Incorporating required consideration of green alternatives, and prioritizing funding to proposals that incorporate them, has large potential.

A model is Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkeley’s S.355 Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act of 2013,  It sets a selection criteria ”whether the project, to the maximum extent practicable, incorporates environmentally sustainable approaches,” including green infrastructure, and assigns priority to projects that do.

#4. Move planning for federal lands and projects into an ecological services framework that includes carbon.

Federal lands and projects supply many crucial natural benefits which are not fully taken into account in planning., including water, biodiversity, recreation and carbon storage.  But they do not always gain the same attention as traditional functions such as timber and livestock grazing.

An April 18, 2012 letter from Schrader and Blumenauer to the Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Forest Service states the issue.  “Despite growing knowledge about methods for valuing ecosystem services, traditional  benefit-cost analyses for federal activities do not include adequate consideration of these benefits.” So for example timber harvesting might take place without evaluating the alternative use of the land for water supply. The two representatives asked for a joint study by the Corps and Service to explore how ecological services accounting can be incorporated into project assessments.  This study could provide a foundation to extend ecological services accounting throughout federal agencies.

Ecoservices planning models are in development on Northwest forests including the Deschutes, Rogue and Willamette.  New national forest planning rules also in development incorporate numerous mentions of ecological services, and a new watershed planning framework opens opportunities.

#5. Incorporate carbon reduction in resiliency efforts

With the increase in extreme events such as Superstorm Sandy is coming a wave of new interest in climate resiliency, adapting our societies and ecosystems to increasing turbulence and extremes.  A prime example is the Obama Administration release of the National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy March 26. It sets out a five-year roadmap for adaptation of natural resources and resource-dependent communities.  That was part of a larger effort spurred by a 2009 executive order which created the Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force spanning across the federal government.  The effort has five pillars:

• Integrating adaptation into federal government planning and activities
• Building resilience to climate change into communities
• Improving accessibility and coordination of science for decision making
• Developing strategies to safeguard natural resources in a changing climate
• Enhancing efforts to lead and support international adaptation.

To these five should be added a sixth pillar – Leveraging resiliency efforts to reduce carbon emissions and concentrations.  Resilience and adaptation will draw significant resources from governments at all levels, businesses and individuals.    But resources are limited, especially government budgets.  When those investments are made, they should incorporate carbon reduction where possible.

In this respect, biocarbon comes out as one of the best win-win solutions.  For example, forests reduce heat and capture stormwater, while also capturing carbon.  Creating coastal wetlands to block storm surges builds a carbon-rich environment, contrasted to seawalls built with carbon-intensive concrete and steel.

If deep carbon reductions are not made, climate consequences will swamp all efforts at adaptation.  The World Bank recently noted that the world is on track to nearly 4° Celsius (nearly 8° Fahrenheit) heating. “. . . there is also no certainty that adaptation to a world is possible. A 4°C world is likely to be one in which communities, cities and countries would experience severe disruptions, damage, and dislocation, with many of these risks spread unequally. It is likely that the poor will suffer most and the global community could become more fractured, and unequal than today.”[2]

To keep climate change to a level at which adaptation is still possible, deep carbon reductions must commence immediately.

Through applying these five principles, the federal government could build significant biocarbon storage on public and private lands throughout the U.S.  The greatest gains will come with the devotion of significant carbon revenues to biocarbon-building activities.  That will be a politically steep climb.  Meanwhile, the other principles can inform policy sooner, and much can take place at the executive level, with congressional action unnecessary.  Incremental steps can build toward major initiatives.  The biocarbon imperative to begin drawing down CO₂ from the atmosphere calls for efforts that will take decades.   What is most important is to begin taking the steps that can be accomplished now

First, we now know Beyoncé is off the hook. The halftime show used its own generator. So was the utility to blame? Entergy says a monitoring device detected a power surge in the system, and automatically shut down a feeder to half the stadium. That was to prevent any problems from spreading. Ironically, while the event spurred calls, such as this one at The Daily Beast, for a smart grid, that was a pretty smart piece of grid automation at work. Utility officials, in fact, place the problem within the Superdome’s own power system, giving the poster child for Katrina’s humanitarian crisis a new source of notoriety.

While the particulars are a bit blurred, the blackout does make the case for a different shape of power-grid architecture that is indeed an advanced form of smart grid. The vision is one of a network of smart microgrids served by distributed energy sources. One of the leading proponents is the Galvin Electricity Initiative. It was pioneered by Bob Galvin of Motorola following the monster East Coast blackout in 2003.

Galvin looked at the rate of power interruption acceptable in the power industry, which settles for 99.99 percent service, and contrasted it with the 100 percent performance for which his telecommunications industry strives. Perfect power should be the goal for power service, he asserted, especially with the spread of digital equipment highly sensitive to disruptions. From that, the initiative developed its solution. Instead of one big grid, make smart microgrids the building blocks for a much more resilient system.

Large facilities such as sports arenas, office blocks, shopping malls, and campuses should have their own microgrids with clean, local generating sources. These are not just back-up generators, but entire systems that provide primary service and can stand alone when necessary. While smaller power plants might lose some efficiency compared with large central plants, they more than make this up in two ways. First, local generation eliminates electricity leakage from power lines, typically around 9 percent. Second, the heat from a local power plant can be used on site, often doubling the efficiency of a central plant, which throws away its heat. It is clear the Superdome would make an ideal microgrid site.

This was brought home for me personally last week when power failed in Corvallis, Ore., due to a faulty transmission line. People waking up to attend the Harvesting Clean Energy Conference were greeted by darkened rooms. But because the conference was at Oregon State University, served by its own campus microgrid, the event could start nearly on time. I tell the story here. The contrast with the events in New Orleans could not be greater.

The Super Bowl blackout is being made a symbol of America’s decaying infrastructure and need for a smart grid. What would perhaps be more accurate is that it demonstrated the vulnerabilities of a centralized power grid and the need for a more resilient and decentralized power network. Smart microgrids, linked in networks, are what we will need to deal with the increasing extremes of climate and the power disruptions that inevitably accompany them. And they even reduce carbon emissions, no small consideration for any of us, especially a city threatened by hurricane storm surges and global sea-level rise.

But I can see out the window the lights of the Oregon State University campus shining into the still darkened sky.  It turns out that while a blackout has engulfed Corvallis in darkness, the campus location is lucky 13 for the conference.  The original location in a building on the edge of campus is dark, but the conference easily relocates to a lit up building next door.

Everyone is speculating why the Beavs campus still has juice, but at my table is someone who I think will have the answer, Dave Sjoding, who directs the Northwest Clean Energy Applications Center.  Turns out Dave does, and for good reason.  He is one of the Northwest’s gurus on combined heat and power plants.  He tells me the OSU campus has a CHP unit that it just installed about three years ago.  We are lit by the campus microgrid.

Because it is highly efficient, unlike most power plants not letting the heat go to waste but using it in campus buildings, the plant received support from Climate Trust for reduced carbon emissions and the Oregon Department of Energy through business tax credits.  And it is located in the nation’s only LEED platinum certified energy facility.  The plant currently uses natural gas but could also use biogas or biodiesel.  So from the standpoint of energy efficiency and the potential to use bioenergy as it becomes available, the plant is an example of the kind of clean energy success the conference has promoted since it started in 2000.

The message, as Washington State Bioenergy Coordinator Peter Moulton noted, is the “resiliency of distributed energy sources. “ As we come to live in a more climate-turbulent world, we will need distributed energy not just to reduce the carbon emissions driving global warming, but also to deal with the consequences of the carbon that’s already up there.  Superstorm Sandy, leaving wide swathes of the New York-New Jersey area blacked out for days and weeks, also sent that message.

I originally reported that the blackout was caused by a substation blow-up, which would have been a failure in the local power grid.  But it turns out that was incorrect, and the actual reason strengthens the distributed energy message even more.  The cause was a cracked insulator in a transmission line bringing power in from a distant plant.  Since Corvallis is served by PacifiCorp, that line could well have been carrying coal power from the Rockies.  And unlike in the local microgrid, around 9 percent of the juice would have leaked out of lines along the way. The power lighting the conference hall was fundamentally more efficient.

With two slides, Renewable Northwest Project Director Rachel Shimshak underscored the huge success of clean energy in the Northwest in an opening “How far we’ve come” session. The first was a map of Northwest clean energy projects in 1998, one small windfarm in the four NW states.  Then she put up the 2013 map, literally dozens of projects in wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, even wave energy.  The figures are huge – $13 billion in investment in Oregon and Washington alone. 7,000 megawatts in installed facilities, enough power generated to supply 1.7 million homes.  Oregon is now the nation’s #4 wind state, and Washington is #7.

Mike McArthur, who heads up Oregon Association of Counties and was a Sherman County, Oregon commissioner, provided another indicative statistic.  The county is now home to 1,000 megawatts in wind power.  One 35^th in Oregon per capita income, it has moved into the #2 position due to a combination of wind revenues and good wheat prices.

Fossil fuel interests have mounted increasing attacks on clean energy.  That includes funding efforts in the Northwest aimed at undermining advanced clean energy policies in Oregon and Washington such as our Renewable Energy Standards.  They have blown up bankruptcies such as Solyndra to smear clean energy, distorting the reality that all new industries have shake-outs.  There were 500 car companies in 1900, and we haven’t seen a new Commodore computer in quite some time.  But clean energy continues to grow, as the Northwest experience proves, and the fact the fossils feel compelled to attack is the best testimony they are feeling the competitive pressure.

So a conference that could go on and an industry that is burgeoning demonstrate, in small and large ways, that Northwest clean energy policies have been a grand success.  We are indeed harvesting clean energy and building a firm foundation of prosperity for our regional economy.  Let’s push back the fossils and keep moving forward.

The two crucial takeways:

• First, the capacity of western ecosystems to absorb carbon between now and 2050 depends on how rapidly we move now to reduce fossil emissions.  To put it simply, the hotter and drier we let the world become, the less will climate-stressed forests, grasslands and other systems be able to capture and store carbon.
• Second, even healthy natural systems can each year absorb only a small fraction of our fossil emissions.  To have any hope we can restore a stable climate, we have to rapidly and dramatically reduce the amount of new CO₂ we dump in the air each year.

The new study, Baseline and Projected Future Carbon Storage and Greenhouse-Gas Fluxes in Ecosystems of the Western United States, covers US lands and waters west of the continental divide.  It is part of a national carbon storage assessment ordered by Congress.  Thick with numbers, the report’s four-page executive summary provides a good overview.  Here are several absolutely key figures:

• Estimated average 2005 carbon storage in Western ecosystems – 13,920 terragrams. (uncertainty range – 12,418–15,460)
• Projected 2050 carbon storage – 13,743-19,407 terragrams
• Annual average capture of carbon in western ecosystems – 91 terragrams – equals 4.9 percent of US net fossil-fuel emissions.

Those numbers hammer home the two takeways.  By 2050 western ecosystems might store less carbon than now, or substantially larger amounts.  The uncertainties are in climate change and land use change. And even the best performance will only make a small dent in atmospheric carbon accumulations if we continue to let them grow.  It is time to back out of fossil fuels fast through a combination of efficiency and clean energy.  Then we can direct natural carbon accumulation to its most critical climate task – the long-term project of reducing atmospheric CO₂ to a level consonant with climate stability.  Now over 390 parts per million, it must be driven down to 350 and under.  That is the goal of the Northwest Biocarbon Initiative.

USGS scientist Ben Sleeter underscored the varying effects of different climate pathways during a Wednesday report release at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.  He showed a slide depicting how Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios affect projected western carbon accumulations.  Under less aggressive emissions reductions scenarios (A1b and A2) annual additions to western carbon storage by 2050 dip as much as 16 percent, to 76 terragrams a year.   Under a scenario in which the west is comparatively less hot and dry (B1) annual carbon accumulation increases 11 percent to 101 terragrams.

Because other factors are in play, there is a wider uncertainty band.  USGS projects that western ecosystems might absorb 114 terragrams in any given year, or actually emit 2.9. This has to do with land use changes such as conversion of forests to residential development, and assumptions about the projected level of wildfires.  Indicatively, much of the projected decline in carbon storage capacity is in grasslands, shrublands and forests of the Western Cordillera. Essentially the west’s higher mountain regions beyond the maritime West Coast forests, the Cordillera stores the largest share of the west’s carbon, an estimated 8,163 terragrams.  These are areas that have already seen an upsurge of drought-driven wildfires such as last summer’s in Colorado and New Mexico.

We urgently need to preserve our current natural carbon stocks by limiting land use change and fossil fuel emissions driving climate change.  We also will likely have to consider more active efforts to upgrade carbon sequestration beyond natural accumulation projected by USGS, such as reforestation and planting new forests.  What we cannot do is continue to add to growing atmospheric carbon levels and hope to return to anything like a stable climate system.  The new USGS study provides the carbon math to conclusively nail home that point.

Under the auspices of the Pacific Coast Collaborative (PCC) composed of the chief executives of the West Coast states and British Columbia, the gathering drew over 50 representatives of public agencies and NGOs grappling with the critical issues of climate risk and resiliency. Scheduled well in advance of Sandy, the roundtable focused on infrastructure, the circulatory systems that make modern life possible. Submerged New York subways, blacked out Long Island neighborhoods and New Jersey gas lines formed a powerful backdrop to the meeting.

“The issue is timely, with Hurricane Sandy devastating the East Coast,” noted Wade Crowfoot of California Gov. Jerry Brown’s office in remarks opening the meeting. “We have a great opportunity to spur climate initiatives, an opportunity that doesn’t exist elsewhere in Canada or the U.S.”

The idea of Pacific Coast as global climate leader is coming to the fore.  The meeting was slated in conjunction with the first carbon emissions auction, held the next day, under California’s economy wide cap-and-trade system, first in the U.S.  British Columbia has charged a carbon tax for several years.  The election of former Congressman Jay Inslee as Washington governor places one of Capitol Hill’s true climate champions at the head of the Washington statehouse.  With Brown and Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, Inslee fills out a coastal line-up of visionary chief executives who understand climate risks and clean economy opportunities.

In 2007 flooding from a record storm shut down I-5 between Portland and Seattle.  Record wildfires nearly devoured a substantial piece of LA’s telecommunications infrastructure in 2009.  Fires in bug killed forests are increasing floods and wrecking roads in central BC. These and other climate extremes are in the face of West Coast leaders and governments.  And unlike electeds in other parts of the continent, they are not evading the issue.

A climate agenda for the Coast and North America was set out in a written statement made by Coastal chief executives made in association with the Roundtable.  Brown, Kitzhaber, BC Premier Christy Clark and outgoing Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, who also has led important climate initiatives, said:

“Confronting climate change requires concerted effort within each jurisdiction and across the region on several, interconnected fronts.

“First, we need to move forward together on policies that will drive investment in home-grown renewable energy and energy efficiency projects – jobs we can’t outsource.

“Second, we must better account for the environmental impacts associated with using fossil fuels that are detrimental to the health and well-being of our communities – and future generations.

“Third, we need to protect our taxpayers’ investment in infrastructure by making sure these investments are resilient and account for climate risk.

“And (citing California and BC examples) we must also look at how best to consider and then account for the cost of carbon and our costly reliance on carbon-intensive energy sources.”

The Roundtable was a demonstration of coastal leadership.  The four jurisdictions are all leaders in climate adaptation.  They are beginning to bring considerations of increased storms, floods, mudslides, drought, wildfires and sea level rise into infrastructure planning.

Washington state, for example, has mapped climate risk to its road system.  British Columbia is doing extensive sea level rise vulnerability assessments along the 155 miles of coast in the Greater Vancouver area, including some stunning visualizations.  The province has supplied sea level rise guidelines to local governments.  Oregon is preparing its first statewide water bond with the challenge of declining snowpack water supplies in mind.  California requires the state’s 48 water planning areas to assess climate risk as a condition of funding.

Infrastructure sits at a vital nexus of climate change response.  It is also one of our hugest investments.  The four West Coast jurisdictions will make over $1 trillion in infrastructure investments over the next 30 years, noted Kitzhaber advisor Dan Carol in a Roundtable presentation on a new investment tool to close infrastructure funding gaps.  The West Coast Infrastructure Exchange is a PCC-generated alignment of the four jurisdictions to attract capital into a wide range of infrastructure investments. It was officially announced the day after the meeting.

With a goal to bring climate risk assessments into infrastructure strategies, the Exchange is a potentially powerful tool to drive huge amounts of capital into investments that both prepare for climate change and reduce the carbon pollution driving it. For example, green infrastructure including forests, wetlands and urban natural features both regulates water flows and takes climate changing carbon out of the atmosphere.

The Pacific Coast is positioned to lead on climate, and has a huge stake in the outcome.  With carbon revenues and new infrastructure investment strategies, it has some serious money to bring to the climate table.  How the four jurisdictions can work together to advance climate strategies that adapt to climate change while reducing its intensity, in the process pulling their respective nations and federal governments along, will be the subject of upcoming blogs.

“What’s the major greenhouse gas?”  I fall right into it. “Carbon dioxide.”

“No, it’s water vapor.”

Of course, he’s right, and I know it.  I have answered the question I thought I heard – What is the human-emitted pollutant that is the largest source of climate change?  But in terms of actual gases in the atmosphere, good old H₂O is hands down the greatest heat trapper.

So what does this have to do with carbon in the soil?  Everything, explains Peter.  Carbon-rich organic matter covering and laced through soils makes the medium and space which holds moisture in soils.  “Carbon is the key to building water in the soil.  Carbon is the key to water.”

The persistent drought covering much of North America’s food growing land over past months brings the carbon-water connection to the fore.  When it remains hot and dry over long periods, water evaporates from soils, and that creates a feedback loop which makes it even hotter.  The poorer soils are in terms of organic content, the quicker the water goes.  Standard agricultural practices promote just this result.

“Our food mostly comes from ground that is bare most of the year,” Peter notes.  To illustrate the point we go over to my computer and he calls up Google Earth Engine.  Remote sensing imagery of croplands shows a lot of yellows and brown and not so much green.

Peter’s answer is the Soil Carbon Challenge, a “competition to see how fast land managers can turn atmospheric carbon into soil organic matter.”  The basic approach is empirical, as the contest text underscores:  “If you want to find out how fast a human can run 100 meters, do you build a computer model, do a literature search, or convene a panel of experts on human physiology to make a prediction? No, you run a race. Or a series of them.”

Here the race is taking place among 60 landowners on nearly 150 plots of land scattered from Massachusetts to California and Saskatchewan to Mexico.  A great Google map-based database on these and other monitoring projects is here.  The Challenge is based on the realization that human management can make a big difference in soil carbon, and that these changes are easier to measure than has been commonly supposed. The approach employs permanent plots that can be repeatedly monitored with field sampling and laboratory analysis of carbon content. Monitoring is done almost entirely by Peter himself.  This past March he returned to his Wallowa County, Oregon home base after a continent-wide 12,000-mile monitoring journey in the school bus that doubles as his home.

The Challenge is seeking out what Peter describes as “positive deviants.” The term originates in a theory that sees change in communities coming not from outside, but led by examples of success within communities, those who deviate from the norm in a positive direction.  The Challenge aims to document and recognize soil carbon success to encourage replication.

Peter reflects the best in citizen science. With a full head of gray hair, and a hardened face that reflects his past life as a rancher, Peter has educated himself on soils science by reading literally hundreds of papers.  And he has found critical gaps in knowledge, originating in the fact that many monitoring projects only run several years.  It takes at least four years to develop a good baseline, and the Soil Carbon Challenge will run a decade, to around 2020, before winners are named.

His ranching background brought Peter to the Challenge.  He has been involved in the holistic range management movement led by Allan Savory.  Also known as active grazing management, this series of practices moves herds across the landscape in a systematic way, rather than letting them move around on their own overgrazing pasture lands.  The result is improved forage growth.  Most of the Challenge participants come from the holistic ranching network.  There are indications these practices do build soil carbon in deep root structure, perhaps to an even greater extent than annual row cropping. But the jury remains out.  Developing a long enough baseline to validate carbon accumulation on grazing lands is crucial.

Farmers and ranchers have a bottom-line interest in building soil carbon because it reduces the need for costly inputs to enhance fertility, Peter notes.  And they are “receptive to the idea of building water in the soil.”  But because of variations in soils, climate and other conditions, developing generalized knowledge on carbon accumulation is notoriously difficult.  That is why local knowledge and examples of success are critical.

“We need to turn leadership to the creativity of land managers,” Peter says.  “The Soil Carbon Challenge shifts leadership to the grassroots.”

Quite literally.

I love pizza, but the anchovies?  Not so much.  Little did I know that by skipping the anchovies I may actually be helping protect https://grist.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.phpEarth’s  natural CO₂ cleansing system.  Anchovy poop, new research suggests, is a really effective biocarbon storage pump.   Ah, the wondrous workings of Nature.

Here’s how it works:  Teeny-tiny, single-celled, drifting sea plants called phytoplankton grab sunlight and carbon dioxide (CO₂) to grow.  (By some estimates, phytoplankton remove as much CO₂ from our atmosphere as all the plants and trees on land.)  Forage fish like anchovies (as well as herring, sardines, shad, smelt and others) fuel up primarily on the super lightweight, drifting, surface-dwelling plankton.  They digest and they poop out pellets that are heavy enough to sink quickly to the bottom of the sea where the carbon won’t see the light of day for a long time

Grace Saba of Rutgers U and Deborah Steinberg of Virginia Institute of Marine Science, set out to count anchovy poop pellets in the waters of the Santa Barbara Channel off southern California coast — nice work if you can get it.

They also picked apart the pellets to measure their carbon content and to identify the semi-digested remains of creatures eaten by the anchovies.  Further, they figured out whether and how fast the poop pellets will sink in ocean waters.  Their key finding: “given the right conditions—fish fecal pellets can transport significant amounts of repackaged surface material to depth, and do so relatively quickly.”

In other words, anchovies and their forage fish brethren and sistren are another important component of Nature’s carbon pollution cleansing system; part of the solution to our biocarbon imperative.

It’s a part of the natural CO₂ cleansing system that is under threat.  An international group of marine scientists called recently for cuts in the global commercial catch of forage fish; their use as feed for fish farming, in particular, has soared.

Flying from Seattle to Boise, Idaho, on Sunday for the Pacific Northwest Climate Science Conference, the pilot pointed to a bit of climate change out the window.

“Over to your left you can see plumes from the fires,” he announced over the intercom. The sky was choked with smoke from Eastern Washington wildfires, as it has been for weeks.

In Boise it was clear and sunny. But the hotel shuttle driver noted this was the first time in days you could see the mountains above the town. Boise, too, has been gasping on the wildfires.

The smoke came up again in a Monday conference welcome by Boise Mayor David Bieter. It is heartening when the leader of the reddest state’s biggest city greets an auditorium full of climate scientists with an acknowledgement that “the work you do is of such importance to our community and policymakers in general … your work will help us understand what we might face in decades to come.”

Bieter said the climate issue has faded in recent times, but smoky skies seem to be bringing it back. “If we didn’t have climate change on our minds, events have forced us to think about it again.”

Indeed, this summer’s record heat waves, sweeping wildfires, and widespread drought have left visible imprints on the public mind. There is a sense that denialism is finally in retreat, and that this is a moment of climate opportunity.

But moments pass. Will we seize this one? Conference keynote speaker Roger Pulwarty’s comments couldn’t have been more on point. Director of NOAA’s Integrated Drought Information System, Pulwarty’s list of accomplishments in climate impacts and adaptation is guaranteed to make most of us feel like underachievers. Work with the World Bank. Reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, including a recent report on managing climate extremes. That resume gives Pulwarty a finely honed sense of the disconnect between information and action. His talk title put the question this way: “Climate, Change and Adaptation: Are we learning?”

“World Bank figures consistently show that $1 spent on hazard mitigation saves $3-$4 in the future,” Pulwarty said. “What do we do with that? Absolutely nothing … People ask for more information because they want to appear rational, not because they are necessarily going to do anything.”

The expectation that information will produce action is “idealized,” Pulwarty said: “The key question is — how do we learn over time? Perfect planning is a figment.” Pulwarty explained that the way it really works is that “proactive” planning results in action when crisis breaks out. When such a “focusing event” occurs, that opens a door to action. But only if a vital link is made — leadership by engaged individuals at all levels within public agencies, businesses, and other organizations. It all comes down to people positioned in a place to act, with a readiness to do so. “No matter how good institutional design is, without particular people it does not work.”

Flashing maps on the screen showing the largest U.S. area in drought since the 1930s dust bowl, with an estimated $77 billion economic impact on agriculture, Pulwarty asked, “Do we have a focusing event?”

The drought expert noted that while La Niña helped trigger the drought, it is temperatures that drive the severity. So as heat increases over the years, so will drought severity. But “knowing doesn’t mean doing things much differently.”

Pulwarty concluded the drought could be a focusing event if we use it to prototype information sharing that links research and management. It goes back to that key link — creating a dialogue between researchers sharing good scientific information and leaders committed to doing something with it. At the center is the critical question, “What drives people to make decisions that optimize what they already value?”

“Only three things ever make change,” Pulwarty said. “Build networks. Identify entrepreneurs within networks who can make change. And do it for a long time.”

The climate movement has been networking with entrepreneurial individuals in government, business, and other sectors who have a commitment to change for years. Are we ready to seize the day now? I don’t have the answer, but I do know this is a time to focus our networks and leaders on the message of the moment — today’s extremes forecast the future. It is time to reduce the fossil fuel emissions driving the warming and prepare for the changes we cannot now avoid. Key to building resiliency is spreading sustainable forestry and agriculture practices that buffer against fires, drought, and heat. A synergistic benefit: These practices generally also soak carbon from the atmosphere, reducing the warming. You can learn more about that through a project I’m working on: the Northwest Biocarbon Initiative.

Climate change is here. Time to seize the moment and act.

Yes, Rachel, you can! What you want is a smart grid rich in distributed energy resources.

First, it is important to be clear that we have two power grids: a transmission grid, which consists of the big lines carrying power from distant generating stations, and a distribution grid, which carries power in the local area to homes, businesses, etc. Failures on the transmission grid, that’s T to us geeks, lead to the really big blackouts like that in the Northeast in August 2003. But most failures — around 90 percent — happen on the distribution, or D grid, and they are usually not well publicized.

Electric Power Research Institute estimates that, overall, blackouts and other power disturbances cost the U.S. economy in the range of $119-188 billion (see p. ES-3 [PDF].) By comparison U.S. power customers paid a total of $343.7 billion for electricity in 2007.

The shocking fact is that the costs of an aging and technologically backward power grid adds something like one-third to one-half to our annual electricity costs. Ghost Town Louisville is a poster child, but most power problems do not receive national publicity.

You would think that this level of costs would be driving the utility sector to invest in advanced technologies that would make the grid more resilient in the face of natural and human-caused disturbances. (Good thing Al Qaeda hasn’t hit a big substation or T line yet. We are highly vulnerable.) But you would be mistaken because the utility sector is probably the world’s worst mesh of capitalism and socialism.

Here’s how it works. The utility comes to the state utilities commission and states its expected costs. After the inevitable arguments, it then receives cost recovery though the rates — a guaranteed rate of return. The problem has been this system favors the status quo. Commissions are hesitant to approve new technologies, and utilities are hesitant to move into them. It’s a kind of comfortable, codependent relationship that promotes more of the same.

Another problem facing the utility sector, as in many industries, is an aging workforce. Working for a power utility has not exactly been the high tech glamor job attracting the best and brightest. So there are simply going to be less people to do the work — fewer linemen who can fix the problems. I can’t say that is what is happening now in the icy regions, but it sure is a proxy for what is going to happen if we don’t amp up emphasis on recruitment and job training. Since we need to rebuild the grid for efficient, clean operations, these are the green jobs.

That was a long set-up to get at your question, Rachel Maddow. Now here are some answers:

1. On today’s dumb grid, power outages must be physically discovered by line crews. This is not the Internet where problems are automatically detected and flows of information are automatically routed around trouble spots. The kind of sensor and automation technology that could do this is only slowly coming to the grid. Literally, this is about putting an automated communications and control backbone on top of the grid, which can detect problems and switch power to another route once a disruption is detected. This exists to some extent on T grids, but very little has been implemented on D grids.

2. Grids are going to get hit by weather. Lines are going to go down. But if you have a grid rich in distributed energy resources, it has much more ride-through capability. What are those resources?

Local power plants — This can consist of solar on roofs, combined heat and power plants at local institutions such as business parks or college campuses, or the existing local plants. Small-scale wind turbines that could mesh into urban and suburban environments are also on the way. Today’s power grid is essentially one-way. With smart communications and control systems, power from local sources can be more easily integrated into the grid, in a more Internet-like fashion. This is where we want to go on a standard basis, and this kind of energy network would be more likely to hold up under extreme conditions.

Microgrids — With those local power plants you might already have what is essentially a micro grid distributing power to a neighborhood, campus, business park, etc. So even if the bulk grid is out, your local grid is still on. Some people see the eventual smart grid as a confederation of microgrids linked by the bulk grid.

Plug-in vehicles running vehicle-to-grid (V2G) — It is generally not known that over 90 percent of potential U.S. energy generating capacity is under the hoods of vehicles. It takes a lot of energy to move around our steel cocoons. But vehicles stay parked generally around 90 percent of the time. As we move to plug-ins, that means we are going to have massive batteries parked in our garages capable of running our homes for several days. Many believe we will use that capacity to store electricity from variable resources like the sun and wind and feed it back into the grid with V2G. That will require smart vehicles connected to a smart grid. In any event, smart charging systems that coordinate plug-in charging with the grid are in development. This is an absolute necessity to make sure plug-ins are not charging during peak hours when it’s not absolutely necessary. The unintended consequence we want to avoid is plug-ins that drive up demand at peak hours, and thus increase emissions from fossil-fuel driven peaker plants.

Smart appliances — Also in development, and successfully tested in the Pacific Northwest, these home appliances have a built-in intelligence that provides them with grid awareness. When they detect a problem they can automatically cycle down, for instance the heating elements in your clothes dryer or water heater shut down for a few minutes, or your refrigerator lets the temperature go up. No food will be spoiled, and you probably will not notice that your dryer has extended its cycle for a few minutes or there is slightly less water to take a shower. But the effect of thousands or millions of small adjustments is to provide “shock absorbers” for the grid. That makes it easier for the grid to ride through problems.

Of course the green energy stimulus package has the laser-beam focus of everyone in the smart grid community. There is $11 billion in President Barack Obama’s package for smart grid. $10 billion is designated for T, and $1 billion will go to D. While I cannot argue with the need for more T to carry resources from our Persian Gulf of wind, running from Montana to Texas to the coasts, there are dangers that it will also transmit more coal-fired electricity. From a climate standpoint this is a perverse result. So we need some “green wires” restrictions on coal transmission. In addition, we need to make sure the D investments provide a migration path to the genuine two-way local D grid.

Druthers, I would have been happier with a more even balance between T and D in the package, but this is only a down-payment on the larger project of full-scale smart grid deployment. From the power disturbance cost figures cited above, it’s easy to argue that this will pay back rapidly and magnificently.

More on this at my new blog, New Energy Nexus.

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We should not rescue General Motors as we know it. But Congress could use the proposed bailout as an opportunity to begin building a new prosperity that can last. As part of any public assistance, GM should be required to help America reduce its oil dependence and tackle the climate challenge by producing the cars of the future.

Saving GM under any circumstances is a hard swallow.

This is the company whose Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said, “global warming is a total crock of sh*t.”

GM sent a posse of executives and lobbyists to Olympia to fight Washington’s Clean Car Act in 2006 — a law that will reduce climate pollution from new cars by 30 percent and save Washington consumers over $2 billion in fuel costs. (Governor Gregoire sent them packing and fought successfully to pass the law.)

The Clean Car Act was due to go into effect in the 2009 model year, so we should be getting the better cars now. But we’re not, because General Motors has more good lawyers than engineers.

In its endless court battles against Clean Cars, GM has mounted a vigorous “can’t do” case, casting doubt on its own ability to deliver quality cars that meet the standards. If you believe them — if they really can’t build good, clean cars — then “what’s good for GM” is what’s killing America.

Federal judge William Sessions scoffed at GM’s pessimism, finding it “improbable that an industry that prides itself on its modernity, flexibility and innovation will be unable to meet the requirements … especially with the range of technological possibilities and alternatives currently before it.”

The market wants efficient cars. The engineers can produce them; the law requires them. But GM’s lawyers and executives fight on for their right to commit commercial suicide and planetary ecocide, even as they descend on Congress, cup in hand.

So — come again — why should we dig deep to save a company that seems so resolutely determined to destroy itself, taking the economy and the planet down with it?

Congress cannot save GM and the jobs it provides by propping up its failed business model. The only way to save it is to overhaul it.

Bullitt Foundation President Denis Hayes nailed it: “In World War II … Detroit was ordered to stop making cars and start making tanks. Today, Detroit needs to be ordered to stop making civilian tanks and start making cars.” Hayes proposes that manufacturers be required to deliver cars that average 50 mpg by 2020, and 100 mpg by 2030. That should be a minimum condition of any bailout. Little tweaks won’t do it. We need — and to survive, the company needs — an automotive revolution.

We can’t revitalize the economy by resuscitating a gasping Hummosaurus. We have to build a new, more durable economy by investing in the infrastructure and industries that can sustain prosperity and save the planet.

The GM bailout is a crucial test: Will our heroic interventions to revitalize the economy merely prolong the demise of the old, bankrupt economic models? In response to this economic seizure, will we just lubricate the same obsolete machinery so it can hurtle more efficiently over the cliff? Or will we use this historic opportunity to begin building a new economy that actually works — delivering sustainable, broadly-shared prosperity and good jobs for the long haul?

The General Motors we know is doomed. But if a new GM can rise from the ashes and deliver “Green Mobility” — aggressively doubling fuel economy and doubling it again — GM would be worth saving.