Up In The Tundra

Yesterday, I stood on top of Niwot Ridge in the Indian Peaks Wilderness with a clear look at both Longs Peak and - 100 miles away - Pikes Peak. Here's a little taste of the world at 11,500 feet.

It's pretty high up there - I was gasping like a landed fish during parts of the hike. But, wow was it an awe-inspiring view. 

However, I wasn't just up there to see the sights - my fellow fellows and I were on our first fellowship field trip, to the University of Colorado's Mountain Research Station (MRS) about 25 miles west of Boulder. It's a field research site for studying mountain environments and ecosystems. Established in 1952, the MRS collects long-term climate data about mountain, sub-alpine and alpine zones, as well as maintains several meteorological stations (which have been up there since the start of the program).

There are bunch of big research projects going on in them thar hills, including how increasing temperatures in this area are affecting the Mountain Pine Beetle, what emissions (especially nitrogen) from nearby Denver are doing to the ecosystem and what climate change is doing to alpine lakes and the tundra.

The tundra - that's a word you might not have heard since sixth-grade science or maybe you only associate it with the Arctic - as in Arctic tundra. But it also applies to the area above the tree-line - in this part of the Rockies, that's at about 10,500 feet. At higher elevations higher, the growing season is short and typically pretty chilly, so plant life is hardy and small. There might be a few stunted and wind-twisted trees (it can get really windy up there), but it's mainly lichens, sedges (which resemble grasses) and low-growing shrubs.

It's in this area that scientists are conducting something called the Alpine Treeline Warming Experiment. Researchers have set up small test plots that are being deliberately warmed by infrared heaters with the goal of creating the conditions that, based on current average climate projections, they expect to see in the year 2100.

Here's what this outdoor laboratory looks like:

All those plots ringed by metal poles and covered in fine mesh are the areas where scientists are using the heaters, which are mounted in a circle around each set of scaffolding. The project began in 2008 and, as the researchers mention on their website (linked above), they're hoping to answer questions about how subalpine and alpine species will react to a warmer world.

These questions - and those being posed by the other scientists pursuing research in these mountains - won't be answered any time soon. Most of these projects are long term. As I mentioned, the University of Colorado has been monitoring carbon dioxide and other emissions and weather conditions up on the Niwot Ridge for over fifty years. That monitoring is no joke - someone comes up to collect samples every Tuesday, rain or shine or complete white-out blizzard. Sometimes they can use a snow machine to get around but a lot of times, they're walking or skiing. The amount of work and the physicality that goes into monitoring and synthesizing all that data isn't something I had thought much about and it gave me a whole new appreciation for what all these researchers are doing. 

And then there's the fact that the information they find is only a tiny piece of what will come from these projects. I'm guessing that none of the guys who started all this back in 1952 are making that trek to Niwot Ridge anymore, or even working on the data that's coming in. That means all their hard work has passed on to the next few generations of scientists, who will now add their own discoveries to this ever-growing mountain of data without entirely knowing what will eventually come of it all or what it all even means. 

That - like the view - is also pretty awe-inspiring.

Not All Gloom And Doom

Hundreds of thousands of people participated in the People's Climate March in New York City today, in an attempt to get both the US and international governments to take climate change seriously. The UN summit on climate change is set to begin on Tuesday - it's a hopeful sign although, given the outcomes of other climate summits (Kyoto Protocol, I'm looking at you), it doesn't actually mean anything will come of it. 

Despite government action or inaction, there are a number of scientists working on ways to slow or reverse the effects of climate change - big geo-engineering projects. Those may provide some of the best solutions, at least in the short-term, and at their core, they follow the same basic physics of climate change that were mentioned in my last post.

So you don't have to go to another post, here's a quick review of the physics.

Climate change is brought about by:

1) How much energy we get from the sun (i.e. sun cycles, our orbit around the sun)
2) How much of that energy is reflected back into space (by polar ice caps, glaciers, various aerosols)
3) The amount of greenhouse gases in earth's atmosphere (water vapor, carbon dioxide, etc.), which absorb the energy that is being reflected.

Those same bits of physics, says Jim White of INSTAAR, apply to potential solutions. Geo-engineering projects could deal with the problem of climate change by: 

1) Blocking sunlight (i.e. putting a giant sunshade into space)

2) Reflecting sunlight back into space (i.e. mirrors, gigantic chunks of styrofoam in the ocean)

3) Removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere (artificial trees are one idea that's on offer)

The best option, in White's opinion, is getting greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. Here's why: 

We've already got close to 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere. CO₂ is one of those greenhouse gases that traps heat inside Earth's atmosphere and could, eventually, raise global temperatures by as much as 3° C. 

Now that temperature increase hasn't happened yet - currently, temperatures on Earth still reflect an earlier time, when there were fewer CO₂ particles. There's something of a time delay here, part of which is due to the fact that Earth is a water planet (think of all our oceans) and water takes a long time to heat up. 

But, much like water set over a burner, eventually that water will get warmer and Earth's temperatures will go up. And that's even if we stopped emitting all greenhouse gases right this very minute (an unlikely and impractical scenario). CO₂ remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. So even if we use our geo-engineering skills to block sunlight or reflect it back, that 400 parts per million stays at the same level - meaning will we still have the same amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and we'll still get those warmer temperatures.

But our third option - removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere - gets to the root of the problem. If we can vacuum up some of that CO₂, we could potentially counteract some of the changes we've already seen and avoid a further increase in temperature.

It's obviously a lot more complicated than what I'm writing here - and there are plenty of financial and bureaucratic hurdles - but scientists do think its feasible and there are a number of projects in the works. 

The thing to remember about all of this, though, is that we're talking a pretty long time table, like more than 100 years. It's going to require commitments that extend through several generations and reach across international borders. 

People and nations will have to suspend their own immediate interests and play the long game. It can't be something that one nation does or that one generation begins - it's a serious, long-term investment and it's one that we, ourselves, won't see the outcome of. Today's marches - in New York and worldwide - and Tuesday's meetings seem to indicate that we might be able to move in that direction.

Simple Physics

Jim White - a paleoclimatologist and the director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INCAAR) - knows something about climate change. And last Thursday, he took the time to explain it to those of us who are a little less steeped in the topic.

Global climate change comes down to simple physics and depends on three factors:

1) How much energy we get from the sun (i.e. sun cycles, our orbit around the sun)
2) How much of that energy is reflected back into space (by polar ice caps, glaciers, various aerosols)
3) The amount of greenhouse gases in earth's atmosphere(water vapor, carbon dioxide, etc.), which absorb the energy that is being reflected.

Pretty basic stuff at its core. And the laws that govern climate change are the same laws that govern other natural phenomena, like gravity - they are universal.

To make his point, he gives us a demonstration he's given frequently, recently to a group of Evangelicals. He asks one person to stand on a chair and then says to the crowd, "What happens if I push this person off the chair?" 

The crowd usually says the person will jump and catch himself.

"What if I tie his legs?"

He'll catch himself with his arms, maybe break a wrist.

"What if I tie his arms?"

He'll fall and get hurt, maybe badly.

But at no point does anyone in the crowd ever say that the guy won't fall. So we do understand that there are physical laws out there that apply to all of us. Those same physical laws are involved in climate change. Whether you believe in climate change doesn't matter - it's happening. To say it's not is like saying you don't believe in gravity or thermodynamics.

It's a good argument. For many - especially for those who are religious - climate change is seen as a different type of faith that scientists are trying to convert them to. But, as White points out, this isn't about faith, which requires you to make a leap, to accept something intangible or unprovable. Climate change and the science behind it are real. They're measurable. 

That doesn't mean religion and science have to be at odds - people have accepted gravity as part of their world and adopted it into their faith-based lives. This shouldn't be any different. Scientists like White aren't concerned with if or how people work climate change into their faith - they just want to make sure everyone understands the facts - the simple physics - of it all. 

Back In The Big Easy

From my hotel room, I'm watching an oil tanker push its way up the Mississippi River. Off in the distance, I see oil refineries, water storage tanks and fluffy white clouds building on the horizon. On the streets below, pedestrians move slowly through the heat and humidity, trying to stay in the shade and out of sight of the piercing hot sun.

I'm back in New Orleans, for the Society of Environmental Journalists' annual conference. It's been more than six years since I've been here but I haven't forgotten what a great city this is. It feels so different from any other American city I've been to; the architecture, the food, the history, even the city's layout - all of it makes it seem so much more foreign, more magical. 

The theme (because we have to have a theme) is "Risk and Resilience" - something that this city knows a lot about, or has certainly learned a lot about in the nine years since Hurricane Katrina. And while New Orleans seems magical, it - like many other cities around the world - faces some very real problems when it comes to climate change.

This morning's workshop focused on what communities are at risk from climate change and what's being done to make those communities and populations more resilient. While there are all kinds of ways to approach this topic, many of the panelists honed in on population growth. 

Obvious statement: population growth has a big effect on the environment.

No surprises there. It's especially a problem in poorer countries, where access to family planning, birth control and education are limited and poverty rates are high. But there have been some interesting finds out of attempts to curb population growth. In countries - Bangladesh was held up as an example - where WOMEN, not men, get more access to education, the population is less affected by climate change.

Why?

No one's entirely sure. But the theory is that when women get an education, they learn about family planning, they make better choices about their health, they understand the potential hazards in their community, they come up with disaster-preparedness plans, they develop skills that help get them out of poverty (or at least make them more economically stable and give them more power) - and all of those contribute to a population that is more resilient to climate change, that can adapt.

It's an interesting idea but it's really more about adaptation and long-term thinking. That's great. Climate change is going to affect everyone and populations will need to adapt to whatever it brings. But those changes are happening fast and we're a long ways from improving education for women across the globe. 

So, as I sit looking out the window at New Orleans, a city for which climate change has some big implications, in a state that faces some very big problems, it leaves me with the question of what are we going to do right now? Can we curb population growth faster? What's being done in poorer countries to make them aware of climate change? And if we can't even get people in this country to believe the science, to change their habits, can we expect others to do the same? It seems to me the longer we wait to make serious changes now, the less resilient we will be in the long run.