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Obama's Landmark Greenhouse Gas And Fuel Economy Standards Are Working - Now Let's Look to the Future

(Tom Toles, Washington Post, Sept 2, 2012)

This week the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) released a very positive report regarding the historic federal greenhouse gas and fuel economy standards. In a nutshell, car manufacturers can meet the current 2025 goals to improve efficiency and slash greenhouse gas emissions at a cost similar or less than expected four years ago.

But despite these clear and comprehensive findings, some elements in the auto industry will inevitably push back, arguing that the rules will be too expensive or that gasoline prices are so low that customers don't want fuel-efficient vehicles.

These arguments against long-term standards are myopic. Remember that when these rules were first adopted in 2009, the auto industry was in collapse. The fate of iconic car companies, for decades the pride of the United States, was a huge question mark. Eventually, the federal government decided to throw GM, Chrysler and Ford a multi-billion dollar lifeline. It was in the midst of these economic conditions, with fragile domestic manufacturers and gasoline prices around $2.00 a gallon--actually lower than today--that EPA, NHTSA and CARB first began developing today's greenhouse gas and fuel economy standards.

To its credit, domestic and foreign manufacturers agreed to the groundbreaking standards. American manufacturers realized they had become overly dependent on heavy, gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs. In 2009, they began to chart a new course that would ensure their long-term competitiveness, both domestically and globally. They bet on building a next generation of vehicles for a cleaner and more efficient future. The environmental upside to this innovation was staggering. Six billion metric tons of CO2 emissions would be avoided and consumers would save $1.7 trillion at the pump.

So how does the auto industry stand seven years later? Have manufacturers crashed and burned? No. From a bankrupt shambles in 2009, US auto industry sales have expanded dramatically. In 2015, they grew by 4.5 million vehicles, numbers on par with historic highs. Profits are also back on solid footing. GM, the largest of the Big Three, has swung from a $30.9 billion loss in 2008 to nearly $10 billion in profits in 2015. In fact, according to one analysis, the "Big Three" stand to fully recover compliance costs and be even more profitable per a range of future scenarios.

What about the variety of vehicles available? It's the largest and most diverse ever. The vast majority of vehicles are still internal combustion, but there are more than 76 alternative powertrain models available. Drivers can choose a large Chevy Suburban with a conventional engine, a hybrid Ford Focus or an all-electric Nissan Leaf. And every single model is more efficient than its 2009 counterpart, making it less polluting and cheaper to operate.

Does the industry have problems meeting the standards? Not at all. In fact, according to the EPA, over a quarter of the 2015 models met the 2018 standards. Fuel economy is at the highest level ever by 5 miles per gallon since 2004. Currently, the 2016 Honda Civic and the Scion iA already meet the 2023 standards. Several Ford-150 models already meet the 2021 standards, as do the Toyota Rav4, Chevy Malibu hybrid and Chevy Cruze.

Just seven years after the auto industry's 2009 nadir, it is in the midst of an innovation renaissance. The costs and the performance of current powertrain technologies are advancing faster than was anticipated. New technologies, such as Li-Ion batteries - the primary driver of cost in an electric vehicle - have come down nearly 70% in the last 6-7 years. So, even with national gasoline prices averaging $2.34 a gallon in early June, an electric vehicle is still about 50 percent cheaper to fuel than a gasoline vehicle.

The drop in battery costs is also translating into greater range. The mid-priced Chevy Bolt EV, which boasts a 200-mile range before being recharged, will be available at the end of the year. Tesla's mid-priced all-electric Model 3, expected in 2018, got over 400,000 advance orders in a matter of weeks. After federal incentives, both are expected to cost around $30,000 - cheaper than the average transaction price of a vehicle last December. What's more, that pricing is based on an electric vehicle market that is less than 1% of all car sales. Over the next decade, increased market penetration combined with technology advances will reduce those prices even further.

Meanwhile, what seemed like science fiction just decades ago is quickly becoming reality. A tech company, Google, continues to make rapid advances in self-driving. Cars with fuel cell powertrains produce only water from the exhaust. The first generation fuel cell production car, the Toyota Mirai is already available for sale in California.

The innovation that has been unleashed over the past seven years is exactly what is needed to take on the biggest threat to our future: climate change. But while it is merely a good start, these rules are not nearly enough for the world to avert the worst impacts of climate change. This past December, nations from around the world agreed that we have to keep average global temperatures from rising more than 2º Celsius from 2005 levels by 2050. In order to meet that goal, the International Energy Agency projects that we will need 100 million electric cars on the road by 2030--up from the 1.26 million in 2015. This is a huge task--but it is still doable with companies continuing to invest and the right government policies.

This year, as the regulatory agencies review the 2025 standards, industry voices should not be calling for the standards to be rolled back. This is not the time to again look in the rearview mirror. Instead, industry and government must set ambitious future targets for 2030 and beyond. We need to provide long-term certainty for the innovative companies that have set us on our current trajectory. We must enhance the Nation's energy security. We have to deal head-on with climate change.

To do so, EPA, NHTSA and CARB should consider setting greenhouse gas standards for cars in 2030 that would lead to a significant number of plugged-in electric vehicles to be on the road. Once again, the auto industry should bring its expertise to be an integral part of the process.

Government policies should also consider incorporating electric vehicles that are shared and autonomous into the standards. Shared and autonomous cars have the potential to use much less fuel or electricity. Under the right government policies and incentives, these vehicles could contribute to lower greenhouse gas emissions and other air pollutants, while reducing congestion and accidents.

These type of commitments will help us avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Setting our standards higher is the only way to shift the balance from an intensely polluting fossil fuel economy to a cleaner and more sustainable future. They will also help the nation's automakers be global leaders in environmental innovation and, as already demonstrated, to profitably secure their futures.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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A PV Panel On Every Roof
In the home stretch of his presidency, Barack Obama still has some ideas up his sleeve. The latest is his crusade to make sure that every American household and business can become a solar power plant.

There has been plenty of good news about solar energy in recent years. It is becoming much more affordable and it's sprouting up on rooftops nearly everywhere in the United States. Yet we have barely begun to capture its potential. Sunlight is free, ubiquitous, domestic, inexhaustible and clean, but it still provides less than 1 percent of the nation's electricity.

Its potential is much greater. The U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado calculates that if every suitable roof was equipped with solar panels, we could get 40 percent of our electricity from sunlight.

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That's a theoretical number, not a plan. But reality will get much closer to theory if solar energy's virtuous cycle continues. The cycle goes like this: Because of state and federal incentives, improvements in technology and state renewable energy mandates, the price of rooftop solar systems has dropped so that more people can afford them. As more people buy solar panels, more must be manufactured. The more that are manufactured, the less expensive they become because of economies of manufacturing scale. As they get even less expensive, more people buy them, more are manufactured, there are more economies of scale, and so on.

However, the virtuous cycle has not yet brought the price of rooftop solar systems down to the point where low-income families or people with low credit scores can afford them. In a study it issued in January 2015, the George Washington University Solar Institute reported that the 40 percent of American households that earn less than $40,000 each year account for less than 5 percent of the nation's solar installations. In other words, we still have a solar income gap in the United States. The study noted that solar energy has the ability to "alleviate the financial burdens of lower income communities, but targeted policies will be necessary for solar to expand into this underserved market."

President Obama responded six months later with some of those targeted policies. In July 2015, the White House announced a National Community Solar Partnership designed to make solar accessible to all income levels. The objective is 300 megawatts of solar power on federally subsidized housing. In addition, because half of the nation's homes and businesses are not suitable for producing solar power, the Administration budgeted $520 million for the development of community solar systems that serve multiple buildings. Several of these arrangements are in place today around the United States so that several buildings can share the capital costs and the savings of a photovoltaic array, including buildings where rooftop solar would not work because of ownership issues, poor solar access and so on.

Many moderate- and low-income families face two other barriers. They may not have the money to pay the up-front costs of a system, and they may have trouble finding affordable financing. The marketplace has spawned some innovative solutions. Today, a homeowner can lease a solar system rather than buy one. The lessor pays all the up-front costs to install the system, plus the cost of maintaining it. The homeowner uses part of the savings on his energy bills and the income from selling solar power to his utility to make lease payments.

Some utilities offer on-bill financing for homeowners to make energy efficiency and renewable energy improvements. The utility loans the homeowner the money for energy upgrades; the homeowner repays the loan with a special charge on his or her monthly utility bills. When on-bill financing is done correctly, the homeowner's energy savings are more than his or her loan payments.

Yet another low-interest option is Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing. Similar to utility financing, the municipality puts up the money for energy efficiency and renewable energy improvements. The building owner repays the assessment with a fee on his or her property tax bill. This option has worked well for commercial buildings, but PACE loans for residences have been in limbo for several years because of objections from the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) over who gets paid first when the house is sold -- the municipality or the mortgage holder.

The Obama Administration has worked out a solution. Earlier this week, the White House unveiled another initiative called Clean Energy Savings for All. It clears up the FHA's objections to residential PACE programs so that municipalities can create them by designating energy financing districts and issuing bonds so homeowners can add PACE assessments to their HUD and Veterans Administration mortgages.

In addition, the Administration will make it easier for the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance program at HUD to fund renewable energy systems.

The goal for this new package of initiatives is 1 gigawatt of solar for low- and moderate-income families by 2020.

The old rap against rooftop solar was that it is a boutique technology that only upper-income homeowners could afford. But because of falling prices for solar panels and innovative financing options, and because of the Obama Administration's ongoing work to make solar power accessible to everyone, distributed solar systems are rapidly becoming an egalitarian technology that gives all of us some choice in where our energy comes from. It also gives us the opportunity to do our patriotic duty and join America's clean energy revolution.

It's time to make America's energy system great again.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Why Wasting Water Is Even Worse for the Environment Than You Think
Is wasting water actually bad for the environment? originally appeared on Quora: the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights.

Answer by Ava Mohsenin, Communcations Associate at WaterNow Alliance, on Quora:

Yes, wasting water is actually bad for the environment. There are anthropocentric, biocentric, and ecocentric reasons why wasting water is bad.

Anthropocentrically, fresh water is a vital resource for the survival of our population. Seeing as less than 1% of the world's water is freshwater and available for us to consume (not trapped in glaciers), there are limitations that factor into our carrying capacity as a population on Earth including the availability and distribution of freshwater. Different countries are endowed with different stocks of freshwater, and depending on their replenishment rate and usage rate, each has varying degrees of water scarcity that needs to be addressed. Below is a map by World Resources Institute that outlines the water stress by country, with 36 countries displaying an "Extremely High Stress (>80%)," which means that "more than 80 percent of the water available to agricultural, domestic and industrial users is withdrawn annually--leaving businesses, farms and communities vulnerable to scarcity" (World's 36 Most Water-Stressed Countries).

Therefore, wasting water in a country where it may appear water just magically comes out of the tap (i.e. Canada, the U.S., most developed countries), is wasting a precious, vital resource that millions (663 million, according to Water Facts: Facts About the Global Water Shortage) don't even have clean, safe access to.

Furthermore, in places where clean water is scarce, overusing or wasting household water limits the availability of it for other communities to use for drinking, cleaning, cooking or growing--and thus contributes to disease, illness, or agricultural scarcity/starvation.

You could tack on the economic incentive to save water, as it means lower household water utility bills, one of the largest incentives for water-wise individuals or households to conserve water.

Biocentrically, other species rely on freshwater besides humans as a vital component to their survival! Overuse of freshwater in household settings means there is less fresh water for agricultural use (which affects humans on an food scarcity level), but many livestock species rely on freshwater. Also, as we divert more freshwater from aquatic environments to supplement agriculturally, many plant and animal species are threatened or can become endangered. Despite our attempts to separate man from nature, we are indeed part of one ecosystem (the biosphere), and reliant on plants and animals; therefore sharing and properly managing our most precious resource is crucial.

Ecocentrically, wasting water while our demand for water increases (as population and standards of living increase globally), means that we need to supplement for this lack of freshwater by pulling it out of aquifers or groundwater supplies in which their regeneration rate is lower than the extraction rate. This unsustainable practice decreases long term water security and availability.

Furthermore, and almost most importantly, water takes a lot of energy, time, and money to filter and clean so that it's drinkable. Wasting water or overusing household water means you're wasting the energy-intensive process of filtration. The many steps of this process--extraction, transportation, filtration, etc.--require non-renewable fossil fuels and as these resources become depleted, their dangerous by-products such as carbon dioxide build up in the Earth's atmosphere, contributing to your carbon footprint and the Earth's rising temperatures.

This question originally appeared on Quora. Ask a question, get a great answer. Learn from experts and access insider knowledge. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. More questions:

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The Cruel Market: Nuclear Pain And Environmental Loss
Just when it needs it most, the United States is losing its most potent weapon in the fight against climate change, which might better be called global pollution. One nuclear plant is closed in Vermont, two are under threat of closure in Illinois, and the only plant in climate-conscious California is to close.

These four plants represent a substantial withdrawal of clean, carbon-free electricity from the market, mostly to be replaced by natural gas, and some wind and solar. Gas will do the bulk of the generating, and it is a carbon-emitter -- less than coal, but a carbon source nonetheless.

What is more, these plants are up and running, which means none of the pollution associated with construction, steel-making or quarrying will have to be repeated. Some, including Marvin Fertel, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, have expressed fears that 20 more nuclear plants may yet close.

"2016-07-19-1468892079-2787399-DiabloCanyonNuclearPowerPlant.jpg"

Diablo Canyon: No fault of its own

The ostensible reason for these closures is that market forces dictate them. That bald statement implies that electricity is bought and sold as freely as any multi-sourced commodity.

But electricity is not traded in any conventional way. And it is weighted in favor of the short term and political goals.

The trouble started when it was decided to deregulate electricity markets in the 1990s. The goal had nobility: Consumers would have choice. At least that is how it was sold by advocates, such as Enron.

Well, choice did not really work for consumers, but it has worked for some large industrial customers, who have been able to shop for price.

Mostly, deregulation has created two kinds of utilities: those that swallowed the deregulation pill, and those who did not, mostly in the South. The northern tier of utilities, under pressure from their state governments, deregulated, some even selling off their generating assets.

The result has been other than anticipated: Consumers have had little or no choice, and the market has set about exterminating long-lived plant, like nuclear, in favor of today's cheapest fuel -- at this moment, natural gas.

The utilities which have remained strictly regulated by their state utility commissions have been more secure financially and able to raise money more cheaply. The leader in this pack, the giant Southern Company, headquartered in Atlanta, has become a technological innovator as well as a builder of new nuclear plant.

Deregulation of the telephone monopoly -- often cited during the passion to deregulate electricity -- created a profusion of innovations. By contrast, deregulating electricity has just brought about a rush to the cheapest fuel of the day.

Electric utilities operate what are known as natural monopolies. Competing entities cannot install a new set of transmission wires, so the deregulated electric market had to be contrived. It was also subject to political and cultural manipulation, as the solar and wind lobbies insisted that their product get preference. Coal was edged out financially, before environmental concerns.

Deregulated utilities have formed transmission organizations to rationalize the system. These are the independent system operators, such as the Midwest ISO or PJM in the Mid-Atlantic. They auction power and the auction system favors the cheapest kilowatt on offer.

That sounds fair, right? Not quite. Some of the power comes from wind and solar, which has been subsidized by an array of tax preferences and other government supports.

Many states have renewable energy portfolios which decree that a percentage of the power has to come from these renewable resources. This is fine because they produce no carbon. But they do not produce that much reliable electricity either. It takes a lot of solar arrays or wind turbines -- and then only when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing -- to produce the same electricity as a nuclear power plant or an old-fashioned, coal-fired power plant. They need reliable backup -- and that is natural gas, a fossil fuel.

Also to replace a nuclear plant with renewables chews up a lot of land, whether solar arrays or wind farms. Imperfect markets produce imperfect results. -- For InsideSources

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Water, Wildlife and Hope: Rejuvenating a Kogi Sacred Site

After years of planning, designing, acquiring materials, developing infrastructure, laying and burying 1,200 meters of pipe, and testing water quality and functionality, the seemingly impossible was achieved: for Colombia's Kogi people, and their related tribes who rely on Jaba Tañiwashkaka, a historically sacred site, an aqueduct that provides access to water for crop irrigation and potable water for consumption is now in place. And thanks to a determined site restoration effort, alligators, nutria, and capybara are only a few of the animals now seen in a wetland previously largely devoid of wildlife.

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The Kogi people live on roughly 14.5 million acres in Colombia's northern Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region. Around the margins of the Sierra Nevada is the Línea Negra, the “Black Line,” a chain of 54 pilgrimage sites sacred to the Kogi and once part of their ancestral territories. Most of the associated sites are not currently under Kogi ownership or control—the Kogi were forced to abandon them due to decades of colonization and violent civil conflict—and many are endangered by poorly planned development schemes, megaprojects, mining activity, and/or illicit crop cultivation.

To address this, in 2012, the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) partnered with the Colombian Ministry of Culture and the Organización Gonawindúa Tayrona of the Kogi people to purchase the essential section of a coastal sacred site that the region's indigenous communities call Jaba Tañiwashkaka—an area of great environmental and cultural importance.

With the legal consolidation and traditional management of Jaba Tañiwashkaka well underway, thanks in part to additional land purchases, a pressing task has been the construction of a water supply system that allows for the continuous residence of Kogi families in their reclaimed territory and the establishment of small-scale subsistence agriculture on three hectares to sustain the families and authorities who live at or visit the site. Today, an aqueduct provides access to water for crop irrigation and potable water for consumption. Previously, any water supplied at the site of the Kogi's temples had to be carried in buckets from the Jerez River at a distance of about one kilometer, and this water was not suitable for human consumption.

"Agua

Now, solar panel energy powers the pump, three 2,000-liter reservoir tanks provide storage, and a filter supplies potable water, with the remainder used for agriculture. The system was designed as a low-maintenance and ecologically responsible project, and a fourth tank has now been sited at the nearby orchard. With assistance from the national government, this land was returned to the ownership and stewardship of the Kogi.

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Under the Kogi's care, and through joint efforts with ACT, their sacred territory is being restored through community monitoring, trash collection, and border enforcement. Local waters are decontaminating, as indicated by studies of the health and size of populations of crayfish, a good indicator of water quality. Littoral vegetation is rebounding, and bodies of water previously scattered with refuse are being restored to beautiful freshwater lagoons.

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The local population of crabs is increasing, and previously unseen semiaquatic animals such as nutrias and young alligators have been spotted. The alligators further indicate that that a recent prohibition from capturing their eggs has helped their reproduction and repopulation. Moreover, with around-the-clock control of fires, local flora is recovering across the local wetland, including propagation of marsh vegetation and young mangrove.

In addition to the return of its original state and beauty, the temple site can now fulfill its role as a gathering site for the Kogi's traditional practices—ritual offerings, internal meetings, and exchange gatherings—that strengthen their culture and advance the conservation and restoration of the local ecology.

ACT and the Kogi are grateful to a set of funders including the White Feather Foundation, March to the Top, LUSH Cosmetics, Dora Arts Janssen, and anonymous donors whose generosity made the aqueduct a reality and helped breathe new life into this ancient wetland.

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Climate Change This Week: Undersea Deforestation Soars, Flipping Crystals, and More!
Today, the Earth got a little hotter, and a little more crowded.

"2016-07-21-1469074591-9009154-bluegoldmacawbirdAmazonBrazilSourcecuyabenolodge.comccr336.jpg"

Saving BUB, Beautiful Unique Biodiversity, like this golden macaw, is another important reason to save the carbon storing Amazonian rainforest. Source cuyabenolodge.com

Forests: the cheapest way to store carbon

"2016-07-21-1469074634-3147965-deforestationforestintheamazonbrazilTDCccr338.jpg"

OO Deforestation In The Amazon Continues - Takeaways:

in the last 50 years, nearly 20% has been lost
almost 300,000 square miles;
In 2015, it lost another 2,000 square miles.

"2016-07-21-1469074668-5236901-deforestationfromPerugoldmineTDCccr338.jpg"

OO Deforestation From Illegal Gold Mining Spreads To Northern Peru show satellite images.

When we harm forests, we harm ourselves.

OO India State Plants Close To 50 Million Trees In A Day - trying to beat a world record. Takeaways:

govt funded +6.2 billion for tree-planting nationally;
India pledges to increase forest cover to 95 million hectares (235 million acres) by 2030.
long-term survival of trees planted in such mass campaigns remains a concern.

"2016-07-21-1469074728-2327381-monarchbutterflyCreditTedWilcoxccr338.jpg"

A Beauty Among Many That Are Threatened, the decline of the monarch butterfly is the poster story of much wider insect decline, including the catastrophic decline of bees worldwide. Credit Ted Wilcox

OO Vanishing Act: Why Insects Are Declining
And Why It Matters - they are being lost to pesticides, monoculture, and habitat loss, but are essential to agriculture and \ecosystems necessary for our survival. Think food pollinators, for starters.

"2016-07-21-1469074765-1223016-ugandadeforestationSourcewww.ababaugandasafaris.comccr338.jpg"

Paying For The Right Kind of Greenery Source www.ababaugandasafaris.com

OO Uganda: A Cheap, Simple Way To Slow Deforestation - where it is happening rapidly, is to simply pay land owners not to cut down their trees, a program showed.

The program is a positive model for protecting a biodiverse hub that includes a key habitat for endangered chimpanzees.

It also validates the effectiveness of a "Payments for Ecosystems Services" of the sort that could help slow global deforestation, leading driver of climate change.

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CARBON-STORING UNDERSEA FORESTS THREATENED

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Wikipedia

OO Sea Otters Are Climate Champions:
They Protect Carbon Storing Kelp Forests in the Aleutian Islands by eating sea urchins, keeping these kelp eaters from ravaging kelp forests.

"The difference in annual absorption of atmospheric carbon from kelp photosynthesis between a world with and a world without sea otters is somewhere between 13 and 43 billion kg of carbon."

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Sea Urchins Flourish, Eating Declining Kelp as oceans warm and acidify. Credit David Doubilet

OO Warming, Acidifying Oceans Harm
Health, Survival Of Kelp Forests - particularly those in the warmest part of their range, shows a new study, reducing kelps while resulting in more of its predators, sea urchins.

Rock lobsters, which usually keep sea urchin numbers in check, are falling, putting yet more pressure on kelp populations. It is uncertain whether kelp communities will survive.

AUSTRALIA SEA FOREST DEVASTATION

"2016-07-21-1469074870-6473552-beautifulkelpforestAustraliaSourcewww.toptenplus.comccr338.jpg"

An Undersea Jungle No More - most of Australia's kelp forests were recently destroyed by a marine heat wave. Source www.toptenplus.com

OO Australia: Marine Heatwave Devastates Vast Kelp Forests destroying about 90% of forests off the western coast between 2011 to 2013, posing a threat to biodiversity and the marine economy.

Related Headline:

OO Climate-Driven Regime Shift Of A Temperate Marine Ecosystem - rapid warming off Australia's west coast has transformed large stretches of kelp forests into tropical and subtropical marine ecosystems of seaweeds, invertebrates, corals, and fish typical of subtropical and tropical waters, a new study finds.

OO Australia's Other Great Reef Is Also Screwed - While the world panics about the Great Barrier Reef, an even larger and more valuable habitat, Australian kelp forests, are collapsing.

"2016-07-21-1469074903-7642852-mangrovedieoffsQueenslandAustraliaCreditJamesCookUniversityccr330.jpg"

That's Not Snow - It's Skeletons... of mangroves that died from overheating. Credit James Cook University

OO Mangrove Die-Off in Australia Led by Climate Change - About 7,000 hectares of mangroves over 700 km in the north have died due to climate change and El Nino -- the worst in the world, says a mangrove expert.

"This is what climate change looks like. You see things push the maximums or minimums."

Climate change warmed waters in the area made rainfall more erratic and, with this strong El Nino year, pushed mangroves beyond their tolerance threshold.

Australia is also reeling from mass coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef and mass deaths of kelp forests off the coast of Western Australia.

OO Great Barrier Reef: Govt Must Choose Which Parts To Save says an expert, and confront the prospect that some of it may be doomed, an expert on conservation modelling has warned.

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OH-OH

"2015-09-15-1442277605-5381443-extremeweatherbcompositedroughtheatwavestormwildfiremehccr290.png"

OO Climate May Be More Sensitive And Situation More Dire says new research. The climate may be warming more and faster in response to climate changing emissions than previously thought.

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CHANGING LAND USE DRIVES ASIAN CLIMATE-CHANGING EMISSIONS

"2016-07-21-1469075196-5212759-asiadeforestationSourceuletifanatflipboard.comccr338.jpg"

Like A Giant Climate Changing Infection Asian deforestation emits climate changing carbon gases, and often the farms that replace them further add emissions in growing livestock and crops. Source ulet ifan at flipboard.com

OO Asia: Significant Carbon Emissions from Changing Land Use and Cover from 1980-2009 resulted, and were responsible for 20-40% of such source emissions globally, a new study finds.

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HOT NEWS

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Source NSF Central Arizona Phoenix LTER site

OO Heat Wave Lifts June To Hottest On Record For US with a record average of nearly 72 F for the lower 48 states.

"2016-07-21-1469075267-3978092-heatwave530x250.jpg"

OO We Just Broke The Record For Hottest Year, Nine Straight Times

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CLIMATE COSTS MOUNT

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US Climate Change Costs Mount with this year looking to equal or be worse than the record US disaster year, 2011. Source NOAA

OO US Billion+ Dollar Weather Disasters Surge to Eight -
And It's Only June - Takeaways:

2 floods and 6 severe weather events
Including severe hailstorms
many in Texas,
well above the US average in yearly disaster costs.

"2016-07-21-1469075345-9057847-sunsetoverLondonheatwaveCreditMikeMey67atflickr.comccr338.jpg"

European Capitals Are Set to Heat UP under continued global warming.
Credit MikeMey67 at flickr.com

OO Climate Change To Blame For 1,000 Deaths In 2003 Heat Wave says a new study.

The model attributes 1,000 deaths directly to climate change.
The model looked at Paris and London;
In much warmer Paris, 70% of the deaths were climate linked;
20% in London.

Extended to the70,000+ deaths in Europe during that hot summer, the model could potentially link far more deaths to climate change.

The chances of experiencing such extreme heat waves in London and Paris have tripled.

OO Boiled Alive - When the human body gets to 42C, it starts to cook. The heat causes the proteins in each cell to irreversibly change, like an egg white as it boils. In the 2003 summer, record temperatures soared from 36.5 C to 41 C in Bosnia.

OO Climate Report Predicts British Heatwaves Of 48C

"2016-07-21-1469075388-4565060-wildfireMcmurrayalbertacanadamay2016SourceCBCReutersccr328.jpg"

Source CBC, Reuters

OO Canada: Alberta Wildfires Costliest Disaster In Canadian History

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MELTDOWN

"2016-07-21-1469075454-2825888-thermalshieldgraphic1.png"

Planetary Thermal Shield Disappearing as it literally melts away, allowing the planet to absorb ever more heat every day.

OO Arctic Sea Ice Crashes To Record Low For June
With Record Speed - ice cover disappeared at an average rate of 29,000 miles a day, about 70% faster than the typical rate of ice loss, experts say.

OO Alaska: As Glaciers Melt, Landslides Follow - mountainsides around Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska are giving way, causing seismic tremors and tsunamis.

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FIXING CLIMATE CHANGE

@@ A Simple And Smart Way To Fix Climate Change given by Dan Miller in 2014 at a Ted talk suggests a way to profit as we tackle climate change, by finally charging those who sell and use fossil fuels - and distributing the revenues back to all of us.

The strategy is sure to speed transition to clean renewable energy. What's not to like? Check it out!

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SPEAKING OUT

"2016-07-21-1469075490-3655292-hillaryclintonbarackobamaTDCccr338.jpg"

Hillary At Least Addresses Climate Change occasionally, but Trump is absent on even acknowledging the problem.

OO Food Shortages, Sea Level Rise:
US Voters' Top Climate Change Concerns

OO Climate Change: The Missing Issue Of The 2016 Campaign - reveals a Guardian survey of US voters, who are angry that the national election campaigns fail to deal with concerns over the gathering global disaster.

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WET NEWS

"2016-07-21-1469075522-8893202-floodingwestvirginia2016TDCccr338.jpg"

OO Climate Change Makes Flood More Likely, More Damaging, experts say. Overwhelming scientific evidence shows that the warming of the planet's atmosphere is increasing the occurrence of and the seriousness of heavy rains in West Virginia.

OO Britain Faces Drowning With Global Warming As the Earth's temperature continues to rise at an alarming rate, and catastrophic flooding is just the beginning.

"2016-07-21-1469075573-7584493-typhoonnepartakTaiwan07.05.2016Sourceclimatesignals.orgccr338.jpg"

The Bright Eye of Destruction, Nepartak, is the latest in destructive typhoons helped by the heat of global warming. Source climatesignals.org

OO Super Typhoon Nepartak Causes Devastation Across Taiwan's Coastline

OO Climate Change Boosted Nepartak's Intensity, Destruction

"2016-07-21-1469075607-4259745-acidoceanmapwpeopleTDCccr338.jpg"

OO Acid Oceans Decreasing Carbon Storage in the Oceans - as the acidity* prevents myriad marine organisms from forming calcium carbonate skeletons, an important way that oceans store carbon.

Ultimately, there will be a limit of the carbon dioxide the oceans will be able to absorb. At that point, the planet will, under continued global warming, heat up far faster.

*As humans fill the air with the carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases that cause global warming, much of that carbon gets dissolved in the ocean, causing the water to acidify.

"2016-07-21-1469075680-3218209-musselsnfritesmoulesfritesSourceallomoulesfrites.comccr338.jpg"

Muscled Out By Climate Change? Source allomoulesfrites.com

OO Climate Change Will Muscle
Mussels Off The Menu By 2100 says a new study, ocean acidification seriously affects mussels' ability to cling onto rocks,, which they must do 6-12 months while they grow to a marketable size.

By 2100, the mussel coastal regions will be so acidic that nearly half of mussels will be unable to cling on long enough to be farmed.

Related Headline:

OO Acid Attack: Can Mussels Hang On for Much Longer?

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SOCIAL REPERCUSSIONS

"2016-07-21-1469075719-3734118-hotconstructionworkersSourceimgur.comccr338.jpg"

Hot Times - Field and construction workers are particularly vulnerable to heat wave harm. Source imgur.com

OO As Temperatures Climb, US Workers Are Suffering - In 2011, heat killed 61 U.S. workers and sickened 4,400+.

There are no federal heat standards for workers.

OO New York City Faces Drowning Within This Century - from projected sea level rises of 5-7 feet or more.

It's not clear that even the planned 10-foot walls to protect Manhattan will be enough, especially when the next big storm comes.

"2016-07-21-1469075765-8063619-marshallislandstidefloodingSourceBikiniAtollLocalGovernmentviaAPccr338.jpg"

The Sea Is Claiming Their Homes with rising tides, faster than these Marshall Islanders can find new ones. Source Bikini Atoll Local Government via AP

OO Seas Rising Faster Than Refugee Law Can Adapt - in being able to decide what rights people have when displaced by rising sea levels.

"2016-07-21-1469075820-2296324-LakePoopowetanddrymehccr338.png"

From Wet to Dry: As Lake Poopo Died, So Did the Identity of A Community

OO Climate Change Drying Up Lakes That Sustain Communities in the Andes in South America.

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"2016-07-21-1469075879-8884636-civilizationcollapseSourcewww.newscientist.comccr338.jpg"

OO What Happens When Society Crumbles And Progress Stops Takeaways:

Every complex society in history - think Rome, the Maya, Greece - has collapsed.

societies grow more complex at the cost of energy;
social collapse occurs when not enough energy exists to sustain social complexity;
collapse of trade, political institutions, technology, economies, production ensues.
collapses are inhumane: MANY people die.

in past regional collapses, people refashioned new societies from remnants.
the next collapse is likely to be global;
current resource devastation and pollution means
there will not be much left to develop our current level of society, again.

MEH: If we brought our populations to sustainable numbers and consumption levels humanely, we might spare our descendents this inhumane future.

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A SWEET SPOT IN CREATING SUSTAINABLE POPULATIONS

"2016-05-11-1462993989-2532103-medicines360.orgbanner5Sourcemedicines360.orgccr328.png"

Triple Win: Using Profits to Provide Needed US Family Planning - Medicines360.org is key to creating a sustainable US population and bright futures for women - AND saving taxpayers many billions yearly in community costs by preventing unintended pregnancies. Source medicines360.org

GOOD IDEAS

"2016-07-21-1469075914-4019062-fisheyeviewbananafieldgrowthlimitsCreditE.MoinuIITAccr338.jpg"

Credit E. Moinu, IITA

OO The Limits To Green Growth - Reconciling environmental and economic imperatives will be hard, but necessary.

"Some might argue that calling for radical transformation, rather than incremental change, is inappropriate...
But this view implicitly underestimates the seriousness of the environmental crisis that the world faces, and assumes linear change when the needed transformation will be non-linear."

"2016-07-21-1469075960-2227428-fisheyeviewofNewYorkgrowthlimitsCreditRandyScottSlavinccr338.jpg"

"We Now Live In A Full World, but we still behave as if it were empty..."
Credit Randy Scott Slavin

As Herman Daly notes:

"we now live in a full world, but we still behave as if it were empty, with ample space and resources for the indefinite future...

The prevailing obsession with economic growth puts us on the path to ecological collapse, sacrificing the very sustenance of our well-being and survival.

To reverse this ominous trajectory, we must transition toward a steady-state economy focused on qualitative development, as opposed to quantitative growth, and the interdependence of the human economy and global ecosphere."

"2016-07-21-1469075996-5106620-soilheldinhandswplantNatashatfreeimagesrbdcctw98.jpg"

Credit Natash at free images

OO How The World's Most Fertile Soil Can Help Reverse Climate Change - Takeaways:

Soil mixed with biochar* and organic matter stores far more carbon;
Retains far more water and is far more fertile;
In combo with reducing fossil fuel use, it could make a huge difference
And address many agriculture, food security and hunger issues.

*organic wastes heated in a low oxygen environment - a way to recycle human and agricultural wastes, both plant and animal.

"2016-07-21-1469076031-7357747-ChinacoalpowerplantpollutionSourceAFPviaGettyImagesccr322.jpg"

Source AFP via Getty Images

OO Fix or Nix the Most Inefficient, Dirtiest Plants
To Reduce Emissions in every country, a new study indicates, since not all plants are equal in how much emissions they produce per unit power.

OO A Super Microgrid Controller Allows Microgrids to 'Talk' to Each Other - important as clean energy microgrids spread.

OO Flipping Crystals Improves Solar Cell Performance - Takeaways:

Perovskite crystals can convert sunlight to electricity efficiently;
A new two dimensional formation of the crystal has tripled that efficiency
And is outstandingly stable.
Perovskites are closer to being used in solar installations.

OO California: Making Your Home Energy Smart With A Click - the state government is making it happen.

"2016-07-21-1469076070-3758610-Miamifloodinghightideviafloridatrendcomccr236.jpg"

Source floridatrend.com

OO Miami's Plan To Deal With Climate Change: Make Developers Pay Up - charging fees for those who develop in environmentally sensitive areas.

OO Here's What US Can Learn From Germany's Sunny Grid - One day recently, Germany had generated just short of 100 percent of its electricity from renewable energy. Part 3 of 4.

OO Surviving Kenya's Drought:
Catching Water With Rocks - Rock catchment systems use naturally occurring rock outcrops to divert rainwater to a central collection area. A concrete wall is built to direct the water that trickles down the rock surface into a sand and gravel filter, then down pipes into covered storage tanks.

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GOOD CLEAN NEWS

"2016-01-26-1453836443-8312905-solarpanelswindturbinesflowersdaisiesSourcecleantechfinance.netccr302.jpg"

OO Big Solar Is Leaving Rooftop Systems In The Dust - Solar power is on pace for the first time this year to contribute more new electricity to the grid than will any other form of energy - a feat driven more by economics than green mandates, favoring large scale over rooftop installations.

OO Offshore Wind Costs Hit Record Low .

OO Wind Power Plant In Atacama Desert Fills Chile's Clean-Energy Sails

"2016-07-21-1469076105-2476809-googleamazonapplelogos.png"

OO Google, Amazon and Apple Are Forging
the Future of Corporate Energy Management
Large corporations are taking a more active approach to managing their energy.

OO New York Investing Bigtime in Clean Energy Future

"2016-07-21-1469076142-1269107-sellssolarlightscleanstovestohervillageTanzaniaSourceSolarSistersccr338.jpg"

Bringing The Sun to her community in Tanzania, selling solar lights, and clean stoves as part of the Solar Sisters cooperative. Source Solar Sisters

OO From Basket Weavers To Salt Farmers:
The Women Leading A Renewables Revolution - From Tanzania to India, social enterprises are helping women become clean energy entrepreneurs.

OO Deutsche Bank Pulls Back From Deals in Coal Mining Sector

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CLINTON BESTS TRUMP AT CLIMATE AND ENERGY POLICY

"2016-07-21-1469076178-6219173-clintontrumponenergyclimateSourcewww.realclearpolitics.comccr338.png"

Where Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Stand on Climate, Energy
Source www.realclearpolitics.com

OO Where Clinton, Trump Stand on Energy, Climate Change

OO Trump's Wall Will Hurt U.S. Energy Companies - by choking off a burgeoning energy relationship between the US and the emerging oil and gas nation of Mexico.

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CLUELESS LEADERSHIP

OO Despite Economic Advantages,
Some Republican States Are Discouraging Clean Energy

OO G20 Nations Fail To Agree
On Timeline For Phasing Out Fossil Fuel Subsidies

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FOSSIL FUEL FOLLIES

"2016-07-21-1469076465-8281815-pollutionfromcoalpowerplantsourceRTCCccr231.jpg"

OO Coal Dust Pollution Kills 23,000 Yearly In EU penetrating lungs, and it racks up tens of billions of euros in health costs, says a new report.

OO Shell Seeks Exemption To North Sea Clear-Up Rules so it doesn't have to remove all the drilling crap it left undersea - some of the structures the size of the Empire State Building.

OO Poland's Disappearing Lakes Fuel Battle Over Coal Mining as the industry siphons groundwater for its mining, and farms and lakes dry up.

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ELECTION YEAR:

"2016-03-08-1457470019-7186523-voteforclimateactionDIFyourfamilymehccr317.png"

If You Don't Vote For Climate Action, You Can Forget The Rest - in a climate-changing world of famine, drought, rising seas, giant storms and heat waves, there will be no security in jobs, health, wealth, or national safety. There will be chaos ensuing from increasing crises and disasters. Vote.

OO Global Warming Policies We Set Today Will Determine The Next 10,000 Years - of global warming, a new study shows -- and whether our civilization survives or not: history shows that harmful climate change has destroyed civilizations before.

This time, it could be worldwide. Let's keep "The Hunger Games" in the realm of fiction.

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"2014-07-06-populationmatters2green.png"

If we do not grow sustainably,
Our children will die inhumanely.

@@ The Cost of Unintended Pregnancy: Too Young

Teen childbearing cost US taxpayers $9+ Billion in 2010
And the costs of raising a child usually ensures decades, if not a life, of poverty for its mother.
- US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Help prevent unintended pregnancies in your community:
publicize where women can access affordable contraception.

"2015-12-15-1450211150-3188590-larccontraceptivepostercoupleeyeslookingsidewaysmehccr307.png"

They can go here to find locations:

"2015-12-15-1450211215-359134-contraceptivealocationengineqrcode.png"

And there are many more actions you can do, right here.

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SOLAR KEEPS SMILING

"2015-02-02-solarkeepssmilingpanelfield300x197ViaSolar.calfinder.com.jpg"

OO Faster Rooftop Solar Growth
To Cut Demand From Biggest U.S. Grid

OO 'The Switch: How Solar, Storage And New Tech
Means Cheap Power For All' - the solar revolution is closer than you think, argues an expert, as storage and new technology evolve.

OO MGM Resorts Expands Solar Array, Now US Largest

"2014-01-31-geostellargetcleanenergy.png"

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WHY WE SHOULD ACT NOW: RISING RISKS

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Daily Climate Change: Global Map of Unusual Temperatures, July 20, 2016

How unusual has the weather been? No one event is "caused" by climate change, but global warming, which is predicted to increase unusual, extreme weather, is having a daily effect on weather, worldwide.

Looking above at recent temperature anomalies, much of the US and the waters surrounding it are experiencing warmer than normal temperatures: the eastern Pacific warm spot continues and so does the drought in California, despite the occasional precipitation.

Much of the areas surrounding the North Pole are experiencing much warmer than normal temperatures - not good news for our Arctic thermal shield of ice. Hotter than usual temperatures continue to dominate human habitats.

"2015-12-28-1451344420-5650759-climatechangebar570.png"

There is, of course, much more news on the consequences and solutions to climate change. To get it, check out this annotated resource list I've compiled, "Climate Change News Resources," at Wordpress.com here. For more information on the science of climate change, its consequences and solutions you can view my annotated list of online information resources here.

To help you understand just what science does and does NOT do, check this out!

Every day is Earth Day, folks, as I was reminded by this wild flower I photographed one spring. Making the U.S. a global clean energy leader will ensure a heck of a lot more jobs, and a clean, safe future. If you'd like to join the increasing numbers of people who want to TELL Congress that they will vote for clean energy candidates you can do so here. It's our way of letting Congress know there's a strong clean energy voting bloc out there. For more detailed summaries of the above and other climate change items, audio podcasts and texts are freely available.

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-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Without a Climate Plan, Republicans Struggle as Voters Shift
The 2016 elections are heating up. And so is the planet. According to NASA, there is a 99 percent chance that 2016 will be the hottest year on record, surpassing the current record set in 2015.

And yet for the first time in the age of modern climate science, a presidential nominee believes climate change is a hoax. Donald Trump has said that global warming was "created by and for the Chinese" (he later said he was joking), and that he will rescind the Paris climate agreement and roll back the steps President Obama has taken to address the issue (definitely not joking).

"2016-07-21-1469061607-8563378-solarroofsCO.jpg"

Photo Credit: Jeremy Symons

Where does that leave Republicans who think the GOP should pay attention to climate change and support clean, renewable energy sources?

On their own.

GOP Stirrings in Congress

A week before the convention, 33 House Republicans joined Democrats to successfully defeat a proposal that would have stripped funding of climate change science at the Environmental Protection Agency.

It's not a vote that will set us on the path to doing something about climate, but the growing number of Republicans who are willing to vote independently on the issue is a notable shift. Just two years ago, only one House Republican, Rep. Chris Gibson of New York, voted against an amendment that would have prevented federal agencies from assessing the costs and risks posed by climate change.

This is the latest, but not the only, sign of heightened interest among Republicans in Congress. Fourteen House Republicans have now supported a resolution calling for action on climate change. When the resolution was introduced last September, Republican Carlos Curbelo explained the reality faced by his constituents in Florida.

"South Florida is the frontline of climate change, where we have seen its negative impact in the form of rising sea-levels and the erosion of our coastal communities. Our goal...is to shift the debate from whether climate change is real to what we can do to mitigate its effects."

In the Senate, a coalition of five Republicans and five Democrats, led by Senators Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat from Rhode Island, introduced an amendment calling for the United States to be a world leader on climate change and for Congress to act.

Many of these congressional voices on climate change took a pass on attending the GOP convention, according to Grist's Ben Adler.

Voters Heading in Different Direction

The GOP's slide into climate denial with Trump should alarm strategists who put together the Republican National Committee's post-mortem analysis of Mitt Romney's 2012 defeat. Their conclusion: the GOP lost the hearts, minds and votes of young voters, swamping the GOP's edge among older voters.

Democrats came to the same conclusion. Jim Messina, who ran President Obama's re-election campaign, revealed after the election one of the secrets to their success: climate change.

"In the 2012 election we did focus groups with young voters...and we asked them to describe a Republican, and their #1 word was 'dinosaur., We asked them why, and their biggest example was 'climate change.'"

The shift is also pushing against the trend of public opinion, and in particular a complex and evolving set of views among Republican voters.

Notably, there has been a 19 percent increase over the past two years in the share of conservative Republican voters who think global warming is happening. That's a larger jump than any other group of voters. Altogether, 73% of voters think global warming is happening.

And when it comes to addressing the problem, a May poll also found that 67 percent of Republicans support a Clean Energy Commitment and believe that "moving rapidly to clean energy is a big step toward reducing the damaging impacts of climate change."

Organizing Around a Moral Cause

Against this backdrop, a number of grassroots leaders convened in Cleveland during the Convention to discuss ways to spring the GOP from the box it has trapped itself in and re-connect with voters to offer a way forward. According to Rachel Lamb of Young Evangelicals for Climate Action:

"First and foremost, it's a moral issue." Climate change is "negatively impacting people, as well as the environment, which we're called to take care of by God."

A Road Back from the Abyss?

As Politico reports, Republican businessman and philanthropist Jay Faison laid out the challenge at a GOP convention event:

"If we have an environmental policy, I don't know what it is....we're virtually defenseless on this issue. Any purple state, we are at risk and we don't know it. Period."

The GOP's road back from the abyss of denial is anything but clear.

Perhaps mayors will lead the way. After all, mayors from both parties have to deal with the real climate damages to their communities.

Or perhaps the growing unrest among Republican rank-and-file in Congress offers a glimpse of a more hopeful path beyond the elections. If more republicans are ready to bring their ideas on climate solutions to the table, who knows what can happen?

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Bracing For Fire
By Rodman Linn

"2016-07-18-1468858770-8025759-lasconchasnasa.jpg"

A photo from space of the Las Conchas fire in the Jemez mountains near Los Alamos, N.M. just after its start at 1:30 p.m. on June 26, 2011. On the first day, driven by strong and unpredictable winds, the fire burned 43,000 acres--a rate of about an acre per second. By the time the fire was controlled, it had burned more than 150,000 acres. (Photo courtesy of NASA.)

How Computer Modeling Might Help Us Better Understand--and Better Manage--Wildfires

This summer, throughout the West, higher temperatures and decreased precipitation brought on by climate change have ramped up the frequency of wildfires -- big, catastrophic fires -- while a century of fire suppression feeds the flames with a thick tangle of fuel in our overgrown forests.

We can't stop all fires -- and we shouldn't. Healthy ecosystems depend on them. But understanding what drives big fires and predicting their behavior helps the fire community prepare for the next blaze through appropriate land management, emergency plans and firefighting strategies. Beyond those benefits, a deeper understanding of wildfires prompts important insights into tactics for using prescribed fire as well as insight into larger regional environmental issues, including how fires change river flows and the availability of water for drinking, agriculture and energy production.

For scientists studying wildfire, the challenge is predicting the seemingly unpredictable. A wide range of conditions -- temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind direction, larger weather patterns, available fuel, fuel conditions and terrain --influence the behavior of fire. Figuring out details such as the movement of hot gasses coming off a raging forest fire or the combination of convective and radiative heat transfer that ignite unburned fuels, for example, seems impossible at first. There's so much to consider, from how the fire front interacts with the atmosphere that drives it forward to the feedbacks of the fuel's structure on the fire and winds to the impacts of the topography and regional meteorology.

Fortunately, Los Alamos National Laboratory is well suited to address this kind of multidisciplinary, ultimately physics-based problem -- and the lab has a stake in wildfire prediction and management. As the Cerro Grande and Las Conchas fires demonstrated, the laboratory and neighboring communities are equally vulnerable to runaway conflagrations on our doorstep. Furthermore, Los Alamos' mission includes addressing energy security and national security, both of which can be affected by wildfires.

Modeling wildfires exploits the lab's unique capabilities in physics, computational modeling and high-performance computing. For decades the lab has built computer models of complex systems that move and change through time. That work includes hot gasses -- fire -- and the atmosphere. The laboratory's supercomputers make it possible.

When a team of atmospheric scientists, computational physicists and mathematicians in the laboratory's Earth and Environmental Sciences division, collaborating with the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station and Southern Research Station, set out to simulate the interacting processes that make up a wildfire as a basis for predicting its behavior, they leveraged a wealth of expertise and experience that had been developed partially through the laboratory's weapons program.

A research effort initiated by Laboratory Fellow Francis Harlow, a pioneer in computational fluid dynamics, and Andrew White, a visionary figure in the national high-performance computing community, led to the development of FIRETEC. It was the first wildfire model to simulate the interaction among many of the physical processes that determine the continuously shifting dance between fire and its surroundings. FIRETEC, which is now developed in collaboration with U.S. Forest Service, simulates three-dimensional interactions among fire, fuel and the environment at landscape scales. By coupling FIRETEC with an atmospheric-dynamics model called HIGRAD and using real-world data, the team can represent the interaction between fire and atmosphere and the way fire adjusts to terrain, vegetation, fuel and the dynamics of fire itself.

FIRETEC presents a new way of studying fire and learning how to better manage and cope with it. The model provides additional scientific input for decisions by policymakers working in land management, water resources and energy. The team hopes it will eventually assist fire and fuel management operations. Currently the team is partnering with the Rocky Mountain Research Station to study the combined influence of wind and slope on heat exposure in firefighter safety zones, with the Air Force Wildland Fire Center to study the efficiency of various prescribed fire tactics and with INRA of France and the Canadian Forest Service to study the effects of fuel breaks for fire management.

But there's more research to be done to further improve wildfire modeling for practical use in the field during a fire. FIRETEC's complexity and the massive amounts of data involved require enormous high-performance computers such as those available at Los Alamos to perform simulations. The laboratory-led team is now working with the Forest Service to apply what it learns from FIRETEC to assist in developing and refining less detailed but faster-running tools that incident fire commanders could run on their laptops to predict fire behavior over the next few hours. This is a short enough time frame to deploy firefighters in anticipation of the fire's next move or help keep firefighters out of harm's way. This faster-running tool could also benefit decision-support tools such as Simtable, which is currently used in the laboratory's Emergency Operations Center.

On another front, as part of a larger Los Alamos study on the impact of climate-driven changes on watersheds, laboratory researchers are working toward using FIRETEC to potentially spin off simplified models. One model can explore, for example, how the aftermath of a catastrophic fire in the Colorado River system might alter flows in the San Juan River. That's important locally because the San Juan supplies drinking water to Santa Fe and cools the Four Corners Generating Station, a major regional energy source. How will climate-driven changes to vegetation alter the pattern of fires and the severity of the effects in that watershed? What can be done to minimize those impacts? Research underway now should answer these questions.

Providing those answers is an appropriate endeavor for Los Alamos for several reasons. While the Los Alamos community has had more than its fair share of encounters with wildfire, the research is more than personal: it fits the laboratory's mission to enhance energy security and national security. Additionally, the required expertise in the combination of multi-phase fluid dynamics, heat transfer, combustion, computational modeling and computer science are optimally aligned with many of the laboratory's other mission areas. "Science serving society" is a catchy phrase, but in the case of wildfire modeling at Los Alamos, it couldn't be more apt.

Rod Linn is a senior scientist in the Computational Earth Science group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he studies and models a wide range of atmospheric phenomenon using computational physics. Linn has led much of the development and application of the FIRETEC computer program for predicting wildfire behavior, but the breadth of work using this tool is accomplished through a broad set of Los Alamos investigators as well as domestic and international collaborators.

More about how Los Alamos National Laboratory prepares for wildfires:

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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