KHARNAK, India — Nomad Tsering Angchuk vows to stay put in his remote village in India’s Ladakh region.

His two sons and most of his fellow villagers have migrated to a nearby urban settlement but Angchuk is determined to herd his flock of fine cashmere-producing goats in the treeless Kharnak village, a hauntingly beautiful but unforgiving, cold mountainous desert.

Dolma Angmo, wife of nomad Tsering Angchuk, attends her hardy Himalayan goats that produce cashmere in the remote Kharnak village Sept. 17 in the cold desert region of Ladakh, India.

Mukhtar Khan, Associated Press

The 47-year-old herds 800 sheep and goats and a flock of 50 Himalayan yaks in Kharnak. In 2013, he migrated to Kharnakling, an urban settlement in the outskirts of a regional town called Leh but returned a year later, not because his old home had become any better, he said, “but because the urban centers are getting worse and there are only menial jobs for people like us.”

Nestled between India, Pakistan and China, Ladakh has faced both territorial disputes and the stark effects of climate change. The region’s sparsely populated villages have witnessed shifting weather patterns that have already altered people’s lives through floods, landslides and droughts.

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Thousands of Ladakh nomads, known for their unique lifestyle in one of the most hostile landscapes in the world have been at the heart of these changes, compounded by border conflict and shrinking grazing land. The changes have forced hundreds to migrate to mainly urban settlements, while others work to make it a more habitable place.

Angchuk’s sons didn’t return — they don’t want to be shepherds, he said — and settled in Leh. One became a construction contractor and the other works at a travel agency, part of the region’s burgeoning tourism industry.

With 300-plus days of sunshine, the desert is in the rain shadows of the Himalayas and receives only about 4 inches of precipitation annually.

Nomad Tsering Angchuk, right, talks with a reporter as he sits with his wife, Dolma Angmo inside their mud and stone house in remote Kharnak village Sept. 17 in the cold desert region of Ladakh, India.

Mukhtar Khan, Associated Press

At an altitude of 15,000 feet, temperatures can fall to minus 31 degrees Fahrenheit during long winter months. But it’s getting hotter.

There is no word for mosquito in the local Ladakhi language, but the region has lots of these insects now, said Sonam Wangchuk, an engineer working on solutions for sustainability at his Himalayan Institute of Alternative Ladakh.

“These are all coming with the viability of climate for them,” he said.

Ladakh’s thousands of glaciers, which help give the rugged region its title as one of the water towers of the world, are receding at an alarming rate, threatening the water supply of millions of people.

“This year we had an unprecedented melting of glaciers,” said Prof. Shakil Romshoo, a leading glaciologist and earth scientist.

Romshoo said his team has been studying seven glaciers in the Kashmir and Ladakh Himalaya for nine years but “this year shows the maximum ablation,” referring to the amount of snow and ice that has disappeared.

Drung-Drung, Ladakh’s second largest glacier, melted 197 inches in its thickness this year compared to an average 39 inches annually in the past few years.

A nomad fetches water from a hand pump Sept. 17 in remote Kharnak village in the cold desert region of Ladakh, India.

MUKHTAR KHAN, ASSOCIATED PRESS

The melting, experts say, has been exacerbated by an increase in local pollution that has worsened due to the region’s militarization. Black carbon or soot from the burning of fossil fuels on the glaciers absorbs sunlight and contaminates waterways, threatening the region’s security of food, water and energy.

The pollution is “a huge environmental onslaught,” engineer Wangchuk said. “Most of it is due to heating shelters that can be easily replaced by non-carbon-based heating systems.”

He added Ladakh today is “probably the densest militarized zone where the civilian-soldier ratio is 1:2.”

The ongoing standoff between India and China has witnessed the deployment of tens of thousands of additional soldiers to the already militarized region.

“Climate change is a global mismanagement while the pollution is a local mismanagement. We’re witnessing devastating effects of the mix in Ladakh,” Wangchuk said.

“It’s not just any little conflict, it’s much more than that and whoever wins we all lose.”

Herders say with access to the usual breeding and birthing grounds blocked by militaries on either side, newborn goats and sheep are perishing in the extreme cold of higher elevations.

Shepherds roamed these pasturelands atop the roof of the world along the unmarked borders with China for centuries where the harsh winds cause the goats to grow their super-soft wool.

Cashmere takes its name from disputed Kashmir, where artisans weave the wool into fine yarn and exquisite clothing items that cost up to thousands apiece in a major handicraft export industry.

Nomad women weave carpets in remote Kharnak village Sept. 17 in the cold desert region of Ladakh, India.

MUKHTAR KHAN, ASSOCIATED PRESS

“None of the other products get as much revenue as what they produce and they are the true generators of wealth in Ladakh,” Wangchuk said about Kharnak nomads. “They’re the most precious but they’re the most neglected lot.”

The nomads live a grueling life and follow a strict round-the-clock routine. They milk and shear their animals twice a day, maintain stone-walled pens, weave carpets, collect and sun-dry manure for fire and cook food. Shepherds also shuttle their animals from place to place more often than usual in search of greener grazing areas.

But there’s almost no health care, school or a proper irrigation system.

“It’s a whole year work here, no holidays. Even if you’re sick you’ve got to tend to animals,” Angchuk, the nomad, said. “In a decade or so I think there won’t be any Kharnak nomads although our people will be around. We’ll be history.”

Authorities say they’re doing everything they can to stop the flight of nomads. Today the village has solar panels for electricity, government-built prefab huts and water taps. Some parts have telecommunication coverage.

But the herders say it’s not enough.

Tundup Namgail, the Leh district head of sheep husbandry department, said all facilities notwithstanding, the nomads need to be “lured back on practical terms, not by romanticizing their life.”

The “only way to keep them there is to improve their profitability. Make them rich somehow,” he said.

The ‘urban heat island’ effect has made these 10 cities the most heat-intense in the US

The ‘urban heat island’ effect has made these 10 cities the most heat-intense in the US

Urban heat islands are areas within cities that are hotter than their outlying regions, largely due to albedo—the tendency of a material like asphalt or pavement to absorb, rather than reflect, heat from the sun. Lack of tree cover, an abundance of tall buildings, and population density can amplify this phenomenon as well.

These hot spots generally experience temperatures about 1-7 degrees Fahrenheit higher during the day and 2-5 degrees Fahrenheit higher at night than the surrounding areas. The rise in temperature increases the chances of air pollution and could prove dangerous for those without air conditioning. Urban heat retention isn’t just uncomfortable: it’s a serious public health threat.

More than 80% of Americans live in urban areas, according to Census data. But within these areas, it is almost always those in low-income and underserved neighborhoods that find themselves living in urban heat islands. This makes them not only economically disadvantaged, but also more at risk of the slew of health dangers urban heat islands pose.

Many of the most heat-intense cities in the U.S. are older cities in the Northeast. These are more compact and developed than other parts of the country. They also tend to have taller buildings, which adds to the heat island effect.

New Jersey Real Estate Network examined data from climate change nonprofit Climate Central to find which cities experience the most intense heat due to overbuilding, also known as the urban heat island effect. Out of 159 assessed cities, these 10 had the highest index.

Ryan DeBerardinis // Shutterstock

#10. Providence, Rhode Island

– Index score: 7.08

– Main contributors: Building height, impermeable surface

Providence owes its high heat concentration in part to a large highway (Route 95) that cuts through the city, and its frequently used industrial port. Areas like Pavilion Avenue, which are sparsely covered in tree canopy, are particularly heavily affected.

This means that lower-income and minority members of Providence’s population bear the brunt of the urban heat island effects as is true in almost every other city. For instance, childhood asthma rates are highest in the parts of the city where heat island intensity is also highest. To combat this, the Providence Neighborhood Planting Program is offering citizens the opportunity to have free trees and greenery planted in their areas.

ESB Professional // Shutterstock

#9. Baltimore, Maryland

– Index score: 7.08

– Main contributors: Building height, impermeable surface

The worst of Baltimore’s urban heat island is in the east of the city, especially the neighborhood of Patterson Park. In these areas, temperatures are as much as 20 degrees higher than elsewhere in the city, with heat-hoarding roofs and roads largely to blame.

To lower temperatures, the city is hoping to implement “cool roofs,” which would have collateral benefits for the local economy, flood damage prevention, and public health. The B’More Cool initiative, started in 2014, is investigating where Baltimore’s urban heat islands are the worst and how to best mitigate the damage. Among their sustainable solutions is an unexpected tactic the entire community can help with: composting.

Sean Pavone // Shutterstock

#8. Miami, Florida

– Index score: 7.24

– Main contributors: Building height, impermeable surface

Miami broke new ground in addressing urban heat islands when it inaugurated the world’s first chief heat officer. Since taking the role, Jane Gilbert is devising solutions to dissipate the strength of urban heat islands, and the class inequities in health they dole out. Among these are climate resilience hubs, which will offer relief for residents suffering through a heat spell.

Additionally, Keep Safe Florida is stepping in to assist low-income residents in these hot pockets of the city. The program provides funding for low-income properties to install and update infrastructure to protect against urban heat islands, as well as other effects of climate change.

Mia2you // Shutterstock

#7. Chicago, Illinois

– Index score: 7.24

– Main contributors: Building height, impermeable surface, population density

Chicago’s heat concentration is quite skewed, thanks to the city’s position on Lake Michigan. With the lake’s waters cooling downtown, it is the city’s western suburbs that are heating up disproportionately. The fact that these areas are also increasingly developing, with additional heat-absorbing buildings and structures being constructed, only adds to the intensification.

To fight against this, Chicago’s city government has developed a series of building codes and green infrastructure projects. These include plans to install reflective roofing and rooftop gardens; requiring that newly built flat roofs meet EPA standards; and offering funding for projects that will encourage greenery and other heat island mitigation.

ezellhphotography // Shutterstock

#6. Boston, Massachusetts

– Index score: 7.24

– Main contributors: Building height, population density

Boston’s neighborhoods with high concentrations of pavement, asphalt, dark roofs, and high buildings are where urban heat islands can be found. These include the neighborhoods of Chinatown, Dorchester, East Boston, Roxbury, and Mattapan.

The city’s Heat Resilience Solutions for Boston is a plan designed to counteract these heat-gulping hot spots, especially during the summer. Strategies laid out include a grant program to fund the installation of cool roofs, as well as plans to distribute cooling kits to the public during outdoor summer gatherings. The Extreme Temperatures Response Task Force has been directed to design action plans to put these ideas into motion.

Marcio Jose Bastos Silva // Shutterstock

#5. San Francisco, California

– Index score: 7.37

– Main contributors: Building height, impermeable surface, population density

San Francisco’s environmentally friendly reputation makes it a receptive city to try solutions for urban heat islands. The Next Generation Urban Greening Project hopes to expand preexisting sustainability programs from the city’s affluent neighborhoods to its poorer ones, where urban heat islands are concentrated. Plans are being considered to redesign sidewalks and buildings to accommodate greenery and reflective materials, even if strategies must be fitted uniquely block by block.

In January 2017, San Francisco became the first city in the U.S. to require at least 15-30% of roof space to have solar panels or greenery. The city’s Clean Air Plan also suggests implementing a “cool parking ordinance,” which would pay particular attention to planting and installing shade materials in parking lots, which are major culprits for absorbing heat.

Daily Travel Photos // Shutterstock

#4. Houston, Texas

– Index score: 7.46

– Main contributors: Impermeable surface, surface color/reflectivity

The Houston Harris Heat Action Team, or H3AT, attempted to map the city’s urban heat islands in 2020 and found that areas close to Richmond Avenue and Chimney Rock Road were noticeably hotter than others. Many of Houston’s hot spots are not random, but the result of past patterns of socioeconomic inequality.

The city’s Third Ward neighborhood has found itself an urban heat island largely because of historical bureaucracy and systemic decision-making that sidelined the community from programs to develop parks and green spaces. Overall, only 18% of the city is shaded. The city would need to plant 2.4 million trees to provide adequate shade for all residents.

Nate Hovee // Shutterstock

#3. New York, New York

– Index score: 7.62

– Main contributors: Building height, impermeable surface, population density

It is perhaps not surprising that the “concrete jungle” is also the third-worst urban heat island in the country. There are over 6,000 high rises and more than 270 skyscrapers in New York City, all of which suck in the sun’s rays and heat up the city. The NYC CoolRoofs project paints urban rooftops around the city white, which lessens the extent to which they absorb heat. The initiative focuses on providing this service to nonprofits, low-income residential areas, community centers, and schools.

Cool Neighborhoods NYC, established in 2017, has dedicated $106 million to reverse the city’s heat-hungry infrastructure—$82 million alone will be used to plant trees in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Brooklyn. New York’s one saving grace is Central Park, which cools the areas around it. However, as the park’s surrounding neighborhoods are some of the wealthiest in the city, low-income residents are once again disproportionately affected by urban heat.

Andriy Blokhin // Shutterstock

#2. Newark, New Jersey

– Index score: 7.71

– Main contributors: Impermeable surface, building height, population density

Newark’s Ironbound neighborhood suffers significantly from heat hoarding, in part because of its population density: It is home to around 50,000 people within 4 square miles. It doesn’t help that the neighborhood is also slated for construction projects that will increase its tall, heat-absorbing structures, including a six-story apartment building, a 13-story retail space, and an 11-story building near Penn Station.

To understand why Newark’s urban heat islands exist where they do, one can look as far back as the 1930s and 1940s, when funding was allocated to other neighborhoods of the city. This led to many Newark residents—including a disproportionate number from lower income and minority neighborhoods—lacking heat-deflecting green spaces while other areas in the wealthier North Ward received more investment, more trees—and decades later, less heat.

quiggyt4 // Shutterstock

#1. New Orleans, Louisiana

– Index score: 8.94

– Main contributors: Surface color/reflectivity, impermeable surface

New Orleans’ lack of tall buildings may offer an aesthetic benefit, but it leaves the city with a climate disadvantage, lacking much shade from the sun. The city also has a high number of dark roofs and roads, in combination with a low amount of greenery. Hurricane Ida worsened the city’s ability to fight against intense heat, cutting residents off from power, and with it the ability to use fans or air conditioners.

The city government has pledged to reverse this and reach 30-40% of the city covered in green areas by 2030. Supplementing this, Sustaining Our Urban Landscape has planted 5,000 trees in the last five years alone, attempting to compensate for the 100,000 trees lost during Hurricane Katrina.

This story originally appeared on New Jersey Real Estate Network and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.

Sean Pavone // Shutterstock

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The post Ladakh herders endeavor to avoid wasting future amid local weather disaster appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

When it comes to clean energy, a few sexy technologies — solar panels, electric cars — get all the headlines. I blame you for reading public. That’s what you click on!

But the workers of the clean energy transition, especially in the early years, are apt to be boring old technologies nobody writes about, some of which may already be in your home. For example, the rising need for energy storage may be partly answered by … the water heater, that unlovely white cylinder thing in your basement.

The other day, I came across another unlikely hero: the heat pump. (Try to contain your enthusiasm.) It requires a little setup, though.

A close look at what’s required to lower San Francisco’s emissions

Siemens — a big player on both the hardware and software side of the “smart cities” space — has developed a tool for modeling carbon emissions in cities. It allows the company to run scenarios showing how various technologies and practices could reduce emissions. It’s called the City Performance Tool, or CyPT.

Siemens recently approached San Francisco about using CyPT to assess the city’s ambitious sustainability goals. Long term, the city’s carbon emissions are meant to decline 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050. (They are already 14.5 percent below 1990 levels.)

Siemens used CyPT to analyze how a bunch of different technologies could contribute to San Francisco’s goals. It ran three scenarios. In the first, it modeled the aggressive but achievable deployment of a whole range of technologies, centered mostly on sustainable transport and buildings. Here they are:

(Siemens)

As you can see, electric cars, car sharing, and congestion charging are the biggies on the transport side. On buildings, home automation and “performance optimization” do the most work.

But this scenario only got Siemens to a 63.4 percent drop in emissions by 2050 — short of what San Francisco needs.

For the second scenario, it modeled carpeting the city with solar panels, to provide a source of electricity cleaner than what the grid provides. With panels on just about every suitable roof, the city could get an additional 776,600,000 kWh/year of carbon-free power. Whatever its other benefits, however, this strategy only secured another 3.6 percent in emission reductions, bringing the total to 67 percent by 2050.

How to get from 67 to 80 percent?

You got it: heat pumps.

A heat pump is a “mechanical-compression cycle refrigeration system” that can serve as both a furnace and an air conditioner (indeed, many air conditioners are just one-way heat pumps). From manufacturer Trane:

Even in the air that seems too cold, heat energy is present. When it’s cold outside a heat pump extracts this outside heat and transfers it inside. When it’s warm outside, it reverses directions and acts like an air conditioner, removing heat from your home.

Because it merely moves, rather than generates heat, it is far more efficient than combustion furnaces.

They key feature for our purposes is that heat pumps run on electricity. When Siemens modeled shifting 80 percent of citywide heat consumption over from natural gas to electric heat pumps, emissions declined another 14 percent, bringing the 2050 total up to just above SF’s goal.

(Siemens)

In fact, “market adoption of electric heat pumps for 80 percent of citywide heat consumption is the single most impactful lever considered in this analysis,” it concluded.

I find this perversely pleasing. In the already boring category of appliances, electric heat pumps may be the most boring. Be honest — every time I write “electric heat pump,” your eyelids droop a bit. But they matter!

(Note: heat pumps work so well for decarbonization in San Francisco because of its clean electricity and mild climate—they won’t have the same effect in areas with dirty and more expensive electricity.)

What heat pumps can teach us

So as not to just have a laugh about heat pumps, let me extract a couple of lessons here.

1) First, this helps illustrate that the bulk of the decarbonization over the next few decades is not going to be accomplished by sexy new technologies with, y’know, carbon nanotubes or whatever. It’s not, fundamentally, going to be tech development work.

Instead, it’s going to involve the more quotidian work of slogging through and reforming the rules, regulations, and incentives offered by various levels of government, so that they align around the deployment of existing clean energy technologies, including the boring ones.

A case study from my own experience: Recently, my wife and I did a bunch of internal work on our house — new plumbing, new insulation, new electrical box, new water heater, and new furnace (and a new kitchen faucet, the one part of the work I actually see day to day).

We still had the old oil furnace installed in the house when it was built in 1957. It was that sickly peach color popular with appliances back then — a real monster. Check it out:

Look at this beauty. DR

I wanted to switch it out for a heat pump. That would have made my house almost fossil fuel-free, since Seattle enjoys very hydro-heavy, low-carbon electricity.

But my utility, Seattle City Light (generally a pretty progressive utility), offers no rebates for air-source heat pumps (only the fancier and more expensive ductless kind). By contrast, it offers substantial rebates for the purchase of an efficient natural gas furnace. [Correction, 10/5/2016: Oops, got that a bit wrong. It’s true that SCL doesn’t offer rebates for air-source heat pumps, but it’s not true that they offer rebates for natgas furnaces — those rebates came through Puget Sound Energy, my gas utility.]

In the end, choosing a heat pump over a natural gas furnace would have cost us $8,000 more, and given that we were already spending into ourselves penury, we just couldn’t do it. It would have paid itself back eventually, but over something like 20 years. Who knows if we’ll be in the house that long?

So I had to pipe another fossil fuel into my house. It was galling. Especially since I live in a temperate climate, perfect for a heat pump.

Making sure that rules and incentives are aligned to promote boring-but-important technologies — that’s the real meat and potatoes of decarbonization in the next decade or two.

2) Without rehashing this all over again, I will say that Siemens’ results line up perfectly with the decarbonization strategy I laid out in a post the other day, namely: Clean up electricity and electrify everything.

That’s what the humble heat pump represents: a way to shift heating and air conditioning from fuel combustion to electricity. It ain’t exciting — you won’t see it on any tech blogs — but it’s important.

(Thanks to @MackayMiller for the tip.)

The post This humble residence equipment could possibly be San Francisco’s secret local weather weapon appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

When it comes to clean energy, a few sexy technologies — solar panels, electric cars — get all the headlines. I blame you for reading public. That’s what you click on!

But the workers of the clean energy transition, especially in the early years, are apt to be boring old technologies nobody writes about, some of which may already be in your home. For example, the rising need for energy storage may be partly answered by … the water heater, that unlovely white cylinder thing in your basement.

The other day, I came across another unlikely hero: the heat pump. (Try to contain your enthusiasm.) It requires a little setup, though.

A close look at what’s required to lower San Francisco’s emissions

Siemens — a big player on both the hardware and software side of the “smart cities” space — has developed a tool for modeling carbon emissions in cities. It allows the company to run scenarios showing how various technologies and practices could reduce emissions. It’s called the City Performance Tool, or CyPT.

Siemens recently approached San Francisco about using CyPT to assess the city’s ambitious sustainability goals. Long term, the city’s carbon emissions are meant to decline 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050. (They are already 14.5 percent below 1990 levels.)

Siemens used CyPT to analyze how a bunch of different technologies could contribute to San Francisco’s goals. It ran three scenarios. In the first, it modeled the aggressive but achievable deployment of a whole range of technologies, centered mostly on sustainable transport and buildings. Here they are:

(Siemens)

As you can see, electric cars, car sharing, and congestion charging are the biggies on the transport side. On buildings, home automation and “performance optimization” do the most work.

But this scenario only got Siemens to a 63.4 percent drop in emissions by 2050 — short of what San Francisco needs.

For the second scenario, it modeled carpeting the city with solar panels, to provide a source of electricity cleaner than what the grid provides. With panels on just about every suitable roof, the city could get an additional 776,600,000 kWh/year of carbon-free power. Whatever its other benefits, however, this strategy only secured another 3.6 percent in emission reductions, bringing the total to 67 percent by 2050.

How to get from 67 to 80 percent?

You got it: heat pumps.

A heat pump is a “mechanical-compression cycle refrigeration system” that can serve as both a furnace and an air conditioner (indeed, many air conditioners are just one-way heat pumps). From manufacturer Trane:

Even in the air that seems too cold, heat energy is present. When it’s cold outside a heat pump extracts this outside heat and transfers it inside. When it’s warm outside, it reverses directions and acts like an air conditioner, removing heat from your home.

Because it merely moves, rather than generates heat, it is far more efficient than combustion furnaces.

They key feature for our purposes is that heat pumps run on electricity. When Siemens modeled shifting 80 percent of citywide heat consumption over from natural gas to electric heat pumps, emissions declined another 14 percent, bringing the 2050 total up to just above SF’s goal.

(Siemens)

In fact, “market adoption of electric heat pumps for 80 percent of citywide heat consumption is the single most impactful lever considered in this analysis,” it concluded.

I find this perversely pleasing. In the already boring category of appliances, electric heat pumps may be the most boring. Be honest — every time I write “electric heat pump,” your eyelids droop a bit. But they matter!

(Note: heat pumps work so well for decarbonization in San Francisco because of its clean electricity and mild climate—they won’t have the same effect in areas with dirty and more expensive electricity.)

What heat pumps can teach us

So as not to just have a laugh about heat pumps, let me extract a couple of lessons here.

1) First, this helps illustrate that the bulk of the decarbonization over the next few decades is not going to be accomplished by sexy new technologies with, y’know, carbon nanotubes or whatever. It’s not, fundamentally, going to be tech development work.

Instead, it’s going to involve the more quotidian work of slogging through and reforming the rules, regulations, and incentives offered by various levels of government, so that they align around the deployment of existing clean energy technologies, including the boring ones.

A case study from my own experience: Recently, my wife and I did a bunch of internal work on our house — new plumbing, new insulation, new electrical box, new water heater, and new furnace (and a new kitchen faucet, the one part of the work I actually see day to day).

We still had the old oil furnace installed in the house when it was built in 1957. It was that sickly peach color popular with appliances back then — a real monster. Check it out:

Look at this beauty. DR

I wanted to switch it out for a heat pump. That would have made my house almost fossil fuel-free, since Seattle enjoys very hydro-heavy, low-carbon electricity.

But my utility, Seattle City Light (generally a pretty progressive utility), offers no rebates for air-source heat pumps (only the fancier and more expensive ductless kind). By contrast, it offers substantial rebates for the purchase of an efficient natural gas furnace. [Correction, 10/5/2016: Oops, got that a bit wrong. It’s true that SCL doesn’t offer rebates for air-source heat pumps, but it’s not true that they offer rebates for natgas furnaces — those rebates came through Puget Sound Energy, my gas utility.]

In the end, choosing a heat pump over a natural gas furnace would have cost us $8,000 more, and given that we were already spending into ourselves penury, we just couldn’t do it. It would have paid itself back eventually, but over something like 20 years. Who knows if we’ll be in the house that long?

So I had to pipe another fossil fuel into my house. It was galling. Especially since I live in a temperate climate, perfect for a heat pump.

Making sure that rules and incentives are aligned to promote boring-but-important technologies — that’s the real meat and potatoes of decarbonization in the next decade or two.

2) Without rehashing this all over again, I will say that Siemens’ results line up perfectly with the decarbonization strategy I laid out in a post the other day, namely: Clean up electricity and electrify everything.

That’s what the humble heat pump represents: a way to shift heating and air conditioning from fuel combustion to electricity. It ain’t exciting — you won’t see it on any tech blogs — but it’s important.

(Thanks to @MackayMiller for the tip.)

The post This humble house equipment could possibly be San Francisco’s secret local weather weapon appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Pictured (left to right): Yasemin Kologlu, Kimberley Petredis, Caleb Anderson, Laura Kohler

Kohler Company partnered with The Real Deal and Best Plumbing Supply to host an event at the Kohler Experience Center in New York City during Climate Week 22′ which brought together a trio of AEC experts about the responsibility manufacturers and the development community have in addressing major societal shifts like climate change, water shortages and urbanization. With a rapidly aging and increasingly urban population, the discussion led by Kohler Company SVP Human Resources, Stewardship and Sustainability, Laura Kohler, kicked off with an urgent call to action to design sustainable products, living and working spaces that reduce environmental impact while accounting for changes brought about by climate instability. It continued with an urgent call to action for manufacturers and the build industry to unlock consumer adoption of more environmentally friendly products.

“The market is changing,” said Yasemin Kologlu, Design Principal at SOM (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill), a leading architecture and engineering firm with studios in the United States and the UK. “As designers, it’s our job to make sure that sustainability can be delivered at every price point. I don’t think that should be our excuse any longer.” Kologlu pointed out that companies like Kohler producing a wider range of sustainable products help her in her role as a designer, giving her the ability to address climate impact at “every level of society.”

Caleb Anderson, Partner at Drake/Anderson emphasized the importance of teaching clients and consumers about the importance and benefits of environmentally friendly designed products and spaces. “Our responsibility as an industry is to come together and educate people,” said Anderson, who went on to say that sustainable products often set themselves apart from the rest of what’s on offer by virtue of their sustainability. “When we show clients an innovative material that we are excited about, it makes them excited.”

“One thing that people have always been really great at is rising to an occasion and innovating out of a problem,” said Kimberley Petredis, Director of Residential Interiors at FXCollaborative in Brooklyn. Petredis, who works with big-name developers around New York City, mentioned that she has seen an increased interest in sustainable design in the last couple of years, thanks in part to individuals recognizing the need to address climate change as well as more budgetary concerns . “Depending on what kind of product it is, you might actually be saving money in the long run by paying more upfront.”

Laura Kohler tied things up with a few lessons that she had gleaned from the discussion. She used Kohler’s WasteLab as an example of her first lesson, that design and engineering don’t have to conflict with sustainability. The WasteLab, which takes materials destined for the landfill and repurposes them into manufactured materials like tiles, has taken off since its inception in 2019, with more demand for the products than the firm can meet. “Let’s try to use easy-to-understand language. Let’s bring everybody with us. Everyone’s participation counts.” After all, it’s all of our futures that are at stake.

“We’re starting to see a lot of really interesting products and solutions,” said Caleb Anderson, who got the last word. “The exciting thing to me is that with the challenge comes newfound creativity and innovation.”

The second lesson related to what Caleb Anderson said about generating excitement around sustainable products, and Kohler emphasized the importance of the company’s associates in creating positive energy around products like those from WasteLab to build the momentum needed to make real change happen. The third lesson related to the need to produce environmentally friendly products at multiple price points now, not at some distant point in the future, calling back to Kimberley Petredis’s point that demand for these products grows every day.

Finally, Kohler closed out the discussion with a call for the AEC industry to be inclusive when talking about sustainability.

Ready to learn more? reach out to [email protected]nyc.com today to make an appointment at their showroom to see the experience.

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San Francisco Fleet Week is unique because it features a disaster response joint training exercise designed to train military forces and local, county, state and federal government agencies to work together to respond to natural and man-made disasters, such as earthquakes, wildfires and industrial accidents. During her keynote address at the fleet week’s Senior Leader Symposium, Ms. Berger spoke to senior leaders in the federal, state and local emergency management field and highlighted the DON’s recently-released Climate Action 2030 strategy, which sets the course for the Navy and Marine Corps to build climate resilience and reduce the climate threat while partnering with communities to tackle shared challenges.

“Changes in global climate and other threats like pandemics are increasingly challenging our Naval forces, platforms, infrastructure and supporting communities, and intensifying conflict and humanitarian disasters around the world,” said Ms. Berger. “A more volatile world calls on the United States Navy and Marine Corps, increasing demands on our forces at home and overseas, while simultaneously impacting our capacity to respond to those demands.”

The Navy has a long history of working closely with communities in California to make Navy and Marine Corps installations climate-ready. Last year, the DON and the California Energy Commission renewed a Memorandum of Understanding to streamline collaboration and accelerate initiatives for energy and water-related projects. In September 2022, the Navy launched a first-of-its-kind partnership with the Port of San Diego to participate in California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard program, which will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve air quality, and advance energy resilience investments in San Diego.

“We are making significant strides in partnership with California and worldwide in ensuring the DON is resilient in the face of climate change, working hand in hand with local communities and industry,” said Ms. Berger. “Recent partnerships with the California Energy Commission and Port of San Diego are critical to our climate work in the region and supports our efforts by building resilience to climate impacts and taking decisive action to reduce the climate threat.”

San Francisco Fleet Week offers the public an opportunity to take a tour of the ships and interact with service members as they showcase their ships’, units’, and services’ capabilities. It also gives the public a chance to gain a better understanding of how the sea services support the national defense of the United States and protect freedom of the seas.

For more information on San Francisco Fleet Week please visit: https://fleetweeksf.org/

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Jamie Alexander said she will never forget the campfire. In 2018, Northern California wildfire killed 85 people, burned thousands of homes and filled the air with thick smoke.

“San Francisco air quality has been in the hazardous category for two weeks. and [it] only had significant health effects on my children,” said Alexander.

With the 2020 pandemic hit and another bad wildfire season forecast, Alexander’s family got into their RV and headed to Minnesota. Both Alexander, who works for a climate change non-profit, and her husband had jobs that allowed them to work remotely.

They landed in Duluth on the shores of Lake Superior. At first they just wanted to get through the summer.

But “we just fell in love with her here,” Alexander said. Also, she recalled, the air quality in California that year was terrible. So they decided to make the move permanent.

Now that working from home is universally accepted, more and more people are deciding where that home should be. For some people, that means places they think are safer from the effects of climate change, including Duluth.

Alexander’s family bought a house in Duluth right on the lake.

“I got into paddling this summer, which I never expected,” she said. She never thought she would live by a lake, “but it’s pretty amazing.”

Alexander is among the people who have moved to Duluth in recent years, at least in part because of climate change.

Jesse Keenan is a researcher on climate migration at Tulane University in New Orleans. A few years ago, while living at Harvard, he identified Duluth as an ideal landing spot for the likes of Alexander.

As climate conditions worsen, experts like Keenan say more people will leave places like California and move to places with more temperate climates — especially now that remote working is common.

“There’s a cohort of Americans who have the means, the resources, and the mobility of choice to get out there,” Keenan said.

But when Keenan first came to Duluth to discuss his idea — complete with pithy marketing slogans for the city, like “Climate Safe Duluth” — locals were skeptical. Real estate agent Karen Pagel Guerndt remembers hearing about it. It was the middle of winter and the temperature was 20 below zero.

“And so the whole idea of ​​climate migration for people coming here kind of made me laugh,” she said.

But then people started shouting. Since then, she has worked with clients from North Carolina to Utah who cite climate change as one of the reasons they chose Duluth, a small city of about 86,000.

There is no data showing how many of these people actually exist. But Adam Fulton, who directs the city’s planning and economic development, said more telecommuters are working out of Duluth. And he hears a lot of stories about people moving here from abroad.

“There are several unseen listings for real estate that may have been on the market earlier,” he said.

That poses a potential problem for places like Duluth that lack affordable housing. The median selling price of a home rose 10% last year to $240,000.

Fulton said the city is working to expand the variety of housing options for both newcomers and locals.

According to online real estate site Redfin, people say they take climate change into account when deciding where to move. But many of them are still moving to places like Florida and Arizona that face severe climate impacts.

“I think it’s mostly just a select group of people who might be personally impacted by climate change that are making the move based on that decision,” said Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather.

But no place is completely immune to the effects of climate change. Wildfires in Canada engulfed Minnesota in smoke last summer.

Doug Kouma, who moved to Duluth two years ago after dealing with wildfires and flooding in Sonoma County, Northern California, said he knows several other Californians who are considering a similar move.

“I think Duluth as a hub for climate migration is already a thing,” Kouma said. “I think we’re just beginning to realize it. And I think in two, three, five years, Duluth will probably be known for that.”

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By Jessica Wolfrom

Examiner employee author

The city’s sidewalks have started to buckle, crack, and slope in one of the newest neighborhoods in San Francisco, creating stumbling blocks for pedestrians and frustrating local residents forced to navigate the city’s uneven sidewalk.

Sidewalks in some blocks of the Mission Bay neighborhood have sunk 10 to 15 centimeters and in some places even as much as 30 centimeters deep, KPIX first reported.

But not only the sunken sidewalks of the quarter are shifting in this densely built-up area. Almost three kilometers away in SOMA, the tilting Millennium Tower also struggles to balance on the sinking floor that bears the building’s multi-story weight.

A possible culprit could be climate change. As a historic drought continues to dry out the state, it can also worsen the subsidence or subsidence of the soil surface as the city’s groundwater, which usually flows from higher elevations like Twin Peaks or Bernal Heights into the sediments below the lower districts, becomes a trickle slowed down.

“When there is a lot of rainfall, the water goes into the clay. It’s slow, but it builds up the water table, ”said Lawrence Karp, a geotechnical engineer from the Bay Area. “In periods of drought, as we have had for a long time, the water table sinks … and the clay thickens.”

As soft clay solidifies from the loss of groundwater, its weight increases, causing it to carry away structures on top, including the sidewalks and streets of Mission Bay.

The redeveloped waterfront neighborhood was built over an old railway station and reclaimed landfill that historically served as a landfill for industrial waste, including the burned remains of the 1906 earthquake.

Today it is home to a sprawling, state-of-the-art medical campus, high-rise apartment buildings, a hotel, school, and the recently completed Chase Center.

But the sidewalks here have become a dangerous headache for residents and local businesses alike. The gap in front of Cafe Réveille on Long Bridge Street is so steep that two ramps, bright yellow paint and whimsical signs point the way into the cafe and warn the guests: “Please watch your step!”

A man walks past a “Watch your Step” sign on Friday, September 24, 2021, alerting customers to a step from a sinking sidewalk outside Cafe Reveille in Mission Bay. (Kevin N. Hume / The Examiner)

It wasn’t always that bad. “There’s been a big change in the last couple of months,” says Aaron Nelson, barista at Cafe Réveille.

Others say the sinking sidewalks are old news. “Since we’ve been here, the streets have been sinking,” said long-time resident Peggy Fahnestock, who moved to Mission Bay in 2009.

A few years ago, a member of her hiking group stumbled in front of Café Réveille and broke his arm. “It’s not been that bad for a long time,” said Fahnestock, board member of the neighborhood association. “I tripped and fell out there … you have to be careful where you go.”

While more research is needed to draw concrete conclusions about the links between the drought and the sloping sidewalks, scientists don’t think this is surprising given the conditions.

“From a scientific point of view, we don’t have any evidence yet, but we do know that (this) process happened elsewhere,” said Manoochehr Shirzaei, a professor of geophysics and remote sensing at Virginia Tech University who did the subsidence in the Bay Area examined in detail. “When we change something in any part of the hydrological system, the chain of events begins,” he said, calling the city’s groundwater a “connected system”.

And at the moment this system is under increasing stress from the persistent drought.

“The drought is affecting groundwater by temporarily reducing its natural replenishment from rain and stormwater runoff,” said Will Reisman, spokesman for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. However, he said, “the total amount of groundwater stored in the aquifer remains large and will be replenished in the wet years that follow.”

Still, water is clear in the minds of many in the town hall. To further protect the city’s water supply, the board of directors unanimously adopted a measure last week that more than doubled the amount of water that new large buildings have to collect and reuse on site.

“This summer of intense drought and terrible forest fires reminds us that the climate crisis is now and will not go away by itself,” said Supervisor Rafael Mandelman. “Although we have zero carbon emissions targets for our city and our world, the reuse and recycling of water is becoming increasingly important to our survival.”

Mission Bay isn’t the only neighborhood suffering from settlement, but it’s one of the newest, which is what makes the crisp infrastructure noteworthy. Other areas built on landfills, like San Francisco International Airport (SFO) and Treasure Island, have also declined as the landfill slowly compacts, according to research, making these areas more prone to flooding and sea level rise .

A cyclist rides elevated pavement slabs outside an apartment building along Mission Bay Boulevard North in Mission Bay on Friday, September 24, 2021. (Kevin N. Hume / The Examiner)

Subsidence alone would not cause a building to collapse or a sidewalk collapse, Shirzaei said. What matters, he said, is what is called differential motion, or the uneven speed of subsurface subsidence.

“Differential movements that can seriously damage any infrastructure,” he said. “In fact, there is no man-made structure that can withstand such a load. So, pipelines, concrete pillars, they would all break and eventually lose their integrity. “

So far, however, the buildings in Mission Bay have remained stable because they are built on stilts, Karp said. But for local residents like Fahnestock, the question remains who will pay to repair the damaged sidewalks.

The city said that such corrections fall on local residents. “The maintenance of the walkways is the responsibility of the adjacent property owners as per state and city regulations,” said Rachel Gordon, Public Works spokeswoman. “Public Works inspects the sidewalks and notifies property owners if a problem needs to be addressed.”

The goal, Gordon said, is not a punishment, but a safe path for pedestrians.

jwolfrom@sfexaminer.com

A pedestrian walks across raised pavement slabs outside an apartment building along Mission Bay Boulevard North in Mission Bay on Friday, September 24, 2021. (Kevin N. Hume / The Examiner)

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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – BART officials said Wednesday climate change and sea level rise will pose a growing threat to the transit system in the coming decades.

The ailing transport company is trying to find money to combat the long-term but looming threat.

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“One of the predictions is that by mid-century we might see tides a foot higher than they are now. So that’s 2050, ”said BART spokesman Jim Allison.

BART engineers say sea level rise could have a number of potential effects. For example, the Embarcadero train station in San Francisco could occasionally be inundated by floods.

Other stations could be threatened by rising groundwater, which would strain the existing pumps and the aging infrastructure of the system.

“The thing for me is that we’re at the height of technology and innovation in the Bay Area, but this is an old system that is really shabby,” said BART driver Jason Caballero.

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BART has identified many of the potential problem areas, but the agency relies on injections of money from the federal government just to keep trains running.

“The devastating effects of the pandemic and the dramatic decrease in the number of passengers paying for their tickets have really turned our funding plan upside down,” Allison said.

BART drivers say they understand the transportation company’s financial plight but are concerned about the long-term costs of inaction.

“It might be better to say, ‘Let’s pretend it’ll happen in 10 years.’ And what could the BART system do in 10 years to avoid being caught wading in the BART system with pants down and knee-deep water? ”Asked rider Bianca Espinoza.

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BART officials noted that several vulnerable stations are connected to other important pieces of infrastructure in the Bay Area, such as the airports in San Francisco and Oakland. Any plan to mitigate this impact would necessarily have to be regional and collaborative.

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To study the role of Earth’s oceans in climate change, NASA recently launched a mission 100 miles off the coast of San Francisco involving a ship, two aircraft, and a fleet of sailing drones and other robotic research vehicles.

Scientists are studying lesser-known features of the ocean’s surface, such as eddies and eddies, which they suspect may play an important role in the transfer of gases and heat between the atmosphere and the ocean. The mission began on October 19 when the research vessel Oceanus left Newport, Oregon and will end on November 6. During the recent storm, when the ship had to enter the port of San Francisco due to waves in the ocean, it made a brief pause in the study region, reaching 30 feet high.

Although NASA is best known for space exploration, it also operates a fleet of satellites for studying the earth’s surface, some of which focus on the oceans. This particular mission is known as the Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment, or S-MODE. Submesoscale refers to ocean dynamics less than 10 kilometers in diameter such as ocean eddies that swirl around the ocean surface and stir up the water.

“These eddies are making a really important impact on the climate,” said Tom Farrar of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the mission’s lead investigator, at a news conference on the mission on Friday.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the ocean absorbs 31% of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Farrar and others suggest that eddies have an impact on the exchange of heat and gases between the air and the ocean, and likely play a role in transporting heat, carbon, and oxygen from the surface to deeper layers of the ocean. But vortices are too small and too short to be studied by satellite, which is why the S-MODE mission uses so many different instruments at the same time, closer to the source.

The location in front of San Francisco Bay was chosen because it is located on the California Current, a dynamic movement of water along the west coast that is surrounded by many eddies. Two planes collect data on wind and currents on the ocean surface from different heights, one under the clouds and one at 28,000 feet, while the Oceanus and autonomous research vehicles collect images and measurements in the water.

“The goal is to map a complete 3-D structure,” said Farrar.

The Oceanus carried most of the marine robots out to sea, although five sailing drones, bright orange, solar-powered robotic vehicles, disembarked from Alameda and made their way to the study area. You can measure air and ocean currents, as well as salinity and chlorophyll levels, or the amount of phytoplankton in the water. With all the tools working together, the team hopes to study the eddies as they form to learn more about how the ocean is slowing the effects of climate change.

What they find can be used to support an international project NASA is participating in next year by using satellites to conduct the first global survey of all bodies of water on the planet, from oceans to lakes, Nadya said Vinogradova-Shiffer, program scientist from NASA’s Earth Sciences department at the briefing.

“Observing ocean circulation directly from space would be a great advance for science,” she said.

Tara Duggan is a contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: tduggan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @taraduggan

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SACRAMENTO (AP) – Unspecified “family obligations” prompted California Governor Gavin Newsom to suddenly cancel his trip to Scotland on Friday for the United Nations’ annual climate change conference, a huge gathering of international leaders on a subject that is one of his highest priorities.

Newsom, who has four children, ages 5 to 12, will attend the gathering virtually, spokeswoman Erin Mellon said. Mellon declined to comment when asked to provide details about what caused Newsom to change its plans.

Newsom asked Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, a Democrat colleague, to lead the California delegation to Glasgow. In an interview with The Associated Press, Kounalakis said she spoke to Newsom on Thursday and felt that she might be asked to leave.

“The governor has a young family and we should all understand, especially those of us who have been there,” said Kounalakis, who has two grown sons.

Democratic Senator Bob Hertzberg, who is attending the conference, said he suspects Newsom will be very disappointed not to leave.

“He loves this topic, it is very important to him,” said Hertzberg. “It’s a big deal for him and I’m sure he was dying to go.”

Newsom has spoken passionately about the need to take decisive action on climate change issues. Last month, while surveying the damage caused by one of the state’s many recent major forest fires, he said, “I literally have no patience with climate change deniers,” adding, that view is “totally inconsistent … with the reality of the field.”

California has long been a global leader on climate issues, dating back to the 1960s when the state first regulated emissions from cars and trucks. While President Donald Trump was in office, California filed more than 100 lawsuits against the federal government, mostly over environmental issues.

Newsom has sought to build California’s influence through a series of ambitious executive orders that, if survived a lengthy and controversial rulemaking process, could transform the way people live. So far, Newsom has proposed banning all new gasoline cars in California by 2035, banning all oil drilling by 2045, and banning gas-powered lawn equipment sales by 2024 or whenever state regulators determine it is feasible.

Most recently, Newsom proposed a ban on new oil and gas wells within 3,200 feet of schools, homes and hospitals in the country’s largest buffer zone in a state that is the country’s seventh largest oil producer.

Newsom, who is not attending the conference in person, will affect the state’s influence “to some extent,” said State Assembly spokesman Anthony Rendon, a Democrat from the Los Angeles area. But he said Newsom doesn’t have to be in Scotland to be a leader on climate change.

Even so, Rendon said he was frustrated that the state was not moving faster.

“Our aggressive actions were cool when we thought the problem was progressing at a certain pace. Now I’m not sure if they are aggressive enough or immediate enough, ”said Rendon, who will be attending the UN conference. “It’s an opportunity to talk about what we’ve done, but at the same time light a fire under the bums of some of our MPs and develop a sense of urgency on an issue that is not just existential, but that is” immediately . “

Last month, Newsom easily pushed back a Republican-backed recall election aimed at removing him from office and cemented his power in the nation’s most populous state. The trip to Scotland would have been his most significant international trip as governor and would have given him a global platform to highlight his agenda and urge others to follow California’s lead.

Newsom is up for re-election in 2022 and is a strong favorite for a second term. Under California law, governors are limited to two terms.

It is unlikely that the cancellation of the trip would harm him politically, said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, professor of public policy communication at the University of Southern California. In fact, Newsom could have been harmed both politically and personally if he had participated, she said.

“The look of leaving the country, assuming something happens that requires his attention at home, would be completely negative,” she said.

“He won’t be able to socialize and network, but he will be visible,” she added. “As long as there is Zoom, as long as there is a means of virtual face-to-face communication, I don’t think it will go off the radar screen.”

Newsom had recently decided to attend the conference and was sending staff, media organizations and other lawmakers out to prepare for the trip. His decision not to go was just as abrupt and more surprising.

Hertzberg credits Newsom for putting his children first.

“At some point you will be human, as much as we want to be out there in politics. You have to take care of your family. And he does it, and I think that’s a good thing, ”said Hertzberg.

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