Welcome to Callie’s Climate Corner! The Civilian Climate Corps May Offer Us Hope for the Future.

Happy New Year, dear readers! And welcome to Callie's Climate Corner!

I just love alliteration. But my favorite "CCC" will forever be the Civilian Conservation Corps for constructing beautiful, time-tested infrastructure across the nation. During its nine-year existence (1933-1941), the CCC employed about 3 million young men. They built roads, bridges, campgrounds, dams, and strung thousands of miles of telephone lines. We still use the infrastructure they built to this very day! These men also fought wildfires, reseeded grazelands to stabilize topsoil, constructed trails and shelters, and planted upwards of three billion trees (https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/civilian-conservation-corps). A quick reminder: trees are a major carbon sink, drawing CO2 down from the atmosphere and storing it in their biomass. Forests are dubbed the “lungs of the world” and we can’t have a healthy planet without healthy forests.

Looking to the past provides us with potential answers to the most pressing issues we collectively face today. FDR’s CCC existed during two separate crises: the Great Depression and World War II. Today we face the dual challenge of COVID and climate change. It’s an ideal time to establish a modern-day Civilian Climate Corps and put our young people to work. The Climate Corps would be managed by the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture, and its project initiatives would resemble those of the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, and Corps Network. Climate Corps members would continue building and maintaining trails and structures, as well as combat invasive species, remediate wetlands, replant trees (where appropriate), and reduce the fuel loads in overgrown forests prone to wildfire.

Now, ideally, this conservation work would be completed in tandem with a complete overhaul of our expired, failing, fossil fuel- and nuclear-powered electrical grid. And rebuilding our grid would require the work of millions of contractors and manufacturers. Although we will always need to consume some fossil fuels for our transportation and manufacturing sectors, it is quite possible for America to invest in a nationwide electrical grid powered by wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal power.

It’s safe to say that we as a nation have maxed out our hydroelectrical potential , considering we’ve built an estimated 84,000 dams, impounding approximately 17% of the nation’s rivers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dams_and_reservoirs_in_the_United_States). There are many good reasons to remove some of these dams: many are in disrepair and pose safety hazards, while others have choked out fish populations. But realistically, hydro power will need to remain a sizable piece of the puzzle if we are to succeed in our decarbonization efforts. We must maintain and repair the roughly 2,400 dams that produce hydroelectricity, and the fate of other dams will need to be decided on a case-by-case basis.

Now, to this day our potential renewable energy sources remain largely untapped. Wind and solar power have grown cheaper over time, and there is plenty more energy to be harvested from the sun, wind, and the very earth itself than we are currently using. The American southwest is an ideal location for solar fields. The Midwest is well suited for wind farms. Geothermal energy exists everywhere. All that would remain is building a large enough distribution system to transport electricity generated in remote areas of the country to the more populous areas. And more than anything, we must encourage and fund the building of renewably-powered localized micro grids that are more resilient, reliable, and less prone to catastrophic failure than our current system.

I believe it is infeasible to completely disuse fossil fuels, but I also believe it is crucial and well within our technological capacity to increase renewable energy use while simultaneously developing carbon sequestration technology (capturing atmospheric CO2 and burying it deep underground in geologic reserves). Executing such great feats would be a veritable job boom for all workers who build things, and establishing a Civilian Climate Corps would carry on the legacy laid down by the original CCC, a legacy that established, defended, and nurtured our public lands. The United States rebuilt itself after the Great Depression. It is my most fervent hope that we rebuild our great nation once more. Our future is always worth the investment.

Paleoclimatology and Proxy Records

Greetings to all!

            Paleoclimatology is the study of ancient climates. We obviously don’t have high-resolution data from 10 or 100 million years ago because we didn’t exist! Today we have satellite measurements, meters, gauges, sensors, etc. which give us a very vivid, clear, detailed picture of our reality. But when we look back into deep time, we must gather data through proxy records. Proxy records are “physical, chemical and biological materials preserved within the geologic record” (https://www2.usgs.gov/landresources/lcs/paleoclimate/proxies.asp) and these materials contain pertinent information about events that took millions (or tens of millions) of years to unfold. Today, we will barely scratch the surface.

            We more or less understand tree rings, right? Trees grow outward, year after year. The more rings, the older the tree. The light rings are summer growth, and the dark lines are winter growth. Thicker summer rings indicate favorable growing conditions with sufficient water, light, and nutrients. Thin rings indicate poor growing conditions.

            Now let’s take that a step further. Plants and trees have preferred climatic conditions and they release pollen to reproduce. This pollen wafts on the wind to various destinations and becomes part of the geologic record. Scientists can analyze the relative abundance of certain species over others to determine an approximate temperature and precipitation regime for the area. With error bars, of course as 100% certainty is never guaranteed. Plant macrofossils can also be used in a similar manner to reconstruct past plant assemblages and infer their preferred climate conditions.

Ice cores also offer us glimpses into ancient atmospheres by trapping tiny pockets of air. Glaciers form via the accumulation and compaction of snow, and some ice cores have visible layers much like tree rings. Air trapped in the pore spaces between snowflakes eventually become bubbles trapped in the ice. Scientists use the amount of methane and carbon dioxide to determine a range of likely temperatures based on our observations and understanding of atmospheric chemistry and climate sensitivity. The Vostok ice core contains 400,000 years’ worth of atmospheric data, and it clearly shows how much of an outlier our current CO2 concentration actually is. (http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/ice-cores/ice-core-basics/).

            Then there are sediment records. Scientists can use the texture, color, structure, density, and magnetic properties of sediments to determine where the sediment came from, where it was likely deposited, which direction wind or water was flowing, how much chlorophyll or rust is present (and therefore what the oxygen conditions were like and how much biological activity occurred), and many other helpful bits of information. Now is a good time to brush up on that chemistry refresher article explaining what isotopes are! And might as well review the slow carbon cycle article, too. Their respective links are below. http://www.trinityjournal.com/community/columnists/article_e52b01a4-0529-11ec-bd09-c720e79ed003.html http://www.trinityjournal.com/community/clubs_and_organizations/article_4471c402-102b-11ec-9805-176802389de5.html

Plankton are microscopic organisms in the ocean that form calcium carbonate shells. The oxygen in these shells can either be O16 or O18, meaning it can either contain 8 neutrons, or 10 neutrons, respectively.

(8 protons + 8 neutrons = an atomic weight of 16)

(8 protons + 10 neutrons = an atomic weight of 18)

            O16 is preferentially evaporated, meaning it becomes gaseous before the heavier O18 does. In periods of extensive glaciation when continental ice sheets are at their thickest, we clearly see more O16 in the ice core records and, here’s the kicker, more O18 in the calcium carbonate shells in ocean sediments! More O18 in the ocean means bigger glaciers. More O16 in the ocean means significantly less glaciation. Coral reefs also create calcium carbonate skeletons and they grow outward and form growth layers, also similar to trees. Proxy records can be used for comparison and calibration as we refine our estimates. There are always more data to discover.

            To those with a knack for chemistry, biology, and geology, proxy records provide rich treasure troves of information about the vast, mysterious, magical world that is our home planet.

            Keep exploring and never stop learning, friends!