Climate Change and LA
What it is, and what LA can and should do about it
Climate Change and LA
What it is, and what LA can and should do about it
Why I care about Climate Change
Timeline of warnings
1856: CO2 witnessed capturing heat from the sun for the first time
1896: First estimate of global warming
1938: First estimate of fossil CO2 emissions (150 billion tons so far by then)
1955: Plass estimates how CO2 variations can drive cyclic climate change
1957: National Academy of Sciences warns Weather Bureau of climate change danger
1958: Observations of CO2 in atmosphere begin
1965: Scientists warn President Johnson of possible climate changes by year 2000
1988: Scientists warn Congress that manmade climate change is now evident
2015: Scientists estimate AGW causes 75% of 99.9th percentile hot days
The Heat Island Effect
Streets and big buildings
soak up heat in the daytime,
stay so hot at night
Temperatures in Birmingham on 22 July 2013
www.metlink.org/other-weather/urban-heat-islands/urban-heat-island-background
Los Angeles Map of
Urban Heat Island Index
Streets etc. soak up heat, make city hotter than unbuilt areas
Prevailing wind from ocean means heat is carried inland during heat wave
Color = Hotter in evening by up to:
Red = 19 deg F
Light green = 4 deg F
(#’s are “degrees C difference vs rural area * hours” sum over 6 months)
How it affects Angelinos
Heat wave-related deaths
Air-pollution-related deaths
Drought
Wildfire
Flooding (well, a little)
“Death toll exceeded 70,000 in Europe during the summer of 2003”, pubmed.gov/18241810
Fig. 2. Daily max temps at Basel showing successive heat waves from June to August. The 90th percentile of Tmax in Basel, 30 degrees C, is represented by the dashed line. (Solid line is 37C, body temperature.)
Smog
On freeways, [UFPs] are generated primarily by diesel-powered vehicles, despite the relatively low fraction (∼6%) of diesel-powered vehicles on Los Angeles freeways. However, UFPs on arterial roads appeared to be driven primarily by proximity to gasoline-powered vehicles undergoing hard accelerations.
The list goes on:
Mitigation
Or, how to survive the heat
New flat roofs must be near-white;
new sloped roofs must use materials that stay slightly cooler; new nonroof areas must have some shade or use some cool materials
What about old buildings?
Prevention
Or, when you’re in a hole, how to stop digging
Ways you can cut emissions:
Efficiency
Electrification
Renewable Energy
Demand action
Efficiency
Lighting
Appliances
Transportation
Buildings
Energy Star and rating sites like enervee.com and fueleconomy.gov are your friends
Electrification
Appliances
Electric cars
Bonus: reducing fossil fuel use reduces smog and associated health costs
Renewable Energy
Sign up for LADWP’s Green Power or Community Solar programs and/or install your own solar
Demand action
What is Los Angeles already doing?
Made a Climate Action Plan showing current emissions & specific goals
Tracking progress meeting the goals on a public web site
Adopted a building code that mandates actions supporting the goals, e.g.
Told all city departments to cut GHG emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 (Council File 14-0907)
City of Los Angeles 2013 Community Greenhouse Gas Inventory
A more detailed inventory has been promised for years, but has never been published. (Or has it? Send me a link...)
Is LA on track to meet its goal of 45% GHG cuts by 2025?
Without a published and annually updated community greenhouse gas inventory, we can’t tell.
Is LA on track to meet its goal of 10% EVs by 2025?
In July, the NRDC forecast that California EV sales will reach only 6% by that year.
LADWP does offer EV charger subsidies (see ladwp.com/EV ), and LA Green Building Code requires 5% of parking spots be EV charger-ready in new buildings, but we may need to do more.
What else could Los Angeles do?
What Los Angeles is considering right now
The council is voting this Friday on whether the LADWP should study what investments are needed to achieve 100% clean energy (see Council File 16-0243)
Friday, September 16, 2016, 9:30am-12:00pm
Los Angeles City Hall, 200 N Spring St, Room 340
“Modeling California policy impacts on greenhouse gas emissions”, 2013, LBNL
Meeting the 80% goal requires everything California was committed to do as of 2014 (S1), hitting goals announced as of 2014 (S2), and many difficult potential actions (S3)
S0 - business as usual
S1 - Committed Policies
S2 - Uncommitted Policies
S3 - Potential Policy and Technology Futures
“[The IPCC said] a two-thirds chance of keeping warming below two degrees required the world to limit its total carbon emissions since 1860 to no more than a trillion tons of carbon. Of this grand all-time total, 515 billion tons had already been emitted by 2011. So, according to the IPCC, we have just under 500 billion tons of our budget left.
Then we have to stop.
Totally.”
e360.yale.edu/feature/what_is_the_carbon_limit_that_depends_who_you_ask/2825
Leave the world a better place than you found it,
that your sons and daughters may enjoy it as you did.
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Spare Slides
Arrhenius, Svante. "XXXI. On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature of the ground." The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science 41.251 (1896): 237-276.
From “Restoring the Quality of our Environment”,
Report of the Environmental Pollution Panel,
President’s Science Advisory Committee, 1975
Cool Pavement
Concrete works, but is hard to fund
Reflective slurry seal available, but limited to < 20 mph.
LA BSS’s about to try it in cul de sacs
http://cao.lacity.org/SOSLA/9_CoolPavement.pdf
http://ens.lacity.org/cao/cao_budget_memo/caocao_budget_memo2925103227_05042016.pdf
Drilling ice cores in Antarctica
Air bubbles trapped in ancient ice
“A Multicounty Analysis Identifying the Populations Vulnerable to Mortality
Associated with High Ambient Temperature in California”, American Journal of Epidemiology, 2008
“A Multicounty Analysis Identifying the Populations Vulnerable to Mortality
Associated with High Ambient Temperature in California”, American Journal of Epidemiology, 2008
37C = 98.6F
35C = 95F
Is Los Angeles on target to meet its goal of 10% of all cars being ZEV’s by 2025?
(A ZEV is a battery electric vehicle, a plug-in hybrid, or a fuel-cell vehicle.)
New cars bought today may last 15 years
If 100% of new car sales were ZEVs, it would take 15 * 10% = 1.5 years to reach the goal
http://www.zevfacts.com/sales-dashboard.html shows ZEVs have 3% of market,
which is worrisome; we’d have to ramp up to something like 15% by 2025 to meet the goal.
The state’s ZEV sales mandate is currently 3%, and ramps up significantly until 2025… although it’s hard to tell by how much; some sources say to 6%, some say 15%.
The LADWP is certainly doing its part at reducing GHGs, particularly by shutting down coal fired power plants.
Ways cities can cut emissions:
Efficiency
Electrification
Renewable Energy
Walkable / Bikeable Cities
Realtime Energy Pricing
Pollution Pricing
Benchmarking
Load Shifting