Day: November 8, 2021

The magic 1.5C: What’s behind #climate talks’ key elusive goal — The #Pueblo Chieftain #COP26

From The Associated Press (Seth Borenstein) via The Pueblo Chieftain:

One phrase, really just a number, dominates climate talks in Glasgow: the magic and elusive 1.5.

That stands for the international goal of trying to limit future warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times. It’s a somewhat confusing number in some ways that wasn’t a major part of negotiations just seven years ago and was a political suggestion that later proved to be incredibly important scientifically. Stopping warming at 1.5 or so can avoid or at least lessen some of the most catastrophic future climate change scenarios and for some people is a life-ordeath matter, scientists have found in many reports.

The 1.5 figure now it is the “overarching objective” of the Glasgow climate talks, called COP26, conference President Alok Sharma said on the first day of meetings. On Saturday, he said the conference, which took a break Sunday, was still trying “to keep 1.5 alive.” For protesters and activists, the phrase is “1.5 to stay alive.” And 1.5 is closer than it sounds. That’s because it may sound like another 1.5 degrees from now, but because it is since preindustrial times, it’s actually only 0.4 degrees (0.7 degrees Fahrenheit) from now. The world has warmed 1.1 degrees (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times. The issue isn’t about the one year when the world first averages 1.5 more than preindustrial times. Scientists usually mean a multiyear average of over 1.5 because temperatures – while rising over the long term like on an escalator – do have small jags up and down above the long-term trend, much like taking a step up or down on the escalator.

But it’s coming fast.

Scientists calculate carbon pollution the burning of fossil fuels can produce before 1.5 degrees is baked in. A report a few days ago from Global Carbon Project found that there are 420 billion tons of carbon dioxide left in that budget, and this year humanity spewed 36.4 billion tons. That’s about 11 years’ worth left at current levels – which are rising, not falling – the report found.

To get there, scientists and the United Nations say the world needs to cut its current emissions by about half as of 2030. That’s one of the three goals the U.N. has set for success in Glasgow.

“It’s physically possible (to limit warming to 1.5 degrees), but I think it is close to politically impossible in the real world barring miracles,” Columbia University climate scientist Adam Sobel said. “Of course we should not give up advocating for it.” A dozen other climate scientists told the Associated Press essentially the same thing – that if dramatic emission reductions start immediately the world can keep within 1.5 degrees. But they don’t see signs of that happening.

That 1.5 figure may be the big number now but that’s not how it started.
At the insistence of small island nations who said it was a matter of survival, 1.5 was put in near the end of negotiations into the historic 2015 Paris climate agreement. It is mentioned only once in the deal’s text. And that part lists the primary goal to limit warming to “2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.” The 2-degree goal was the existing goal from 2009’s failed Copenhagen conference. The goal was initially interpreted as 2 degrees or substantially lower if possible.

But in a way both the “1.5 and 2 degree C thresholds are somewhat arbitrary,” Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson said in an email. “Every tenth of a degree matters!” The 2 degrees was chosen because it “is the warmest temperature that you can infer that the planet has ever seen in the last million years or so,” University of East Anglia climate scientist Corinne LeQuere, who helped write the carbon budget study, said at the Glasgow climate talks. When the Paris agreement threw in the 1.5 figure, the United Nations tasked its Nobel Prizewinning group of scientists – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC – to study on what difference there would be an Earth between 1.5 degrees of warming and 2 degrees of warming.

The 2018 IPCC report found that compared to 2 degrees, stopping warming at 1.5 would mean:

  • Fewer deaths and illnesses from heat, smog and infectious diseases.
  • Half as many people would suffer from lack of water.
  • Some coral reefs may survive.
  • There’s less chance for summers without sea ice in the Arctic.
  • The West Antarctic ice sheet might not kick into irreversible melting.
  • Seas would rise nearly 4 inches less.
  • Half as many animals with back bones and plants would lose the majority of their habitats.
  • There would be substantially fewer heat waves, downpours and droughts.

    • “For some people this is a life-or-death situation without a doubt,” report lead author Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald said at the time.

    That finding that there’s a massive difference to Earth with far less damage at 1.5 is the biggest climate science finding in the last six years, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research Director Johan Rockstrom said in an interview at the Glasgow conference.

    “It gets worse and worse as you exceed beyond 1.5,” Rockstrom said. “We have more scientific evidence than ever that we need to really aim for landing at 1.5, which is the safe climate planetary boundary.” “Once we pass 1.5 we enter a scientific danger zone in terms of heightened risk,” Rockstrom said. In a new IPCC report in August, the world hit 1.5 in the 2030s in each of the four main carbon emissions scenarios they looked out.

    Even when scientists and politicians talk about 1.5 they usually talk about “overshoot” in which for a decade or so the temperature hits or passes 1.5, but then goes back down usually with some kind of technology that sucks carbon out of the air, Stanford’s Jackson and others said.

    As hard as it is, negotiators can’t give up on 1.5, said Canadian Member of Parliament Elizabeth May, who is at her 16th climate negotiations.
    “If we don’t hang on to 1.5 while it is technically feasible, we are almost criminal,” May said.

    #FortCollins puts new barriers in front of billion-dollar Northern Water dam and pipeline project — The #Colorado Sun #NISP

    Cache la Poudre River. Photo credit: Allen Best

    From The Colorado Sun (Michael Booth):

    City Council calls for local control rules in big land projects could delay approval of Northern Water’s Northern Integrated Supply Project by a year.

    Fort Collins has placed new barriers in front of Northern Water’s $1.1 billion plan to build a dam and pipeline network along the Cache la Poudre River, further slowing a decades-long project backed by 15 growing Front Range communities and water districts.

    City government put a hold on the kind of pipeline and infrastructure work Northern Water needs for its Northern Integrated Supply Project, saying Fort Collins will pause for a year to write new regulations under state “1041” permitting laws that encourage local control of big land use projects. Fort Collins’ planning commission had rejected a NISP pipeline proposal through city open space last summer, but Northern Water’s board overrode the decision, as is allowed by state law.

    Northern Water says it has already complied with local approval protocols, including receiving 1041 approval from surrounding Larimer County, and will study its options if Fort Collins tries to force NISP through a newly created layer of planning.

    “We think that we’ve completed” the city’s Site Plan Advisory Review process, which was the standard before Fort Collins started talking about creating 1041 rules, Northern Water spokesman Jeff Stahla said. “We’re really going to take a close look at exactly what was passed by the city council.”

    Placing a hold on new projects and asking staff to create a 1041 process for the first time was not meant to target Northern Water specifically, though it will likely delay their Fort Collins projects, city council member Kelly Ohlson acknowledged. A new group of city council members taking office after spring elections learned Fort Collins could use the state’s 1041 law to influence projects rather than just react to them, Ohlson said…

    Mayor Jeni Arndt said the new tier of local regulations should not make a big difference in Northern Water’s decadeslong pursuit of final project approvals. Northern Water wants to build two big reservoirs northwest and east of Fort Collins, and connect them to the Poudre and the South Platte River through a series of pipelines and ditches.

    Arndt said city leaders have narrowed down their interests in creating a 1041 review process to two areas for now: water projects and development that impacts natural areas.

    “I don’t feel like that’s an evil volley against them,” Arndt said. “It’s not tit for tat. We have some legitimate concerns about our natural areas and parks.”

    Conservation groups that have battled NISP and its complex water engineering for years are happy to see a new bump in the road for Northern Water, which says it expects to receive a final federal-level permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers any month now. Opponents have filed suits and protested local government approvals since portions of NISP were first conceived in the 1980s. In July, they focused on the Fort Collins planning body’s decision whether to approve project pipelines buried in city park land and right of way…

    A delay from Fort Collins to pursue more local control rules follows Northern Water’s success in September getting Larimer County approval for another key element of the project: moving U.S. 287 east over a ridge, north of Ted’s Place, to create the dam basin where Glade Reservoir will store Cache la Poudre water.

    Northern Integrated Supply Project (NISP) map July 27, 2016 via Northern Water.

    Overall, the northern supply project will build Glade and another new reservoir northeast of Greeley, Galeton, that will store South Platte River water. Some of the new supply will be delivered in the Cache la Poudre channel, while other transfers will be made by a series of pipelines and ditches.

    Northern Water says the project will bring much-needed supply to 80,000 more residents in more than a dozen growing communities that have signed up for the water. The water agency says storing Cache la Poudre water in Glade during higher runoff allows them to supply a steady stream for wildlife and recreation through Fort Collins at times when the river otherwise runs nearly dry.

    Opponents say NISP takes water from wildlife and scenic rivers, and encourages sprawling growth in communities that could do more to conserve water.

    @CSUSpur water symposium shares scaleable solutions — @ColoradoStateU

    Screenshot from the Water in the West Symposium November 3, 2021.

    Here’s the release from Colorado State University (Tiana Kennedy):

    One key takeaway: The situation around water is dire – more dire than it has ever been before.

    Yet, as the Fourth Annual CSU Spur Water in the West Symposium convened experts from across the country on Wednesday, the focus was on learning from one another’s successes and finding solutions at-scale to water issues.

    “As in past years, the Symposium will touch on the challenges that face us in water, but we won’t dwell there – instead we’ll spend most of our time on the solutions to these challenges. This year we have the opportunity to link these solutions to one another in specific ways – across scales at which these solutions have been applied to-date,” said Dr. Tony Frank, Chancellor of the CSU System. “Our hope is that today you will listen with an ear toward features of water solutions that you might be able to apply at the scale at which you work.”

    The Water in the West Symposium was launched in 2018 as an early offering of the CSU Spur campus, set to open its first public-facing building in Denver this January. The Symposium is an example of the kinds of convenings and conversations that will happen at the CSU Spur campus.

    The 2021 Symposium, hosted virtually, began with CSU Native American Cultural Center Director Ty Smith sharing the CSU land acknowledgement, recognizing that the lands of the university’s founding came at a dire cost to Native Nations, and sharing a commitment toward education and inclusion.

    Rancher Bryan Bernal irrigates a field that depends on Colorado River water near Loma, Colo. Credit: William Woody

    Water is a common thread

    Water connects all things, all people, all lands. It’s at the heart of basic human needs of water, food, habitability, equity … and there is much work to be done.

    Keynote speaker Tanya Trujillo, assistant secretary for Water and Science for the U.S. Department of the Interior, noted that nearly 90% of the West is experiencing some level of drought conditions – with Lake Mead and Lake Powell making recent headlines for being at all-time lows – and that water issues require collaborative solutions and solutions that have a “solid foundation in science.”

    Water solutions also require ongoing optimism, perseverance, patience, and a focus on relationship building – “we’re looking for win-wins and patience,” she said.

    “We have seen over the past 20 years great examples of being able to work among constituencies in individual states and to determine solutions to conflicts from an interstate perspective,” Trujillo said.

    “The Colorado River Basin is one where we have been able to bring diametrically opposed perspectives together.”

    The difference between the terms equality equity and liberation illustrated. Credit: Shrehan Lynch https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340777978_The_A-Z_of_Social_Justice_Physical_Education_Part_1

    Water in Climate & Equity

    Climate challenges and equity often go hand-in-hand, and Symposium panelists reiterated that water is no different.

    Adel Hagekhalil, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, outlined the efforts of Metropolitan and noted the focus on sustainability and climate resiliency and efforts to build the plans into a holistic One Water infrastructure. Water recycling is the future, he noted – showcasing that they are building one of the largest water recycling programs in the nation – recycling, reusing, and returning water to the ground – which will create 150 million gallons of recycled water a day, equivalent to water for 500,000 households. It’s a regional solution that California, Southern Nevada, and Arizona are collaborating on, and the federal government is helping to fund.

    Metropolitan covers 5,200 square miles and six counties, which include diverse and underserved communities.

    “I believe strongly that we need to do something that can help everyone. And to me the future is One Water — One Water is a holistic solution, a solution that brings everyone together,” Hagekhalil said.

    Andrew Lee, acting general manager, Seattle Public Utilities, reiterated that point.

    “Community centered, One Water, zero waste, that’s the heart of our statement. We believe that water and wastewater services are a platform for greater social good,” Lee said, acknowledging that equity work is a constant learning process of empowering voices, listening to people, and finding places where underrepresented communities have power to make decisions that impact them.

    “Equity is at the heart of all of it,” he continued.

    Water, while seemingly accessible to all, is actually an area where equity is a large issue.

    Native American homes are 19 times more likely than white homes to lack indoor plumbing; Black and Latinx homes are twice as likely to not have drinking water, said Bidtah Becker, associate attorney of the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority. She noted that there have been some successes when it comes to Tribal water but shared that she has unprecedented hope for the future.

    In addition to subsidizing residential water usage, the biggest outcomes can come through policy changes, John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, noted. He said that Nevada expects its gallons per capita/day to increase by nine gallons, simply due to the increasing temperatures.

    “We’ve added over 800,000 new residences to Southern Nevada, using 23% less water in that same timeframe— and we’re not done yet,” he said. “In the next five years, the Nevada Legislative Assembly Bill 356 will prohibit the use of Colorado River water for watering nonfunctional turf.”

    Jennifer Pitt, Colorado River program director of the National Audubon Society, showed a photo of the dried-up Colorado River Delta.

    “Not everyone fully appreciates that the Colorado River trickles to its end in the sand between the U.S. and Mexico,” Pitt said. “It’s the beginning of the end of the Colorado River’s Delta.”

    The 2015 Colorado Water Plan, on a shelf, at the CU law library. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism

    The Colorado Water Plan brings a shared vision to water and water in Colorado, which is designed to be a living document that will seek input on its next version in June 2022.

    “We did imagine that the future would look different than the past,” said Director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board Becky Mitchell. “Colorado has to come together to solve its challenges.”

    “These are challenging times,” Mitchell said. “[For instance] we also want to avoid the risk of curtailment in the upper Basin, because if there is a curtailment situation on the Colorado River, every Coloradan will be affected whether they know it or not. That would have a heavy impact economically, socioeconomically.”

    While the issues are clear and vast, panelists – whether from national, regional, state, or local interests – reiterated the importance of innovating on the path toward increasingly smarter and more sustainable solutions, and of working together and using learnings from each other to scale these solutions.

    “By putting more than just the usual suspects … by including other stakeholders at the table, the solution sets grew because we had more to talk about,” Pitt said. “Adaptation in this Basin, creating climate resilience, is going to take a generational investment, no question about it.”

    #Fountain looking to #ColoradoSprings Utilities to help fill water gap — The Colorado Springs Gazette

    From The Colorado Springs Gazette (Mary Shinn):

    The city of Fountain is on the hunt for more water to support growth and the most likely short-term option is an agreement with Colorado Springs Utilities.

    “Fountain is coming to the ceiling of the treated water supply,” said Mike Fink, city water resources manager, during a recent board meeting.

    While the city owns enough water rights to double its treated water capacity, enough to serve 8,800 taps, developing the infrastructure to treat that water will take time and purchasing water could provide a more immediate solution, Utilities Director Dan Blankenship said.

    In the long-term, the town expects residents could consume about four times as much water as they do now, a recent water master planning process showed, Fink said. The study showed the town uses about 3,167 acre feet of water annually, or about 1 billion gallons and it will need 11,527 acre feet or about 3.75 billion gallons, he said. The town’s maximum daily demand for water could also increase four fold, he said…

    The need for more water is not tied to a calendar date, rather it will be driven by the speed of growth within the city’s service area. Those developments will also be expected to pay for additional water infrastructure, Blankenship said.

    The town’s service area is distinct from the town’s boundaries because five water providers serve homes and businesses within the city’s boundaries, Fink said.

    To meet the need, Blankenship said he recently put in a formal request to Colorado Springs Utilities to purchase treated water and would like to have an agreement in two years, he said…

    the water could be delivered to Fountain by way of a new water main line that could run from the Edward Bailey Water Treatment Plant south to the eastern side of Fountain, he said.

    Blankenship would like to see an agreement to purchase water over 15 to 25 years until the water is needed to serve Colorado Springs, he said…

    Fountain is also working on a new reservoir so it can use water rights it already owns. It has purchased gravel pits on the very southwest side of Fountain west of Interstate 25, just north of the Nixon power plant and has hired a consultant that is designing the new facility. However, the excavation company must complete reclamation on the property before the town can start work, Blankenship said.

    Widefield aquifer via the Colorado Water Institute.

    Town officials are also exploring other options, such as injecting the Widefield aquifer with surface water from Fountain Creek to store it, he said. When water is stored in existing aquifers none of it is lost to evaporation.

    The Widefield aquifer is contaminated with chemicals from firefighting foam that used to be used on Peterson Space Force Base and all the water from the aquifer goes through extensive treatment to ensure its safe for consumption.

    Still, Fountain, Security and Widefield are interested in the injection as a potential to increase water storage, Blankenship said…

    “There’s science that indicates the aquifer could be cleaned over time,” he said.

    Denver Basin Aquifer System graphic credit USGS.

    Fountain could also become a partner in the project to recapture Denver basin groundwater water released into Fountain Creek by northern water users.

    A map being shown around El Paso County by suburban water agencies traces the path of the Loop, a complex $134 million pipeline and pumping project that would allow northern and eastern communities in the county to reuse aquifer water returning to Fountain Creek, and pipe along water rights they have bought up on the southern side of the county. (Provided by Woodmoor Water and Sanitation District)

    Colorado Springs Utilities, Monument and six groundwater districts are working together on the feasibility of capturing the water.

    It’s possible the water could be diverted below Colorado Springs and may require new water storage, such as a reservoir or tank, Colorado Springs Utilities said in the past.

    Inside the Gunnison Tunnel, the first major water diversion system in the U.S. — The #Colorado Sun

    East Portal Gunnison Tunnel gate and equipment houses provide for the workings of the tunnel.
    Lisa Lynch/NPS

    From The Colorado Sun (Jason Blevins). Click through for the cool photos, here’s an excerpt:

    After more than a half-hour splashing through the dank dark of one of the world’s longest irrigation tunnels, Dennis Veo grins in the sunshine showering the cliffs of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River…

    The 120-year-old, 5.8-mile tunnel was the largest irrigation tunnel in the country when it opened in 1909. It was also the first major transmountain diversion in the U.S., becoming a model for moving Western water beneath mountains, connecting wet basins with dry deserts.

    Today, the Gunnison Tunnel can move more than 500,000 acre-feet of water a year, more than the entire Eastern Slope draws from the Upper Colorado River Basin.

    That water, roughly 1,150 cubic-feet-per-second when filled to the ceiling of the granite-blasted tunnel, irrigates about 83,000 acres for 3,000 members of the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association and also delivers water to more than 50,000 people in the three-county Project 7 Water Authority. The water that pours from the Gunnison Tunnel is the lifeblood of the Uncompahgre Valley, flowing through 128 miles of major canals and 438 miles of lateral ditches in Montrose and Delta counties.

    “We are the largest diverter of water in Colorado,” says Steve Anderson, the second-generation general manager of the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association. “We can take about the same as the entire Front Range takes from the Colorado River. And about the same as the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California takes out of the Colorado River. That is a lot of water.”

    Gunnison Tunnel via the National Park Service

    An engineering marvel

    In the late 1800s, it became clear that the fickle flows of the Uncompahgre River alone could not irrigate enough acres in the river valley between Delta and Montrose. There were close to 100,000 acres homesteaded by farmers but only enough water to irrigate a fraction of that.

    An ambitious plan to connect the Gunnison River with the Uncompahgre River valley started in the early 1900s, when a pair of intrepid engineers with the local power company and the U.S. Geological Survey descended the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River on rubber air mattresses. With cameras and rudimentary surveying equipment, they searched for a place to build a diversion dam and tunnel.

    The first bore of the Gunnison Tunnel opened in 1909. It was the first major project approved by the Department of the Interior under the 1902 Reclamation Act. More than 26 men died during construction of what was then the longest irrigation tunnel ever built. Countless more workers were maimed. The manual diggers — crews of 30 men working around the clock from both ends of the tunnel — were off by only 6 inches when they met in the middle, Veo said. By 1912, water was flowing through the tunnel and irrigating crops from Delta to Montrose.

    In 1973, the American Society of Civil Engineers honored the Gunnison Tunnel as a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. A few years later it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places…

    The Gunnison Tunnel is the critical link of the Wayne N. Aspinall Unit, one of the four projects that make up the 1956 Colorado River Storage Project…

    The other units created under the 1956 Colorado River Storage Project Act include the Flaming Gorge Dam on the Green River in Utah, the Navajo Reservoir in New Mexico and Lake Powell in Utah. The network of reservoirs and dams are used by Upper Colorado River Basin states to store water and generate electricity as part of the Colorado River Compact that divides up the river between seven states and Mexico…

    The engineering masterpiece has sustained a lush vibrancy along the Uncompahgre River. It’s pretty simple to imagine what the valley would look like without that tunnel, says John Harold, who farms corn, onion and beans in the valley.

    Map of the Gunnison River drainage basin in Colorado, USA. Made using public domain USGS data. By Shannon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69257550

    Deep, Watson creeks being considered for instream flow water right — Steamboat Pilot & Today

    From the Steamboat Pilot & Today (Dylan Anderson):

    When water runs low in the late summer, many small creeks and streams dry up as water is diverted for irrigation, leaving pools scattered around each bend of the channel.

    Ranchers and other water users have a right to this diverted water, part of a system that dates back more than 100 years. Until the early ’70s, leaving any amount of water in these creeks was considered a waste.

    “There was no beneficial use recognized to keep water in the channel,” said Rob Viehl, a water resources specialist with the Colorado Water Conservation Board.

    Colorado passed a law in 1973 that said the streams had a right to some of the water too by establishing the Instream Flow Program. Nearly 50 years later, the board is considering new rights for two creeks in Routt County, adding to a network of more than 1,700 flow rights decreed across the state.

    Deep Creek, which flows from Hahns Peak down into Steamboat Lake in North Routt County, is being considered for an instream flow water right by the Colorado Water Conservation Board.
    Colorado Water Conservation Board/Courtesy photo

    Deep Creek, which runs from the southwest side of Hahns Peak down into Steamboat Lake, and a stretch of Watson Creek, which is on public and private land west of Yampa, are being considered for the new instream flow rights.

    These rights are a little different than traditional water rights because they span between two points on a stream, rather than a point where water is diverted. Between these points, the river is entitled to a certain amount of flow.

    The riffles section of a creek will dry up first because it is the shallowest. But it also holds a lot of biological significance for fish and other aquatic species, Viehl said. The Instream Flow Program is meant to consider the uses of water with the benefits there are to leaving it in the creek…

    But the program also provides certainty to current rights holders that any of these flow rights would still be administered within the larger system, Viehl said. For the proposed rights on Deep and Watson creeks, Viehl said they would be for 2022, meaning rights established for it are not affected.

    That means there is no guarantee that these rights will be able to keep water in the channel year-round, Viehl said.

    The rights take about three years to establish and requires another entity to approach the water board with a recommendation. Colorado Parks and Wildlife is the more likely recommending agency, but Viehl said the Bureau of Land Management and other agencies make recommendations, as well…

    Deep Creek has a fishery of cutthroat and rainbow trout, riparian plants like willow and alder, and flows down into Steamboat Lake. The proposed right would ensure that there are 2.5 cfs of water flowing from May 1 to July 1, with a lesser amount later in the summer and winter.

    Watson Creek at Ferguson Ditch Headgate June 3, 2021. Photo credit: Scott Hummer

    Watson Creek’s fishery is different, with longnose and whitehead suckers rather than trout. It also has insects like mayflies and caddisflies, and several riparian grasses. The proposed flow rate would be 1.9 cfs from April 1 to June 21, but there would be no rate through July and early August.