What climate change means for Utah

Last Wednesday three of my colleagues from BYU and I met with Congressman John Curtis to talk about what climate change means for Utah. The meeting was organized by the Citizen's Climate Lobby and RepubliEn.

 We met on the west side of Cascade with on the smoky morning. Photo courtesy of BYU Photo.

Representative Curtis was attentive and well informed. He brought up the point that we sometimes get too concerned about whether someone accepts that climate change is occurring and whether it is human caused. Climate change is enough of a polarizing issue that I tend to agree. I count anyone as an ally who is willing to work towards cleaning up our energy supply and using our resources responsibly. If someone is denying climate change and using that as a reason to keep consuming dirty fuels, then establishing the science becomes more important. In my experience, fighting about beliefs isn't terribly productive. If someone sincerely wants to investigate the scientific basis of climate change, John Cook has already done much of the legwork for her/him: https://www.skepticalscience.com/.

Neil, Sam, Zach, and I prepared a brief info sheet for Congressman Curtis, which I thought I'd share here.

How has Utah’s climate changed and what does the future hold?

• It has warmed 2°F over the last century. An additional increase of 3.8°F is expected by 2050 (1). Summer and fall warming will be greatest.
• Transition from snow to rain. Spring snowpack has decreased in Utah by ~30% on average, and more than 75% in some areas (Fig. 1). Precipitation is expected to decrease in central and southern Utah.
• Wildfire in the Intermountain West nearly doubled from 1979-2015. More than half that change was due to manmade climate change (2).

What does climate change mean for Utah’s water?

• Even without climate change, Utah is facing a water crisis (Fig. 2).
• Utah has always been vulnerable to climate VARIATION, especially recurring drought. Climate change and population growth increase vulnerability to drought.
• Decreased groundwater recharge (aquifer depletion), less reliable runoff (empty or overflowing reservoirs), and expensive water infrastructure because of increased evapotranspiration and changes to the amount and timing of precipitation

What does climate change mean for Utah’s ecosystems?

• Fire will continue to increase in severity, extent, and frequency because of warming, lightning, invasive species, and dryer fuels.
• Invasive species such as the pine beetle and cheatgrass are damaging ecosystems and costing millions of dollars a year3.
• Loss of snowpack, more extreme weather, and increases in evapotranspiration are pushing many Utah ecosystems to the edge.

What does climate change mean for Utah’s people?

• The annual human death toll from air pollution is 15 million worldwide (4), 200,000 in the U.S., and 2,000-5,000 in Utah (5). That is more than 10 times the number of Utahns who die in car accidents every year. Pollution from fossil fuels is responsible for 85% of this loss of life and 15% is from smoke, dust, and other sources, which will be worsened by climate change.
• Quality of life depends on climate and healthy ecosystems
• Longer hotter summers, less snow, worse summer air quality, degraded lands

What can we do about it?

• Reduce production and consumption of fossil fuels. Most of the consequences of climate change can still be mitigated if human emissions are actively reduced.
• Conserve water use (agriculture, industry, and domestic)
• Protect integrity of natural systems: intact ecosystems are more resilient
• The clean energy, technological innovation, and strong communities needed to respond to climate change are opportunities for Utah.

1. Naz, B. S. et al. Regional hydrologic response to climate change in the conterminous United States using high-resolution hydroclimate simulations. Glob. Planet. Change 143, 100–117 (2016).

2. Abatzoglou, J. T. & Williams, A. P. Impact of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire across western US forests. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 113, 11770–11775 (2016).

3. Kurz, W. A. et al. Mountain pine beetle and forest carbon feedback to climate change. Nature 452, 987–990 (2008).

4. Landrigan, P. J. et al. The Lancet Commission on pollution and health. The Lancet 0, (2017).

5. Caiazzo, F., Ashok, A., Waitz, I. A., Yim, S. H. L. & Barrett, S. R. H. Air pollution and early deaths in the United States. Part I: Quantifying the impact of major sectors in 2005. Atmos. Environ. 79, 198–208 (2013).

 Neil Hansen talks about how water quantity and quality may change. BYU Photo.

 Zach Aanderud gets serious enough to take off his glasses.

I discuss the human health effects of air pollution and climate change from fossil fuels.

Sam St. Clair brings it home with an explanation of wildfire, invasive species, and forests.

How to Become a Pirate Hunter

Tanner Lex Jones' concept album How to Become a Pirate Hunter is adventurous, fun, and surprisingly emotional. The songs tell the coming-of-age stories of Samuel, Charlotte, and Eric, characters from Marty Reeder's young adult novel of the same name. Using a hodgepodge of genres including sea shanty, alternative and classic rock, indiepop, nursery rhyme, and country western, Jones creates an engaging and, at times, epic musical experience.

How to Become a Pirate Hunter could have easily been a fan-fiction gimmick, only of interest to devotees, but Jones drew me in from the first tin-whistle melody of the first track, Samuel. Solid songwriting, production values, and polished but heartfelt performance come together in an uplifting and moving album.

As usual, Jones weaves candid and piercing lyrics with full but not over-orchestrated accompaniment. He 

shows more vocal and emotional range than in previous albums, particularly in the seven-plus minute long This Boy. Like in Reeder's novel, Jones snaps between mundane scenes in a suburban high-school to 18th century sea battles. While the songs stay true to the novel, Jones' storytelling transcends the details of the plot, addressing questions of how to find one's place, wrestling with external and internal expectations, and balancing fear with safety.

Jones multi-genre musical past is apparent in the album. Influences range from Flogging Molly, Coldplay, They Might Be Giants, Decembrists, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Mason Jennings. Despite the sometimes abrupt transitions between styles, the album has a strong arc and cohesive presence. The musical diversity combined with honest storytelling kept me engaged from the first to the fifteenth listen. Jones has delivered a thoughtful and deep album that my kids like as much as I do. Five stars.

Keep Utah Lake Wet

I grew up in Orem, one of the cities wedged between the Wasatch Mountains and Utah Lake. The lake is an unlikely shallow pool in the high pan of the Great Basin. It is the largest fresh remnant of the Lahontan and Bonneville inland seas, which swelled or shrunk in these valleys depending on climate for the last million years.

The mountains were what impressed me as a teenager. Timpanogos and Cascade were too steep and wild to build on. Their avalanches and debris flows kept them clean from subdivisions and other sins. I spent a lot of time on my bike in the mountains, and from there you can’t help but notice Utah Lake.

As the sun goes down, the lake illuminates the valley, casting light into the undersides of clouds and up somber canyons. In the wintertime and early spring, the lake’s living surface breaths snow into the mountains.

Even so, I didn’t set foot in Utah Lake until I was in high school (setting foot is the right term for a lake this shallow). I remember wading a half mile out into the warm desert water one summer night. I slipped into the lakebed, just leaving my face above the water. The night herons were out skimming the water, and one flew directly over me—inches from my face—as big and loud as an airliner from where I lay floating.

Now that I’m a grownup, I study Utah Lake and its tributaries. I am an ecosystem ecologist (redundant right?) and my work focuses on the water, energy, and nutrients that flow through our soils, streams, and lake.

Lots of people think that Utah Lake is trashed. It has been described as an ecological disaster, a poison lake, and more colorfully as a cesspool by some in our state legislature. The lake is suffering symptoms of eutrophication—a condition that develops when you over-fertilize an aquatic ecosystem. Eutrophication affects about three out of four of the Earth’s inland waters, but compared to most cases, Utah Lake has a minor and curable infection. Thanks to the lake’s shallow and wide bathymetry, it is resilient to the worst effects of eutrophication (anoxic dead zones that kill all animal life), and the lake is free of more toxic compounds like heavy metals, PCBs, and pesticides. With some upgrades to our wastewater treatment plants, better water conservation, and a continuation of the invasive-species removal efforts, Utah Lake could return to full ecological function.

Some people would like Utah Lake to be something different. Its natural shape or color are not good enough, and they’d like to perform cosmetic surgery to help the lake live up to their ideal. The proposal is to rip up the lakebed and drag the sediment into artificial islands—more space for pavement and buildings—and then somehow change the lake’s beautiful brown water to an unnatural blue. The engineers and investors say that these alterations will restore the lake, but their proposal doesn’t contain any feasible mechanisms for improving the hydrology or ecology of the lake.

On a more fundamental level, Utah Lake is one of the only wet spots in a vast sea of dry land. Before we fill it in, let’s take a long look from the mountains and from the lake shore at what we could lose forever. As for me, I believe we should keep Utah Lake shallow, clean, muddy, warm, beautiful, and at the very least . . . wet.