On tonight’s State of the Bay, I’ll be speaking with Ricardo Cano, transportation reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, about why state regulators have revoked permits for Cruise’s driverless autonomous vehicles. What are the implications for the autonomous vehicle industry here in California and beyond?
We’ll also hear from Los Angeles Times environmental reporter and author Rosanne Xia about her new book “California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline.”
And finally, we’ll sit down with Emily Pilloton-Lam, founder and executive director of the Berkeley non-profit Girls Garage.
Tune in at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live at 6pm PT. What comments or questions do you have for our guests? Call 866-798-TALK to join the conversation!
Tonight on State of the Bay, we’ll discuss the potential Oakland A’s move to Las Vegas with the “Bay Area Sports guy,” Steve Berman of The Athletic. He’ll also share his latest analysis of the Warriors/Kings playoff series, the state of the Giants, and more.
Plus, we’ll talk about a new report on preparing the Bay Area for rising sea levels, with an estimate that it will cost a staggering one hundred and ten billion dollars. We’ll dig into the feasibility of this. Guests will include:
- Dana Brechwald, Assistant Planning Director for Climate Adaptation at the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, or, BCDC.
- Adrian Covert, Senior Vice President of Public Policy for the Bay Area Council, or BAC.
Finally, we’ll start our series “Have you met”…where we talk to Bay Area folks that we think you should know. So have you met Chris Chatmon? Find out why you should.
What would you like to ask our guests? Post a comment here, tweet us @StateofBay, send an email to stateofthebay@kalw.org or leave a voicemail at (415) 580-0718.
Tune in tonight at 6pm PT on KALW 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live. You can also call 866-798-TALK with questions during the show.
I’ll be hosting two radio shows on KALW 91.7 FM today. First, at 10am I’ll be guest-hosting Your Call’s One Planet series, focusing for the first half hour on the threat that sea level rise poses to California’s coastal cities and town.
Joining me will be Los Angeles Times environment reporter Rosanna Xia, who penned a fascinating piece recently on how climate-induced changes in ocean levels has already started affecting California communities.
For the second half hour, we’ll discuss the Trump Administration’s proposed rollbacks to the federal Endangered Species Act, a law that protects over 1,600 plant and animal species in this country. We’ll be joined by Rebecca Riley, Legal Director for the Nature Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
Tune in at 10am on 91.7 in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream it live. We’d love to hear your questions or comments. You can call in at 866-798-TALK, or e-mail yourcall@kalw.org, or tweet us @yourcallradio. You can also post your comments and questions on our website @yourcallradio.org.
Then at 7pm tonight, I’ll be hosting City Visions, discussing the crush of student loan debt and what we can do about it. I’ll be joined by:
- Jacob Dumez, Manager of Policy and Partners in San Francisco’s Office of Financial Empowerment which co-authored an April 2019 study on Bay Area student loan debt.
- Juliana Fredman, a consumer protection attorney with Bay Area Legal Aid who works directly with low-income clients through the Legal Aid’s clinic.
- Suzanne Martindale, Senior Policy Counsel & Western States Legislative Manager for Consumer Reports.
Tune in at 7pm or stream live. We’d love to get your questions and comments. You can call us at 866-798-TALK or can e-mail or text us at cityvisions@kalw.org. You can also reach us by tweeting us at @cityvisionskalw.
Hope you can tune in to these two shows today!
With the baseball postseason here, it seems fitting to think about how climate change will affect the national pastime. The early research reveals some interesting results, per the Atlantic, centered mostly on bigger hits in hotter weather:
“If we change the density of the atmosphere near the surface of the earth, that will influence the behavior of objects that are thrown or hit through the atmosphere,” he writes. “That of course includes baseballs. Lower density means less air resistance, which would mean balls would get hit farther.”
In other words, all conditions being equal, a long fly ball that reaches the warning track in April might be a home run on a scorching day in July.
With the heat though will come more exhausted players, which could lead to more injuries and possibly worse defense and fewer stolen base attempts (I’m guessing). Or maybe more limber players from the heat will avoid injury?
But another impact could be related to the emotional side of the game:
Hot weather’s ability to stir up aggressive behavior has been well documented. According to a 2013 study published in the journal Science, “climate’s influence on modern conflict is both substantial and highly statistically significant.” Baseball, it seems, is no exception. As Larrick points out, “When we’re in an agitated state, we’re more ready to see hostility and want to retaliate.”
King tide near AT&T Park in San Francisco may one day flood the Giants out.
Basically, we may get more hit batters and fights on the field.
But the article fails to mention possibly the biggest impact: with rising sea levels, coastal cities like Miami may be completely underwater by the end of the century, while ballparks on the water like AT&T Park in San Francisco may be either abandoned or surrounded by sea walls. So a Marlins vs. Giants playoff game may one day be an impossibility, regardless of how the teams play.
More immediately, Major League Baseball may soon face a shortage of ash baseball bats, due to an insect infestation killing off the trees, which could be caused in part by a changing climate.
All in all, some interesting changes to contemplate for baseball fans. Take me out to the ballgame — while you still can.
King tide at the San Francisco Embarcadero
Climate change presents a lot of uncertainty for our future. But one of the climate impacts that scientists predict with confidence is sea level rise, as the ice to our north and south melts with a warmer global climate.
The ocean has already risen eight inches in the past century, and the median scientific estimate is that it will rise another four feet or so by 2100. But a subset of scientists thinks that estimate is too low. Some think that the sea level rise will be closer to 12 feet.
Regardless, even a few feet of ocean rise will cause havoc on our coastal cities and infrastructure. The costs will be enormous, as we glimpsed with the storm surge caused by Superstorm Sandy in the New York City area.
To discuss how the San Francisco Bay Area will adapt to this likely future, I’ll be hosting a City Visions radio show on KALW 91.7 FM tonight at 7pm. Please tune in and join the conversation. I’ll post a link to the archived broadcast tomorrow.
UPDATE: The broadcast is now archived here.
According to NASA satellite data:
The agency says that we’ve seen 3 inches of global sea level increase since the year 1992 — with large regional variation — and a further rise of three feet has likely been “locked in” by warming that has already occurred. Other scientists have recently suggested that we may be about to unleash considerably more than that.
“The data shows that sea level is rising faster than it was 50 years ago, and it’s very likely to get worse in the future,” Steve Nerem, who leads NASA’s new Sea Level Change Team, said in a press call Wednesday.
The Greenland ice sheets alone could raise sea levels 20 feet, if they melt completely.
I’m sure climate deniers will try to attack the messengers here, arguing that the satellite data is untrustworthy or that NASA scientists wills somehow personally profit from skewing these results.
Instead, I’d rather they read a recent peer-reviewed study showing that the lone 3% of scientific reports casting doubt on climate science appear to have significant flaws, like cherry-picked data and conclusions that can’t be replicated. Not that facts matter of course.
At the Yosemite conference this past weekend, I moderated a panel with California Natural Resources Agency Secretary John Laird. The topic was greenhouse gas reduction goals by 2030, and Secretary Laird spoke about the likely risks California faces from climate change. He said that in the agency’s recent report on climate impacts, they settled on a median scientific estimate of a five-foot sea level rise by 2100 (see the PDF report). That’s median — so the result could either be much worse or (hopefully) less severe.
Threatened by this sea level rise are 20 existing coastal power plants, 80 substations, natural gas pipelines, and the levees that form the crucial connection in our north-south water infrastructure. Not to mention hundreds of millions of dollars — if not more — in coastal property. It’s worth remembering these costs when we hear critics discuss the costs of prevention, such as relatively tiny increases in gas or electricity prices.
Jon Stewart and the Daily Show seems to have the best summary of the dynamics, complete with an optometry exam for climate change deniers on sea level rise:
I’ll be on KALW radio tonight at 7pm (91.7 FM in the Bay Area, internet for everyone else) discussing the future of development along San Francisco’s waterfront. The implications go well-beyond San Francisco: waterfront development battles have brought out neighborhood opponents in full force, reflecting a widespread dynamic of local politics thwarting development projects in our existing cities and towns.
And the waterfront will be ground zero for sea level rise over this century and beyond. How will cities start to plan for the ongoing climate impacts?
More information on KALW’s website here, as well as an eventual link to the audio.
