You may be wondering why the line on the map hasn’t moved in the past week. I’ve been in Florida, spending Thanksgiving with four (!) different generations of my family. I will be missing the next two Christmases, and I figured I could justify flying across the country for Thanksgiving.
    Unfortunately, flying across the country uses a lot of fuel. Even though airplaine efficiency has improved in recent years, flying still gives off almost as much carbon dioxide as driving. It is almost as if I drove across the country.
    So I have purchased carbon offsets. This means that I am paying someone else to not pollute, or I am paying someone to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. This is similar to how the Kyoto treaty works — if you emit too much carbon dioxide, you have to pay someone else not to emit it.

    Flying to Florida, I was responsible for about 1 metric ton of carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere. I have paid $12 to www.climatecare.org to offset these emissions through their various projects.
   Anyway, I’m back in L.A. now, about to try to take public transit from this Starbucks to the other side of town (It takes three different busses to get from the Ontario airport to the metro station. And the first bus? It was to the rental car parking lot and I had to ask the driver to make a special stop so that I could take the second bus).
   Back to the bike tomorrow!

   After talking with Mr. Ransom’s 9th grade class, I decided to bike through Los Angles to get a sense of the city. Following a city map, I rode 30 miles to Hollywood and back.

   I hoped to talk with cyclists to see how they managed to bike in LA. I found only two. One had lost his license, and was forced to bike. I asked if he had trouble with the cars. He replied, “Recently, I was hit by a Mercedes and then my arm was run over by a Lexus.” The man then listed his hospital bills. I biked on the sidewalk (slowly) afterwards.
   The climate in L.A. is perfect for year round bicycle commuting, yet few people bike because 1) everything is so spread out and 2) there are few (if any) bikeways or bike lanes. The public transit does work, but only a few people I talked with seemed satisfied with it. Most trips are in a car, and in traffic.

    Unfortunately, cars are an inefficient way to travel around a city. A person in a car emits, on average, twice as much carbon dioxide as a person in public transit. Also, by comparison, cycling adds almost no carbon dioxide to the atmosphere (see comment on this).
   I would love to see an L.A. with bike lanes and great public transit. It would require great change, but I think it is possible, and I think the city would be far better for it.

    A recent study (see a summary of it here), involving a team of researchers and two state-of-the-art climate computer models, estimates the future effects of climate change on California. The study considers two scenarios, one in which we significantly reduce our use of fossil fuels, and one in which we continue to use fossil fuels unabated.

    The most surprising find is that summer temperatures are likely to be much hotter 100 years from now—4 to 7 degrees F for the lower scenario and 7 to 14 degrees F for the higher. And this is the average for California—inland areas, such as the central valley, are likely to see more warming.
    I asked people in Fresno what they would think if every summer day was 10 degrees F warmer. Most shuddered at the thought. Fresno already sees many summer days over 100 degrees. A vendor I talked to in downtown Fresno said he would not want to work on the street. The family I stayed with (who extremely generously shared with me the meal on the left) remarked that even a few degrees in the summer makes a huge difference for comfort.

    Agriculture, the foundation of the central valley’s economy, will likely suffer under such high temperatures. The same study estimated that dairy production and wine grapes, the two most profitable products, would see declines in their production. The farmer who I talked to in the last entry, after saying that such a warming would definitely not happen, said he would simply use more water if it did.

    Unfortunately, using more water will be tough in a warmer California. Most of California’s precipitation falls in the winter in the north, yet most of the water is used in the summer in the south, and, in particular, by agriculture around Fresno. This water use is possible because the Sierra Nevada mountains store an incredible amount of water in their snowpack, which they release over the spring and summer. If the temperatures warm, we will lose the snowpack. In the higher emissions scenario, California lost 70% to 90% of its snowpack (and its ski season, for that matter), and in the lower emissions scenario, between 30% and 70%. The models also predict that there will be a slight decrease in total precipitation, only adding to the problems.

    Warmer summers, decreased agriculture, and reduced water availability are just three of the findings of the study. While not entirely disastrous, the effects are bad, and there is a very big difference between the high emissions scenario and the low emissions scenario.

    When I entered the Central Valley yesterday, I stopped by a field where tomatoes were being picked (mostly by Mexicans or Mexican-Americans). I talked with a man watching the field from his pickup, and, after getting directions, learned that this was his field of tomatoes. I then asked him what he thought of global warming.
    I expected his answer, but not the emphasis with which he gave it. “It’s entirely made up—there isn’t a single bit of evidence to show it will happen…I guarantee it won’t happen in my lifetime or in your lifetime.” It was clear that I had touched some type of nerve, and the anger seemed somehow directed at environmentalists. He said environmentalists were just out to hurt the economy and that the ‘liberal science’ was fictitous. I knew I could not convince him, so I listened, tried to briefly and respectfully disagree, and thanked him for directions.
   It was sad to me to see that the dialog between environmentalists and farmers (or at least this farmer) is so poor. Environmentalists and farmers should be working together on problems, not in opposition to each other.