A Change in the Wind

Is climate change impacting real estate in the Southwest?

In the United States today, according to the real estate site Zillow, the two cities in the most trouble are Phoenix, where a little more than half than half of all homeowners are underwater -- where debt outweighs the equity -- and Las Vegas, where an astounding 70% of homeowners are underwater. 

Is it a coincidence that these are the two biggest cities in the Southwest, where climate change is expected to hit brutally hard? Could climate change be contributing to this mega-downturn now?

Until someone goes out and starts doing some serious interviewing of folks in the real estate market, we're not going to know for sure, but we do have Tom Ashbrook's show on the subject from January, On Point: Can the Southwest Survive Climate Change? which was especially good. (To give an example of its quality, when an author of a book about the grim future of the Southwest claims he's not "in the prediction business," Ashbrook has a little fit, and forces him to answer.)

Ashbrook points out that we had record wildfires, record drought, and record temperatures in the Southwest last year He looks at two books, A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the future of the American Southwest, by William deBuys, and Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World's Least Sustainable City, and talks to the authors. 

William deBuys points out that the predictions for temperature change in the Southwest have been underestimates, and that this century Phoenix will get 4-6 degrees C hotter. Andrew Ross points out that the growth in Phoenix and the Southwest has been largely driven by growth itself: People making money on construction, buying their own homes, buidling more. Growth has stopped now, and -- as Ashbrook said -- developments have been all but abandoned. Ross doubts it will return, and points out that Phoenix in our times has yet to experience a mega-drought (of sixty years or more) which are shockingly common in the long-term record. Could the suburbanization of the desert be over? 

Included in the discussion s a notable figure in Phoenix, Grady Grammage, an attorney, developer, and believer in climate change, who sees high temps as the factor most likely to bring down his business. Yet Grammage insists that Phoenix is accustomed to planning for drought, that the region could support many millions of more people, and that growth will return. 

Grammage in my personal experience is a more thoughtful and reflective figure than one usually encounters in real estate, but even so his claims that Phoenix is "fine" fails to convince. 

"We call these places deserts for a reason," as Ashbrook said, "because they are often deserted." 

From on high, NASA looked at a related issue -- the urban heat island index in Phoenix -- and by cross-referencing satellite data with sociological data found that the rich were clustering in areas of vegetation and permeable soil (green), while the poor were shunted towards downtown Phoenix, with impermeable surfaces and buildings reflecting heat (blue). 

This week it reached 108 in Phoenix -- 12 degrees above average for May. 

When 1 + 1 = 3: Ken Burns on Story

A fascinating short film (in the Burns style) on what the documentarian thinks makes a good story: 

Sez Burns:     

Abraham Lincoln wins the Civil War and then he decides he's got enough time to go to the theatre. That's a good story. When Thomas Jefferson said "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal", he owned a hundred human beings and never saw the hypocrisy, never saw the contradiction, and more importantly never saw fit in his lifetime to free any one of them. That's a good story.

From Kottke.

Could one consultant mislead two SoCal water districts?

At its best, journalism is surely a joint enterprise. It's not a reporter that makes democracy workable, it's the press. Quotes from Thomas Jefferson come to mind. So it's very exciting to yours truly to see another reporter pick up and run with a crucial detail from a long story I wrote a few weeks back on an unhappy experience a big water district in Ventura County had with an underground reservoir.

This unhappy history could be repeating itself in the Mohave desert, with a notorious underground resevoir project known as Cadiz. 

Let the reporter herself, Emily Green, an expert in water issues, explain: 

When last month the Ventura County Reporter recounted that the capacity [of the Las Posas aquifer] proved to not be the much-celebrated 300,000 acre feet, but instead 50,000 acre feet, no villain was named. Who needs a villain when, as the Reporter ran a rough tally, the cost borne by a water district serving 620,000 people exceeded $53 million?

No, no hand was caught in the civic till. There were only pregnant hints as to the possible miscreant, all implying that it was a one-man job. “After 18 years as general manager for Calleguas, Don Kendall abruptly resigned in May of 2010,” went the Reporter account. “Neither he nor the Calleguas board of directors will discuss with the press the reasons why he left. Nor will any other water official speculate on the record as to why he stalked off a job that paid him a quarter-million dollars a year. Off the record, a Metropolitan insider said that Kendall’s resignation was ‘not unrelated’ to the collapse of the Las Posas ASR deal… “

As it happened, when earlier this week I decided to put up a brief  post connecting the early enticements made about Las Posas and a new generation of stunningly high estimates to do with a project best known simply as Cadiz, the fleecing of Ventura County was not on my mind. Orange County was, where a municipal water company has signed on to front the Cadiz project. San Bernardino County was, where the Cadiz target basin is located in the dry Mojave.

All it took to get me wondering aloud about the hard landing that the Ventura County rate payers covered by Calleguas suffered in the Las Posas venture was the chance observation that Las Posas shares a hydrologist with Cadiz. Cadiz has convinced the Rancho Santa Margarita Water District, an Orange County water company only a fraction the size of Calleguas, to go a-prospecting in the San Bernardino desert. Like Calleguas, Rancho Santa Margarita Water District is big enough to be credible, but small enough to be credulous. If only by coincidence, it’s been using hydrological estimates from the same man who consulted Calleguas.

As Green points out, the Los Posas deal cost Calleguas ratepayers about $53 million. The deal also evidently cost the general manager his job, but no one before Green seems to have questioned the consultant involved. The controversial Cadiz deal is expected to cost in the range of $200 million, even though the availability of the land, the delivery of the water, and the condition of the aquifer all look far more dicey than the Ventura County/Los Posas project did in its early days. Here's muckraker Michael Hiltzik on the Cadiz issue three years ago in the LA Times:

As it was presented to the Metropolitan Water District in 2002, the idea was to pump surplus Colorado River water into the aquifer underlying the firm's desert acreage. During droughts, the stored water (along with some indigenous groundwater) would be pumped out for delivery via the aqueduct to a parched Southern California.

If you don't look too closely, the plan has a sort of shimmering authenticity, like a desert mirage. Yes, the state faces a long-term water shortage. And yes, in the midst of drought, sometimes the rain comes down in torrents.

Yet as the MWD realized, reality isn't so simple.

First, there isn't any surplus water in the Colorado. Rather, the basin is in a long-term drought. For the foreseeable future California will be lucky to get its full statutory apportionment of river water. A single extra drop? Forget it.

Second, there's considerable disagreement over how much groundwater really underlies the Cadiz parcels, not to mention how much the company is legally permitted to pump out and how much could be pumped before neighboring aquifers become contaminated with carcinogenic minerals.

Green herself does point the finger, as tough reporters sometimes must, at a consultant for the huge water engineering firm CH2M Hill, a hydrologist named Terry Foreman. She calls him a "serial exaggerator," for his work on the Los Posas and Cadiz aquifers. She also implicitly criticizes yours truly for not delving deeper into the collapse of the Los Posas deal. To this charge I plead guilty, with extenuating circumstances. (After all, that deal fell apart many years ago, and I was focused on its successor, a completely different technology, just as complex, and pricier.)

But more importantly, Green suggests -- based on a study of documents -- that the former general manager of the Ventura County project, Don Kendall, was himself misled by Foreman. Kendall's successor, Susan Mulligan, who I interviewed at length, and who was a model of responsiveness by a public official, disputes Green's charge. But given Mulligan's good government orientation,  I expect that if she were on the spot, that she would take Green's advice:

If Mr Foreman’s work is good, isn’t the best insurance against calamity with Cadiz impartial review of the hydrology as he presents it by the USGS? Only the USGS should do it because it is their model Mr Foreman purports to use on Cadiz to arrive at recharge estimates that are, according to other USGS estimates, wildly high. 

At least, I hope so. Here's a chart Green posted of the Los Posas aquifer, the one that was expected to store water in case of drought or disaster not just for Ventura County, but all of SoCal. 

Didn't work out that way -- a warning to those who would try it again. 

For Mother's Day, a spiked New Yorker cover

From a fun new site called Blown Covers, a New Yorker cover that could have been:

 

Andrew Revkin: on climate change in a post-media world

Covered a talk by the dean of climate reporters, Andrew Revkin, last week at UCSB, for the Santa Barbara Independent. In part because he got so sick of "the yelling" around climate, a couple of years ago Revkin gave up traditional reporting to teach at Pace University, and to run the great Dot Earth blog on sustainability (and related questions, such as climate) for the New York Times.

This year, seemingly in a better mood, Revkin is promoting the concept of the Knowosphere, a portal for the exchange of ideas useful in getting us humans through "the bottleneck" that E.O. Wilson spoke of a decade ago. Revkin brought up the analogy of yeast bacteria in a sugar solution in a petri dish. They will multiply until they consume all the food, or until they foul their nest with waste, or both, and crash.

In his talk, Revkin pointed out that:

"Scientists for the last fifty years have been saying, "Hey, there's an edge to the petri dish!" Essentially the question is will we be able to find a "peak us" before nature imposes a limit on us." 

Revkin had some nifty examples of how Internet ideas have proved useful in facing problems; for instanct, a site for Pennsylvania residents called Fraktrack, that puts all public documents relating to hydraulic fracking on-line in a searchable form. He also thinks education -- which can teach the well-accepted fundamentals of climate science to young people -- offers hope.

But when it comes to "the yelling," in an answer to my question, Revkin put it with pithy vigor:

“In a post-media world, which is what we’re entering, it’s a great opportunity for institutions, or for individuals who understand these issues, to create a new space for scientific discussion,” he explained. “I think that’s the way forward.”

On the one hand, he's absolutely right about "the yelling." My little story led to immediate attacks on Revkin, inadvertently and ironically proving his point, and making me feel guilty for causing him pain.

On the other hand, I'm troubled by his blithe reference to a "post-media world."

Really? Do we not use the media and need the media today as much as we did twenty-five years ago?

To be specific, aren't we actually more dependent on The New York Times than ever?

The culture without the media. Talk about a post-apocalyptic landscape...

To see the Prez, it helps to be a whale

In Las Vegas, to be a "whale" -- a high roller -- you have to be ready to live large, even if it costs $500,000 an hour.

It's a little like what you have to do if you want to get into the White House and see the President. Big bucks, as this graphic shows. Perhaps coincidentally, it's known as the "Blue Whale": 

Other representations of related data, with other spirit animal names, are posted on a fascinating and apparently new site devoted to representing numerical facts in graphic form, a tumblr (of all things) called ChartsnThings. 

The proprietor, New York Times graphics editor named Kevin Quealy, discusses how he "cleans up" the data by putting it through programs. Correlation comes in various forms: Working in R is necessary but "unsexy," he says, for example.  He briefly explains how to explicate datasets with various tools. 

Could this be the fastest possible delivery of fact to mind? 

The heroism of the lonely PhD

Deep in a magnificent USA Today team investigation last week was hidden a revelation: How a PhD doctoral candidate doing historical research discovered -- and publicized -- a massive threat to public health.

From Ghost Factories:

In April 2001, environmental scientist William Eckel published a research article in the American Journal of Public Health warning about the dangers of old smelting factories. While working on his Ph.D. dissertation, Eckel had identified a historical smelting site unknown to federal and state regulators and wondered how many other sites had been forgotten over time, their buildings demolished or absorbed by other businesses.

Eckel used old industry directories, which he cross-referenced with EPA databases, to come up with a list of more than 400 potential lead-smelting sites that appeared to be unknown to federal regulators.

Eckel confirmed that 20 of the sites' addresses were factories — and not just business offices — using Sanborn fire insurance maps, which detail the historical uses of individual pieces of property. An additional 86 sites were specifically listed in directories as "plant" locations. He paid to have soil samples tested from three sites in Baltimore and five in Philadelphia. All but one of the samples exceeded the EPA's residential hazard level for lead in areas where children play.

Eckel's article warned that the findings "should create some sense of urgency for the investigation of the other sites identified here because they may represent a significant source of exposure to lead in their local environments." The research indicates "a significant fraction" of the forgotten sites will require cleanups — likely at state and federal expense — because most of the companies went out of business long ago.

The study points the finger at the EPA.

Of the 639 sites, 170 (27%) were listed in the US EPA Facility Index System database; 469 sites were not listed. Through a Freedom of Information Act request, US EPA regional offices reported having files on 14 additional sites (2%). After these 14 sites and 16 “officeonly” locations were eliminated, approximately 435 of the 639 sites identified in the literature search (68%) were apparently unknown to the US EPA. A further 5 sites (all in Massachusetts) were listed by state authorities among the 8 states with the largest number of sites, which left about 430 previously unrecognized potential sites (67%).

The EPA, perhaps due to a lack of resources, hasn't done much. But give credit to USA Today for its huge follow-up. The LA Times in the past has claimed to be the best at "gang-tackling" reporting, but in this case it clearly has competition. Amazing story.

Here's an image from a fire in a smelting factory in Philadelphia in l952 that "sickened dozens." . 

If Barnes and Noble collapses, it's the death of books

So argues Ted Rall, who knows a thing or two about media today and publishing:

Borders and Barnes & Noble killed independent bookstores. Amazon killed Borders. Now Barnes & Noble, which sells more than 20 percent of pulp-and-ink books in the U.S., is under siege.

If B&N collapses: the death of books.

Cultural apocalypse.

Neo-feudalism.

You may remember such classics as “How the Internet Slaughtered Newspapers” and “How Napster Decimated the Music Business.” It’s always the same story: Digitalization destroys profits.

Whether it’s newspapers, magazines, CDs or books (“pBooks,” they call them now), the electronic assault on tangible media follows a familiar pattern.

Rall lays out four factors:

1)    Margins are squeezed: e-whatevers are cheaper (seemingly) than print, disks, etc. 

2)    Pirary and copying runs rampant (already 20% of ebooks are pirated). 

3)    A la carte sales (buy the song, not the album) reduce revenues. 

4)    Lack of visibility degrades consumer interest in books, records, newspapers, etc.  

Ben Enrenreich googled the phrase for the L.A. Review of Books and got 11.8 million choices. It's not a crazy idea at all; it's well-understood to be happening. 

My belief is that the future of books will be half-academic and half everything else, and serious non-fiction will have to find its way into the library. Won't be easy. 

The trials and tribulations of the Newsosaur; er, reporter

In the last couple of weeks a virtual avalanche of appalling news about newspapers and their field workers -- the species newsosauras, according to one wit -- has come down on me.  

On a list of best and worst jobs, according to a career agency cited by the WSJ, reporters come in 196th, almost last, well below such glamorous and lucrative occupations as roofing, waitressing, and sheet metal working. 

Then there's this charming chart from GeekWire, based on a Pew Study, showing where ad revenue is going today. Not to newspapers, that's for sure: 

Not to mention this one, showing the decline in newsroom employees, from an editors group: 

Guess I needn't worry about finding free-lance work. Who else will do the job? 

Mike Wallace, depression and the real "Blues Brothers"

Today was reported the death of the great reporter Mike Wallace, of 60 Minutes fame. Sharon Waxman, an excellent reporter herself, recalls meeting him, and hearing of a now forgotten side of Mike Wallace, and of his great friends Art Buchwald and William Styron too: 

[Mike] Wallace always seemed fearless and in fact on that day -- vibrant and powerful late in his 80s – he seemed timeless too.

Wallace was one of [Art] Buchwald’s closest friends. They would spend summers on the Vineyard together (that day Wallace had just come up from exercising on the beach, visiting Art who was recovering from a stroke).

And Art was a friend of mine, a late-breaking relationship during which we talked for hours. One of the things we talked about was Art’s recurring bouts with depression. It was the thing that he shared with two of his closest friends: William Styron, the novelist, and Mike Wallace.

The three of them would discreetly appear together at support groups, calling themselves “The Blues Brothers,” Buchwald told me.

I could understand Buchwald and Styron as suffering from depression: a humorist (a common affliction among them), and a novelist who wrote about the illness in “Darkness Visible.”

But Wallace was a surprise. Familiar to us all as the aggressive journalist who asked the fearless questions of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Malcolm X, that seemed hard to fathom.

But it was the case. In 1996, Wallace went public with his illness, and asked the Senate’s Special Committee on Aging for more federal funds for depression research.

He told the committee that he had felt “lower, lower, lower than a snake’s belly,” and had tried to commit suicide.  (The depression apparently first appeared after being sued for libel by Gen. William C. Westmoreland, who sought $120 million for a 1982 “CBS Reports” documentary, “The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception.”)

I don’t know if Wallace succeeded in winning funds for research. But he overcame his depression and went on to continue one of the most storied careers in American journalism.

He is missed, and a man worthy of our great admiration.

I recall Wallace declaring then that he intended to spend the rest of his life on Zoloft. I wonder if he did.