Download: Estuary News, April 2013 PDF
There’s a new place to explore the Bay and it isn’t an aquarium, a boat, or a model. It’s an observatory, a square room perched high in the back corner of a San Francisco pier, where you can look out the window at the Bay or the city, or look into the Bay through a dozen, way-cool, exhibits. Here is a place that deciphers age-old relationships between moon and tides, sun and fog, shore and sea for you, and throws humans into the mix. And the new Bay Observatory in the new Exploratorium, opening April 17, does what the Exploratorium always did best, and now does better: gives you knobs to turn and scopes to squint through and maps to touch and shadows to chase. If there is a place where the frontiers of “interactive” exhibit are pushed, it is here, as always. But this new museum — moved from the historic Palace of Fine Arts to a designer, ultra-energy efficient space on Pier 15 — puts a finer point on it.
“The Palace was a dark hole with no windows, so trying to engage people in the environment didn’t work well there,” says Susan Schwartzenberg, a senior artist at the Exploratorium. “Here we have the Bay on one side and the whole history of the urban shoreline on the other, from sunken Gold Rush ships and bay fill to downtown development, so landscapes fill our windows. All of our Observatory exhibits are set up in relationship to the environment outside.”
On the Bay side, you can watch giant ships lumber into port and also see them on a ship tracker screen at your fingertips — bright green arrows with tails tracing their recent routes. The ship tracker display uses the same technology captains consult on their ship bridges to check their position in relation to other vessels. On a table nearby spread the ridges and bays of the region’s topography, carved in white wood. Turn a knob and suddenly the salinity of the water is projected in yellows and blues across what exhibit developers call a “visualization platform.” “It communicates different aspects of the Bay, like tides or storm events, by projecting image skins on the platform,” says geologist Sebastian Martin, who worked with the Observatory’s team on science content. As we watch yellow water creeps upstream into the Carquinez Strait with a projected tide. “Our team hopes one might look at this and learn about tides, and then look out the window and search for signs of the same thing in the Bay,” he says.
Indeed, the Bay is on the big screen everywhere in this beautiful room, in windows, on table displays, and on a state-of-the-art video wall. Nearby stands a tower of smaller screens revealing data from monitoring instruments in the water below and the air above. They’re tracking everything from greenhouse gases to water quality and turbidity around the Observatory. “We’re a wired pier,” says Ron Hipschman, a selfproclaimed “geek” physicist. “We have more instrumentation here than most meteorologists have, and we’re offering our location for science.” And science has taken them up on the offer. The Observatory is fast becoming a station for a number of Bay and ocean monitoring networks. Indeed, right off the inner pier, a red and white buoy owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will soon measure ocean acidification, and another pier device bounces high frequency radio waves off the water surface as part of a study of currents by San Francisco State’s Romberg Tiburon Center. Kids and adults visiting the Observatory can see how scientists collect the field information they need to protect Bay health and commerce. “We’re not a research entity, but we can provide a location, power, and maintenance for instruments collecting raw data,” says Hipschman. The Observatory is even testing hydrocarbon levels in the water as spilled oil and fuel runs off city surfaces into the Bay. “Visitors can see on screen what happens after the first rain, and the second rain, and the third rain,” he says.
The Observatory also presents what creator Bryce Johnson, calls a “library of mud” — two clear tubes of sediments from the bay bottom laid on their side for public perusal. One “core” comes from the South Bay, and one from the North, and each reveals layers and layers of Bay history, from the white chips of broken oyster shells and the gold grains of sandy deposits to mining debris and the “fines” of our soupy, sticky, gray-green Bay mud. “Our mud library shows just how fast, and how slow, the landscape can evolve, and how humans have been part of that change over time,” says Johnson.
These are just a few of the waycool exhibits in the new Observatory that are giving visitors a new window into the local environment, and shoreline history. You can see the sun’s movement through an “oculus” and identify buildings on the Embarcadero waterfront through an “alidade.” You can sit on a bench outside and watch solar shadows, or go on to the Life Sciences room for a close look at brine shrimp in a tank of salt water. There’s the upended, 13- foot tall, root mass of a 330-year old Douglas fir and geysers that spume up into rafters. There is also of course the giant pier itself – the Observatory is just the eastern tip of an iceberg sparkling with Exploratorium exhibits invented through unique collaborations among local scientists, historians, artists and, of course, geeks.
This writer was struck by how much thought has gone into these spaces, how much passion into the idea of making physics, engineering, environment, light, even life itself, touchable, understandable. This is a place where all that is so obvious and exaggerated about contemporary American culture melts away, and we remember the subtleties of nature, and how we cannot help but be drawn into an intimacy with the landscapes we live in. As Schwartzenberg puts it: “Our Observatory sits in a dramatic landscape with a rich human and natural history. We want to bring all the global changes in our environment home, and engage people in what’s happening here and now.”
By Ariel Rubissow Okamoto
Nothing could be stranger than sitting in the dark with thousands of suits and heels, watching a parade of promises to decarbonize from companies and countries large and small, reeling from the beauties of big screen rainforests and indigenous necklaces, and getting all choked up.
It was day two of the September 2018 Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco when I felt it.
At first I wondered if I was simply starstruck. Most of us labor away trying to fix one small corner of the planet or another without seeing the likes of Harrison Ford, Al Gore, Michael Bloomberg, Van Jones, Jerry Brown – or the ministers or mayors of dozens of cities and countries – in person, on stage and at times angry enough to spit. And between these luminaries a steady stream of CEOs, corporate sustainability officers, and pension fund managers promising percentages of renewables and profits in their portfolios dedicated to the climate cause by 2020-2050.
I tried to give every speaker my full attention: the young man of Vuntut Gwichin heritage from the edge of the Yukon’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge who pleaded with us not to enter his sacred lands with our drills and dependencies; all the women – swathed in bright patterns and head-scarfs – who kept punching their hearts. “My uncle in Uganda would take 129 years to emit the same amount of carbon as an American would in one year,” said Oxfam’s Winnie Byanyima.
“Our janitors are shutting off the lights you leave on,” said Aida Cardenas, speaking about the frontline workers she trains, mostly immigrants, who are excited to be part of climate change solutions in their new country.
The men on the stage, strutting about in feathers and pinstripes, spoke of hopes and dreams, money and power. “The notion that you can either do good or do well is a myth we have to collectively bust,” said New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy whose state is investing heavily in offshore wind farms.
“Climate change isn’t just about risks, it’s about opportunities,” said Blackrock sustainable investment manager Brian Deese.
But it wasn’t all these fine speeches that started the butterflies. Halfway through the second day of testimonials, it was a slight white-haired woman wrapped in an azure pashmina that pricked my tears. One minute she was on the silver screen with Alec Baldwin and the next she taking a seat on stage. She talked about trees. How trees can solve 30% of our carbon reduction problem. How we have to stop whacking them back in the Amazon and start planting them everywhere else. I couldn’t help thinking of Dr. Seuss and his truffala trees. Jane Goodall, over 80, is as fierce as my Lorax. Or my daughter’s Avatar.
Analyzing my take home feeling from the event I realized it wasn’t the usual fear – killer storms, tidal waves, no food for my kids to eat on a half-baked planet – nor a newfound sense of hope – I’ve always thought nature will get along just fine without us. What I felt was relief. People were actually doing something. Doing a lot. And there was so much more we could do.
As we all pumped fists in the dark, as the presentations went on and on and on because so many people and businesses and countries wanted to STEP UP, I realized how swayed I had let myself be by the doomsday news mill.
“We must be like the river, “ said a boy from Bangladesh named Risalat Khan, who had noticed our Sierra watersheds from the plane. “We must cut through the mountain of obstacles. Let’s be the river!”
Or as Harrison Ford less poetically put it: “Let’s turn off our phones and roll up our sleeves and kick this monster’s ass.”
by Isaac Pearlman
Since California’s last state-led climate change assessment in 2012, the Golden State has experienced a litany of natural disasters. This includes four years of severe drought from 2012 to 2016, an almost non-existent Sierra Nevada snowpack in 2014-2015 costing $2.1 billion in economic losses, widespread Bay Area flooding from winter 2017 storms, and extremely large and damaging wildfires culminating with this year’s Mendocino Complex fire achieving the dubious distinction of the largest in state history. California’s most recent climate assessment, released August 27th, predicts that for the state and the Bay Area, we can expect even more in the future.
The California state government first began assessing climate impacts formally in 2006, due to an executive order by Governor Schwarzenegger. California’s latest iteration and its fourth overall, includes a dizzying array of 44 technical reports; three topical studies on climate justice, tribal and indigenous communities, and the coast and ocean; as well as nine region-specific analyses.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.
For the first time, California’s latest assessment dives into climate consequences on a regional level. Academics representing nine California regions spearheaded research and summarized the best available science on the variable heat, rain, flooding and extreme event consequences for their areas. For example, the highest local rate of sea level rise in the state is at the rapidly subsiding Humboldt Bay. In San Diego county, the most biodiverse in all of California, preserving its many fragile and endangered species is an urgent priority. Francesca Hopkins from UC Riverside found that the highest rate of childhood asthma in the state isn’t an urban smog-filled city but in the Imperial Valley, where toxic dust from Salton Sea disaster chokes communities – and will only become worse as higher temperatures and less water due to climate change dry and brittle the area.
According to the Bay Area Regional Report, since 1950 the Bay Area has already increased in temperature by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit and local sea level is eight inches higher than it was one hundred years ago. Future climate will render the Bay Area less suitable for our evergreen redwood and fir forests, and more favorable for tolerant chaparral shrub land. The region’s seven million people and $750 billion economy (almost one-third of California’s total) is predicted to be increasingly beset by more “boom and bust” irregular wet and very dry years, punctuated by increasingly intense and damaging storms.
Unsurprisingly, according to the report the Bay Area’s intensifying housing and equity problems have a multiplier affect with climate change. As Bay Area housing spreads further north, south, and inland the result is higher transportation and energy needs for those with the fewest resources available to afford them; and acute disparity in climate vulnerability across Bay Area communities and populations.
“All Californians will likely endure more illness and be at greater risk of early death because of climate change,” bluntly states the statewide summary brochure for California’s climate assessment. “[However] vulnerable populations that already experience the greatest adverse health impacts will be disproportionately affected.”
“We’re much better at being reactive to a disaster than planning ahead,” said UC Berkeley professor and contributing author David Ackerly at a California Adaptation Forum panel in Sacramento on August 27th. “And it is vulnerable communities that suffer from those disasters. How much human suffering has to happen before it triggers the next round of activity?”
The assessment’s data is publicly available online at “Cal-adapt,” where Californians can explore projected impacts for their neighborhoods, towns, and regions.