More heat, more home runs

18. Dingers, gas, oil, soil, and cloud seeding

Apr 30, 2023

Note: The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not reflect the views of Energy Impact Partners.

Baseball

One of the great things about baseball, if you’re a nerd like me, is that the game lends itself to meticulous data analysis. Each play starts the same way. There are a limited number of outcomes of a given play. You can now use cameras to gather extremely high-resolution data. There are lots of games to analyze (2,430 games spread across 30 teams). And with a few exceptions, the game hasn’t changed much since its beginnings 150 years ago.

So it’s possible to analyze small differences over time with a high degree of precision: Who hits the ball hardest? Why is J.T. Realmuto so good at catching base stealers? Where should you really not pitch to Mike Trout?

It also turns out that we can measure the effects that climate change is having on the game. From ESPN:

Climate change is making major league sluggers into even hotter hitters, sending an extra 50 or so home runs per year over the fences, a new study found.
Hotter, thinner air that allows balls to fly farther contributed a tiny bit to a surge in home runs since 2010, according to a statistical analysis by Dartmouth College scientists published in Friday's Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. They analyzed 100,000 major league games and more than 200,000 balls put into play in the past few years along with weather conditions, stadiums and other factors.

It’s pretty straightforward. Weather during games is getting incrementally hotter. Hotter air is less dense, so batted balls experience less drag. Less drag means that a given ball flies farther and has a greater chance of carrying out of the park. More heat, more home runs. Baseball coaches have been saying this for decades.

Other factors, like the size of the stitches on the ball, stronger pitchers and hitters, and batters’ newfound attention to launch angle, affect home runs much more than climate change, but sure enough, there climate change is in the background. It’s a parable of what’s going on in the rest of the world.

That being said, I am a fan of this particular effect of climate change. Last summer, I went to a Blue Jays-Red Sox game that ended 28-5. It was one of the highest scoring games in MLB history, there were nine home runs, and it was very fun to watch.1 Climate change did not make the Red Sox give up 28 runs – they played like shit – but did an unusually warm July evening help Teoscar Hernández’s fourth-inning home run barely clear the right field wall? I mean yeah, probably.

Note: Many thanks to my wife for spotting this study!

Gas

In the US, natural gas consumption peaks in the winter. Although we use natural gas to both A) heat spaces in the winter, and B) produce electricity to cool spaces in the summer, the winter demand wins out.

Climate change leads to warmer winters, and in the US, we just had a warm one. Because of this, we used less gas than normal. This showed up as multiyear lows for both direct consumption and storage withdrawals. Most coverage of this phenomenon tends to fall into two buckets: Russian supply cuts, and climate change.

But I want to point out something else. If this trend continues, it’ll be a rare example of a negative climate feedback loop – where climate change is self-limiting rather than self-exacerbating.

Usually when we hear about climate feedbacks, it’s the positive variety: oops, the thawing permafrost is also a methane bomb, or ooh, yeah actually the ocean can’t hold as much CO₂ as it warms. But not this time! In this case, warmer winters reduce natural gas demand, but warmer summers don’t induce the same amount of new natural gas demand.

As we talked about a few months ago, most of the US will actually be more hospitable in a changing climate for most of this century. Which is weird. Warmer winters wasn’t exactly the plan we drew up for building decarbonization, but hey, a ton of CO₂ is a ton of CO₂.

Alaskan oil

Speaking of fuels, President Biden recently approved an oil drilling project in Alaska called the Willow project. From The Guardian:

The Biden administration has approved a controversial $8bn (£6bn) drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope, which has drawn fierce opposition from environmentalists and some Alaska Native communities, who say it will speed up the climate breakdown and undermine food security.
The ConocoPhillips Willow project will be one of the largest of its kind on US soil, involving drilling for oil and gas at three sites for multiple decades on the 23m-acre National Petroleum Reserve which is owned by the federal government and is the largest tract of undisturbed public land in the US.
It will produce an estimated 576m barrels of oil over 30 years, with a peak of 180,000 barrels of crude a day. This extraction, which ConocoPhillips has said may, ironically, involve refreezing the rapidly thawing Arctic permafrost to stabilize drilling equipment, would create one of the largest “carbon bombs” on US soil, potentially producing more than twice as many emissions than all renewable energy projects on public lands by 2030 would cut combined.

As you can tell, this made some waves in climate circles. To give you a sense for the opposition, here are a few quotes from the above article and a related one.

Evergreen Action:

Approving the Willow Project is an unacceptable departure from President Biden’s promises to the American people on climate and environmental justice … After all that this administration has done to advance climate action and environmental justice, it is heartbreaking to see a decision that we know will poison Arctic communities and lock in decades of climate pollution we simply cannot afford.

Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic:

The Biden administration’s approval makes it clear that its call for climate action and the protection of biodiversity is talk, not action … The only reasonable solution to the climate emergency is to deny new fossil fuel projects like Willow. Our fight has been long and also it has only begun. We will continue to call for a stop to Willow because the lives of local people and future generations depend on it.

Al Gore:

The proposed expansion of oil and gas drilling in Alaska is recklessly irresponsible … The pollution it would generate will not only put Alaska native and other local communities at risk, it is incompatible with the ambition we need to achieve a net zero future.
We don’t need to prop up the fossil fuel industry with new, multi-year projects that are a recipe for climate chaos. Instead, we must end the expansion of oil, gas and coal and embrace the abundant climate solutions at our fingertips.

Earthjustice:

I think that litigation is very likely. We and our clients don’t see any acceptable version of this project.

Look, I get it. Biden’s been great on climate, so it looks like a betrayal to turn around and approve new drilling on federal land, which he said he wouldn’t do, “period, period, period.”

Here’s the thing, though. This project actually makes a lot of sense.

First, it’s not all that much oil. Yes, it would be the largest active project in the US, but US oil production is very distributed. Averaged over the Willow Project’s 30-year lifetime, it will produce only ~52,000 barrels per day, or about 0.4% of current US oil production. The entire project represents about 50 days of US oil. Of course it would be better for the climate if we didn’t produce more oil, but we still need it! It’s a lifeline that we can’t yet sever.

In particular, Alaska could use some more oil. Today, Alaska produces about 450,000 barrels per day, imports over 1MM barrels per day, and exports very little. In other words, most Alaskan oil never leaves Alaska. Alaskans currently pay high energy prices, and more local production will ease the strain.

Relatedly, Alaska is really hard to decarbonize. It has poor renewable resources,2 limited electrical infrastructure, a remote population, and high heating demands.3 Alaska needs time for low-carbon technology to meet their demands. Producing oil buys them some time.

On top of this, the project is actually fairly popular. Both of Alaska’s (Republican) Senators and its one (Democrat) House Member all support the project. Nationwide, only one third of Democrats even oppose it. Climate activists didn’t vote Biden in, moderates did. He’s running for reelection and reading the room.

So why is this the battle we’re picking? Alaska is one of the most appropriate places left on Earth to continue producing and consuming oil.

There are of course ironies to drilling in the Arctic in 2023. The Arctic is warming ~3x faster than the rest of the world. Pollution from the project may threaten local businesses. There will be thermosiphons installed in the ground to keep the to keep the thawing permafrost stable during production.4

But are these any more ironic than burning natural gas to power direct air capture, running diesel generators to drill geothermal wells, or flying to climate conferences in private jets?5 We live in a world of contradictions. It’s 2023, and we still need oil to survive. This one’s happening.

Construction

A few houses collapsed in Utah last week, and it’s not hard to see how climate change contributed:

@kutv2news HOUSE COLLAPSE: A safety alert was issued in Draper, Utah, after two homes collapsed, giving way to wet, sliding soil. A trail underneath the homes was also closed due to safety concerns. Read the full story at kutv.com, or by using the link in our bio. 📹: Courtesy of Jeremy Nef, Draper City #draperutah #utahspring #housecollapse #landslide

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

Many more were evacuated. This was in Draper, a town on the outskirts of Salt Lake City nestled up against the Wasatch mountains. The immediate reasons for the collapses were unstable soil and poor construction practices. But this winter, the Mountain West was unusually snowy – 300% of typical levels in some places. Extreme precipitation – even during winter – is in line with what we expect from a changing climate. And now, as snow has started to melt, the water has to go somewhere. So it flows down the mountains, saturates the soil, and eventually ends up in the Great Salt Lake.

What can we do about this? I only see a few options:

Improve water management. Better runoff control, sewer systems, and so on.
Improve building codes. If you’re going to build homes next to a snowy mountain range, you’d better make sure they’re secure.

Of course, this is easy for me to say. I’m not the developer trying to make the project pencil out, and I’m also not the city official in charge of building codes in an area undergoing rapid growth. I don’t know the politics in Draper, but it’s not hard to imagine there’s some pressure to cut corners.

That being said, we’ve crossed a bright line when buildings start collapsing. I think the best we can hope for is that Utah and similar states start implementing building requirements similar to Florida’s hurricane requirements or California’s earthquake requirements. It’s not that we can never build in Draper again, but as the climate changes, buildings will need to become fortresses.

On the bright side, maybe this will replenish the Great Salt Lake and keep the toxic dust bomb from going off?

Climate control

I’m sorry, but this is nuts:

*Source: UAE National Center of Meteorology*

The UAE is saying hey guys, we’re upgrading our geoengineering rigs, and nobody cares. They printed a banner, had a signing ceremony, tweeted out photos, and… nothing. As of this writing, this post has eight likes.

I just can’t get over the fact that this kind of geoengineering is a normal part of life in some places, but nobody seems to know or care (unless your project is subversive). It’s not just the UAE; China’s been doing it for a while, and we in the US have been doing it for many decades. For example, the US Bureau of Reclamation is funding the Southern Nevada Water Authority with a $2.4MM grant, not to launch a new cloud seeding project, but to modernize its existing fleet of cloud seeding equipment.

The big questions about geoengineering will be here sooner than we think. It’s too bad that we’re not paying more attention to the geoengineering we’re already doing.

Elsewhere:

Thanks for reading!

Please share your thoughts and let me know where I mess up:

Adapting

Discussion about this post