Climate Change and Forests in Minnesota: Alternative Futures
Forests in Minnesota have dramatically different futures depending on the CO2 emissions scenario that we follow as a society. For the business as usual scenario, the state would lose all of the boreal forest (cold climate conifer and birch forests of northern MN), and much of the state would support prairies rather than forests by 2070. For a low emissions scenario, forests would experience much smaller changes, with some boreal forest remaining in the north.
Presenter: Lee Frelich is Director of the University of Minnesota Center for Forest Ecology. He has over 180 publications with 265 coauthors from 23 countries and has appeared in the news media over 500 times, including the New York Times and Washington Post. Current research interests include impacts of fire and wind disturbances, invasive earthworms, and climate change in forests.
This event was co-sponsored by:
Resilient Roseville, a Roseville citizens climate action group
Bill Gates released a new book today on climate change. He wrote the book to give readers a better understanding of what we need to do to avoid a climate disaster.
Excerpt from How to Avoid a Climate Disaster:
Two decades ago, I would never have predicted that one day I would be talking in public about climate change, much less writing a book about it. My background is in software, not climate science, and these days my full-time job is working with my wife, Melinda, at the Gates Foundation, where we are super-focused on global health, development, and U.S. education.
I came to focus on climate change in an indirect way—through the problem of energy poverty.
In the early 2000s, when our foundation was just starting out, I began traveling to low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia so I could learn more about child mortality, HIV, and the other big problems we were working on. But my mind was not always on diseases. I would fly into major cities, look out the window, and think, Why is it so dark out there? Where are all the lights I’d see if this were New York, Paris, or Beijing?
I learned that about a billion people didn’t have reliable access to electricity and that half of them lived in sub-Saharan Africa. (The picture has improved a bit since then; today roughly 860 million people don’t have electricity.) I began to think about how the world could make energy affordable and reliable for the poor. It didn’t make sense for our foundation to take on this huge problem—we needed it to stay focused on its core mission—but I started kicking around ideas with some inventor friends of mine.
In late 2006 I met with two former Microsoft colleagues who were starting nonprofits focused on energy and climate. They brought along two climate scientists who were well versed in the issues, and the four of them showed me the data connecting greenhouse gas emissions to climate change.
I knew that greenhouse gases were making the temperature rise, but I had assumed that there were cyclical variations or other factors that would naturally prevent a true climate disaster. And it was hard to accept that as long as humans kept emitting any amount of greenhouse gases, temperatures would keep going up.
I went back to the group several times with follow-up questions. Eventually it sank in. The world needs to provide more energy so the poorest can thrive, but we need to provide that energy without releasing any more greenhouse gases.
Now the problem seemed even harder. It wasn’t enough to deliver cheap, reliable energy for the poor. It also had to be clean.
Within a few years, I had become convinced of three things:
To avoid a climate disaster, we have to get to zero greenhouse gas emissions.
We need to deploy the tools we already have, like solar and wind, faster and smarter.
And we need to create and roll out breakthrough technologies that can take us the rest of the way.
The case for zero was, and is, rock solid. Setting a goal to only reduce our emissions—but not eliminate them—won’t do it. The only sensible goal is zero.
Have you ever wanted to take a look at the climate models or a world look at today’s temperature? Try the Climate Reanalyzer: https://climatereanalyzer.org/ The climate reanalyzer is a service of the Climate Change Institute, the University of Maine, and the NSF.
In 2017, Michael Bloomberg and former California Governor Jerry Brown launched America’s Pledge in the wake of President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement, to ensure that U.S. climate progress continued despite federal inaction. Since then, America’s Pledge has annually aggregated and quantified the actions of U.S. states, cities, businesses and other non-federal actors to drive down their greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement, presenting these findings to the United Nations.
America’s Pledge published a progress report in September 2020. The report assesses how states, cities, and businesses are continuing to drive climate progress despite the events of 2020—including the COVID-19 pandemic and economic recession—and increasing our confidence in the country’s ability to achieve the 2030 emissions reductions modeled in Accelerating America’s Pledge.
Bottom-up climate leadership has kept the U.S. on a path of progress. Since the launch of We Are Still In and America’s Pledge in 2017, climate action by U.S. states, cities, and businesses has increased dramatically. Despite four years of environmental rollbacks from President Trump’s administration, bold climate actions from non-federal actors have successfully counterbalanced the climate denial and obstruction from the White House.
Post-election federal leadership can put Americaback in alignment with the Paris Agreement. If the federal government re-engages, invests in a green stimulus recovery and works together with states, cities, and businesses to enact climate-forward policies, we can cut emissions by 49% from 2005 levels by 2030 and put America back in alignment with the Paris Agreement, reaching net zero emissions by 2050.
America has passed a tipping point in its clean energy transition. Unprecedented non federal leadership, strong market forces, and overwhelming public demand for climate solutions all suggest that clean energy is here to stay.
Ambitious, expanded action by U.S. states, cities, and businesses can reduce emissions up to 37% by 2030. Despite the pandemic and economic recession, non-federal climate action can still substantially reduce emissions, with or without help from Washington.
The global pandemic and economic recession have not impeded non-federal climate action. America’s Pledge identifies five key sectors with the greatest 2030 emission reduction opportunities: electricity, transportation, buildings, methane, and HFCs. Confidence in these sectors’ ability to drive ambitious 2030 emission reductions has increased, with the exception of buildings, in which confidence has remained unchanged.
We’re at an inflection point. COVID-19, the climate crisis, and a global reckoning on racial justice have forced us to rethink normal and created a new world of possibilities. Now it’s time to ask ourselves one simple question. What is the future we want? From October 10-11, former Vice President Al Gore and The Climate Reality Project will do just that with 24 Hours of Reality: Countdown to the Future, a global conversation on the future we want and how we get there, held in partnership with TED Countdown.
For 24 straight hours, Vice President Gore and Climate Reality Leader activists across the planet will lead digital presentations and discussions exploring the historic conjunction of climate change, COVID-19, and structural racism that not only threatens our lives and deepest values, but opens the door to truly transformative change.
Beginning at 4 PM ET on October 10, Climate Reality Leaders around the world will host 24 hours of virtual presentations and discussions exploring how the climate crisis, a global pandemic, and racial injustice together shape our moment and presenting a path forward to the just and sustainable future we want.
The Family Forest Carbon Program is a new program, created by the American Forest Foundation and The Nature Conservancy, that brings together rural family forest owners and companies to address climate change together.
In the U.S., families, and individuals own the largest portion – 36% – of all forests. Yet nearly all of these owners have been unable to access carbon markets due to high upfront costs and complexity. The Family Forest Carbon Program helps solve this challenge, giving family forest owners an opportunity to bring in income from their land, in exchange for implementing sustainable forest practices that help sequester and store more carbon. Companies in turn can purchase this carbon in the form of verified carbon credits.
Carbon produced from the small landowner holdings enrolled in the Program will be available for purchase in the form of verified carbon credits. For companies, this provides a method for reducing residual emissions when energy efficiency, renewable energy, and employee behavior change strategies have all been exhausted.
The climate models predict ocean level rise and increased rainfall events with significant flooding. First Street Foundation published a study this week showing that nearly 70 percent more homes are at substantial risk of flooding than are within the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Special Flood Hazard Areas, a designation that determines eligibility for the National Flood Insurance Program.
Drs. Moomaw, Masino, and Faison coined the term “proforestation” in a 2019 paper. They say that keeping existing forests intact and growing them to their ecological potential is a more effective, immediate, and low-cost approach that could be mobilized across suitable forests of all types. They conclude that proforestation serves the greatest public good by maximizing co-benefits such as nature-based biological carbon sequestration and unparalleled ecosystem services such as biodiversity enhancement, water and air quality, flood and erosion control, public health benefits, low impact recreation, and scenic beauty.
Forests annually sequester large quantities of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), and store carbon above and below ground for long periods of time. Intact forests—largely free from human intervention except primarily for trails and hazard removals—are the most carbon-dense and biodiverse terrestrial ecosystems, with additional benefits to society and the economy.
A recent study by the USDA Forest Servce (https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/59852) estimates that US forests represent the largest net carbon sink in the United States. They offset more that 11 percent of total green house gas emissions annually.
From the University of Minnesota :
Trees and climate change
Trees are a natural climate solution, absorbing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it as wood. This means that healthy growing trees increase carbon sequestration and help offset greenhouse gas emissions.
According to recent estimates in the United States, forests remove about 11% of total carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the atmosphere. This is a motivation for keeping healthy trees and forests on the landscape! Minnesota woodland owners own 40% of the state’s forests or about 6.8 million acres.
The American Forest Foundation estimates that across all forest ownerships, private woodland owners have the greatest opportunity to mitigate the effects of future climate change through storing and sequestering carbon in their trees and woodlands.
In Minnesota this is especially true: our diverse forests from the North Woods in northern Minnesota to the Blufflands in southeastern Minnesota present a rich opportunity to contribute to natural climate solutions.
The Sleeping Bear Tree Farm will participate in current and future CO2 studies.
