Introduction to Problems and Solutions
Jim Blackburn is a Professor in the Practice in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Rice University, co-director of Rice’s Severe Storm (SPEED) Center (sspeed.rice.edu), and a Faculty Scholar at Rice’s Baker Institute where he is leading the development of a United States standard for storing carbon in the soil of prairies and grasslands.
He is an environmental lawyer and planner and has written two books about the Texas coast: the most recent, A Texan Plan for the Texas Coast, was published October 2017. He co-directs the Texas Coastal Exchange (texascoastalexchange.org) which supports the resilience of our local coastline.
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I’m going to be covering today more of the problems that exist with climate change and the solutions that we have ahead of us um i want to start off with uh my favorite uh climate um kind of uh expert uh dr catherine hey ho from texas tech university and
She’s also an evangelical christian and she started off a presentation i saw here in houston with a very interesting statement she said you know i don’t believe in climate change and kind of everybody in the audience kind of went whoa what you know what are you talking about
And she goes you know climate change is science it’s fact my religion is a belief and it was a really interesting and i think very stark way of just starting us off with the the fact that we’re talking about facts in science we’re not talking about belief
A lot of people would rather not believe that the climate is changing but that’s not the situation that we’re looking at now the other thing i wanted to start off with was an observation of terry hershey’s husband jake hershey many of you may know terry hershey she was
Kind of the environmentalist the leader in houston for many years very involved in most everything green in houston uh among other things a big supporter of urban harvest over the years uh and jake once uh put his arm around me you know fed up at a cocktail
Party and said blackburn have you ever worried about what happened to the horse and buggy and i said i have no idea what you’re talking about jake and he said well you know the people that made horses and buggies were the leaders of the economic kind of revolution of
The late 1800s at least some of them were among the the most wealthy in the country and then the car came along and totally wiped out the horse and buggy uh kind of economy if you will and and his point was the market can change incredibly fast with different signals and different uh
Uh kind of impetuses that are kind of forcing uh kind of where the market goes and i think i keep jake’s message in mind these days as i uh watch what’s happening with climate and particularly climate in the economy which will be really the second half of the presentation
Nobody thinks much about the horse and buggy these days yeah are we headed for the same thing with sort of the internal combustion engine in cars uh it’s an interesting thought so the truth about climate change the climate’s changing humans are changing it now that’s not really a controversial statement
Virtually every scientific organization that studies these issues agrees with that this slide on the uh right hand side of your screen 80 national academies of science got come up with that opinion that was from 10 years ago i mean this is not a disputed issue the united states fourth annual fourth
National climate assessment from the trump administration climate is changing we’re causing it so that’s really not a debate issue anymore um the observed change in surface temperature i mean this is data this is this is recorded over time the areas in purple have had a change of two and a half degrees centigrade
Um the areas in red have all increased in terms of average temperature the only place that is really blue or at least the wind is noticeable besides actually texas uh which i’m not sure i quite understand um is uh below greenland where the ice is melting and the ocean is uh
Is cooled in that location uh this is uh from john nielsen gammon the state climatologist of texas and uh basically what it shows is that texas its temperatures are increasing they have been for the past 40 years according to john nielsen gammon the rate of change is similar to what
Would be expected giving global chance and it appears to be largely anthropogenic and should be expected to continue whereas anthropogenic means it’s caused by humans now that is the official climatologist of the state of texas over at texas a m with that pronouncement now what i’m amazed at about
Climate change is that a lot of people have really not seen kind of what all of this means now when you talk about what it means something to keep in mind there has to be basically alternative futures in alternative future projections and uh what i’m showing over here on the right hand side
There’s a there’s kind of a purple kind of there’s a line with purple on either side of it there’s a red line with a kind of a reddish color on either side of it these are different climate projections in terms of emissions in the future carbon dioxide emissions other greenhouse gas emissions
Are tied to climate change to the warming of the atmosphere to the warming of the temperature and these different scenarios are about different amounts of carbon dioxide or carbon dioxide equivalence being released to the atmosphere and so when you see uh rcp uh i think whether 2.2.8 4.5 6.0 and 8.5
Those are three those are four different scenarios of carbon dioxide emissions and basically the amount of change is related to the amount of emissions that is a key aspect of all of the work that is being done in climate so here you see the average surface temperature change it’s going to be much
Higher in degrees centigrade with more emissions and you reduce that by keeping the emissions down same thing with sea ice extent i mean under this scenario we eliminate summer sea ice up in the northern hemisphere by 2050. now it doesn’t affect texas a lot
But that’s a big deal up in the uh up in the arctic circle area one that does affect texas a lot is ocean surface ph the ph is also affected by the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere the co2 coming into the ocean and then the change of ph
Of the ocean waters and with the higher emission scenarios the ph of the ocean waters goes up tremendously we’re going to do those have huge effects the other point i want to make is climate models must include a human factor all of these little charts here there’s a purple area
And a pink area on each one of these little charts purple is only looking at natural factors to explain the change pink is adding in human cost factors to me this is the graph that truly uh explains that humans are you know you’ve got to have a
Human factor to explain the changes that we’re seeing and we’ll go over that in several different ways coastal waters of the gulf of mexico are increasing this is the western gulf the highest temperatures are getting higher the average temperature is getting higher that’s just data in terms of the ocean heat content
That’s going up in terms of the global sea level that is going up these are observed changes carbon dioxide levels we know are going up this only takes us up through about 2010 we’re over 400 now it’s the exact same pattern it changes at different times of the year but the trend line
Is absolute and if you look at that again reference to the late last 800 000 years these numbers are just off the charts high totally different than anything we’ve seen for a long time now i want to talk a little bit about statistics um the chart at the top
Um is from moscow and this is where dr ron sass over at rice came and made a presentation in my class and yeah he used this chart to begin to talk about the fact that there’s no way to explain the temperature in 2010 in moscow it’s so different than their averages it’s way
Off the end of the chart they also had high incidences in 72 and 2001. and the bell curve which is that big slope that you see that white line i think i can probably outline it with the white line that goes up like that is the bell curve basically we work off of
Averages and we assume that this statistical distribution particularly with things like temperature you can depend on 20 i mean 50 years worth of records 100 years worth of record to give you a good indication of what your weather would be so based on that you can begin to set up percentages of
Times that things would occur and i’m really interested in this area down here off the bottom of the curve so to put this chart larger i’m interested in focusing on this area over here the this two point this two percent chance means that basically it ought to happen once every 50 years
A 1 10 chance means it should happen about once every thousand years that’s where we get something like the hundred year flood event so when you hear people talk about a one percent event or the 100 year flood statistically it’s out here on the edges and it’s a
They say point that is defined by all of this other data and it’s a relatively rare occurrence but you know i mean things happen beyond it but not very often if you look at what we’ve had here with rainfalls we’ve got tropical storm allison we’ve got the tax day storm
We’ve got harvey and the melda which came in 2019 is right there between allison and harvey now that is not a common standard statistical distribution pattern that is an aberrant pattern and that is a pattern that indicates change now i once saw a presentation by a
Person a stock analyst and they use that you know they use these curves in all sorts of different applications and uh he put these two lines up um and he put tbd and i was trying to figure out you know to be determined that doesn’t make any sense
What does tbd mean in this context and turns out he said there be dragons uh the edge of the bell curve is a spooky area this is where you’re truly aberrant events occur those are the events we’ve been having that’s this is the reality of climate change
That we will be seeing more and more aberrant events now with these different climate change scenarios there’s going to be changes in the average there’s going to also be changes in the extreme events i just talked about the extreme events the changes in the average are really spooky
Um if we have a low emission scenario we’re still going to see an increase in temperature that’s the up on a that’s the one on the left hand side and that shows you know somewhere between a degree and a degree and a half over most of the world
And that’s in degrees centigrade if we don’t change the way we’re emitting the modeling projections here show that by the time you get to about 20 81 to 2100 time period at the end of this century we’re going to be looking at you know probably an average of five to seven
Degrees something like that maybe maybe three to three to five degrees centigrade on average with the the northern uh hemisphere having tremendous increases uh the rainfall i’m not going to talk as much about because i don’t think we’ve got quite as good a handle from the models in terms of
Of the long-term averages but there will be certainly changes in those long-term averages now this is the one that as a texas resident you might want to pay some attention to um top slide from 61 to 79 we had less than 20 days per year where we got over 100 degrees centigrade
I mean i’m sorry 100 degrees fahrenheit fahrenheit um if you have the low emission scenario by 2080 2090 time period is predicted that they’ll be 20 to 30 days over 100 degrees fahrenheit but if we have the higher emission scenario we’ll have a 100 to 120 days over hundred degrees fahrenheit now
Think about that you know how hot it is i mean we’re in the middle of the summer here in houston and it’s plenty hot it was i saw 99 degrees on my uh in my car yesterday um but think about a hundred to a hundred and twenty days a year
Over a hundred degrees fahrenheit i would be surprised i have asked many audiences i’ve made this presentation to how many of you have heard these scenarios presented and very few people have heard these scenarios and what the results of these scenarios are and um and you know that
In particular i’m talking about you know down in here now this says 2080 to 2099. something to keep in mind here is this change will be gradual toward 20 90 20 99 this change is happening now it is something that is ongoing and it will be a stepwise process
And one of the things i’ve been looking for are good intermediate uh images because it seems like a lot of people see this slide and go oh well that’s 2099 i’m going to be you know dead and gone by the time that comes along except that this is occurring today
And it’s the stepwise function so so what what does all of this mean that we’re going to be looking at this type of of change well the catastrophic events are going up and will continue to go up the only thing that is not changing are the geophysical events they’re staying pretty much
Steady but our meteorological events which are as in the the dark blue here the hydrological events in green and then the climatological events extreme temperature drought forest fire events there are also a increase cumulatively though that trend is just going up and up and up what am i most worried about hurricanes
Uh this is going to affect hurricanes this is i mean we this is the texas coast it looks like a bowl of spaghetti there the texas coast gets hurricanes we’ve always had hurricanes uh this is ike coming in in 2008 the last really big storm that we’ve had in the houston area
In terms of storm surge harvey coming in actually harvey’s not on this chart but harvey came in down here i’ll show you more about harvey but harvey was a rainfall storm ike was a surge storm and flooded everything from basically the east side of galveston bay
All the way back across to grand isle louisiana and wiped out the bolivar peninsula and there was certainly flooding on the actually exposed southern shorelines of the west side of galveston bay from the back circulation now hurricanes are essentially heat pumps hurricanes get their energy from the ocean
And if you look at the you know the fact that we’ve got a hotter ocean we’ve got a and we’ve got a situation where we’ve got a hotter ocean we’ve got a hotter atmosphere a hotter atmosphere that holds more water uh all of the factors are there to increase the severity of hurricanes
And this is something called the power dissipation dissipation index anomaly just simply showing that the potential strength of hurricanes the power the intensity of these hurricanes is going to be increasing over time it is not a good scenario for us now this is hurricane harvey and the path of harvey
Uh it’s kind of interesting to look at it in light of what we’re seeing coming off the satellite now and then it’ll show you these uh these different systems coming off the coast of africa and then basically they wander across the atlantic harvey was actually named on august 17th
It degenerated into a tropical wave kind of disappeared at least as a really identified storm as just a massive of rain coming across went across the yucatan and then reformed as a tropical storm on august 23rd it became a category 4 hurricane almost overnight it was the fastest forming
Hurricane in united states history because of the heat of the gulf of mexico because of these factors we’re talking about then it came into the coast and stopped it’s almost unprecedented for a category hurricane coming ashore to actually stop but there was a high pressure system over here and a high pressure system
Over here and it basically blocked the storm moving in and so it kind of wandered around and of course those of you that were here during carving know how much rainfall that we got during harvey the point being this was a climate change influence storm in many been more many in many ways
Certainly more than a single way we had a conference over at rice at the speed center in february of 2018. the consensus is that there will be increased rainfall in the houston area due to climate change and that the future storms that we’ll see will be
Bigger we’ve got to be honest about this this is absolutely critical to the future of houston now this chart is a bit detailed this is our current 100 year rain and 500 year rain we use the 24 hour rainfall event it’s kind of what we work with so right now
Officially still 13 inches in 24 hours is our 100 year rainfall event that’s what the the 100 year maps 100 year flood maps that are out there are based on this we’re redoing our maps based on this noaa atlas 14. and this is a report that came out at
The end of 2017. it includes harvey data and it identifies 17 inches of rain in 24 hours as our 100 year storm and 25 inches of rain in 24 hours as our 500 year storm but now look at these storms that we’ve had imelda was 21 inches in 24 hours
Harvey was 25 inches in 24 hours tax day 17 allison had 28 inches in 24 hours uh there was a storm in october that 94 that had really 21 inches uh i mean i’m not real comfortable with 17 inches is our 100-year storm but that’s what all of our new planning is
Based on we are not looking forward in our analysis of these storms i think that’s a major problem i think that frankly there’s a chance that everything we’re designing now will be obsolete almost as soon as it’s built we’re basically driving using our rear view mirror and there’s something that’s just pervasive
About climate we’ve got to be able to look forward and right now we keep looking backwards we keep looking at the statistics and we don’t take the more recent statistics and try to tease out of them what the future is going to look like uh we have there are various
Reasons many of them political about why we do what we do today but it is not good for us uh again catherine hey ho talks about driving with the rear view mirror and she says in west texas you could probably do that pretty safely for a while but
Steve says i think it’s coming in i don’t know plainview one of those west texas town there’s a grain elevator right in the middle of the road and the road swerves around it and if you’re driving in your rear view mirror you’re running right into that grain elevator
Well we’re running into some grain elevators by using our rear view mirror and i mean it’s just kind of where we are and we’ve got to get better than this we can be better than this but we’ve got to trust science and we’ve got to trust modeling
Now this is my favorite slide of this whole presentation this marker was put up down in the clear lake area down by nasa uh after uh hurricane night and it marks how high the water would be in a category storm and how high the water would be in a cat5 storm
This sign lasted about two months and was removed because of complaints by the real estate industry hard to sell houses with those markers around so we took the markers down now what that tells me is it’s more important to sell real estate than it is to protect the people
We’ve got to change that my vision of the future is it’s more important to protect people than sell real estate that is something that is pervasive in our society there are economic effects of these of the information that i’m talking about we have to be honest about it sea level rise
Um the average number of amount of sea level rise that that we’re uh told uh probably is still i guess probably the prevalent view one to three feet of sea level by the end of the century um that’s going to be basically the area shown in green here um mr hansen
From nasa are formerly of nasa probably the best one of the best climate scientists i’ve ever run across um james hanson from nasa uh thinks that that’s the that’s low he was joined with about 16 17 other climate scientists they’re predicting three to ten feet as a reasonable amount of climate
Increase to have or a sea level increase to have uh that would cover the area in yellow if we had 10 feet of sea level rise that begins to get pretty serious we’re talking about losing i would guess probably six million acres on the texas coast
Now that is that is not the commonly accepted view right now one to three i would say is the commonly accepted view but sea level rise is a big issue now when we talk about sea level rise it is already beginning to be observed that area in brown that you see there is
The number of days where basically tidal flooding is beginning to come inland uh significantly with the really high tidy bits i smile when i look at this because there’s a bunch of us looking at this at rice and we couldn’t figure out why that graph leveled off this is the number of days
Where essentially high tide flood events would be occurring down in port isabel and that’s like where you’d have local road flooding things like that with the frankly tide coming up well the reason it levels off is it it has reached 365. that’s every day uh miami is already having this problem
Uh we’re going to really begin to see this kicking in strong on the texas coast and the next tenure by 2030 we’re going to see about half the days in the year where we’re going to have severe high tide events it’s coming it’s happening now this is my point about that chart
That talks about well look you know it’s out here well that’s 2060 when all that yeah but this is happening in 2040 that’s 200 days a year we’re going to have problems this is about 20 30 we’re going to have about 125 days a year this is happening over time
Uh things like bird migration are affected by climate change this is back to the so what uh all of these on the left hand side all of these top dots are the furthest north recording of various nesting birds uh we’re seeing expansions northward this is the
Breeding area of the summer range of the baltimore oriole expanding northward over time it has from 2000 to 2020 it’s going to continue to do that this is coastal marshes along the texas coast they’re going to need to migrate inland because the sea level is rising if we
Don’t have the ability to migrate these marshes we’re going to probably drown them and lose them that’s a so what flounder flounder requires certain number of days i think bob’s going to talk about plants and what’s required temperature wise for certain plants to germinate and to thrive
Well the same is true with animals as well young flounder are becoming harder and harder for the net native of texas parks and wildlife to pick up we’re just not seeing the replacement flounder need a certain temperature a certain low temperature to be reached and maintained for a certain number of days
In order for the eggs to uh basically become fertilized and to begin to mature it’s just not happening like it has in the past and should in the future ph of seawater i mentioned that earlier as the ph drops it’s going to be harder and harder for the calcium carbonate chemistry to occur
Like it has been the expectation is we may see fewer hard shell organisms like blue crab oysters um blue and i mean brown and white shrimp the larger so what so what we’re going to see regional strife if not outright war caused by that there’s going to be
Caused by climate change there’s going to be environmental immigration there’s going to be large-scale economic changes and one might also anticipate large-scale spiritual changes as well i’m not going to talk so much about this but it’s an area that i find incredibly intriguing if you look at the vulnerability to climate change
The areas in red are the most vulnerable malaysia southeast asia india bangladesh uh africa or the area shown in red on this map um but it just simply makes the point that certain areas of the world are going to be more vulnerable to climate change than others
Um if you throw in the ability to adapt the current financial situation of the countries uh their ability to respond you begin to see a little different map certainly africa is incredibly impacted uh probably the center part of africa being one of the most serious of these areas pakistan
Afghanistan some of the middle east begins to show up we know about the fires in australia um in terms of sea level rise we’re you know we’ve got cities all over the world that are extremely vulnerable i think this is again james hansen from nasa talking about um the cities that he
Thinks are most at risk around the world and houston does not show up here houston’s inland i mean we’re at uh elevation i think my house is about 45 feet uh it’s it’s not bulletproof from a sea level rise standpoint but it’s not as vulnerable as a lot of areas
But there are many places around the world that are incredibly vulnerable to climate to sea level rise particularly and here they’re noting new york boston miami virginia beach new orleans tampa saint pete um in the united states and of course many other countries around the world water stress look at the united states
Southwestern united states um central united states definitely expected to be water stressed the droughts will be just as bad as the floods and the big rainfall events will be the droughts are on the other side of the bell curve that’s what we worry about is that bell
Curve we’re seeing the action at the edges of the bell curve but look at the middle east if you think we got problems in the middle east now i think that they will only get worse um and this shows where there is extremely high water risk
Areas in the world and i mean just time after time after time let’s see number one is cotter um five is iran four is jordan three is lebanon two is israel i mean right there in the center so water as an issue is huge and then you’ve got just
Generally the the ability of states to withstand that change this is a slide showing fragile states again emphasizing really the vulnerability of the central area of africa the point here is that they’re going to be changes that will occur in the united states that many of us are not aware of
Uh they’re going to affect us daily there’s also going to be major geopolitical issues arising from the changing climate and that’s something that we really don’t know much about and don’t talk about so now i want to talk about what should we do about it what’s going to happen
What action should we take now i put this slide in here because it makes me smile for one thing i have tried to talk about climate change in houston for many years and i have found that if i start off a conversation about climate change with this slide
I can talk to anybody about climate change uh now some of my environmentalist friend kind of get offended a bit that i’m talking about climate change and money but in the houston business community this slide will keep people’s attention because there are huge financial implications um and there’s huge economic implications
And i think we will see a different economic system emerge because of climate change on the other hand sometimes if we use words that are more comfortable to talk about an uncomfortable subject it’s easier to have a conversation money is something that a lot of people understand
And i can talk about climate change and money and not lose an audience and i just it’s something i’ve just found very interesting about having a discussion about this bob may have similar luck talking about gardening and growing things and climate change um so much about climate change is uncomfortable
And um certainly the implications that i’m going to be talking about are going to be harsh the paris climate agreement was signed in 22nd of april in 2016. um this is the chart of where we have to be and basically it’s about becoming carbon neutral by 2050. that’s essentially the global
Policy right now as a global community we are shooting to become carbon neutral by 2050. now that has been basically formally adopted in the paris climate agreement united states signed it president trump is withdrawing the united states from the climate agreement right now but the global community is on a path to
Be carbon neutral by 2050. most multinational corporations either are or will become carbon are committed to being carbon neutral by 2050. this is where things are going it’s not something we’ve talked about a lot in houston now the oil and gas industry has got tremendous pressure there are tremendous forces
That are working on the oil and gas industry right now there’s public opposition there’s financial issues about it their future there’s moral opposition there’s legal opposition they’re they’re facing continuing pressure all the time and it’s beginning to have a real impact um this is one of my favorite slides again this
Is pope francis meeting with executives from the oil industry and meeting with also executives from the investment community that basically underwrites the oil and gas community um pope francis came out with the encyclical um uh that he put together uh about faith and climate and it is one of the most um
Incredibly uh revolutionary documents really um google the pope’s encyclical um on climate change and you will find an incredible document of really a changing view from the religious community of the concept or the issue of climate change he is probably the most adamant outspoken of the religious leaders in the world about
Climate as an issue and in this case he was meeting with the leaders of the oil and gas and investment community basically telling them they needed to do something about climate change i would have loved to have been in that meeting i have to admit i that’s one meeting where i would have
Loved to have been a fly on the wall when i first started working on a lot of this i was backing up been working on these climate issues pretty seriously since about 2010 and i was told when blackrock financial makes a move things are going to start
Changing in the oil and gas industry well blackrock financial made a move january 14 2020 and what blackrock announced was that they will begin to exit investments in coal production they will begin to introduce funds for investment that ban fossil fuel stocks and they are going to begin to vote their
Their shares and these are treatment this is a trillion dollar plus investment company to vote against corporate management who aren’t making progress on fighting climate change now that is a huge huge change in blackrock and like i said this is what i was told to watch out for when blackrock moves
This whole con the conversation is going to change well the conversation is changing now when i first started as an environmental lawyer back in the 70s and all through my career the economy that we’ve been working with is one that that takes natural resources manufactures uh various types of goods various types of
Services we consume those and then we throw them up throw away the residuals the waste products that is part of our economy that is what we call what i call the linear economy it’s a straight-line economy now the economy the future will be different this is a diagram by herman daly my
Favorite economist and first of all he shows the economy as a subset of the ecosystem of the earth that is an important concept herman daly was the working at the world bank as an economist and wanted to publish a report that showed the economy as a square within the larger circle of
The ecosystem because his view was that the economy had to basically live within the limits of the ecosystem and he was fired because he insisted upon this diagram i mean this is like here theoretical document on one level because it suggests limits to the economy
On the other hand what it talks about is energy and matter coming in and energy and matter if you will coming out of the economy and it puts recycle in there as a kind of key piece of the equation and that becomes a huge piece of where we’re headed
The linear economies on this on the um on the left hand side extract produce consume and throw away and the new economy of the future the circular economy is the economy that you see on the right and the transition from a linear economy to a circular economy will
Be the hallmark of the 21st century this is the response to climate change is to change our economic view of how we do things very to me is almost a profound i mean something as simple as this diagram is profound something as simple as that diagram that herman daly drew
Is profound we’ve got to live within the limits of the ecosystem that means we’ve got to protect the atmosphere we’ve got to take that carbon which is the carbon cycle is shown over here on the right hand side the earth has natural cycles we take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere with plants
And with uh various type of prairie plants mars plants trees we take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere put oxygen back that carbon dioxide gets either put into the system or perhaps goes back into the atmosphere but it’s a circular system same thing’s true with precipitation we have a circular system of evaporation
And precipitation nature is full of circles and cycles the closer we can link the human economy to the natural economy the economy of nature the better we’re going to be and part of that is getting our carbon cycle back into balance we are out of balance on the carbon
Cycle we’re headed toward putting it back into some sort of much better balance our carbon emissions our carbon dioxide emissions are in excess of 35 billion tons on a global basis um china is i think ahead of the united states now in terms of the total amount of emissions of course
China has over a billion people united states has over 300 million people so there’s a difference in per capita consumption but in terms of just sheer volume china and the united states are the leaders the point being we’ve got to get that down to zero um
We’ve got some work to do by 2050. and how are we going to get there um again simplicity i i keep i keep emphasizing sort of some of these simple concepts um these are this is what’s called the wedges concept it comes from paccolo and so globe there are two princeton scientists that
Published this in science magazine back in 2004. what you see in front of you is how you solve climate change those wedges each represent a billion tons of carbon which is 3.5 tons of 3.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide co2 weighs more than carbon does so a ton of of carbon
Is the equivalent of three and a half or 3.65 i think tons million tons of carbon dioxide so to avoid 5 billion tons of carbon about 15 million tons of a billion sorry b billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions uh switching to renewables um is a huge thing renewables can make a
Big difference nuclear fission is identified as an option there’s no co2 emissions at least from the production of the nuclear energy there is from a lot of co2 associated with the facilities themselves and with the processing of the materials but from the actual nuclear process itself no co2 minimization energy conservation energy efficiency
Huge benefits fuel switching is switching from natural gaming switching from coal for for example electrical production switching from coal to natural gas um and then finally carbon capture and storage and they identify both natural storage and co2 capture and storage but what they have identified are basically chunks large chunks of emissions that
Can be removed simply by avoiding minimizing or removing capturing and storage i just love that as a beautiful kind of way to at least begin to think about well we can do this you know these are just you know step one step two step three and we have scope one scope two and
Scope three of our emissions when you hear about carbon footprint when you hear about the emissions of carbon this is how you think about it scope one is what you actually put out if you have a personal car and you drive it you are having scope one emission you are emitting carbon dioxide
If you have a natural gas a furnace in your house if you uh heat your pool with natural gas when you turn that natural gas burner on and burn natural gas you will emit carbon dioxide if you’re a company uh a refinery a chemical plant they are direct emissions from boilers from
Various sources and then there’s all sorts of vehicles the company owns scope 2 are the emissions that all of us have from purchasing electricity the grid of the state of texas has an energy or a carbon emission profile all of us participate when we use electricity from that grid many of us
Try to buy green energy and that’s great but the you’re still going to be emissions from the grid you’ve just invested in in renewables and uh that feels good but there’s still emissions associated uh with the electricity you use the really interesting one is scope 3
And i’m not going to spend a lot of time on it but there’s both kind of upstream and downstream uh indirect emissions so for example all of us or many of us have investments of different types a retirement account perhaps savings accounts or stocks what stocks are you invested in well
There are emissions associated with the stocks you’re invested in there are emissions that are associated with all types of activities both above and beyond and this is where something called supply chain gets involved in the process of carbon thinking because companies are now looking at who are they buying things from
And what does their what does their footprint look like and then downstream people that are buying or looking um at well what what carbon investment am i purchasing and so you’re starting to see carbon accounting going all through the economy and the carbon footprinting business is expanding but it’s more importantly i
Think than that carbon footprinting is the starting point for becoming carbon neutral because first of all you have to identify what your carbon footprint is then you identify back to those by packing so glow and those both wedges once you calculate your footprint you identify what can be avoided
What can be reduced and what can be removed and stored and that is sort of the process toward becoming carbon neutral now this is not anywhere close to the full list of companies that are committing to carbon neutral or renewable con commitments in the last six months to a
Year this this slide is from about two or three years ago and these were some of the early ones the country of norway’s committed the uh the province of british columbia the companies shown are all involved but it has gone far beyond these companies now uh business-wise
There is a revolution going on in terms of the movement toward carbon neutrality uh carbon neutral cities uh there’s a carbon neutral cities alliance that’s out there these are cities that are committed to becoming the carbon neutral by a certain time period these cities may well become the premier locations
For new economic development in the 21st century as carbon neutral thinking begins to emerge on the other hand harris county at least back in 2002 which is the last time i had found this compilation was the top emitting carbon dioxide county in the united states the united states
Is a major carbon emitter harris county is a leading or the leader in terms of carbon emissions from the county itself not to mention the emissions from companies that are headquartered here now this is where business is headed business as usual as shown at the bottom a regenerative circular economy is shown
At the top you will not believe the number of companies that are beginning to put circular economy as a goal of for the 21st century many of the plastics companies particularly are very very interested in circular economy but there’s all of these steps in between getting to the circular economy you
Lower your carbon emissions you have carbon neutral operations but that’s what your that’s your scopes one in scope two that’s what you actually produce you have carbon neutral products where you’re really thinking about who you’re selling to shell has talked is committed to being carbon neutral in terms of its customers by 2050.
That is huge i’ll show you more about that in a minute uh carbon negative where you go beyond your current emissions and actually take more out of the atmosphere than you’re putting in and then regenerative is where you’re truly uh restoring energy and material cycles and you have created the circular economy
Now bobby tutor is the new president of the houston partnership and he made a blockbuster of a speech um and the the first part of this year and he has a view of houston leading the energy trans uh transition and i just put this up there because it emphasizes what a different conversation
And certainly we were having this conversation before covet hit and with covet coming the conversation has continued so this is a conversation it’s a harder conversation because of the economic impacts of copen but the need for this con for this conversation has not gone away very interesting situation i would have
Thought that there would have been a real drop-off but i’m seeing more interest today in august of or july end of july 1st of august of 2020 than at the first of the year when bobby tutor made this uh presentation his idea of houston is that we will lead the energy transition
We’re committing to lower carbon emissions we’re talking about dual new technologies to address the dual challenge of meeting global energy while lowering the world’s carbon footprint leverage houston’s strength in natural gas lead the development of carbon capture use in storage that’s a removal of carbon dioxide either from the stack or from the
Atmosphere and be leaders in energy efficiency con conservation and sustainability in smart city technology now that is the conversation that is occurring publicly by the leader of essentially the business community in houston and that is a conversation that frankly did not occur in 2019 or 2018 or
2017. so this is a huge change now there’s some pretty serious emissions that are headquartered in houston these are 15 companies that will remain unnamed that have the basically between themselves 538 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions um then this is only scope 1 and scope 2. so 15
Companies with a strong houston presence uh represent over 500 million metric tons of emissions those are directly now i’ve picked on exxon mobil this the public information they have 120 million or so in direct emissions uh if you look at their customers and what their customers combustion product is
They’re about 610 million so there’s about a five-fold difference between direct emissions and scope one and two and then scopes one two and three so if you go back it to this 538 million metric tons and multiply by five you’re talking about 2.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions that are
Represented by just 15 companies that are very strong in the houston region if houston gets behind doing something about climate change if the houston business community gets behind doing something about climate change it can make a huge difference carbon capture and storage technology has been where uh the oil and gas industry has
Been committed for years uh that cost the lowest we’ve run across is sixty dollars a ton uh it’s more like a hundred dollars a ton for average and gets up as high as a hundred and thirty hundred and fifty dollars at a time and it’s very hard to frankly get the scale
Of a removal that you need carbon is priced carbon dioxide emissions are priced around the world this is a dashboard that’s maintained by the world bank uh in california right now there’s a market at 15 a ton uh british columbia is about 35 dollars a time
You get over into europe and they tax carbon and in sweden it’s over a hundred dollars a ton for carbon dioxide emissions uh switzerland lichtenstein finland norway france iceland denmark all of them are taxing cars the voluntary market on carbon yeah there’s some of it up in around uh 30
25 28 dollars a ton right now the voluntary market for carbon has been slow to develop but it’s evolving now when i talk about voluntary markets and i talk about technology this image is of the technology this is what it looks like when you capture carbon
And you try to put it down into the soil so you you get carbon dioxide out of your flue gas out of the gases that are coming through processes you come through separators and you basically pump it down deep this is the 60 to 130 a ton carbon however there is another
Alternative for capturing carbon and it’s a wonderful technology called photosynthesis something bob randall knows a whole lot about something urban harvest knows a whole lot about trees native plants wetlands they’re wonderful basically carbon dioxide can be captured and stored in native systems and that’s what i’m
Spending a lot of my time on these days um here is just an example carbon dioxide comes into a tree as photosynthesis there is co2 this released there’s oxygen that’s released but over time carbon becomes stored in the wood material of the tree some of the trees i’ve seen
I think a live oak over 30 years or so uh will sequester about five tons of carbon dioxide um in the life cycle of the tree um carbon dioxide comes into marsh grasses and goes down into the soil of the marsh some comes back to the atmosphere but net
Conservatively on the texas coast we get two tons an acre from our marshes per year the root system of native prairie grasses are fabulous for putting carbon dioxide into the uh the soil and that is i think probably uh one of our greatest opportunities for carbon capture is to expand the native prairies
That we have that root system is essentially a carbon pump carbon dioxide comes into the plants by photosynthesis and gets pumped down into the root system the roots put sugars out into the um the microbes that are in the subsurface and basically you build your soil over time with organic carbon
Again something bob can talk a whole lot about now in the work that we’re doing we think about putting carbon in the soil uh through the root system you see on the right hand side kind of like growing potatoes it’s a crop we want to see a lot of ranchers particularly become
Carbon farmers with row crops we’ve got to be careful uh plowing releases a lot of the carbon to store but there is a future in carbon farming this is the key area of the united states um that kind of that central prairie grassland uh we think is a
Has huge potential a lot of that is row crop country uh when we grow a lot of row crops uh for um cattle feed um we’d like to see probably the feeding feedlot business uh begin to disappear and a lot more grass-fed beef and a lot more beef friendly
Um or a lot more bird-friendly native prairies again this is sort of that primary and yellow you see the pasture and range areas and uh brown you see the cropland uh but you know we think you will see probably more pasture and range particularly over here on the
Back side of the ogallala aquifer they’re beginning to run out of groundwater you know we’re talking about native systems that can survive basically and thrive with the natural conditions um now climate’s changing a bit there’ll be there’ll be changes there’ll be perturbations but there is a latent seed stock out there that we
Think can can really be both found and regenerated carbon neutral driving we think will be a thing of the future uh if you paid 20 a ton to a farmer for each ton of carbon dioxide they put in the ground that add about 20 cents per gallon a hundred dollars a
Year and you could drive carbon neutral um if if a company offered carbon neutral gas would you buy it this would be what it would be talking about uh carbon neutral refinery a hundred and fifty thousand barrel refineries kind of a small to average size of refinery here on the coast
Um but they generates about 4.6 million tons of carbon dioxide each year take about two million acres on the texas coast at a couple of tons per acre you know if you’re talking a ton an acre which is maybe more reasonable for native prairies four million
Uh maybe two percent of texas if you took all the customer emissions in rather than the six percent if you did a ton an acre probably be more like 12 percent of texas for a single refinery take some land uh but you’re talking about paying landowners money for putting this carbon dioxide
Into the ground and storing it with exxon mobil if they i used them earlier if you take that 610 million tons of co2 uh again at two times an acre you’re talking about a quarter of the u.s land we’re talking about a lot of land but there is also a lot of money
That we’re talking about now at baker institute at rice we are developing a standard for basically carbon transaction we are setting up a system that will enable buyers and sellers to come together and pay landowners basically where companies like the big emitters can pay landowners ranchers farmers that are doing various
Types of practices will also be able to qualify and paying them to store carbon dioxide in the soil that system we’re about to put out a publication in a couple of weeks that will be essentially a summary of the standard that we’re developing we will be setting up a certification entity that
Should be established over the course of the rest of this year and early into next year and we hope to be seeing transactions under this standard in early to mid 2021 on a commercial level there is a working group that’s been developing this standard these are the members that have agreed
To allow their names to be used publicly there are many others that are participating that would just assume not have their name publicly linked with the jet they’re kind of waiting to see how it all kind of develops out but it’s a very interesting cross section of everything from the king ranch to
Parks and wildlife we’ve got a lot of participation from new mexico we’ve got some national groups like ducks unlimited and audubon society that are working with us to create this standard um there are companies valero sprint several oil companies that would prefer steel to not be named um
Just helping to develop this wanting to see this system get started uh these the idea of carbon exchanges came out of the originally the green think tank at houston wilderness at least my involvement with it we brought those over to the speech center at rice university there is something called the texas
Coastal exchange that exists now i think lilly has put that up on the on the chat check it out that’s probably the most vibrant exchange right now america’s wetland foundation basically asked us if they could rip that idea off and they set up a variation called the louisiana coastal exchange
The texas hill country exchange we’re about to get started with as a non-profit and then uh there’s a private company called soil value exchange that comes out of this rice university work and um that’s looking to to take all of these uh concepts commercials and work with landowners to
Help them package this for sale the target is really the cow and pasture range but look at this livestock feeding this is basically how the united states land use is kind of parceled up this doesn’t just this has no geographic uh importance it’s really important as a
Percent of the united states land area but look how much we are using for growing feed for livestock and feed exports that is a really interesting area that i’ve got my focus on if that land use were transformed back into native grasslands that would make a huge difference in terms of the carbon
Footprint so my last slide is basically that there’s six and a half billion tons of carbon dioxide that are emitted by the united states there’s about a billion that is of tons that are available for carbon dioxide storage in the soil there’s not room for everybody to store
Their carbon dioxide in the soil it’s likely to be the least expensive uh long-term solution to removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it it’s going to be a little bit of like a game of musical chairs question is do you have yours yet and individuals can also
Participate in this system again i would refer you to texas coastal exchange and thank you that’s pretty much what i’ve got uh lily you want to take back over or carol thanks thanks so much jim appreciate it and carol if you want to um moderate what questions have come up
Sure just to let everybody know again you have a q a box at the bottom of your screen where you see the menu icons we have two questions submitted so far thank you karen and megan for submitting your questions the also another option is that you can post your questions in chat and
Our audience members we have 50 folks with us 54 participants total you can post your questions in the chat just like karen did so that if you have resources you can also chime in and answer in the dialogue on chat so thank you jim thank you for that talk
And one of the first questions we have is related to schools and school districts and so i’m going to turn the question a little bit to tap into your expertise as the leading environmental lawyer in the state of texas because karen is asking how would you apply these same concepts of circular economy
Solutions to school districts and do the solutions lie in policy or grassroots efforts well i think the answer is both uh grassroots efforts are important to get the policy thinkers thinking in in a particular direction so i think certainly the input from the parents certainly the input
From the taxpayers of the district can make a difference the ideas i’m talking about are not ideas that are necessarily well known or well accepted so i think a lot of it involves some education and understanding how the circular economy might the type of thinking might be better
Reflected i think part of it is everybody ought to at least be able to talk about what their carbon footprint is what are they doing about it i mean just against it’s not any and a lot of times we approach these things but why aren’t you doing this yeah it comes
As an attack as opposed to look let’s work together and figure these things out um we’re working with some churches we’re working with some different organizations really from the standpoint of just trying to understand what is this this what are the issues how do we work through them together
As opposed to we versus they or you’re doing it wrong you know we we tend to be accusatory rather than working together in sort of a community sense as opposed to uh i mean lawyers are the worst i mean we get we get paid for proving someone else is wrong this
Really isn’t about right and wrong this is about a different way of thinking a different way of approaching and so i think so much of this is in how you approach it and how you set it up in collaboration you’ve got some tremendous talent at the school district in the in the teachers
And a lot of these teachers are probably much further along than the administration has a clue but i think trying to tap into that expertise and at least figuring out if you know what’s out there but again i think it’s attitude attitude and attitude i just think we’ve approached as
Environment i’m an environmentalist i’m a card-carrying environmentalist and i think the environmental community has done this wrong in a lot of ways and that it’s always been you know we’re right you’re wrong it’s it’s almost like a conversion has to take place then that’s not it it’s about working through
To solutions in my mind and i think that’s kind of the key thank you for that yes working through solutions together and as a community effort so as you said a lot of teachers are further along and incorporating carbon footprint studies within their classroom we also have environmental
Conservation groups and that i can also post into the chat a little bit later or send as a resource to connect teachers to those other resources now we have a question from megan um how do you see incoming artificial intelligence machine learning automation impacting the overall climate change topic
Can these technologies help us make sense of the problem and provide solutions well i’m no expert on ai you know in a in a technological sense i mean certainly companies are doing all sorts of alternative futures analyses so you know there are algorithms being developed and
Perfected uh where you can begin to say okay if i go down this path and if i do this that a lot of if then scenarios can be uh evaluated very quickly using computer related uh kind of both techniques and then the learning part of that is
Trying to come in and then perfecting those uh various algorithms to come up with the fit that is a sophisticated approach that’s going to be used by a lot of these companies there’s a lot of data to crunch if you’re a company a lot of issues come up and so there’s a
There’s a lot of a lot of room for for machines to help us a lot but i don’t want to i mean i think to emphasize the machine is to de-emphasize our personal responsibility to both you know commit the machines to do the learning on these issues
I mean basically we’ve been in denial about climate change as a community as a nation for a long time i mean one might argue we’re still in denial at the state or the national level with at least some of our uh leadership and you know that’s what’s got to change
I mean we’ve got the tools to figure this out if we get the commitment to figuring it out i think that’s the point i so i i i mean hey i can help but i think the the real problem is back with uh our human intelligence and getting our
Intelligent humans to actually act like they’re intelligent and do something about it yes just again working together and our leaders our leadership is so key and important so who we vote for and also community action on the local level so i’m going to look at the chat because
We have a few questions in just when you post in the chat in the chat field when it says to you can select the audience so make sure that you select all panelists and attendees to post to all um because right now it is set to default for
Panelists only and so we have susie shapiro who posted some resources i shared that to all in the chat and karen does have another question about architecture and so it’s architectures in school so the guidelines for green energy design and architecture um she has attended some workshops and she doesn’t see
A model or standards included for schools so what would be a solution for a circular economy and working together to integrate those two well i’m not sure that i’ve seen a blueprint you know for school specifically myself i mean what i’m finding is that we have to
Search i mean i’ve got a group of students that have been working with me this summer and we’ve been looking at things like apartment complexes we have been looking at things like various types of businesses and you almost have to develop these these resources i mean i’m not saying they’re not out there
But they’re not necessarily easily accessible some are something you have to pay for access to uh and so yeah it would be lovely just to get the architects here and tell me there’s some fabulous green architects here in town they really understand these issues they know what they’re doing
You know to get them to begin to put out some guidelines and and some recommendations there are really in terms of standards out there i mean there are our precious few standards um in terms of like what we should be shooting for what are your best practices i think all
Of this is evolving it is evolving i know within hisd the houston independent school district is working very closely with the national wildlife federation and so the national wildlife federation has developed standards for teachers and schools to look at a rubric to grade themselves on either gold platinum silver levels
Of being green and sustainable so within their architecture and also within their curriculum and programming so i see another question from carolyn she says how does a land owner begin the process of soil storage carbon transaction for transformation of property well i mean i think that where we’re
Coming from with at least the baker institute standard is that measurement is a key and right now we don’t think there are sufficient kind of really good scientific studies out there to make a definitive statement about any particular soil type or kind of geographic area because there’s a lot of variation
Depending on rainfall depending on kind of the management style so we’re looking to measurement and for it’s gonna measurement costs money so it’s gonna be larger tracks that we’re going to start off with i think as we get better with this we’re going to improve the technology for
Soil carbon testing and we will develop methods that will make it much more accessible for every land owner now what landowners can do is they can begin to manage their properties in different ways i mean one of the common things we see is overgrazed properties
Um that is that’s one of the things that that certainly you’d want to try to try to change because you want to enhance your native vegetation you want that native root system which is really what we see as a premium there are grazing techniques regenerative grazing adaptive multipatic raising some of the
Concepts that alan savory kind of perfected many years ago that those types of things uh you know is what we really recommend is sort of the best management practice for up for for for ranch lands or for uh for lands that are large enough to be able to
To utilize those concepts uh you know for lands that are appearing for very small tracks we’re looking eventually to expand to those probably harder with grasslands than it is with individual trees frankly um also i did want to share with the audience artist boat which also does a lot about education
On native plants and the marshes that sequester carbon within their roots so that’s also a resource in addition to like this larger land and i i do have a question about that because the in the slide for feed export you said that that was most likely one of the uh target areas
That would have a great impact because uh raising crops to export do you think that sort of pasture-raised uh farming raising livestock to include native grasses would be a way to integrate sort of a circular solution within living within the means of the environment oh absolutely i think that’s exactly
What we’re suggesting is that that is the solution for the future if you think about just like a kind of current kind of mechanical agriculture which i know is not what urban harvest is about and i mean bob can talk i mean any of you three can talk forever
On these subjects but if you just think about using uh protractors to plow the the hydrocarbons that you use for that pesticides herbicides fertilizer all of the different things they kind of go into modern row crop agriculture and you do all of that to grow corn or grain
To then feed to livestock to fatten them up before you slaughter the livestock um and if you change that to the livestock feeding on the natural gas or natural grass what what we are seeing in the data and what we there is a definitive study coming out of arizona state university and they’re
They’re going through peer review now a lot of this data will be coming out later this year and early next year but that the methane emissions from cattle that are grass-fed is going to be much lower we believe the sequestration of carbon in these uh particularly in regenerative
Grazed branches is going to be much much higher than even you get with your standard native prairies um they’re replicating the action of the buffalo on those landscapes it’s a very interesting kind of way of looking at grazing and working through and and what we’re seeing is if you
Think about how many emissions there were with this kind of a mechanical egg alternative and where we’re headed with this more natural economy uh we’re going to be restoring hydrology we’re going to be restoring the carbon cycle we’re going to be removing the carbon dioxide emissions
I mean that is the circular economy so yeah very much so carol well thank you and so we now have a question from betsy longoria i’m sorry carol to interrupt you somebody uh i think andrea had a question on restorative justice do you want to take that one i think that was before
Fancy’s okay is that one in the chat yeah uh uh how do you uh jim consider what’s going on uh today particularly and in terms of global poverty how can you use the circular economy to have restorative justice and work on global poverty to get away
To get people to work together so many people are struggling just to survive and not empowered to work on this problem rather than appealing to just large landowners how can we create a personal sense of responsibility well i mean i think that that is going to be one of the
Much harder issues i mean to some extent uh we are looking for almost the easiest place to start which is working with the large emitters and working where we’ve got the biggest ability to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere uh beginning to integrate that in any kind of a concept of
Environmental justice kind of two ways of looking at it i mean the first way i look at it is the lower income community is going to be most heavily impacted across the world in our communities by climate change so anything that we’re doing to address climate change first and foremost
Is an environmental justice solution so i think just first and being i think if you look at and it may not be perceived this way today but in my assessment that is the largest long-term threat to the the lower income community is the climate change we’re looking at if you
Look at northeast houston and harris county and their impact from here from harvey and then from a melda there’s people that are still living in houses that have black mold inside uh i mean there are people that have not had a champion you know you know in some areas of town
You see people restoring their houses they’re elevating they’re elevating them up higher we’ve got people that are still living in these houses that have not been totally repaired so there are certainly different levels of issues but those rainfall patterns if we don’t solve the flooding problem in those
In those neighborhoods if we don’t buy out a lot of the houses that are deep in the floodplain now to me those are the solutions that you can come in at the neighborhood level and implement how do we get individuals to buy into the circular economy how do we get the individuals to
Appreciate these these uh if you will almost subtleties when they’re having difficulty making their daily bread and being able to survive i don’t have the answer to that yet but it is a absolute critical issue that we’ve got to address and incorporate yes thank you for that uh response and
Lilly thanks for chiming in on that question that’s a very important question and relevant and also uh for lower income communities access and work in the food system and strengthening our food system and supporting local farmers is all part of the circular economy absolutely yeah so it is 11 30 and
We are going to have to wrap it up because we’re at the end of our session um we can go over a little bit so uh those people can’t uh stay on uh sorry about that but we’ll continue to answer questions for those who are on
For the next uh 10 minutes or so sure okay so so we have a little bit of time for more questions betsy’s question question relates to uh public lands how do we look at our public lands differently do you see any changes that could be made in federal agencies such as the
Bureau of land management so going back to larger picture no it’s a it’s an excellent question and then i mean one of the things we’ve one of our member groups at baker institute is the western landowners association um and they have a lot of landowners that are leasing land for example from
Bureau of land management and most of the work that we’ve been doing at least in the way we’re structuring the standards at the bakery institute is that we require landowners to make commitments of no plowing no subsurface disturbance for a period of 10 years uh that’s going to be renewed each year
That there’s a transaction the federal government owns that land out on much of the what 50 percent of the western united states something like that huge huge federal ownership out there of course texas is private property but uh for the most part but once you get into new mexico colorado utah
Moving back out and open the to the west you’ve got a lot of federal lands i would think that the blm uh the bureau of land management changing its rules beginning to recognize long-term management plans for sustainable grazing for regenerative grazing and then incorporating that into essentially their lease structure
Is going to be one of the real key things but we’re going to be setting up a separate working group at baker institute just to address the problem of western lands and these uh really the com the commitments that unless he can make and begin to participate in this process because
There will be quite an interesting market we believe developing here that’s vibrant and if we could offer uh ranchers uh an additional 30 40 uh an acre of income most of them would do handsprings to be able to get that additional income really with with essentially practices that are also
Conducive to raising beef so i mean we’re not talking about one or the other we’re talking about layering benefits on top of each other to try to maximize income uh for the ranchers that are participating and ultimately for the farming farming community that might be able to participate in this
Okay so i’m looking at the chat i think that has answered most of the questions that have been submitted believe that’s all the questions that we have at this time again thank you jen for joining us and presenting all this valuable information so hopefully i’m hoping that we can
Continue this as a series and we do have the next part of which will be bob randall thank you so much jim and thank you for everyone who attended well good thank you for having me and i hope everyone enjoyed it