Climate Change Effect On Golf Courses

[Tom_Doak]

Steve,
Actually it might have been.  I am not home to check the date on my scorecard  but I have been to Shanghai several times and the smog has always been bad even that far outside the city (as you know the city keeps going and going even two hours drive away from downtown on the river). 

Mike,
I remember playing Desert Forest many years ago (highly doubt it is like this now).  I called the pro about playing as it was in October and asked him about the status of overseeding.  He said, “Mr. Fine, we don’t overseed at Desert Forest as we believe brown grass plays just as well as green grass.”  I knew I was going to love the place which I certainly did.  Sadly I have not been back but feel I will very much miss the original design.

Desert Forest is indeed a special place.


Talking Stick would be a great case study for not overseeding .. they could do one course and not do the other.  It's always amazing the couple weeks before oversees out there and I always wonder why they do it.  It plays so much better fast & firm.

Part of the reason they don't overseed at Desert Forest is that Carefree is at higher elevation and the winter grass sticks around for longer in the spring, which is detrimental to the health of the bermudagrass underneath.  So they're not just being altruistic.


I'm not sure if that $4k per acre figure you quoted is correct -- it might be more than that! -- but unfortunately, the many courses that do overseed feel like it is worth the expense.  They make it up by charging you cart fees for running over that green turf that you'd wear out if it was all brown.  It would be much easier to give up overseeding if golfers would give up driving their golf carts on the fairways.

[Mike Wagner]

Mike Wagner -

You can start here:

https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

DT,


p.s. Remember, there are still so-called authorities who deny the Holocaust happened or that smoking is bad for your health.

David -


Are you saying that I'm saying there's no such thing as global warming?  Um, maybe go back and read what I wrote .. possibly with a half open mind. Not denying it's happening but I will question data all day long ... and the media .. and alarmists who can't think for themselves.

[JLahrman]

David -

Are you saying that I'm saying there's no such thing as global warming?  Um, maybe go back and read what I wrote .. possibly with a half open mind. Not denying it's happening but I will question data all day long ... and the media .. and alarmists who can't think for themselves.

Mike, I'm not sure anyone is sure what you're saying. Perhaps David was giving you a resource where you could learn some of the names of the scientists since apparently that's important to you? I admit, I can't name any of the scientists who determined that asbestos is a cause of lung cancer or the scientists who developed a measles vaccine, but with the amount of peer reviewing that occurs in the scientific world and the fact that scientists love to prove each other wrong, I'm quite comfortable with the conclusions.


So when you ask "Do you think we should rely solely on all these scientific experts no one can name and just take their word for everything", I think that when the scientific community reaches such broad consensus on an issue then the answer is generally yes. I don't have a scientist fantasy team so I don't know their names or study their stats, but peer-reviewed research is available and it has names on it. I'm not sure what you consider thinking for yourself (and at this point I have to try hard to not associate that term with some of my idiot relatives doing their own research on the COVID vaccine by posting memes), but I'm also not sure that reading Bjorn Lomborg counts. The caveats on his work are extensive. Sometimes someone is called a hack because he is a hack. See also: Food Babe.

Scientific conclusions can evolve course...a few years ago I read an article in National Geographic about our evolving understanding of fat. Why the medical community was once worried about fat, then the focus became saturated fat, and now it is trans fat. And why this corresponded to margarine being supposedly better than butter but now we're back to butter being better than margarine. It was surprisingly interesting.

Are there other widely held scientific conclusions or recommendations that you are as suspicious of?
 
 
 

[Thomas Dai]

This Fried Egg podcast with Parker Anderson is worth a listen - https://thefriedegg.com/ - I can’t seem to provide a direct link to it but the particular episode is entitled as being about bees but it’s a lot more than that.
Atb

[Anthony_Nysse]

Steve,
Actually it might have been.  I am not home to check the date on my scorecard  but I have been to Shanghai several times and the smog has always been bad even that far outside the city (as you know the city keeps going and going even two hours drive away from downtown on the river). 

Mike,
I remember playing Desert Forest many years ago (highly doubt it is like this now).  I called the pro about playing as it was in October and asked him about the status of overseeding.  He said, “Mr. Fine, we don’t overseed at Desert Forest as we believe brown grass plays just as well as green grass.”  I knew I was going to love the place which I certainly did.  Sadly I have not been back but feel I will very much miss the original design.

Desert Forest is indeed a special place.


Talking Stick would be a great case study for not overseeding .. they could do one course and not do the other.  It's always amazing the couple weeks before oversees out there and I always wonder why they do it.  It plays so much better fast & firm.

Part of the reason they don't overseed at Desert Forest is that Carefree is at higher elevation and the winter grass sticks around for longer in the spring, which is detrimental to the health of the bermudagrass underneath.  So they're not just being altruistic.

They are on some form of rotation for overseeding since the renovation on 2013. In fact, they were closed from Sept 27-Oct 18th for seeding.


Here is a video from their former Superintendent.


Desert Forest Golf Club 2014 Overseed Slo-mo - YouTube

[Mike Wagner]

David -

Are you saying that I'm saying there's no such thing as global warming?  Um, maybe go back and read what I wrote .. possibly with a half open mind. Not denying it's happening but I will question data all day long ... and the media .. and alarmists who can't think for themselves.

Mike, I'm not sure anyone is sure what you're saying. Perhaps David was giving you a resource where you could learn some of the names of the scientists since apparently that's important to you? I admit, I can't name any of the scientists who determined that asbestos is a cause of lung cancer or the scientists who developed a measles vaccine, but with the amount of peer reviewing that occurs in the scientific world and the fact that scientists love to prove each other wrong, I'm quite comfortable with the conclusions.


So when you ask "Do you think we should rely solely on all these scientific experts no one can name and just take their word for everything", I think that when the scientific community reaches such broad consensus on an issue then the answer is generally yes. I don't have a scientist fantasy team so I don't know their names or study their stats, but peer-reviewed research is available and it has names on it. I'm not sure what you consider thinking for yourself (and at this point I have to try hard to not associate that term with some of my idiot relatives doing their own research on the COVID vaccine by posting memes), but I'm also not sure that reading Bjorn Lomborg counts. The caveats on his work are extensive. Sometimes someone is called a hack because he is a hack. See also: Food Babe.

Scientific conclusions can evolve course...a few years ago I read an article in National Geographic about our evolving understanding of fat. Why the medical community was once worried about fat, then the focus became saturated fat, and now it is trans fat. And why this corresponded to margarine being supposedly better than butter but now we're back to butter being better than margarine. It was surprisingly interesting.

Are there other widely held scientific conclusions or recommendations that you are as suspicious of?
 
 

There's so much in here, and it honestly doesn't really matter to me.  The only question I really care about: what are you willing to give up if you believe golf has an impact on climate change?

[David_Tepper]

Mike -

For starters, I would certainly be willing to give up "wall to wall" green courses.

The Del Monte course in Monterey, CA stopped watering the first 100-120 yards off of every tee box over a year ago. It is a start and I am OK with that.

DT

[Jim Sherma]

It's not that golf as a game has an impact on climate change, other than good. We can all agree that marginally maintained open space is a net good when compared to modern development over the same land. The question is whether certain aspects of maintenance decisions negate this impact. These can include carbon footprint of excess mowing and chemical inputs. Water usage, taking into account the trade off of potable vs effluent vs net impact on the underlying aquifers. I'm sure there are other instances of maintenance choices that result in a carbon footprint that are peripheral to the playing of the game itself.


The question was asked what we would be willing to give up. Certain levels of maintenance will probably become cost ineffective in general. The impact of alternating periods of excess and insufficient rain will probably create stretches requiring a triage prioritization of "need to have" versus "nice to have" maintenance decisions (e.g. need to have - reasonable putting surfaces with full turf coverage free of disease and cleared of any flood damage, nice to have - healthy tees, more consistent rough and bunkers, over manicured landscaping around the property). Travel will probably become more dear as well, meaning that more of our golf will likely be played closer to home.

[JLahrman]

There's so much in here, and it honestly doesn't really matter to me.  The only question I really care about: what are you willing to give up if you believe golf has an impact on climate change?

Apologies for putting so much in there that doesn't matter LOL. You've been bouncing back and forth between asking people specifics about what they've done or would be willing to do, and making big statements about the scientific community.


If you want to swing the pendulum back to the former, I'm not at all sure that golf has that much of an impact on climate change, but certainly as a game that takes up a lot of land there is a responsibility to be a good steward. Water usage especially in arid areas should be a concern. I'm probably not a great example for what to give up as it relates to golf, because I barely play golf anymore.


The travel (as Alex mentioned) is something that all of us could be more mindful of - travelling for golf is probably more of a concern than actually playing the game. It's easy for us all to say we've traveled less over the past couple of years thanks to COVID, but I haven't flown in over two years and I plan to do less of it both for work and personal travel. But given the amount of fuel used by a typical commercial flight, and that an estimated 80-85% of the world's population has never taken even one flight, flying around the globe simply to hit a ball around a field is a energy-consuming luxury that we could cut back on.


As far as other actions, I installed solar panels on my home five years ago. Yes I know it takes resources to build solar panels. They provide about 93% of the power for my home. Next steps would be a solar water heater and setting up a rainwater harvester, I'm looking into those.


I've been a vegetarian for 12 years. The carbon footprint for meat production compared to grain is eye-opening. There are other reasons I became vegetarian but lowering my carbon footprint is one of them, especially because we try to eat local and in-season as much as possible.


I work from home entirely, no commuting anymore. Not sure that avoiding sitting in traffic really counts as a sacrifice! I do have three kids, which is probably not the best thing for using fewer resources, but we bike them to school about 60% of the time.


Reducing consumption of single-use plastics, composting, adjusting the thermostat seasonally, etc. all make a difference. Pretty much everyone on this board is big time first world so it's really hard to not consume more than our share but it's also not that hard to reduce your footprint.

[Mark_Fine]

Most people think that there’s not much they can do themselves to change or help the climate or the planet.  Who thinks by not taking a plastic bag when you buy a pack of gum or a single item (a bag that you’re going to immediately throw out when you get home) or using one less plastic water bottle when you could use something that’s reusable, can make a meaningful difference.  I always remember the story about a huge storm that washed up thousands of starfish on the beach. After the storm huge groups of people came down to see the sight and everybody just stood there in awe.  Finally one young boy decided to walk down on the beach and started to pick up one starfish at a time and toss them back into the sea. Finally someone yelled down to him, what do you think you’re doing, there’s hundreds of thousands of starfish!  How can you make a difference?  The boy turned around, picked up another starfish and tossed it back in the sea and said, well I made a difference for that one! After that everybody started to come on the beach and toss the starfish back into the sea! 
[/size]
[/size]Golf courses can and some do play their small part and set a good example as well.

[Peter Pallotta]

I've talked with a few people over recent years who are deeply worried about and shaken up by climate change. I don't mean they're 'intellectually' or 'politically' or 'philosophically' troubled, I mean they are 'viscerally' afraid -- in their bodies. And fear is the right word. They are fearful that the world 'will end' not with a bang but a whimper, i.e. not by an single climate-change-related cataclysmic disaster or dramatic one time rise in temperatures or sea levels, but by a thousand cuts:

ever-drier/parched agricultural lands here, ever-wetter/flooding populations centers there, more and more intense tornados ripping through America's heartland, more and more intense hurricanes barreling into the southeast states and causing billions (and then trillions) of dollars in damage -- inexorably, continually straining personal psyches and community bonds and global resources, just as at the same time the press of migrants from regions of the world even more impacted by climate change gets more intense, and fresh water becomes as valuable as gold.

Yes, yes, the more 'strong minded' and 'self-reliant' among us will say: "But even if that's all true -- and we're not certain that it is -- we'll adapt, and continue to adapt, and finds new ways to grow enough food for everyone and people will move to 'higher ground' etc etc just as we always have ". But the sensitive 'frightened' people I've talked to, listening not to their heads or their egos or their pocket books or to talk-radio rhetoric or to the language of mocking self-righteousness or cynical hypocrisy but to their bodies, are very worried about the harsh and painful times that lie ahead.

This is not to say we should throw up our hands and do nothing, of course, nor does it mean that we should lose hope and start panicking (not least because there's really no place to run): just to note that the form that climate change might take - and so far seems to be taking -- isn't as clear cut as most seem to want to make it. I listen to scientists; they seem to know. But the more worrisome predictions come from those 'outside the debate' as it were.

[Bob Montle]

There are several problems with climate change mania.  For example;


1st problem:  From CNN.   Right, enough said.
2nd problem:  Statistics prove extreme weather events are declining and not increasing
3rd problem:  Sea levels have been increasing for millions of years and the rate of increase is decreasing.
4th problem:  Temperature records are so incomplete and have been fudged so much in the past twenty years that NO-ONE can say what the temperature changes have been.  Only thing which is known with certainty is that temperatures in the USA in the 30's were higher than the present temperatures.
Nothing to see here, move along!

ps: There are those who make this a political argument. It isn't.  It is a scientific argument and as such the facts speak for themselves.  Just don't go to Fox or CNN for your facts, please!

[astavrides]

There are several problems with climate change mania.  For example;


1st problem:  From CNN.   Right, enough said.
2nd problem:  Statistics prove extreme weather events are declining and not increasing
3rd problem:  Sea levels have been increasing for millions of years and the rate of increase is decreasing.
4th problem:  Temperature records are so incomplete and have been fudged so much in the past twenty years that NO-ONE can say what the temperature changes have been.  Only thing which is known with certainty is that temperatures in the USA in the 30's were higher than the present temperatures.
Nothing to see here, move along!

ps: There are those who make this a political argument. It isn't.  It is a scientific argument and as such the facts speak for themselves.  Just don't go to Fox or CNN for your facts, please!

ok, I'll bite. Where did you go to get these, uh, facts?

[Sean_A]

There's so much in here, and it honestly doesn't really matter to me.  The only question I really care about: what are you willing to give up if you believe golf has an impact on climate change?

Apologies for putting so much in there that doesn't matter LOL. You've been bouncing back and forth between asking people specifics about what they've done or would be willing to do, and making big statements about the scientific community.


If you want to swing the pendulum back to the former, I'm not at all sure that golf has that much of an impact on climate change, but certainly as a game that takes up a lot of land there is a responsibility to be a good steward. Water usage especially in arid areas should be a concern. I'm probably not a great example for what to give up as it relates to golf, because I barely play golf anymore.


The travel (as Alex mentioned) is something that all of us could be more mindful of - travelling for golf is probably more of a concern than actually playing the game. It's easy for us all to say we've traveled less over the past couple of years thanks to COVID, but I haven't flown in over two years and I plan to do less of it both for work and personal travel. But given the amount of fuel used by a typical commercial flight, and that an estimated 80-85% of the world's population has never taken even one flight, flying around the globe simply to hit a ball around a field is a energy-consuming luxury that we could cut back on.


As far as other actions, I installed solar panels on my home five years ago. Yes I know it takes resources to build solar panels. They provide about 93% of the power for my home. Next steps would be a solar water heater and setting up a rainwater harvester, I'm looking into those.


I've been a vegetarian for 12 years. The carbon footprint for meat production compared to grain is eye-opening. There are other reasons I became vegetarian but lowering my carbon footprint is one of them, especially because we try to eat local and in-season as much as possible.


I work from home entirely, no commuting anymore. Not sure that avoiding sitting in traffic really counts as a sacrifice! I do have three kids, which is probably not the best thing for using fewer resources, but we bike them to school about 60% of the time.


Reducing consumption of single-use plastics, composting, adjusting the thermostat seasonally, etc. all make a difference. Pretty much everyone on this board is big time first world so it's really hard to not consume more than our share but it's also not that hard to reduce your footprint.

Very true. As I say, the question isn't how much, but how. The argument over how much humans negatively impact the earth is a waste of time. Everybody can agree that we can choose to do better. It's not complicated.

Ciao

[Pete_Pittock]

There are several problems with climate change mania.  For example;


1st problem:  From CNN.   Right, enough said.
2nd problem:  Statistics prove extreme weather events are declining and not increasing
3rd problem:  Sea levels have been increasing for millions of years and the rate of increase is decreasing.
4th problem:  Temperature records are so incomplete and have been fudged so much in the past twenty years that NO-ONE can say what the temperature changes have been.  Only thing which is known with certainty is that temperatures in the USA in the 30's were higher than the present temperatures.
Nothing to see here, move along!

ps: There are those who make this a political argument. It isn't.  It is a scientific argument and as such the facts speak for themselves.  Just don't go to Fox or CNN for your facts, please!

3rd Problem.  Actually they have been rising for billions of years since there were no oceans or water when the earth formed,
The rate of increase is decreasing with that time frame, but if you only look at the last few decades the argument becomes specious with man (man made islands) and nature (volcanic activity) taking space away from water,