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Carl Hodges, accomplished Arizona climate scientist, dies at 84 after Alzheimer's diagnosis

Audrey Jensen
Arizona Republic
Carl Hodges was a prominent atmospheric scientist and innovator from Arizona. He passed away on Saturday, April 3, 2021, at 84 years old after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's, according to his family.

Carl Hodges, a longtime Arizona innovator and prominent atmospheric scientist who was one of the first to recognize and address climate change using seawater, died Saturday morning at 84 years old after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. 

Over his life-long career, Hodges was known for developing and pioneering systems to combat climate change, sea-level rises and poverty around the world by using seawater to develop agriculture and jobs.

Beth Hodges, Carl's wife of about 35 years, said he started suffering memory loss about a year ago. A few months ago, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and died on Saturday, shortly after his birthday, she said.

Carl was remembered by colleagues, friends and family as a humble, kind, and determined man who understood climate change early on and could turn simple resources into something useful, they said.

"He knew what was coming and he worked, country to country, to help people understand there were ways they could begin to address this," said Margaret Mullen, the former executive director at the Seawater Foundation. "He was just a very humble man who wanted to do everything he could to prevent a disaster in the global environment." 

In the '60s, Carl figured out how to desalinate seawater with solar in Mexico

Hodges was born in 1937 in Texas and moved to Phoenix with his family when he was 10 years old. His father was a horse trainer and trained horses for their neighbors Dr. Robert Flinn and Peggy Flinn of the Flinn Foundation, an organization that awards grants for bioscience, arts and culture and public university students in Arizona.

Dr. Flinn helped pay for Carl's college education as a family friend, which contributed to Carl's life as a prominent scientist, according to a spokesperson for the Flinn Foundation and Beth, who said Carl was the first in his family to go to college. Carl also worked in construction in the summers.

Carl graduated from the University of Arizona in 1959 with a degree in mathematics and then returned as a graduate student, joined the Institute of Atmospheric Physics and became a supervisor for the university's Solar Energy Research Lab, according to his friends and family. 

He studied efficient ways to water the desert by using resources like the ocean, which constitutes about 96.5% of Earth's water supply. As a graduate student, Carl, at 24, figured out how to desalinate seawater through a solar still purifier, which used the sun's heat to evaporate seawater.

His goal was to turn the desert green, according to a 1962 Saturday Evening Post magazine article, which deemed Carl a "water wizard." 

Through a Rockefeller Foundation grant, Carl and his team built inflatable greenhouses in Puerto Penasco in Mexico that used freshwater distilled from seawater for crops like cucumbers, squash, and tomatoes. He then traveled to discuss water and food production with communities around the globe. 

"Carl was a genius, who thought about the greatest, most urgent existential problems facing mankind," said Dino DeConcini, Carl's colleague and friend of 50 years. "He set out to do what he thought should be done. And he had the ability to garner resources, money and expertise." 

Carl Hodges, a prominent Arizona scientist and innovator for climate change solutions, is pictured at a seawater farm in Eritrea, Africa. Hodges died on Saturday, April 3, 2021, due to Alzheimer's at 84 years old.

Carl developed seawater farms to help impoverished communities

In 1967, Carl became the founding director for the Environmental Research Laboratory at the University of Arizona, where he spent much of his career and developed many projects utilizing the sea. In his next mission, Carl figured out how to use seawater to irrigate crops, plants, land and food.

In Eritrea, which sits along the Red Sea in Africa, Carl developed a seawater farm, which at one time had employed about 800 people and shipped 1 metric ton of shrimp every week, according to a Vanity Fair article about Carl's farm in 2007. 

"It was very, very important to have whole communities based on seawater and provide jobs for people in which they could be proud ... and have a good life for their families," Beth told The Arizona Republic.

Through a canal, seawater from the ocean moves inland and serves as a supply for fish, shrimp and mollusks. The seawater, filled with marine life excrement, is used as a fertilizer to irrigate nearby fields with salt-tolerant plants like salicornia, a high-protein food source with oil that can be used as biodiesel. The seawater also watered mangrove trees for lumber.

Carl was one of the first people to create an integrated seawater system to restore ecosystems, the Vanity Fair article said. Carl built the farm in Eritrea after developing and experimenting with a seawater farm in Mexico and researching more than 1,000 halophytes that could grow on seawater, Beth said.

Carl served as consultant for well-known climate projects

Throughout his career, Carl also founded and led the Seawater Foundation and was well known for his achievements like helping design The Land Pavilion at Walt Disney World’s EPCOT Center in Florida in the late 1970s.

He also served as a principal consultant for the University of Arizona's Biosphere 2, a $150 million enclosed, ecological research facility for controlled studies with seven major ecosystems. The Biosphere 2 was initially developed as a habitat that could duplicate life-sustaining features of Earth in a sealed environment for Mars, an Arizona Republic article said in 1986. 

"The eight 'biospherians,' who will live in the biosphere for two years, 'will be able to drink water out of a fountain that is the same water that went through the sewage system, the fish production system, etc., and be happy with it,'" said Carl in the 1986 article. 

Carl also consulted for well known organizations like NASA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research and had some of his earlier work in Mexico funded by Coca-Cola through the environmental lab at the university, his wife said. He also conducted trials in countries like Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, she added. 

Carl developed Solar Oasis project to reduce heat in downtown Phoenix

In the 1980s, Carl had taken an idea from the Middle East and proposed a Solar Oasis to help reduce heat and pollution in Phoenix, where he served as an advisor for a number of projects, said Terry Goddard, the former mayor of Phoenix and former Arizona attorney general.

''Solar, which had its first application in this state powering irrigation pumps in the 1910s, has suffered dramatic peaks and valleys, especially due to exaggerated expectations in times of crisis and times of doubt in periods of pessimism,'' Carl said in a Republic article from the 1980s. 

The 30-foot cool towers pulled hot air over water and down the towers. Air would then come out cleaner and about 40 degrees cooler at the base of the tower, Carl said in 1987. "It was designed to prove, and it did prove, that you could enjoy yourself outdoors in Phoenix in the height of the summer," said Goddard.

Marlon Brando talks with Carl Hodges of the Solar Oasis, A Summer Invitation group at the Civic Plaza in Phoenix.

The towers would also bring utility companies "relief from power demands," a Republic article wrote in 1987. "Using this technique could cut down on their summer peak months," Carl said in an interview. Most of the power in the oasis was provided by photovoltaics, which Carl said was "coming technology" for producing electricity and cheaper than using power lines.

A day before the opening of the project, Carl and Beth invited friends and colleagues to the towers for their wedding in 1987. "It was a surprise wedding," Beth said.

Solar Oasis stayed opened through the summer that year, Beth said. The goal was to expand the project in Phoenix, but the bond project failed so it did not continue on.

Carl received lifetime achievement award from Arizona State University

Workers erect a cool tower, developed by prominent Arizona scientist Carl Hodges to combat heat and pollution, at Civic Plaza in Phoenix in 1987.

In March 2020, a year before he died, Carl was surprised with a lifetime achievement award from the Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University, according to a university spokesperson.

His colleagues and family said his legacy was his work to desalinate water and "green" the desert and for turning common elements into "something extraordinary," like an alchemist, Goddard said.

"He was a giant, he was an extraordinary visionary," said Goddard. "A lot of the environmental movement today owes its roots to Carl Hodges."

Now, Beth said Carl has "opened the door" to implement his work on a large scale. She said he was a person who would "get down and get his fingernails dirty and dig ditches" and make sure what needed to be done for the people in the communities he helped got done.

"I'm very proud of the work, very proud of him," she said. "Seawater agriculture and seawater communities are going to now happen on the planet. That's an accomplishment that very few people have ever been able to do, to open up something that has the potential to be that broad, once it comes to scale."

Carl is survived by his wife, four children and 10 grandchildren, according to his family.

Reach the reporter at Audrey.Jensen@arizonarepublic.com or on Twitter at @Audreyj101.