Today the sky is blue. Does the future matter?

Today, I see a brilliant blue sky out my window. I can't tell that there' s more carbon dioxide up there then there was last year. It's tempting to think, "Why worry? Why change anything?"

I focus on local preparation for adaptation to a changing climate because I know, based on assurances by a preponderance of scientific investigation, that the impacts of climate change will come, probably sooner than we'd like to think. Most of us, it seems, choose to not think about it. And that spurs me further to do what I can to advance adaptation planning.

Who is responsible for educating and motivating the public about this stuff? There are countless other climate/green organizations, agencies and web sites. Al Gore got his Academy Award and Nobel Prize. The IPCC shared the Nobel and is now known worldwide for having substantiated the evidence of big problems ahead.

I have automatic web searches dumping more climate-related articleson my desktop every day than I can possibly read. The information to lead our actions is available and plentiful.

So why aren't things moving as they must to prevent catastrophic impacts in our future? You'll notice that none of the presidential candidates even mention climate change. Today's NY Times editorial urges Clinton and Obama to elevate their campaigns "to a serious debate about major issues," none of which happens to be climate related. This is absurd.

I'm thinking that the best way to penetrate the average U.S. citizen's crisis fatigue is to make the climate change threat a local one - to describe it in terms of what might happen in each person's back yard. The prospect of having to abandon one's lush landscaping or of upsetting one's ability to commute to work or of having high tide covering the local high school's athletic fields is a lot less abstract than presenting the threats as "global." Which is not to say that the global perspective deserves to be ignored; billions of lives are at stake.

And who should be bringing the challenge back home? I propose that it's our local elected leaders and public servants. Here in Marin, the local government has been very visible in promoting its Get Ready Marin initiative, which is aimed at elevating disaster preparedness across the county. Hundreds of weatherproof banners were produced and hung in high visibility locations, resulting in the training and recruiting of hundreds of neighborhood volunteers.

Marin should expand beyond emergency planning and bring the same level of urgency to long range planning. The future matters and for the first time in human history we have forecasting abilities that can warn us about emergencies long before they happen.

Virtual Civic Centers for Local Resilience and Climate Adaptation

Why aren't we doing more to get ready for climate impacts? We know they're coming. They may already be here. We've seen from Katrina how lack of adequate preparation can leave a place vulnerable to even the most obvious risks. We know these impacts won't just come through once and be over. Sure, we need to slash carbon emissions, but we can do that and learn to adapt at the same time. In fact, they should go together.

Having been following the news and the science so closely over the past year in my research for Climate Frog I've learned a few things that are calling me to action:

• The timeframe for many key forecasts has been compressing; the pace of change seems to be accelerating
  
• Many locations have had - and are still having - extreme weather that may as well be climate change impacts even if they're not referred to as such
• We're not going to reverse the climate change process and impacts for a long, long time
• We're going to go through at least a decades-long period of "unstable" and extreme weather
• Adaptation is defined by the location where climate impacts take place
  
• Local is where the rubber meets the road in terms of government involvement with its constituents
  
• Local governments have yet to begin addressing adaptation planning for their local conditions and populations
• The Web is being underused as a local information and collaboration medium on climate
  

I'm proposing that we begin building a global network of local civic center sites that operate through enlightened (or at least willing) local government agencies to:

1. inform their citizens about the latest science, news and commentary on climate change
   
2. involve them in risk assessment and civic deliberation on planning issues
   
3. support collaborative activities among citizens, businesses, groups and government
   

At the same time, these local sites will be networked to share knowledge and experience about risks and situations they have in common. All sites will contribute knowledge to a global knowledge base that anyone can draw from.

Yes, this is actually a serious business proposition. I'm taking the unorthodox path of announcing it here for anyone who might be interested in helping to get it off the ground. I'm calling it AdaptLocal, and here's a short version of the proposition.

Please circulate. Contact info is on the site or just comment here. Ciao.

Pew Center Paper on Adaptation Planning

Reinforcing my focus on local adaptation, the Pew Center released this new report: Adaptation Planning – What U.S. States and Localities are Doing. First, the report reinforces the need for adaptation, beyond mere mitigation.

While governments act to mitigate future climate change, they must also plan and act to address the impacts. This preparation includes risk assessments, prioritization of projects, funding and allocation of both financial and human resources, solution development and implementation, and rapid deployment of information sharing and decision support tools. Corresponding to the size of the challenge, impacts span entire communities and regions. As such, adaptation is dependent on numerous stakeholders from federal, state and local government, science and academia, the private sector, and community residents to develop solutions to complex problems for which prior solutions may not exist. Adaptation will require creativity, compromise, and collaboration across agencies, sectors and traditional geographic
boundaries.

It then emphasizes the importance of more localized approaches to adaptation, at the state and local levels, and reveals how little has been done at these levels to put adaptation planning into action.

This paper focuses on adaptation plans and actions in progress by state and local
governments. Many of these efforts are in their earliest stages. Some states are including adaptation planning within the scope of their state Climate Action Plans to address GHG emissions. A few others have recognized the need for separate and comprehensive adaptation commissions to parallel their mitigation efforts. Many are simply responding to climate impacts
as they occur, without necessarily attributing the impact to climate change.

And validating another of my beliefs - that local entities need to be networked to learn from one another, the reporting team writes:

Regardless of the basis for the adaptive response, states have much they can learn from each other, and from localities where adaptation is already occurring. While comprehensive and proactive adaptation planning is still in the early stages, as states complete their GHG mitigation plans, adaptation planning is gaining greater attention and resources from states and localities.

Cities - far more than counties - are beginning to adopt the adaptive approach to planning, but there are few examples cited in the report. King County, Washington, is one great exception that has been blogged here.

One county in particular, King County, Washington is a leader in the United States for adaptation planning. In 2006, King County formed an inter-departmental climate change adaptation team, building scientific expertise within their county departments to ensure climate change factors were considered in policy, planning and capital investment decisions. Partnering with the Climate Impacts Group,1 the county has already begun many adaptation efforts, including the development of water quality and quantity models and monitoring programs. The 2007 King County Climate Plan lays out detailed goals and actions for six (6) “Strategic Focus Areas” for adaptation efforts going forward.

Leading adaptive planning is clearly one of the reasons we have local government. That is the closest we citizens get to the people we elect to represent us and to work for our interests. It is also the most practicable level on which we citizens can converse with our government. We can show up at our local civic centers and speak directly to our planners and supervisors. We should also be able to communicate through the Web much more than we do. If there was ever a need for an effective Web-based interface between government and citizen, it is right here in the present, around local climate adaptation.

Sea Level Rise in a Countywide Plan

In a previous article I questioned whether my home county of Marin was looking closely enough at the impacts of sea level rise on the local built environment including homes, businesses and transportation routes. After having read through the latest draft of our new Countywide Plan, I feel a bit more at ease. I'm not sure if I had much to do with the incorporation of these statements, having grilled one of the county planners about the department's consideration of this elephant under the carpet, but at least the Plan acknowledges the looming danger. It does not, though, make any definitive declarations of zoning changes or plans for levee development. Such changes, when sea level rise is regarded as a conceptual future risk, would no doubt create a political firestorm with business owners, homeowners and Marin's lucrative real estate industry.

Again, I'll go on record to say that nothing in the Plan acknowledges the potential of amplifying feedbacks to speed up sea level rise beyond one meter by the year 2100. The next iteration of the Plan will surely include a reassessment. So here are a few excerpts from the Countywide Plan that other county governments might be interested in seeing:

The Role of Science
Achieving and maintaining sustainability requires keeping up with science. At times, land use and other public policy decisions operate within an institutional framework that does not reflect current scientific information. This is understandable as cutting edge science is always on the move. For example, the multiple causes and effects of climate change, described below, are now well established and current land use decision-making needs to reflect the link between fossil fuel consumption and sea level rise. Keeping up with science is an underlying principle of this Plan. Towards that end, employing evidencebased strategies combined with up-to-date scientific knowledge will provide sound guidelines for taking care of the land, our communities, and the generations that will follow us.
***
Are threats from environmental hazards increasing?
Many structures lie in hazardous areas, and land for new development may be even more hazardprone. With most easily buildable land already developed, construction increasingly is being proposed on the remaining marginal lots with difficult access and steep hillsides which are subject to slope instability and are vulnerable to rapid changes in fire behavior. Bluff erosion is threatening coastal homes built when bluff edges seemed safely distant. Vegetation that can fuel fires has increased because
natural fires have been suppressed, and residential development continues to encroach on wildlands. Proliferation of impermeable surfaces, alteration of natural drainage patterns, and the effects of climate change have increased the frequency and severity of flood events, and estimates indicate that sea level could rise as much as 36 inches by 2100. Maps 2-9 through 2-15 are utilized by the County in reviewing land use activities proposed in areas with hazard potential.
***
EH-3.3 Monitor Environmental Change. Consider cumulative impacts to hydrological conditions, including alterations in drainage patterns and the potential for a rise in sea level, when processing development applications in watersheds with floodin or inundation potential.

With increases in sea level due to global warming, flooding is predicted to increase in the future. Locating development in flood-prone areas can expose structures to damage and create risks for inhabitants in the immediate and surrounding areas.
***
EH-3.k Anticipate Sea Level Rise. Work with the U.S. Geological Survey, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, and other monitoring agencies to track bay and ocean levels; utilize estimates for mean sea level rise to map potential areas subject to future inundation (including by updating information about watershed channel conditions and levee elevations); and amend the Development Code to incorporate construction standards consistent with the policies of BCDS’s Bay Plan for any areas subject to increased flooding from a rise in sea level.
EH-3.l Limit Seawall Barriers. Limit repair, replacement, or construction of coastal sea walls and erosion barriers consistent with Local Coastal Program requirements, and as demonstrated to be necessary to protect persons and properties from rising sea level.

EH-3.n Plan for Sea Level Rise. Consider sea level rise in future countywide and community plan efforts. Consider revising Marin County Development Code standards for new construction and substantial remodels to limit building or require elevated buildings and infrastructure or other applicable mitigations in areas that may be threatened by future sea level rise as shown on maps released by the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission in February 2007.
EH-3.o Seek Levee Assistance. Pursue funding for levee reconstruction in those areas threatened by sea level rise, including but not limited to Santa Venetia.

Hard Choices for Local Government

If your community or region is going to prepare itself for CC impacts, it's going to need local politicians who are willing to educate themselves and advocate energetically in the face of more immediate issues. We're lucky to have a couple of staunch, environmentally informed local supervisors on our board of 5 members. Unfortunately 2 does not give them a majority vote.

The Marin Countywide Plan is being updated and one of the most contentious issues is the zoning of several hundred acres adjacent to an old but still operating rehabilitation center for boys, called the St. Vincent Home. Most of its property consists of a flat meadow between highway 101 and the San Francisco Bay - land that is vulnerable to sea level rise and that the county's Planning Commission had zoned as part of the the Bayfront Corridor where no development is to take place. That parcel of land is also one of the last remaining available areas where low-cost and senior housing could be built in the county.

If climate change looms as a serious threat in Marin's future, even more immediate is the dramatic demographic shift that will happen as we Boomers reach our senior years. Unless more senior housing is provided, many of us will be forced to relocate to other areas within the next 20 years. The over-65 demographic is by far the fastest growing one in Marin, and there has been a strong movement to reclaim the St. Vincent property from the Bayfront Corridor zoning.

Yesterday I attended the Board of Supervisors hearing where this zoning question was debated. Over 140 citizens made verbal comment, with environmentalists standing up for preserving the zoning and most of the seniors and low-cost housing advocates speaking for building out on the property. It was a wonderful demonstration of democracy in action. Too bad "our" side lost.

Yes, we do need to provide for the aging population, and yes, a levee could be built to protect the new development from a 1-meter rise in the level of the Bay. But these facilities will not help reduce Marin's huge ecological footprint by taking vehicles off the roads. The units will be isolated from any shopping areas or medical services and I'm sure more imaginative and convenient solutions could be found for locating the same facilities.

Most significant to me, though, were the fact that the County now acknowledges the threat of a 1-meter sea level rise and the quote by my local supervisor, Charles McGlashan, who told a reporter, "We are fighting, in my view, a race against potential extinction." Yes, those could very well be the stakes.

And as to the 1-meter sea level rise, I'm following up with McGlashan's aides to find out if that threat is being applied to the rest of the County's coastline. If it's recognized as a threat to a large, currently uninhabited wetland and meadow, it should certainly be considered as one in the many inhabited and developed coastal locations.

Climate Frog takes local educational turn

I've been blogging on climate change for all of six months now and I've learned a lot about the lay of the blogosphere and where the most pressing needs are, at least in the United States. I see that there are plenty of good sites with outstanding reporters and writers to keep us up to date on the current extreme weather situation, the global atmospheric carbon status and the lagging federal legislation regarding emissions limits. There's Al Gore's movie and the ongoing training of presenters who keep his famous slide show circulating to new audiences. I link to what I consider to be the best of these sites.

These are all wonderful efforts and they get my standing ovation. But I sense that there is too little effort in bringing it all back home, to the local level where citizens see climate change in terms of how it will impact them and their communities. As I've reported here, the local county officials could tell me nothing about climate-related contingency planning for Marin County. Yet, with all the stories about extreme weather - and with all the actual experiences that communities are going through due to extreme weather - you know that many of us have questions and concerns about when and how it's going to hit us and our lifestyles.

So Climate Frog is from here on out going to focus on answering local questions for the concerned citizen. This does not mean that I'm going to go out on the thin limbs and try to predict the future for each location and microclimate in the world. I'm not so dumb as to assume that's possible. But through research and sharing knowledge, I'm going make Climate Frog into a knowledge resource for doing your own local research and for getting more people involved locally so that your community can have its risks realistically assessed for climate change impacts.

I'll still report on climatic events and findings from around the world, but more with the perspective of the local community learning from the experiences of others. When we report on the flooding in England, it will be to learn how much damage can be done, how victims recover and respond to the disaster, and how government at all levels acts to protect its citizens.

I lean in the direction of local empowerment and believe that it's unwise today to depend on higher levels of government to deal competently with situations at the local level. We've seen (and continue to see) the debacle of Katrina. And though some works can only be handled at the federal and state levels, it's critical that citizens be the driving force for specialized preparation and response for the fast-evolving climate change situation.

Each of us, in our own separate locations, is vulnerable to different dangers from the potential of extreme weather. To plan our most secure futures, we need the most accurate information about the impacts we're likely to be dealing with. These can't be sugar coated by politics or business concerns. Neither of those social forces can influence the weather, excecpt by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and even those reductions won't influence the weather we'll see in the next 4 decades. We can only guide ourselves by trusted sources and objective science, and then make our most effective and practical choices.

Climate Frogs in your own backyard

I live in Marin County, California. Though it's rarely referred to as a peninsula, it could claim that description, with the Pacific Ocean defining its western boundary, the San Francisco and San Pablo Bays defining its eastern boundary and the Golden Gate Bridge crowning its southern end. Western Marin is separated from the rest of the county by a spine of coastal hills and Mt. Tamalpais. Much of the county has been preserved as park land, open space and agricultural trusts, and most of that land makes up West Marin. There is little land there for development and its population is very small. But most of that limited development is either vulnerable to sea level rise or on land that is vulnerable to landslides or forest fires - the byproducts of weather extremes.

East Marin is much more populous, but its residential and business areas are likewise vulnerable to climate change. I've begun to research county planning to find evidence that, in this region of above average education and income, some forward-thinking precautions are being taken. Slides and fires are perennial threats everywhere in California, and all residents have been informed for years about best practices to reduce risk from these threats. But sea level rise has been all but ignored. In fact, this past March marked the first time that the problem has been brought up for public discussion.

March 2007
Hearings before the Planning Commission on the Marin Countywide Plan are currently taking place. The Commission has recommended that the Baylands Corridor be expanded to protect a larger portion of the interior coast. Using Bay Conservation and Development Commission maps on potential sea-level rise, the Commission has recommended removing high-density development potential from areas subject to future oceanic flooding.

One quarter of humans vulnerable to sea surge

Just to put a rough number on the portion of humanity that might decide to move to higher ground (or build some pretty damn impressive sea walls), a new report from a team at the U.S. Geological Survey reveals that

More than 1 billion people live in low-lying areas where a sudden surge in sea level could prove as disastrous as the 2004 Asian tsunami

Add to that the number of people living less than 100 feet above current sea levels and you get a quarter of the world's population.

But just to provide some perspective to Americans, the article ends with this tidbit from Usery:

A 30-meter surge in Florida would leave the whole state covered except for a little plateau area.

Does this mean that we can expect sea surges and/or tsunamis that rise up to 100 feet? Well, sort of...

The team also found that a 100-foot (30-meter) rise in sea level would cover 3.7 million square miles of land worldwide. A rise of just 16 feet would affect 669 million people and 2 million square miles of land would be lost.

Sea levels are currently rising about 0.04 to 0.08 inches (1 to 2 millimeters) each year, making it unlikely such a scenario would suddenly occur across the globe, Usery [E. Lynn Usery, who led the team] said.

But he said 10,000 years ago sea levels rose 20 meters in 500 years -- a relatively short span -- after the collapse of the continental ice sheets.

"It can happen in a short period of time if we look at the historical data," Usery said.

Using a 500-year example is probably not going to motivate many people at the 50-plus elevation to move. But that billion who are within range of a good-sized tsunami (admittedly not a climate-related event, but becoming more of one as sea levels rise) should seriously be considering a change of scene. The problem for the vast majority of these people is that their livelihoods depend on being at sea level.

Santa Cruz looks ahead

Santa Cruz, California, located on the Pacific coast between San Francisco and Monterey, is known for its local political activism. It's probably one of the most progressive localities anywhere, so it should come as no surprise that it's ahead of the curve in preparing for a rising sea level.

In this article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, we learn some helpful stuff for climate frogs. For instance, someone has been surveying cities and their governments to find evidence of climate impact preparation.

"People are worried, there's a readiness to take action, but hardly anything is being done," said Susanne Moser, a research scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., who surveyed 300 planners, public works engineers and other officials from city and county governments.

Santa Cruz is rare, but is not alone as a California city planning mitigation projects. The article points to Sonoma, Berkeley and San Luis Obispo as other cities with global warming plans. But planning is only in its earliest stages, with little practical traction yet.

Those surveyed said it's tough to act due to lack of money and other obligations.

"It's not that they need better information," Moser said, "it's that few have time to think about it. There's too much else on their plate"

And we learn about other bureaucratic obstacles to planning and implementation.

Complicating the problem is that responsibility for coastal management — protecting homes, providing water, preserving natural habitat — is spread over multiple state agencies, state commissions and local governments.

Moser's survey has prompted the writing of new legislation in California to create mandated planning across the state.

Legislation proposed by Assemblyman John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, would force cities to better prepare for impacts associated with climate change, such as sea-level rise, by revising local plans and seeking state funding for communities to understand, mitigate and adapt to climate change.

"We're learning quickly how important it is to expand the climate-change discussion to include preparing for future impacts, while also working today to reduce consumption that results in global warming," Laird said in a statement.

It's interesting to note that Santa Cruz is planning for what some consider to be worst-case scenarios - the melting of icecaps on both Greenland and Antarctica.

Most of Santa Cruz will be submerged if Antarctica and Greenland's ice sheets calve or melt entirely, a scenario that climate scientists say will play out in anywhere from 100 to 1,000 years if current trends continue.

Mission Street would be the shoreline if glacial melt follows even the more
conservative projections of some researchers, causing sea levels to rise 70 feet.

Who took my microclimate???

The second home has become a mainstream asset over the past 40 years. No longer restricted to the elite, the vacation home - located in a place with a climate that offered relief from wherever your first home happened to be - is now as much of the American lifestyle as boat-owning, the multi-car family and having the latest TV technology. But one of the first social effects of climate change in the U.S. may be the abandonment of the getaway.

Take Summerhaven, Arizona on Mount Lemon, for example, looming 9,000 feet over Tuscon - for years offering cool relief from summer in the city below. People built homes, towns, precious little tourist areas with shops and restaurants. They'd created a permanent community where only ancient native Americans had camped temporarily before. A month-long fire in 2003 - fueled by dead, beetle-infested pines whose fatal arc was started by drought and unusually warm temperatures, took out many of the cabins and commercial buildings.

Now, according to an article in the NY Times (registration required), climate change may be about to convince most of the remaining hardcore residents to abandon their erstwhile paradise.

One resident was quoted: “We used to have four seasons. Now we have two. I love this place dearly, and this is very hard for me to watch.”

“A lot of people think climate change and the ecological repercussions are 50 years away,” said Thomas W. Swetnam, director of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “But it’s happening now in the West. The data is telling us that we are in the middle of one of the first big indicators of climate change impacts in the continental United States.”

This blog isn't jumping the gun at all. We're right on time.