Major H2O Utilities Want Fed Research Help

Now we're talking. But will the Feds respond, at least before Bush is gone?

Quoting from Climate Science Watch:

An alliance of eight major water utilities that provide drinking water to 36 million people is calling on the US Climate Change Science Program and the science community to aid in assessing and managing risks to water infrastructure and supply from impacts of warming, diminishing snowpack, bigger storms, drought, rising sea level, and potential abrupt climate change.

This is about the US Global Change Research Program, which the Bush Administration has done its best to disempower. The alliance calls itself, logically enough, the Water Utility Climate Alliance, and they need "access to the best possible climate change research as they prepare to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure over the next 15 years."

OK, water comes first, especially for the regions most threatened by water shortages. (Interestingly, neither Georgia's nor Alabama's water utilities are among them.) But wouldn't just be right for the federal program to fund research to provide the best risk assessment for all potential climate impacts across the U.S.?

A science teacher simplifies your risk management decision

Leave it to a guy who teaches science, probably to high schoolers, to clarify the risk assessment process for taking action on global warming, or as he posits the threat, "climate destabilization." If you've been reading my blog for while, you'll have noticed that I've tried to frame climate adaptation in much the same way, but this guy nails it.


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Americans deserve a "full soup-to-nuts national assessment"

Here's some evidence showing why we can't depend on the current Federal government to assess the risks we face from global warming and let us know about them.

Exhibit A: The Administration refuses to issue a mandated public assessment of the risks of climate change.
Exhibit B: When ordered to comply by a Federal judge, the Administration does all it can to weasel out of the order.

As it turns out, the Global Change Research Act, which mandated the assessment, did not specify the form that the assessment should take, so the Administration is likely (based on its history with regards to global warming) to issue "assessments" that disemble and confuse rather than clarify our situation.

This led to Richard Moss, the former head of Bush's Climate Change Research Program to speak out against the low standards the Administration is setting for its responsibility to the public.

As reported by Climate Science Watch:

Richard Moss, who ran the climate change office under Bush until 2006, called it "unfortunate" that the ruling criticized the timing of the reports but failed to force CCSP to integrate its findings. "The Administration should be held to a higher standard than just what a judge finds follows the letter of the law," says Moss, adding that Americans deserve a "full soup-to-nuts national assessment" of how climate change will impact them. [emphasis added]

Maybe the Administration will shock us by offering us some information that is helpful and scientifically accurate. Even so, it won't provide us with the local assessment that we need to make our own plans.

Why the grassroots matter

You Should Know
It's well worth your while to have some idea of what may be in store for you and your hometown in a climate changing future. Finding, gathering and acting on that knowledge before the impacts of global warming arrive at your door may save your home, your town, your life.

Your Governments are Failing You
Your federal government is not helping you accumulate that knowledge. In fact, the current Administration has actively stifled the distribution of scientific findings on global warming. State governments are not much better at educating us, preparing us, protecting us and keeping us informed about this critical situation. [I'd like to hear from you about any exceptions to that.] And as we all know, the Feds seem to have their hands full with a war.

This is Not Necessarily Long Range Planning
I hate to write this, but if current trends continue a lot of people are going to end up leaving the homes they live in today, for reasons of climate change. It may be the threat of destruction or the destruction itself, but just as flooding and drought are forcing people to reassess their situations this summer in England and Australia and the American Midwest, many more people will have to do so in the not-so-distant future.

I realize that such a statement is going to set off an emotional reaction in those of you currently invested in your homes, neighborhoods and regions. I don't blame you; it's an outrageous scenario. But if you live where a 2-foot rise in sea level will put your front yard under water at high tide; or if you live in a desert only made habitable by importing water from a long distance, then you should really know and understand the scientific assessments of your risks.

Of course, that's oversimplifying things. If you live anywhere in a region where those conditions are present, you'll be affected to a greater or lesser degree by the disruptions.

The Climate, It Are A-Changin'
We're no longer living in a benign climatic condition, where extreme weather visited us rarely enough that we didn't have to worry. We're currently seeing records broken for heat, rainfall, drought and storm intensity all over the planet. We're losing the overall stability that characterized weather for as long as we've been keeping records. You can no longer take for granted that the weather patterns you've lived with in your location for 50 years will be your weather patterns for the future.

The Grassroots Matter
For democracy to work, the citizens need to be involved. It's the informed citizenry that does the best job of choosing its representatives. Sometimes it takes an especially strong motivation to get citizens to that level of involvement.

I believe we last saw that when America entered World War II. Global warming has the potential to be much more destructive than the Axis Powers. We, the people, need to mobilize not only to change our energy habits, but to prepare for the global warming effects that are already heading down the tracks toward us.

If we inform ourselves about the risks we face, we make ourselves less dependent on dysfunctional government. We also get to understand just how dysfunctional our representative bodies have become, and how important it is that we choose representatives with brains, courage and integrity.

Climate change in your backyard

Are you curious about how climate change will affect you and your home location? I’m sure that’s in the backs of many people’s minds today, with so much talk of global warming and so many news stories of floods, drought and record-breaking heat.

Right now I can’t offer any definite answers, but I’m going to provide some clues and resources so that you can track the most current, most relevant and most accurate scientific data available that pertains to your region, if not your actual county or town.

I’m also going to continue to report news about climate-related impacts around the world and how those are being dealt with by the unfortunate souls who happen to be in their way. Between the science and the facts on the ground, you may be able to gather enough information to take some protective or preventative local action. At least I hope to motivate you to demand that your public officials provide you with ongoing risk assessments based on the most current science.

The science is advancing rapidly and so are some of the key factors that will determine tipping points in climate change. On the global level, we know that a lot of formerly permanent ice is melting at an accelerating rate. We’re also seeing some of the predicted markers of global warming appearing sooner than expected – extended droughts, extreme flooding, major heat waves. But the science of localized forecasting is still immature and not tailored for use by those of us who are not climatologists.

Here’s an example. This is an article posted 10 days ago on RealClimate, probably the most valuable hard science blog for following climate change. It’s titled Regional Climate Projections and it describes the different climate models that were incorporated into the findings of the fourth assessment report from the IPCC. The climate models are all structured to evaluate global processes, so breaking them down into regionally relevant reports is difficult. The closest we get, in this article, to localized projections is the assessment for North America, and here’s where the language barrier comes into play.

A number of RCM-based studies provide further regional details (North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program). Despite improvements, AR4 also states that RCM simulations are sensitive to the choice of domain, the parameterisation of moist convection processes (representation of clouds and precipitation), and that there are biases in the RCM results when GCM are provided as boundary conditions rather than re-analyses.

Radiative-convective models (RCMs) and general dirculation models (GCMs) are beyond what us non-scientists are trained to understand. But the current drought and heat in the American Southwest are conditions that these models forecast, as is the intensifying of all weather conditions. We’re also seeing the migration of the average temperature lines toward the poles. Growing seasons are longer. Regions that have always had hard freezes during the winter are seeing warmer winters.

So I’m going to start simply and safely by emphasizing the climatic vulnerabilities of certain geographical situations. If you live near the ocean, you’re sea level infrastructure and housing is at risk. If you live on a floodplain, you’re risk of flooding may be increasing. If you live where summers are hot, look for them to get hotter. If you live in a desert environment, expect it to become drier.

But you can only do so much as an individual. Your public officials should be way ahead of you in assessing local risk. They should have access to the latest science and should be interpreting it for you, putting together contingency and action plans appropriate to the risks and informing you – their constituents – about them. You may need to do some of the initial groundwork to stimulate them to perform these duties, and I’m here to help you get that groundwork together.

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.