USA Today on Climate Changes

Our national daily newspaper calls its section "Weather and Climate Science," and on the Feb 17 page from that section it provides two interesting features.

First is an animated map of the Northeast U.S. that illustrates how scientific projections see local climate changing over the course of this century under reduced emissions and constant emissions scenarios. Worst case for Massachusetts: its climate toward the end of the century will be like South Carolina's climate today. Imaging adapting to THAT! The original version of the map can be found in this report by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Second is an article inspired by the latest update from the Pew Center for Global Climate Change (PDF), which surveys cities, states and counties that have begun pursuing adaptation planning. All of these places are, in turn, inspired by their membership in ICLEI, which has focused for years on sustainability planning but has begun to emphasize adaptation planning.

The clear leader in local sustainability and adaptation planning is King County, WA, whose Executive, Ron Sims, has launched these initiatives and was just named to the board of ICLEI-USA.

The Flooded Northwest

There have been more than a few incidents of flooding on Route 101, running through my home county of Marin. These have always been the result of torrential rains - which raised the level of Larkspur Creek - and high tides combined with some storm surge. It's been deep enough in the northbound lanes to shut them down on a few occasions. Whenever I consider the prospect of sea level rise, I know that this entire stretch of highway will have to be rebuilt.

Interstate Route 5, between Seattle and Portland has been shut down since Monday. Railways have been buried in mud. The closures could last into the weekend and the business impact is considerable.

About 54,000 vehicles traverse that portion of the highway daily, and 10,000 of those are trucks. The I-5 delays alone are expected to cost businesses $4 million a day, the Transportation Department estimates.

The effect on commuters could be the least of the problems; road closures are making it difficult to deliver emergency supplies and groceries to the flooded areas, said department spokesman Stan Suchan.

The department also is concerned about the effect on business.

"We know that a lot of companies are using just-in-time delivery so that they don't have a huge stock sitting in the back of their store," he said. "They rely on the trucks on the freeway to keep them in business."

Just another data point in understanding the potential impacts of climate change. The effects tend to cascade.

Oregon gets FEMA flood warning

It's encouraging to see FEMA out ahead of the game for the La Nina-influenced rainy season in Oregon. The risk of flooding is also raised due to the 600,000 acres burned by wildfires in the state this past year. According to the FEMA press release:

This year, predictions for La Nina call for an even wetter-than-average 2007-2008 winter season in parts of the Northwestern United States, including Oregon. The time to prepare for this year's rainy season and possible flooding is now.

"Recovering after a flood can be overwhelming. With flood insurance, you have the financial support to get back on your feet as quickly as possible," said David Maurstad, Assistant Administrator of Mitigation and Federal Insurance Administrator for FEMA. "Too often, people mistakenly think flood damage is covered by a homeowners policy. Flood coverage must be purchased separately, and there is typically a 30-day waiting period before a new flood insurance policy becomes effective."

Voting on local transportation - Get your assessments straight

Gristmill provides a great article on Seattle regional transportation initiatives voted on in the recent election. In "Transportation and climate get hitched," Eric de Place describes how "voters just sank an $18 billion transportation megaproposal that would have built more than 180 lanes miles of highway and 50 miles of light rail."

The local media seems to have missed the most significant factor in the vote - the extent to which climate impact concerns drove voters' choices. And that voters on both sides of the issue - for and against the proposal - considered that their votes were pro-environment.

In the run-up to the vote, a surprising amount of the debate centered on the package's climate implications. (The state has committed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, and many cities, including Seattle, have been national leaders on climate.)

The opposition argued global warming. So did the measure's supporters. If you don't believe me, see, among others, the Seattle P-I (yes), The Stranger (no), the Yes Campaign, the Sierra Club's No Campaign, the right-leaning Washington Policy Center (no), and even the anti-tax/rail No Campaign, which oddly enough kept trumpeting the Sierra Club's opposition as a primary reason to vote no.

The turning point may have been when King County Executive Ron Sims suddenly withdrew his support. He cited the climate-warming emissions from added traffic as one of his chief objections -- he was thinking about his granddaughters, he said, not just the next five years.

King County, of course, is one of the more active American counties in doing local adaptation planning, and is a primary contributor to Preparing for Climate Change: A Guidebook for Local, Regional, and State Governments.

But as Gristmill points out, even in such an environmentally conscious area, there was no comprehensive impact assessment done to inform the voters of the tradeoffs of supporting or not supporting the proposal. If voters are going to be in control of local adaptation planning, it's essential that such huge issues as highway expansion and widening and light rail systems be put under the microscope so that voters understand the short- and long-range impacts of their implementation.

Die-offs - Trees and Ocean Zones Fading Fast

Global warming byproducts become links in a causal chain that can only make things worse. Here are two that probably won't find their way to much public attention, but are nevertheless of huge importance to all of us.

Bark beetles are rapidly working their northward to the great forests of the northwest U.S. and western Canada. One estimate is that 80% of the marketable lodgepole pine in British Columbia could be killed off in 10 years. And in the U.S. pine bark beetles are infesting more than a million acres of forest in Idaho and Montana, while over 2.5 million acres are threatened in Washington state.

Warmer winters are blamed for the spread of the beetles, which have historically been killed off by the hard freezes. The impact of continued dying off will land on the environment as a whole and on the industries that rely directly and indirectly on these sources of timber.

And while we're in the American Northwest, we can look offshore from Oregon and find the return (for its sixth successive year) of a "death zone" where low oxygen levels are inhibiting sea life. Unlike the dead zone on the Gulf of Mexico, which is blamed on fertilizer runoff deposited by the Mississippi and other rivers, the Pacific dead zone is caused by new wind patterns that are identified as a result of global warming. The winds churn the ocean, bringing up so much plankton from the deeps that their death and decomposition take up most of the oxygen supply in the area.

The impact here is on our supply of food fish, but it's a climate-related effect that could be seen in other global regions as well.