I don't think anyone can improve on what Bill says in this column in the Washington Post.
It's the oldest and most cliched of metaphors, but when it comes to global warming, it's the only one that really works: We're in a desperate race. Politics is chasing reality, and the gap between them isn't closing nearly fast enough.And, as he pitches at the end of the column, don't forget to get involved with StepItUp07.org. Invite your political representatives. Get real, get answers, get action.
In what its organizers call "an unprecedented educational initiative, involving over a thousand colleges, universities, high schools, middle schools, faith groups, civic organizations and businesses," Focus the Nation is leading what amounts to a grassroots nationwide teach-in and open discussion of the climate change situation and what must be done in a hurry to prevent worst case scenarios from becoming reality.
Aiming at people young enough today to be in their prime when today's efforts to reverse carbon-loading of the atmosphere will make a difference in the years that follow, Focus the Nation has an impressive list of advisors, board members, staff and sponsors.
They quote Jim Hansen on their home page, which gave them instant credibility in my eyes.
It's always cool when citizens take matters into their own hands to force their political reps to do the right thing. Here's a story from the BBC about residents of Tewksbury, one of the worst-hit towns by the recent flooding, marching to call attention to a policy which would allow new housing to be built on locations that the flooding showed to be at risk. Said one citizen,It is a difficult problem, but it does need the government to look at the issue again to review its policy on building on flood plains because it just seems to the average person a nonsensical thing to do.
As it turns out, local planning committees need the agreement of the Environmental Agency before allowing new building where there is a risk of flooding.
When you're convinced, like me, that there's sufficient evidence and logic that we're at high risk in from so many related climate forces, it's frustrating as hell to see our leaders and our neighbors doing nothing. I was at least a little encouraged to read this guest essay on Gristmill by Herman E. Daly, an ecological economist and professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park, who is a featured expert in the new film, 11th Hour.
Here's the crux of what he says about not taking any action if there are any unresolved arguments about scientific findings.
We'll NEVER achieve absolute certainty about the future. It wasn't certain that Hurricane Katrina would be a certain category of storm or that it would land at a particular point on the Gulf Coast until it happened. But history shows that preparation was delayed on many fronts due to less than perfect prediction. That's the stupidest of human responses. We've got to do better than that. As Daly says in the last paragraphs of his essay,As long as we focus on measuring inherently uncertain empirical consequences, rather than on the certain first principles that cause them, we will overwhelm the consensus to "do something now" with the second order uncertainties of "first knowing the exact consequences of what we might someday do."
To put it another way, if you bail out of an airplane, you need a crude parachute more than an accurate altimeter. And if you also happen to take an altimeter with you, at least don't become so bemused in tracking your descent that you forget to pull the ripcord on your parachute.
Setting policy in accord with first principles allows us to act now without getting mired in endless delays caused by the uncertainties of complex empirical measurements and predictions. Of course, the uncertainties do not disappear. We will experience them as surprising consequences, both agreeable and disagreeable, necessitating mid-course correction to the policies enacted on the basis of first principles. But at least we will have begun moving in the right direction.
To continue business as usual, while debating the predictions of complex models in a world made even more uncertain by the way we model it, is to fail to pull the ripcord. The predicted consequences of this last failure, unfortunately, are very certain.
A New York Times story describes how scientists and political leaders in Brazil are having their "AHA!" moment regarding the impact of climate change on their nation.
The factors behind the re-evaluation range from a drought here in the Amazon rain forest, the world’s largest, and the impact that it could have on agriculture if it recurs, to new phenomena like a hurricane in the south of Brazil. As a result, environmental advocates, scientists and some politicians say, Brazilian policy makers and the public they serve are increasingly seeing climate change not as a distant problem, but as one that could affect them too.There has long been pressure on Brazil to better manage the Amazon Basin - the largest CO2 sink and oxygen producing region in the world. Until now, Brazil has stood fast in its independent approach to dealing with the destruction of the forest in favor of agricultural and timber interests that fed into its growing economy. Now, it's beginning to reconsider some of the issues that have caused international friction in the past.
The Tsunami was the topper, but Sri Lanka sees its share of floods, droughts and epidemics. In a wise move to learn from these disasters, going back to 1974, the government's Disaster Management Centre (DMC) is gathering a database of information about how it dealt with them in order to plan for better handling of disasters in the future.
"This database will help policymakers make investments in disaster reduction more efficiently, and relief providers will be able to identify vulnerable areas to target their programmes," U. W. L. Chandradasa, the DMC's director of mitigation and technology, told IRIN.Apparently, it doesn't take a disastrous response to a disaster (as in Katrina), to provide useful and instructional lessons. Every emergency provides opportunities to learn. As the preliminary report says:
The systematic tracking of small and medium disasters [which do not hit the headlines of international or even national media] along with detailed data about large-scale disasters will provide the necessary disaster intelligence to keep a tab on emerging patterns of disaster risk and look at the underlying causes.Of course, a study of Katrina could fill volumes and we still see little evidence that FEMA has gotten its act together for the next powerful storm.
The land down under is in the 10th year of drought. In light of the warnings of scientists that the country is experiencing accelerated global warming, state and federal authorities have agreed to establish a 1,740-mile, north-south climate "spine" to allow free passage of wildlife to more habitable climate areas. Reported by Reuters and published in Planet Ark, this is an example of government authorities taking action based on emerging evidence.
The corridor, under discussion since the 1990s as the argument in support of climate change strengthened, will link national parks, state forests and government land. It will help preserve scores of endangered species.
"We are talking a very long-term vision, a land use that values keeping the eastern forests in place over past uses like landclearing," said Graeme Worboys from the IUCN, the world conservation union.
China used to be able to grow enough food to feed its entire population. It used to be a net food exporter, but since 2004 it has been a net food importer. With one fifth of the world's population, it has only 7% of the world's arable land, so its leaders intend to stem the loss of any additional land to other purposes such as development. Housing, roads and factories have been gobbling up farmland at an accelerating pace. China now has a food security problem.
Reuters reports that in a news conference, Minister of Land and Resources Xu Shaoshi declared that the government will hold the line at a minimum of 120 million hectares devoted to agriculture. How this new law will be enforced, given the turmoil of China's booming business development and migration to the cities, remains to be seen.
No mention at the news conference, apparently, of the spreading Gobi desert, which has been claiming Chinese farmland for years. More on that in a future post here.
California has a Hazard Mitigation Portal maintained by the Governor's Office of Emergency Services. Hazards listed include Fire, Flood, Earth Movement (Landslide), Seismic (Earthquakes, Tsunamis) and Other Hazards.
Other includes Avalanches, Drought, Freezes, Insect Pests, Civil Disturbances, Dam Failure, Hazardous Material Spills, Polution, Terrorism, Volcanoes, and Less Significant Hazards.
Hurricane's are one of the "Less Significant Hazards," along with nuclear power accidents, tornadoes, airline crashes, computer breaches and train derailments.
In assessing whether or not hurricanes present a threat to California, the state currently relies on information found in the USA Today Weather Book by Jack Williams, which dismisses the possibility with this statement:
No hurricanes have hit California in recorded history because tropical storm winds generally blow from east to west, but California is affected by heavy rain resulting from tropical winds that blow north from Mexico and become colder by the time they hit California.Thus, recorded history determines policy. In fact, though California certainly faces enough threats that have historically been devastating - earthquakes, wildfires, inland flooding and mudslides - the mitigation planning does not even consider the effects of climate change. Nowhere is sea level rise mentioned, or the possibility that eastern Pacific hurricanes may reach further north than before, or the possibility that both drought and extreme rainfall will become even greater threats than before.
I'm convinced that climate change is happening now and will have impacts that force us humans to take action to save our asses. Those actions must be brought into focus as they are taken so that (1) they emphasize the in-your-face reality of the impact and (2) others can learn from the vanguard - the early jumpers - how to organize, plan and collaborate effectively in their own locations.
As much as they are needed, I choose not to report much on efforts to slow climate change or convince people that it's important because I have no patience with silly arguments. In Climate Frog's world, definitive action is the only real news.
IPCC plays the poor role model
For an example of how public servants invent ways to waste time, look at the IPCC itself, on the eve of releasing its highly anticipated second report on climate change. With global motivation at stake, the IPCC has allowed itself to get hung up on language and semantics. Just swell, people. Way to go.
"There is wrangling happening," said Hans Verolme, director of the global climate change programme at WWF, an environmental group that is an observer to the meeting.As Washington Post staff writer Juliet Eilperin explains it:
"There are some who are questioning the scientific basis ... of some of the summary statements, which is leading the authors to have to go back to the underlying document." The U.N. panel's report is the most authoritative study since 2001 on the regional impact of climate change. Verolme said the fact world leaders would read the report's summary had added pressure for consensus on the wording.
"There is discussion whether something is 'likely' or 'very likely', and my sense is that is because people are aware here that heads of state are paying attention," he said.
"If the text says this is very likely, the response (from governments) has to be very significant."
The draft report makes distinctions between changes it considered significant with "high confidence" -- at least 80 percent certainty -- and those to which it assigned "very high confidence," which means 90 percent certainty. While it says with "very high confidence" that earlier bird migrations and a shift of species toward the poles are results of warmer temperatures, it said satellite data gave it only "high confidence" that "there has been a trend in many regions towards earlier greening of vegetation in the spring and increased net primary production linked to longer growing seasons and increasing atmospheric CO2concentrations."
In anticipation of the April 6 release of the IPCC report about the regional impacts of climate change, a Reuters article released today, Global warming happens: but is it "catastrophic"?, begins with this:
OSLO (Reuters) - Likely headlines predicting a global warming "catastrophe", "disaster" or "cataclysm" after a U.N. report due on Friday risk sapping public willingness to act by making the problem seem too big to tackle, some experts say.Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Program, is on of those "some experts," and he cites the tendency for journalists and politicians to instill dread by predicting doomsday and then six weeks later describe the fear they created as "hysteria."
"It is legitimate to use those words in specific scenarios," he [Steiner] told Reuters. "But does that mean that the whole climate change debate should be about doom and gloom? No, because we are finding that we can do something about it."Sometimes - perhaps most of the time - that "something" will prove to be disruptive, painful, expensive, difficult...lot of other negatives. It's hard to frame all of the adaptive and mitigating necessities in an attractive way. Nature can be a terrible master, and the prospect of forced migration will never be framed as an "adventure in human adaptation."
