White House to unveil dire climate warning in new report

mentalfloss

mentalfloss

Prickly Curmudgeon Smiter
Jun 28, 2010
39,778
454
83
White House to unveil dire climate warning in new report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration will release an updated report on Tuesday showing how climate change touches every part of the country, as the administration seeks to convince the American public on the need for a crackdown on carbon pollution.

Some environmental and public health groups expect the U.S. National Climate Assessment to be a "game changer" in the administration's efforts to address climate change.

The extensive report will update a January 2013 draft, which detailed how consequences of climate change are hitting on several fronts, including health, infrastructure, water supply, agriculture and especially more frequent severe weather.

Since then, the report was reviewed by the National Academies of Sciences and attracted more than 4,000 public comments.

The advisory committee behind the report was established by the U.S. Department of Commerce to integrate federal research on environmental change and its implications for society. It made two earlier assessments, in 2000 and 2009.

Thirteen departments and agencies, from the Agriculture Department to NASA, are part of the committee, which also includes academics, businesses, non-profit organizations and others. More than 240 scientists contributed to the report.

"We expect it will paint a huge amount of practical, usable knowledge that state and local decision-makers can take advantage of as they plan on or for the impacts of climate change and work to make their communities more resilient," John Podesta, an adviser to President Barack Obama, said on Monday.

Podesta said the administration hopes that conveying the warnings contained in the report can help the administration implement the president's Climate Action Plan, which was unveiled in June 2013 and focuses on executive actions Obama can use to rein in polluters.

As part of that outreach Obama will speak with several local and nationally known meteorologists on Tuesday, including the NBC Today Show's Al Roker.

Among the key findings in the draft report expected to be reiterated are that the past decade was the country's warmest on record, and that some extreme weather events, such as prolonged droughts and heavier downpours, have increased.

Extreme weather events and other impacts of climate change also increase the risk of disease transmission and even mental health problems, the 2013 draft said.

Also expected to be featured is an ongoing sea-level rise, which increases the risk of erosion and storm surge damage and raises the stakes for the nearly 5 million Americans who live within four feet of the local high-tide level.

Vicki Arroyo, executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center of Georgetown University, said the climate assessment will focus on solutions not just dire warnings.

"You really can't just provide a report that paints this dark picture of all these impacts. You have to couple it with a message of what our government can do about it, what you can do about it and what our communities can do," she said.

White House to unveil dire climate warning in new report
 
C

Cliffy

Standing Member
Nov 19, 2008
44,850
192
63
Nakusp, BC
You really get your jollies locking horns with deniers, don't you. I can't be bothered with meatheads. Life is too short.
 
mentalfloss

mentalfloss

Prickly Curmudgeon Smiter
Jun 28, 2010
39,778
454
83
Cliffy said:
You really get your jollies locking horns with deniers, don't you. I can't be bothered with meatheads. Life is too short.
Click to expand...

It would be nice if this wasn't such a big problem for them so there would be less headache.
 
captain morgan

captain morgan

Hall of Fame Member
Mar 28, 2009
28,429
146
63
A Mouse Once Bit My Sister
Nuggler said:
Yes, some more words. What would be do without them.
Let's start the "Church of words and reports"
Jesus wants us to, I can feel it.
Goodness gracious sort of sums it up Capt. well done.
Click to expand...


A friend of mine had an old expression whenever he'd wash his old klunker:

"You can polish a turd, but it will always be a piece of sh*t"

I believe this expression is fully appropriate to the reams of 'new' studies on the subject
 
mentalfloss

mentalfloss

Prickly Curmudgeon Smiter
Jun 28, 2010
39,778
454
83
U.S. climate report says global warming impact already severe

The government’s newest national assessment of climate change, released early Tuesday, declares what a wide majority of scientists say is clear: Americans are already feeling the effects of global warming.

Heavy Northeast downpours unleashed by super storms such as Sandy, flooding from sea-level rise from Norfolk to Miami along the Atlantic Ocean, record-setting monster wildfires in several western states, a crop destroying heat wave in the Mid-West, and drought that has parched southern California, have all taken place in recent years.

“The report affirms a number of things we have known,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a Texas Tech University professor and lead co-author of the changing climate chapter of the assessment.

Another year of extreme weather brought a super typhoon, tornadoes, deadly wildfires, severe drought and killer floods. Here is a look at the most significant events to affect the environment.

“But there are new aspects,” Hayhoe said. “For a long time we have perceived climate change as an issue that’s distant, affecting just polar bears or something that matters to our kids. This shows it’s not just in the future; it matters today. Many people are feeling the effects.”

The decade starting in 2000 was the hottest on record, and 2012, the year Sandy followed an epic summer drought, was the hottest ever recorded in the nation’s history, the report says. U.S. temperature is 1.3 degrees to 1.9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer now than it was 1895, and most of that increase — 80 percent, the assessment says — occurred over the last 44 years.

David Wolfe, a professor at Cornell University who was a lead co-author of the report’s chapter on change in the Northeast, said that might sound frightening, but he and other authors of the study are optimistic that climate impacts can be mitigated.

Business leaders are looking more toward investments in renewable energy, he said. This third assessment, unlike the others, offers a Web site with interactive tools showing Americans how to reduce climate impacts.

“It will be a living document, a resource for people...,” he said. “It’s a place to start.”

Wolfe’s optimism wasn’t universally shared, even among some co-authors who described the assessment as too conservative — a consensus document meant to reflect the diverse views of the more than 300 scientists who crafted it.

To mark the release of the report, President Obama is expected to speak with a number of national television meteorologists from across the country about climate change early Tuesday afternoon.

The federal climate assessment brought together hundreds of climate experts in academia and government to guide U.S. policy based on the best available climate science. They were billed by the U.S. Global Change Research Program as “the largest and most diverse team to produce a U.S. climate assessment.”

They worked for several years, holding 70 workshops nationwide, revising the final drafts to reflect thousands of public comments. They were guided by a 60-member panel called the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee.

Echoing the findings of a global report by climate scientists at the International Panel on Climate Change, U.S. scientists said the climate is changing in the United States almost without a doubt, and the warming of the past 50 years is primarily due to emissions of heat-trapping gases released by humans.

Burning coal for electricity, oil and gas in vehicles, along with forest clear cutting and certain agricultural practices, all for the convenience of humans, contribute to the problem, the assessment said.

By the end of the century, temperatures could be up to 5 degrees higher if the nation acts aggressively to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from industry, or up to 10 degrees if emissions are high.

The higher the temperature, the more dire the impact. Extreme weather in the United States has “increased in recent decades,” the report said.

The assessment carves the nation into sections and examines the impacts: More sea-level rise, flooding, storm surge, precipitation and heat waves in the Northeast; frequent water shortages and hurricanes in the Southeast and Caribbean; more drought and wildfires in the Southwest.

Rapidly receding ice and shrinking glaciers are occuring in Alaska, which warmed twice as fast as the rest of the country in the past 60 years. And warmer oceans, along with increased acidification, particularly in the Pacific, has put marine life in peril.

Sea-level rise is a major concern to the District, Maryland and Virginia. A report last year by the Maryland Commission on Climate Change found that coastal sea-level rise on the state shoreline will range from slightly less than a foot to more than two feet by mid-century, and from two to six feet by the end of the century, depending on whether carbon emissions increase or decrease.

Climate change is also leading to heat stress events, forcing people with respiratory illnesses to turn to devices such as inhalers or to hospitals, the federal assessment said. It is leading to more severe allergies and waterborne illnesses as pathogens increase. Minority communities are especially vulnerable.

Extreme heat causes more deaths than other weather events, and that is expected to continue. Such deaths have decreased in recent years, but the assessment attributed that to better weather.

But increased heat doesn’t just affect humans. In warmer and more acidic oceans, particularly the Pacific, the effects of climate change are deadly, said Drew Harvell, a Cornell University professor of ecology and a co-author of the marine resources chapter of the assessment.

Marine scientists in the Pacific have traced the mass die off of the sunflower star, a type of sea star, to warmer temperatures. In a laboratory, 10 sunflower stars were placed in water with normal temperature and another 10 in water only 1 degree warmer.

Within two days, half the sunflower stars in the warmer water were dead. “It’s going to get worse with warming,” Harvell said.

Thirty percent of carbon released into the atmosphere is sucked up by the ocean, leading to acidification that’s killing coral and shell life. Coral protects young fish from predators, and tiny shellfish, at the bottom of the food chain, help feed entire ecosystems.

“A third of all coral is at the risk of extinction,” Harvell said. After two decades of studying marine life, her view of the future was more negative than both Wolfe and the Cato researchers.

“It’s important to understand that this is a very, very, very conservative document, a consensus document,” Harvell said of the assessment. The truth is more dire.

“The Pacific Ocean is the place with the most extreme problem with acidification and salmon, mussels, things heavily affected,” she said. “I’m not sure there are many mitigations to these impacts. There’s hope, but there’s got to be some pretty radical changes to practices and policies.”

U.S. climate report says global warming impact already severe - The Washington Post
 
captain morgan

captain morgan

Hall of Fame Member
Mar 28, 2009
28,429
146
63
A Mouse Once Bit My Sister
mentalfloss said:
U.S. climate report says global warming impact already severe - The Washington Post
Click to expand...


 
taxslave

taxslave

Hall of Fame Member
Nov 25, 2008
36,362
4,337
113
Vancouver Island
mentalfloss said:
U.S. climate report says global warming impact already severe

The government’s newest national assessment of climate change, released early Tuesday, declares what a wide majority of scientists say is clear: Americans are already feeling the effects of global warming.

Heavy Northeast downpours unleashed by super storms such as Sandy, flooding from sea-level rise from Norfolk to Miami along the Atlantic Ocean, record-setting monster wildfires in several western states, a crop destroying heat wave in the Mid-West, and drought that has parched southern California, have all taken place in recent years.

“The report affirms a number of things we have known,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a Texas Tech University professor and lead co-author of the changing climate chapter of the assessment.

Another year of extreme weather brought a super typhoon, tornadoes, deadly wildfires, severe drought and killer floods. Here is a look at the most significant events to affect the environment.

“But there are new aspects,” Hayhoe said. “For a long time we have perceived climate change as an issue that’s distant, affecting just polar bears or something that matters to our kids. This shows it’s not just in the future; it matters today. Many people are feeling the effects.”

The decade starting in 2000 was the hottest on record, and 2012, the year Sandy followed an epic summer drought, was the hottest ever recorded in the nation’s history, the report says. U.S. temperature is 1.3 degrees to 1.9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer now than it was 1895, and most of that increase — 80 percent, the assessment says — occurred over the last 44 years.

David Wolfe, a professor at Cornell University who was a lead co-author of the report’s chapter on change in the Northeast, said that might sound frightening, but he and other authors of the study are optimistic that climate impacts can be mitigated.

Business leaders are looking more toward investments in renewable energy, he said. This third assessment, unlike the others, offers a Web site with interactive tools showing Americans how to reduce climate impacts.

“It will be a living document, a resource for people...,” he said. “It’s a place to start.”

Wolfe’s optimism wasn’t universally shared, even among some co-authors who described the assessment as too conservative — a consensus document meant to reflect the diverse views of the more than 300 scientists who crafted it.

To mark the release of the report, President Obama is expected to speak with a number of national television meteorologists from across the country about climate change early Tuesday afternoon.

The federal climate assessment brought together hundreds of climate experts in academia and government to guide U.S. policy based on the best available climate science. They were billed by the U.S. Global Change Research Program as “the largest and most diverse team to produce a U.S. climate assessment.”

They worked for several years, holding 70 workshops nationwide, revising the final drafts to reflect thousands of public comments. They were guided by a 60-member panel called the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee.

Echoing the findings of a global report by climate scientists at the International Panel on Climate Change, U.S. scientists said the climate is changing in the United States almost without a doubt, and the warming of the past 50 years is primarily due to emissions of heat-trapping gases released by humans.

Burning coal for electricity, oil and gas in vehicles, along with forest clear cutting and certain agricultural practices, all for the convenience of humans, contribute to the problem, the assessment said.

By the end of the century, temperatures could be up to 5 degrees higher if the nation acts aggressively to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from industry, or up to 10 degrees if emissions are high.

The higher the temperature, the more dire the impact. Extreme weather in the United States has “increased in recent decades,” the report said.

The assessment carves the nation into sections and examines the impacts: More sea-level rise, flooding, storm surge, precipitation and heat waves in the Northeast; frequent water shortages and hurricanes in the Southeast and Caribbean; more drought and wildfires in the Southwest.

Rapidly receding ice and shrinking glaciers are occuring in Alaska, which warmed twice as fast as the rest of the country in the past 60 years. And warmer oceans, along with increased acidification, particularly in the Pacific, has put marine life in peril.

Sea-level rise is a major concern to the District, Maryland and Virginia. A report last year by the Maryland Commission on Climate Change found that coastal sea-level rise on the state shoreline will range from slightly less than a foot to more than two feet by mid-century, and from two to six feet by the end of the century, depending on whether carbon emissions increase or decrease.

Climate change is also leading to heat stress events, forcing people with respiratory illnesses to turn to devices such as inhalers or to hospitals, the federal assessment said. It is leading to more severe allergies and waterborne illnesses as pathogens increase. Minority communities are especially vulnerable.

Extreme heat causes more deaths than other weather events, and that is expected to continue. Such deaths have decreased in recent years, but the assessment attributed that to better weather.

But increased heat doesn’t just affect humans. In warmer and more acidic oceans, particularly the Pacific, the effects of climate change are deadly, said Drew Harvell, a Cornell University professor of ecology and a co-author of the marine resources chapter of the assessment.

Marine scientists in the Pacific have traced the mass die off of the sunflower star, a type of sea star, to warmer temperatures. In a laboratory, 10 sunflower stars were placed in water with normal temperature and another 10 in water only 1 degree warmer.

Within two days, half the sunflower stars in the warmer water were dead. “It’s going to get worse with warming,” Harvell said.

Thirty percent of carbon released into the atmosphere is sucked up by the ocean, leading to acidification that’s killing coral and shell life. Coral protects young fish from predators, and tiny shellfish, at the bottom of the food chain, help feed entire ecosystems.

“A third of all coral is at the risk of extinction,” Harvell said. After two decades of studying marine life, her view of the future was more negative than both Wolfe and the Cato researchers.

“It’s important to understand that this is a very, very, very conservative document, a consensus document,” Harvell said of the assessment. The truth is more dire.

“The Pacific Ocean is the place with the most extreme problem with acidification and salmon, mussels, things heavily affected,” she said. “I’m not sure there are many mitigations to these impacts. There’s hope, but there’s got to be some pretty radical changes to practices and policies.”

U.S. climate report says global warming impact already severe - The Washington Post
Click to expand...

I like the part where they call it a concensus document. So were all the IPCC reports. And we allknow how accurate they turned out.
Anyone taken a boat trip through the ice free arctic ocean yet?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom