Santa Claus' Adaptation Plans for the North Pole

I put together the following post for the Bay Area Open Space Council's blog, and it went live today: Santa Claus and the Melting North Pole: Is Christmas in Danger?

I'm reposting the text here:

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Santa Claus and the Melting North Pole: Is Christmas in Danger?

By Silver Cherryblossom, Junior Wood Elf Correspondent to the North Pole

ATTENTION HUMAN CHILDREN: This message is from Elf Central in Muir Woods. We have been trying to reach you, but you might not have heard from the Muir Woods Elves before because we have had trouble getting our elf-mail (elf e-mail, which smells like peppermint) to transmit to human e-mail (which doesn’t smell like anything at all). If you get this message, then we’ve finally gotten the tinsel wires untangled. I hope this message gets to you, and it smells OK.

Your First Worry: How are Santa Claus and His Elves Doing with Climate Change?

FIRSTLY, Santa Claus says he is “fine, thanks for asking.” As long as humans continue to give each other gifts from the heart, he will be in good shape and Christmas will come on schedule, ice or no ice.

SECONDLY, the Ice Elves are very organized. They are really good planners – that’s how they are able to make your presents on time every year.  So, they started planning for climate change a long time ago. 

Of course, they have gotten really good with technology by making all your electronic toys.  So, if anyone can figure out what to do about climate change at the North Pole, the Ice Elves can.

If Christmas Will Be OK, Is There Anything That Santa and the Ice Elves Are Worried About?

Well, someone gave me a copy of Executive Memo XMAS-11-001 “On Climate Change and Its Effects RE: Santa’s Workshop Activities,” about the North Pole Workshop’s preparations for climate change.

I’m still just a Junior Correspondent, so I hope I don’t get in trouble for sharing this! (If I do, it might be a while before you get a message from me again!) The memo says it is “classified,” but I don’t know what that word means, so I hope it means that I should share it with everyone.

CLASSIFIED


Executive Memo XMAS-11-001 “On Climate Change and Its Effects RE: Santa’s Workshop Activities”
By Junior Science Elf Frostbottom

Climate change is causing a lot of problems at the North Pole.  The three big ones are ice melting under the Workshop, getting fresh, non-salty water for the Workshop, and our neighbors who rely on ice—animals and humans— losing their homes.

          PROBLEM 1: Ice melting under the Workshop.

With the ice melting, it’s like the ground is moving!  The Workshop floor is already tilting where Mrs. Claus stores the old exercise bicycles (which are very heavy). This is only going to get worse as the ground gets warmer.

There used to be a LOT of ice up here which NEVER melted, and the ice prevented anybody from sailing a ship anywhere near the North Pole. We found a group of scientists skiing near the Workshop in 2009 , and they said the North Pole might be a free-flowing ocean as soon as 2030. (That’s when today’s toddlers will be graduating from college)!

PROPOSED SOLUTION: Move the Workshop to an abandoned oil platform. We can call it Workshop Island. The reindeer might need their own platform for grazing and playing reindeer games.

QUESTION FOR SENIOR SCIENCE ELF: How can we generate electricity on Workshop Island? At the Workshop we have plenty of room for solar panels and windmills, but not on the oil platform. Can we use tidal and wave energy? We need to make enough energy for making toys AND gingerbread.

ANSWER FROM SENIOR SCIENCE ELF:  Click here for more information from the U.S. Department of Energy on getting power from the ocean. 

***NOTE TO SANTA: Look at this! A sea adventure resort built on an old oil platform! 

          PROBLEM 2: Getting water for the workshop.

Mrs. Claus needs the best-tasting fresh water for her delicious peppermint hot chocolate .  Right now, she uses melted ice.  Once the ice is gone, there will be nothing but salty sea water around us.

PROPOSED SOLUTION: Maybe… build a plant that removes salt from water (desalinize the water)?

NOTE FROM SENIOR SCIENCE ELF:  This creates a new problem, because removing salt from sea water takes a lot of energy and leaves behind icky salt sludge. What if instead, we collect rainwater and use less water? We should ask the Island Elves how they do it.

Click here to learn about how kids, elves and reindeer can collect rainwater and use less water at home. 

***NOTE TO SANTA:  Can you take shorter showers?

          PROBLEM 3: Our neighbors who rely on the ice— animals and humans— are losing their homes.

After all the ice melts, some animals who make the ice their home— like polar bears and walruses—  might have nowhere to go. Do they want to stay at the North Pole on their own abandoned oil platforms? We asked, and they said, “No, thanks, those are too small for us.” Do they want to live in zoos? They said, “No, thanks, we don’t want to give up our freedom.”

Our other neighbors at the North Pole are the people who have lived on the ice for centuries. These are the people humans often call Eskimos, even though there are actually many different nations living around the North Pole, including Inuit, Evenk, Yupik, and many others . We asked if they want their own abandoned oil platforms, and they said, “No, thanks, those are too small for us.” Do they want to move south to other lands? They said, “No, thanks, our culture is built on ice and snow: this is our home.”

These are our neighbors, and like any neighbors, we’ve always helped each other out when things have gone wrong… we should try to help them if we can.

PROPOSED SOLUTION: I don’t know. We need to keep talking to our neighbors and asking how we can help.

QUESTION FOR SENIOR SCIENCE ELF: Can we save the ice?

ANSWER FROM SENIOR SCIENCE ELF:  We can’t stop the ice from melting, but we can slow it down if we change how we do things. Can we get humans to slow climate change?

***NOTE TO SANTA: When you are traveling around the world, can you please tell the human children about ways to slow climate change so they can teach their parents? Maybe you can tell them to check these out:

• Super awesome U.S. Environmental Protection Agency climate change site: A Student’s Guide to Climate Change.
• Spiffy U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Climate Kids site (and they talk about sea ice!).
• Global Warming Kids, an information portal presented by science museum docents at the University of California, Berkeley. Full of useful resources, including videos of human children talking about climate change.
• Free Lesson Plans from the North American Association forEnvironmental Education for pre-K to Grade 12— to help teach about nature, including climate change.
• The book The North Pole Was Here: Puzzles and Perils at the Top of the World (by New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin, 2006, for grades 6-9), about how a group of scientists studied the relationship between climate change and the loss of ice at the North Pole.

So, there you go, human children. Remember: don’t worry about Santa’s Workshop. The Ice Elves have it under control. Also:

1. Keep learning about climate change and thinking of ways to slow it down. Ask your teachers about it!
2. When you write your letter to Santa this year, also think about writing to the politicians who represent you in human government to tell them about the people, polar bears, and walruses who depend on the ice at the North Pole, and ask them to help them any way they can. (Get addresses for your representatives here: for the U.S. House of Representatives ; for the U.S. Senate ).
3.  Try to use less water and electricity in your home. (How many ways can you think of to save energy around your house? ) You can help your parents save money and slow down climate change at the same time!

And the next time you visit Muir Woods, keep an eye out for elves and say hello if you see me (I’m the elf with my pointy ears tucked into my park ranger hat).

Merry Christmas!

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Endnote: On Talking About Climate Change with Children

This is a note for adults talking to children (or, adults talking to their inner child) about climate change. Climate change is an overwhelming and scary problem: it can make you feel helpless. A 2010 UC Berkeley study showed that it is dangerous to be too apocalyptic when talking about climate change, inspiring denial instead of action. When talking to children about climate change, try to focus on positive actions they can take to improve the situation. The future is not written in stone, and the children of today may yet dream up solutions we adults haven’t even considered yet!

The piece above is intended for children ages 10-13 (they might have stopped believing in Santa, but are still entertained by the idea). If you have younger kids, consider reading parts of it out loud to them and using it to open a conversation where they can ask questions and brainstorm their own solutions.

Here are some tips about talking to children about climate change:

1. Talk about positive actions that they can do now.
2. Try to keep it simple. It is a complex problem with a lot of dispute about the definition of the problem, its causes and solutions, but you can bottom-line it: scientists have shown us that the earth is warming, and it is changing our environment.
3. Emphasize that we are all a part of the problem and the solution. Even people who question the reality of climate change are asking hard questions that can make our solutions better!

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About the author: Silver Cherryblossom (AKA Sara Moore, of the blog Pacificadaptation.blogspot.com), Junior Wood Elf Correspondent to the North Pole, is stationed at Elf Central in Muir Woods. She researches and writes about climate change adaptation. While she has never seen Santa Claus in person, the Ice Elves reliably send peppermint-scented elf-mail keeping her updated about Santa’s plans for dealing with the melting ice at the North Pole. She thanks all her friends who pitched in to help write this article.

Were you worried about Russian Arctic methane emissions?

Well, if you weren't, now you can worry.

Writing about the newly discovered gargantuan methane plumes on December 12, 2011, Nick Jardine quotes thusly:

One scientist told the Independent: "Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of meters in diameter. This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It's amazing."

Disappointment in Durban

I'm not surprised to be hearing a lot of disappointment from my colleagues and friends who are in Durban for the international climate change negotiations there.

I wanted to know more about other people's disappointment in Durban, so I Googled the words 'disappointment in durban' and actually found a Dec. 5, 2011, article with that exact title-- from the Spectator, by Matthew Sinclair.

It's just a few paragraphs summarizing the main problem with the Durban talks-- that the world's main greenhouse gas emitters aren't willing to take a strong stand on controlling emissions. Canada, Russia and Japan aren't even at the table in Durban. And, Sinclair points out, whatever is decided at Durban will likely be proclaimed a success by participating governments. Also not helpful.

I largely agree. I also think it is valuable to gather the governments who are willing to work on reducing GHG emissions to make whatever agreements they can make. However, nobody should be entertaining the thought that this is enough. And, everybody should gear up to face the impacts of failed emissions-control policies. Durban's wheel-spinning should put government planners on notice-- the impacts of climate change just got a little more real, a little more life-threatening.

I don't know much about Matthew Sinclair, but he seems to have some interesting economic points to make. He cites his August 2011 book: Let Them Eat Carbon: The Price of Failing Climate Change Policies, and How Governments and Big Business Profit From Them.
From the Amazon blurb:

Around the world companies are making billions out of the schemes governments have put in place saying they will curb global warming and protect us from the threat of climate change. There is little evidence that those policies are an efficient way to cut emissions.

It looks like his alternative to investing in expensive renewable energy projects and putting a fixed price on carbon is putting "scientists and engineers to work making it cheaper to produce low emissions energy" (from his article of this past Monday).

I found this 10-minute video of Sinclair from Aug. 2011 giving his point of view on renewable energy policy failures. He explains his economic points briefly, repeating some truths that need to be remembered, including the fact that rich countries investing in expensive renewable energy projects won't be worth it if ONLY rich countries are doing it.

While effective adaptation policy has to be local, effective greenhouse gas reduction policy by definition has to be global.

I'd like to hear more about his alternative solutions. He ends the video saying "there is a better way." I guess I'll have to get his book to find out what that is!

Climate Bonds! May you live long and prosper!

From the Nov. 27, 2011, edition of the New York Times, by Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop: A Change of Heart on Investing in the Climate.

This article describes a new form of financing for climate change adaptation now underway. These "green bonds" focus on "battling climate change" -- e.g., backing mitigation and adaptation investments-- using a relatively low-risk finance instrument. They will only be successful if they get enough projects to back and enough big investors, but they've only just launched and... "[Sean Kidney, executive chairman of the Climate Bonds Initiative] estimates that $14 billion to $30 billion worth of bonds backed by investments related to climate change solutions have already been issued internationally..."

Kidney elaborates on what these bonds should cover:

"'[W]hen you’re talking about building a low-carbon economy, it should not be just about mitigation but about adaption as well. Water investments in North Africa might be considered climate adaptation bonds. Adaptation would look at infrastructure for disaster risk reduction, flood defenses or forestry conservation.'"

Find out more here:

Climate Bonds Initiative - "an investor-focused nongovernmental organization set up to promote large-scale investment in the low-carbon economy"

CBI's new Climate Bond Standards and Certification Board - launched on Nov. 24, 2011.

The Oct. 19, 2011, press release about the launch of the State Street Global Advisors (SSgA)'s High Quality Green Bond Strategy "a way to direct fixed income investments to climate solutions."

My Writings about Adaptation on the Bay Area Open Space Council's Blog, Part 4

Here's my new piece "Be Our Guest: Generation Hot" for the Bay Area Open Space blog, posted yesterday. I'm describing some of the good work being done to prepare California for climate impacts at the state and local levels.

My Writings about Adaptation on the Bay Area Open Space Council's Blog, Part 3

Here is my post "Be Our Guest: When the Levee Breaks, Mama You Got to Go"on the issue of human versus natural system adaptation, and "ecosystem-based" adaptation, written for the Bay Area Open Space blog.

Part four, coming out next week, talks about California adaptation initiatives.

I love that the blog editor linked my title "When the Levee Breaks, Mama You Got to Go" to a recording of the Led Zeppelin song. I didn't explain in my post that the song is actually relevant-- written about the Great Mississippi Flood in 1927, which was as much an engineering disaster as a natural disaster. Read more about the 1927 flood in John Barry's book on the matter, Rising Tide, written well before Katrina. I loan that book out but make sure to get it back, because I feel like it's a really important cautionary tale that I never want to forget. You can preview it on Google Books.

Congratulations RISE on a great media piece!

Yesterday I heard a wonderfully evocative radio program on KALW radio about the San Francisco Bay and sea level rise, featuring our local climate change science/ planning heavy-hitters Will Travis of BCDC and Healy Hamilton of the California Academy of Sciences.

Congratulations to radio producer/director Claire Schoen, and to Travis and Healy (and the others who appeared in the segment) on a great piece of media exposure!

One of my favorite quotes was from Healy, said with such calm force, as though her life depended on you, the listener, grasping her every word and believing:

We are headed right now on a path to an ice-free planet. And once we are there this planet will look nothing like it does today, and the human infrastructure that we all depend upon will not be able to adapt to those kinds of changes.

Listen to the one-hour program RISE: Part I: Sounding the Waters streaming here.

My Writings about Adaptation on the Bay Area Open Space Council's Blog, Part 2

Here's "Be Our Guest: Planning for Climate Change, Part Two (A Case Study of Impact Scenarios in Marin County)" -- the next installment in my four-part series being posted on the Bay Area Open Space Council Blog. This one is about the Futures of Wild Marin workshop that I organized with 35 resource managers and scientists in Marin in January 2011.

My Writings about Adaptation on the Bay Area Open Space Council's Blog, Part 1

I've been asked to write a series of posts for the Bay Area Open Space Council's blog about climate change adaptation, and Monday was the launch of the series.

Read my first post "Be Our Guest: Planning for Climate Change, Part One," wherein I tell the story of how I got involved in adaptation work back in 2008.

Part two will talk about my scenario planning case study in Marin County, the Futures of Wild Marin.

Part three will discuss the conflict between planning for adaptation for human and natural systems, and the theory of "ecosystem-based" adaptation.

Part four will present some of the new California-based adaptation initiatives.

Water security alarm bells sound in Canada

On Oct. 4, 2011, the Adaptation to Climate Change Team (ACT) think tank at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver-- "the only university-based think tank initiative in North America dedicated to climate change adaptation" -- released a set of water security reports: Climate Change Adaptation and Water Governance.

Last year I interviewed the executive director of ACT, Deborah Harford, for my thesis on North Pacific adaptation, to get her critique of the British Columbia province-level plan. She was clearly passionate about trying to provoke the government into further action, and I am excited to see this new set of reports coming from her team.

The lead author of the reports, Bob Sandford, is quoted in the Vancouver Sun, directing comments at the government of British Columbia:

"You manage groundwater like a country would in the 18th century!"

Read more in L. Pynn's Oct. 5, 2011, article SFU study calls for coordinated water conservation policies: Surface and groundwater should be managed together.

ITEP's Treasure Trove of Planning Resources for Tribal Climate Change Response

The Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals (ITEP) is about to hold two workshops in the U.S. Southwest to support the climate change planning of Native American (American Indian) tribes, the Southwest Tribal Climate Change Workshop, September 13-14, 2011, Flagstaff, AZ, and a course on climate change impacts, Climate Change on Tribal Lands, October 11-14, 2011, Flagstaff, AZ.

ITEP appears to be primarily focused on Southwest U.S. tribes (being based at Northern Arizona University), but it also has a great set of links to reference materials on climate change policy broadly relevant for tribal climate change planning (local, national U.S., Canadian, and international references).

One of the reference documents linked there is a set of recommendations on funds allocations for the Fiscal Year 2012 Department of the Interior (DOI) Climate Change Adaptation Initiative (PDF). The recommendations start off with brief, clear language the basis for why climate change planning is important to tribes, how climate change is disproportionately affecting tribes, and why the DOI should fund planning for climate change on tribal lands. The document makes this excellent point:

Due to a lack of financial resources, only a few of the 565 federally recognized tribes, such as the Swinomish Tribe, have developed or are developing adaptation plans, calculating their carbon footprints, and collaborating with states, local governments and federal agencies in joint climate adaptation efforts. By comparison, at least 36 of the 50 states have climate action plans.

The document is authored by a broad coalition of tribal organizations, including ITEP and twelve other groups: the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission, the Intertribal Agriculture Council, the Intertribal Timber Council, the National Congress of American Indians, the National Tribal Environmental Council, the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society, the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, the Swinomish Tribe, the Tulalip Tribes, and one non-tribal organization-- the National Wildlife Federation. (See the National Wildlife Federation’s Tribal Lands Conservation Program website: Tribalclimate.org)

The quote above brings up for me the question-- how far has the Pacific Northwest's Swinomish Tribe gotten with their climate change adaptation planning?

It appears, from the ITEP pertaining web page, that the Swinomish began planning in 2007, published the Swinomish Climate Change Initiative Climate Adaptation Action Plan (PDF, 144 pages) in October 2010, and are moving on to implementation. Read more here:

• ITEP's summary of the Snohomish adaptation planning process, dated Feb. 2011.

• The Swinomish Climate Change Initiative Web Site, maintained by the Swinomish Office of Planning & Community Development (based in Washington State, just south of the U.S./Canadian border, across the strait from Vancouver Island, British Columbia)

Now on the California DWR Climate Change Blog - A Summary of the "Futures of Wild Marin" Climate Change Scenario Planning Case Study

California's Department of Water Resources decided to start a climate change blog at the beginning of this year, and provisionally called it a "Clog," i.e., short for climate change blog. I wasn't alone in thinking it needed a new name, and now it is live under the title "Climate Change Current Perspectives," with the word "current" in a watery font.

Meanwhile, Erin Chappell, the staff scientist who is the climate change point person for Northern California, asked me to write a summary of the case study workshop I did using scenario planning to develop a resource management action plan in West Marin, California. I wrote it up and submitted a final version in May 2011. By now I'd decided they probably weren't going to post it. But no! Today I got notice that it was live!

See the California DWR climate change blog

See the archived form of my article "Preparing for Climate Change with Scenarios: A Marin County Case Study" (just a PDF of the post)

One correction to the post: I'm no longer employed by Erika Zavaleta's lab at UC Santa Cruz. The funding ran out in July, and so I'm just a freelance consultant. I let DWR know and told them they can either correct my title or insert the original May date of the article in the blog header. Or, leave it as-is, since Erika certainly won't mind me being erroneously assigned to her lab again. Especially since I'm still working on the project as a volunteer. :->

The Russian Far East Sees its First Shark Attacks: Warmer Waters Blamed

Overfishing together with warming offshore waters are cited as possible causes of the first known shark attacks in the Russian Far East according to this Aug. 18, 2011, NYT article "Shark Attacks Shock Russian East." Two or three (with the third unconfirmed) shark attacks took place over the past few days off the shore of the Russian coastal province of Primorsky Krai, where beaches are crowded this time of year.

For US West Coasters, the beaches of Primorsky Krai on the Sea of Japan are relatively more swimmer-friendly than the East Pacific coast, with warmer waters and more sandy shores. The footage they are showing in conjunction with the shark attacks looks like Shamora, a famous beach near Vladivostok where I hung out on at least one occasion back in my Russian environmental activism days, though I don't believe any of the attacks took place there.

For Russian-readers, here's a decent article from Lenta.ru, Aug. 18, 2011, covering the two confirmed attacks of a 25 year old man and a 16 year old boy. Both the NYT and Lenta.ru articles quote WWF's Konstantin Zgurovsky mentioning the role of climate change in the changing migration patterns of the shark.

The U.S. GAO to the Fed: Get Your Adaptation Funding Ducks in a Row

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a new report: Climate Change Adaptation: Aligning Funding with Strategic Priorities (July 28, 2011). This 14-page report suggests that the U.S. government can't align funding with climate change adaptation priorities for two main reasons: officials across agencies lack a shared understanding of climate change adaptation priorities, and mechanisms intended to align funding with priorities are nonbinding. One suggested way to ameliorate the problem is a government-wide strategic planning process to coordinate a federal adaptation response.

I haven't had a chance to digest the report enough to comment on it, but I always expect to like GAO reports, and this one looks typically plain-spoken and action-oriented.

"Green Helmets" Get a Red Light at the UN Security Council

Today's New York Times reports that a special meeting at the UN Security Council did not result in agreement on action to address security threats caused by climate change. (The article was published online yesterday - U.N. Deadlock on Addressing Climate Shift by N. MacFarquhar, July 20, 2011)

The Guardian's advance coverage of the meeting (UN security council to consider climate change peacekeeping, S. Goldenberg, July 20, 2011) describes the backdrop for the meeting as discussions proposing introduction of "green helmets – which could step into conflicts caused by shrinking resources."

The idea of climate change as a threat to the security of sovereign states is not at all new. The U.S. National Intelligence Council issued an alert back in 2000 about how infectious disease, propelled in new ways by climate change, threatens U.S. security (The Global Infectious Disease Threat and Its Implications for the United States) - though soon after eclipsed by more immediate security threats in 2001.

The idea of the UN acting to address climate change as a global security threat-- that is relatively new. Russia, China, developing nations and climate change denialists argued against this action. The NYT article quotes a government representative of China, Wang Min: "The Security Council does not have the expertise in climate change and does not have the necessary means and resources." He has a point.

The other problem I see with a "green helmet" campaign- what threshold event would trigger deployment? Where does the line between one human-generated crisis and another get drawn? Would the Security Council deploy the theoretical green helmets to evacuate a drowning island nation, where the crisis is clearly caused by climate-driven sea level rise, but perhaps not deploy them to help alleviate the famine in Somalia, where climate change plays a role but less definitively so?

I can't help think about Cyclone Nargis, which devastated Burma/Myanmar right as I was transitioning from a study of the human rights impacts of sanctions on that country to a study of the concept of human security. I was reading strong statements from advocates working within the UN to create a team that would deploy in "human security" crises, as in, crises exactly like Cyclone Nargis, where a population was under massive threat and the government was unequipped (and in this case just reluctant) to help its own people. In that storm in 2008, about 138,000 people died, and the UN stood by, talking about intervention - but not intervening - to help a people devastated by violent weather of the sort we will see more often under climate change.

I presume the "green helmet" promoters are the same people who make the human security argument at the UN (that the UN should intervene if a government can't protect its own people against threats to individual security, such as organized crime, domestic violence, droughts and violent weather, etc., differentiated from national security threats, such as international terrorism, which the military addresses).

I wish it were so that the UN could ever be that organized and well-resourced to take into account climate change threats to security. The reality is that there will be climate refugees, they will look like economic refugees and will be treated as such (badly), and-- like those lost in Cyclone Nargis, living under military dictatorship-- many more will not be able to escape their life-threatening climatic conditions.

Read more about what the International Organization for Migration paper has to say about these climate refugees:
Brown, O. (2008). Migration and Climate Change. Geneva: International Organization for Migration.

Here's a newer IOM report (2011): Climate change, migration and critical international security
considerations.

Cal-Adapt Presentation Now Online

If you are interested in learning more about the Cal-Adapt climate change planning tool, the 44 minute presentation that launched it is now available online, linked from the bottom of this page. Enjoy!

Congratulations Cal-Adapt development team!

Congratulations to Kevin Koy and the other outstanding GIS specialists at the Geospatial Innovation Facility at UC Berkeley, under the faculty direction of the illustrious Maggi Kelly , who today launched a new climate adaptation tool for California, the Cal-Adapt site!

This morning a national audience about 80 planners, scientists and climate adaptation consultants listened in on a WebEx presentation of all the ways Cal-Adapt can display maps of climate impacts to help planners make decisions for the future. Audience questions touched on the possibility of exporting this to other states (from the Climate Impacts Group in Washington State), and also the availability of downscaled climate impacts information for the rest of the country (from, I believe, someone from the Mayor's Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability/ New York City Panel on Climate Change- see their May 2010 report on adaptation for NYC here).

I'm hoping a link will be made public for the recording of this 40 minute presentation, and if so I will post it here. This is an exciting step forward in the realm of climate change planning tools, and I'm proud that California is again leading the way, with my alma mater UC Berkeley at the head of the charge!

"America's Climate Choices" final report released

Last Thursday, May 12, 2011, the final report of a series of studies requested by the U.S. Congress was released by the Committee on America's Climate Choices. This committee was formed by the National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council.

I'm trying to get a handle on what they have done, exactly. There is a site dedicated to the project: America's Climate Choices Dot Org, but be warned that two videos automatically start playing at the same time when you go to that site, creating a strange duet of professorial voices. You can go from that page to a page that gives their summary of the conclusions of the concluding report of their project. I would reiterate their recommendations here except that-- to me-- they are so vague that I don't believe they'd tell anyone reading this anything new.

You can get a free PDF of the report here.

I've now gone page-by-page through the final report looking for what they have to say about adaptation to climate change. To the authors' credit, there is text in there about adaptation, and it isn't just a paragraph at the end. But it is so vague, again, I don't know who is reading this report who would be educated in any way by what they are reading. It's a 117 page report full of generalities like this:

"Adaptation responses can be improved through research on methods for assessing vulnerability and on integrative approaches for responding to the impacts of climate change in interaction with other stresses." (p. 67)

(End of paragraph, no further elaboration.)

I hate to nitpick, but the text is also full of incorrect comma placement that makes me wonder about the level of editing that went into it. This sort of thing is on nearly every page:

"A wide array of actors ... are already playing important roles and should continue to be involved, in the enterprise of collecting and sharing climate-related information..."

Involved, in?

Who is reading this? What are people learning from it? Was it written with the intention of teaching a particular audience?

I wish I understood... I'll keep poking at the internet and trying to figure out what precipitated this report and what the press said around the report release. If the U.S. Congress was their audience I wish it were more concise and specific.

By the by, it does touch on my favorite topic: criteria. On page 46 it gives the following criteria for "climate-related decision making":

1. Risk reduction potential
2. Feasibility and effectiveness
3. Cost and cost-effectiveness
4. Ancillary costs and benefits
5. Equity and fairness
6. International considerations
7. Robustness

My two cents:

1. Risk reduction potential is the same thing as effectiveness, to me.
2. Feasibility is a whole different thing from effectiveness.
3. Cost (direct, indirect, etc.) -- a whole HUGE different thing from cost-effectiveness.
4. Ancillary costs are costs, and should go under that criteria. Ancillary benefits (also called co-benefits) are really their own criterion.
5. Equity and fairness: good for them for including these! It would have been better if they defined the terms anywhere in the text. They give examples, which is good, but only talk about equity in terms of greenhouse gas reduction measures (e.g., the differential impact of the increasing cost of energy), not the much more pronounced disproportionate difference in impacts on vulnerable populations that we'll see as the direct climate impacts start to ramp up.
6. "International considerations" -- could not be more vague as a criterion. This belongs as a sub-category of costs, benefits, and equity.
7. Robustness is a very clear, well fleshed-out criterion in this document.

My revision of their criteria, to make it logical to me:

1. Effectiveness at reducing risk.
2. Feasibility.
3. Costs (direct & indirect, domestic & international).
4. Co-benefits (direct & indirect, domestic & international).
5. Cost-effectiveness.
6. Equitable distribution of benefits (within process and outcomes) across population groups.
7. Robustness to multiple climate futures.

(Not that anyone's asking my opinion.)

New estimate of sea level rise: five feet

A new estimate of five feet of sea level rise within this century came from the AP yesterday. The most important piece of news - this greatly accelerated rate of sea level rise- is down in paragraph two; the article's title: "Climate scientists told to 'stop speaking in code.'" Journalists: stop burying the lead!

-- EDIT: Cleaning up my blog, August 2015, I realized this post was not very informative and the link is now dead.

Here's the original AP article that inspired my post.

Here's a better article from May 4, 2011, that talks about the new 2011 sea level rise projections, and talks about the source-- the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme. Also, five feet is the high end:

A major new multi-country scientific assessment of the Arctic has concluded that on our current greenhouse gas emissions path, we face 3 to 5 feet of sea level rise — far greater than the 2007 IPCC warned of. 

A case of misuse of science in climate change discourse

From Alternet today:
Scientists Find Link Between Global Warming and Earthquakes

Let's be clear, climate change affecting earthquakes does not mean that climate change will make earthquakes more frequent or more damaging. And this process of changing climate affecting tectonic plates takes place VERY SLOWLY. Over milennia. It is something to be aware of, but not something that should be used to imply that Now We're All Completely Doomed.

Here is the original scientific report:
Monsoon speeds up Indian plate motion
(Iaffaldano, Husson, Bunge 2010)

From the report, a very nuanced and specific implication:

Our results support the notion that faster erosion in the eastern Himalayas locally reduced tectonic resistance against India/Eurasia plate convergence.

Things are changing, but we don't know what it means, please don't panic.

There are other, better reasons to panic. Like that the U.S. Government doesn't believe in climate change.

Breathtaking Shortsightedness in the U.S. Congress

U.S. House of Representatives Votes to Repeal Climate Science (a April 7, 2011, blog post by Dan Lashof, Director of NRDC's Climate Center in Washington, D.C.)

The impacts are evident, communities are already having to retreat from coastal erosion and sea level rise, and the House of Representatives is denying the whole scientific body of evidence. Some days you feel more hopeful than others.

Congratulations Fresno County on Your New Adaptation Plan!

Read the 50-page adaptation plan "Integrated Strategies for a Vibrant and Sustainable Fresno County" (March 2011) here.

Congratulations Oakland on Your New Climate Action Plan!

Congratulations specifically should go to Oakland's Public Works Sustainability Coordinator Garrett Fitzgerald and to all the community members and organizations who worked with him to develop the Oakland Energy Climate and Action Plan (ECAP).

On Tuesday March 1st, two years of community consultation culminated in the adoption by Oakland City Council of the ECAP, which calls for aggressive greenhouse gas reductions in the city alongside climate change adaptation measures.

-- Read Oakland's ECAP (the Feb. 22 variant currently on the Public Works site).

-- Read the Ella Baker Center's March 3, 2011, press release on the passage of the ECAP - highlights of community involvement in the plan (though nothing about how climate adaptation is in the plan).

-- See the Oakland Public Works page on the ECAP, giving a little background, additional links.

-- See Oakland Climate Action Coalition's Webpage - again, the content is more about supporting sustainable economic development along with GHG reductions and less about preparing for climate impacts, but this coalition has a lot of potential to help Oakland identify its community vulnerabilities and prepare accordingly.

Go Oakland!

Lake Baikal May Unlock Climate Impacts

It appears that excellent data collected by one family of scientists living and working on Lake Baikal, Russia, may provide clues to how climate variability affects many diverse species, according to Science Daly ("World's Largest Lake Sheds Light on Ecosystem Responses to Climate Variability" - by Marianne V. Moore, Feb. 18, 2011).

Detailed and frequent measurements of Lake Baikal conditions show correlations between Baikal's temperature and "El Niño indices, reflecting sea surface temperatures over the Pacific Ocean tens of thousands of kilometers away." Measurements also show a strong influence on Baikal conditions by the Pacific Ocean pressure fields described by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

"Remarkably, the temperature record that reflects all these climate messages was collected by three generations of a single family of Siberian scientists, from 1946 to the present, and the correlation of temperature with atmospheric dynamics is further confirmation that this data set is of exceptionally high quality," said [Steve] Katz [of NOAA's Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary]. "This consistent dedication to understanding one of the world's most majestic lakes helps us understand not only the dynamics of Lake Baikal over the past 60 years, but also to recognize future scenarios for Lake Baikal. The statistical approach may be used for similar questions in other ecosystems, although we recognize that the exceptional quality and length of the Baikal data was one of the keys to our success."

Lake Baikal - called the "Pearl of Siberia" - is the world's oldest and deepest lake. It is largest freshwater lake in the world, and home to the Nerpa, one of only three known freshwater seals.

I'd like to point out that those of us working in the increasingly embattled budgetary environment of the public university system in California should look to these scientists working on Baikal for inspiration. They have faced worse barriers than we can imagine working through the funding environment of the Russian Academy of Sciences from 1946 to the present. That family undoubtedly suffered deprivations to maintain their work which many U.S. researchers would not tolerate. My work with those defending the health of Lake Baikal at the small non-profit Pacific Environment has instilled in me a deep respect for the sheer tenacity of Russian scientists. And there's nothing like the passion of a Russian scientist-turned-activist.

Read about Pacific Environment's work protecting Lake Baikal, "the Galapagos of Russia."

Dispatch from Western Australia- Lessons for California

Mark Lubell, an Associate Professor at the Dept. of Environmental Science and Policy at UC Davis, is visiting Western Australia and writing on his department's blog about that country's water management lessons for California. Read his latest post: "Dispatch: Climate Adaptation in Southern California...oops...I mean Perth, Western Australia."

According to his departmental bio, Mark studies human behavior and the role of governance institutions in solving collective action problems and facilitating cooperation. His bottom line in this latest post:

Australia appears to have a far more centralized set of environmental management institutions than California, with centralization at the level of state agencies. This is a nuanced statement because in another way natural resource management is decentralized like in California--the national government gives all the responsibility to the states (for example, the states manage the national parks). But in terms of regional adaptation, the state agencies have a lot of centralized control. The chief example is the Water Corporation, which manages all of the water infrastructure and delivers water to households. The local governments don't provide the water themselves, and in fact the local governments have far less control over their resources than cities and counties in the US. So the number of actors and policy games involved with climate adaptation is smaller and more centralized in [Western Australia], which makes for an interesting comparison and possibly a better ability to actually get things done.

I wonder-- what conditions could lead to the creation of a state "Water Corporation" like this in California? Would people cede control at the prospect of trucking in bottled water in a severe drought? Adelaide, Australia, faced this prospect in 2009.

I also wonder how the Australian Water Corporation handles water rates, and if they have anything like a "universal lifeline" rate for low-income households to provide the poor access to water in a drought. It appears from the Water Corporation's website that seniors and pensioners can get "a substantial rebate or concession" on their water bills. Otherwise, it seems water users can negotiate a payment plan, but not for a reduced rate.

Some utility districts in California offer a low-income water rate, but from what I know most don't. Again, I wonder what it would take for California to mandate a water rate for the poor.

--- An aside:

The idea of a universal lifeline rate for water isn't my own idea, incidentally. The Pacific Institute's Peter Gleick, speaking at a UNESCO conference in 1998:

Water is a social good-- we all agree on that. People should pay for its use, to encourage efficiency and as a recognition of its value. But perhaps a universal 'lifeline rate' should be established, and anything above that should be priced much higher. To water a lawn, for example, should be truly expensive.

(As quoted in Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource by Marq De Villiers, 2001.)

San Luis Obispo County Climate Plan: "We've never been here before."

Only two counties in the State of California have detailed climate change adaptation plans in the works: San Luis Obispo is one. Last Thursday they held a community workshop on the plan. It is primarily a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but I know researchers focused on climate adaptation have been involved in this planning process, including one of California's leading lights on adaptation Susanne Moser.

From the article "County to Fight Against Climate Change" (David Sneed, Feb. 13, 2011, SanLuisObispo.com - The Tribune):

The county is ...one of only two in California to have had a detailed climate adaptation study done. It looked at the various impacts climate change will have on the county and how to prepare for them.

The study was headed by the Local Government Commission, an organization that advocates centralized community and economic planning based on Ahwahnee Indian principles.

“San Luis Obispo County will be setting the marker for other communities,” [Michael] Boswell [a Cal Poly city planning professor] said.

Environmentalist and government watchdog Eric Greening of Atascadero urged county planners to concentrate on reducing emissions rather than adaptation.

“We’ve got to stop being so full of ourselves,” he said. “We haven’t the faintest idea what we are going to have to do to adapt to climate change. We’ve never been here before.”


It sounds like a good reason why you should focus on BOTH adaptation and reducing emissions (and, personally, I believe reducing emissions is a long-term adaptation strategy).

The article doesn't state which is the other California state county creating a detailed adaptation plan, but here is a November 2010 list (PDF) compiled by the Governor's Office of Planning and Research (OPR) with links to 63 different California city and county, and 36 relevant non-Californian climate planning efforts. Most of these are concerning greenhouse gas reductions, but those are the plans where you can find most U.S. adaptation efforts.

Susanne Moser is working with both Fresno and San Luis Obispo counties on their adaptation plans, so this article might be referring to Fresno as the other county with a plan.

Read more about Fresno's adaptation plan here.

Read more about the San Luis Obispo adaptation plan here.

Read more about Susanne Moser's work supporting climate adaptation in California here.

P.S. If you don't know what the Ahwahnee Principles are, you are probably not a city planner. This author incorrectly refers to them as the Ahwahnee Indian Principles. They are a modern (1991) invention of some California city planners at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite. Read more about their invention here.

The principles basically emphasize developing neighborhoods so that homes are located within walking distance of retail shops, schools, and public transit, and other social and economic efficiency principles. No "Ahwahnee Indians" were involved in the drafting of the principles, from what I can discern.

Read the “Ahwahnee Principles for Climate Change" here (PDF), published in 2008 by the Local Government Commission. Sacramento, CA.

Lessons from the Developing World Come to Chicago

This morning on NPR I heard a story about the sale of snow derivatives by the Chicago Weather Brokerage on the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange). This is the first I've heard of what amounts to weather-indexed insurance in the U.S. It's apparently been around 2 years, and -- as of Feb. 2, 2011-- they are now selling rain derivatives. Payouts are triggered by measurements at pre-set weather stations (Chicago's O'Hare Airport; Minneapolis/St. Paul; Detroit; Boston; and New York's LaGuardia Airport and Central Park). The pay-out amount is set in advance, and depends on what kind of policy you get (i.e., betting on the snow being above average or below average). This is generally how weather-indexed insurance works.

Listen to another NPR story from "Marketplace" on snow derivatives.

Weather-indexed insurance is usually designed to issue quick, pre-set payouts in the case of severe drought using the banks where farmers already have loans. They were rolled out most systematically first in India, and then spread to Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. It's historically a developing-world mechanism designed to quickly smooth things out for farmers who would otherwise have to sell their hard assets in the case of drought.

The benefit of weather-indexed insurance? It pays quickly-- and speed is key when you are trying to survive a total crop loss.

The drawback? The payout might not be sufficient to cover your losses. And, from the insurer's point of view, your weather-indexed policy holder might not live anywhere near the weather station being used to trigger the pay-out, so the drought might not have affected them at all, leading to overpayment.

But farmers might prefer a weather-indexed payout in any case, because the traditional claim-based insurance policy requires a time-intensive assessment process, and pay-outs might be late or gradual, requiring negotiation-- a problem, like climate change impacts, not restricted to the developing world.

Climate Change, Russia's Fires and the Present Uprising in Egypt

When Russia's fires last year led to the curtailing of wheat exports, it was predicted that world food prices would spike and inflame political conflict.

Climate events inflating food prices is just one example of how climate change is going to drive political conflict. Water and energy are also going to see price spikes that drive conflict.

Right now as we watch Egyptians struggle to transition from totalitarianism to democracy, remember that one of the main sparks behind this revolution was not some new societal level of enlightenment, but a new level of desperation driven by food prices.

On Feb. 3, 2011, PRI's Peter Thomson wrote about the Russia fire/ wheat scarcity/ revolution connection.

From "High food prices in Egypt and climate change":

Food price inflation in Egypt was over 20 percent last year. In particular, there’s been a big squeeze from the rising global price of wheat. New York global investment manager Vincent Truglia says depending on how you measure it, the price of wheat went up between 50 and 70 percent in 2010.
[...]

Egypt is among the world’s largest importers of wheat, and the global wheat market received a number of nasty shocks recently. The worst came last summer, when Russia was hit by an unprecedented drought and heat wave that destroyed 40 percent of its wheat harvest.

Russia abruptly banned exports, and Egypt, which had just signed a big wheat deal with Russia, was left scrambling.

The Egyptian government has tried to keep a lid on wheat prices through subsidies and rationing. But Truglia says anxiety over food prices is the key problem facing Egypt today.

And some look further up the chain of events, and trace the problem at least in part to climate change.

“I think we are seeing some of the early effects of climate change on food security,” says veteran environmental analyst Lester Brown, of the Earth Policy Institute. In particular, Brown says the heat wave that led to the collapse of Russia’s wheat harvest was no ordinary weather event.

“If someone had told me that there was likely to be a heat wave in Russia in which the average temperature would be 14 degrees Fahrenheit above the norm — that’s pushing the envelope. I mean FOUR degrees would be a lot.”
[...]


Vicken Checherian, writing for Opendemocracy.net, wrote on Jan. 26, 2011 (The Arab Crisis: Food, Energy, Water, Justice), about other nearby countries taking measures to try to prevent food price-driven revolution: "Even Saudi Arabia is taking precautions; the kingdom aims to double its wheat reserves to 1.4 million tons, enough to satisfy demand for a year." He also points out that food price-driven revolution hasn't historically led to democracy in the region:

The rise of food and energy prices sparked popular demonstrations in Algeria in 1988 and Jordan in 1989. When the authorities could not suppress the demonstrations by pure repression, and could not reduce the prices for lack of means, they chose to open up a closed political system: single-party rule was ended in Algeria in 1989, and in Jordan restrictions on the media and the work of political parties were lifted. In neither case did this political opening lead to sustainable institutions and democratisation: Algeria eventually degenerated into a fratricidal war, Jordan recalled the old habits once the wave of contestation died down.

Let's hope for a better outcome for Egypt.