New study: the low price of carbon puts brakes on innovation

A former professor from my public policy graduate school, Margaret Taylor (now at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), has just published a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) with her findings about how the low price of carbon in current cap-and-trade programs is leading to a slow-down on technological innovation to reduce greenhouse gases. Read it here: Innovation under cap-and-trade programs (March 12, 2012).

New Sea Level Visualization Tool Launched by Climate Central

On March 14, 2012, Climate Central, a climate science and climate communications-oriented NGO based in Palo Alto, CA, and Princeton, NJ, launched a new report with an on-line interactive tool for analyzing the risk from US coastal sea level rise-- Surging Seas. Its map is searchable by US postal code or city name.

Read the press release about the launch of the report and on-line tool.

Here's Climate Central's compendium of news coverage about the Surging Seas on-line tool.

And here's the scientific report published on March 14 whose methods form the basis for the Surging Seas map outputs: Tidally adjusted estimates of topographic vulnerability to sea level rise and flooding for the contiguous United States (Strauss, Ziemlinski, Weiss and Overpeck, in Environmental Research Letters).

The first thing I notice is that Alaska and Hawaii aren't included in this map. When I searched "Alaska" it said "No affected location found." Looking back at the title of the methodological basis... "contiguous United States." Aha. (I hope someone is creating a tool like this for those states' extremely vulnerable coasts!)

Searching my hometown of Oakland, CA, it tells me: "Over 1 in 6 chance sea level rise + storm surge + tide will overtop +1ft by 2020 at nearest flood risk indicator site: San Francisco - San Francisco Bay, 13.4 miles away." 

I like that it spells out in a sentence the meaning of what you see in the map that is generated. However, with any tool like this I have to wonder if someone is going to misuse it in an actuarial capacity, or use it to refuse financing to someone looking for a mortgage. The 1 in 6 risk (that's 16% -- we're not told how much over that percent, just that it's over that percent) is for a location 13 miles away; will the sea rise and overtopping happen exactly the same way all the way around the San Francisco bay? If not, that 16% might be only a VERY rough estimate. As with any simplified tool like this, we can't see the error bars or caveats. 

Curious, I looked at their disclaimer. It includes this:

You are cautioned that Content should NOT be used:

• to assess actual coastal or other hazards, insurance requirements, or property values.

• in lieu of Flood Insurance Studies and Flood Insurance Rate Maps issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

• for navigation, permitting, zoning or other legal purposes.

I hope people heed those words! In the meantime, it's a very accessible tool to provoke thinking (and hopefully motivate policy action) to protect our coasts' future under climate change.

And also... perhaps is has already provoked a little tongue-in-cheek future history of San Francisco after catastrophic sea level rise... From "San Francisco Archipelago" on the blog Burrito Justice, March 20, 2012: "While the submerged ruins of the Sunset and the Mission have always been popular diving attractions, many have already forgotten the locations of long-flooded streets and avenues."

The award for the best-ever 3rd-grade pun utilization in a response to a climate change impact question goes to...

...Conrad Anker -- in his interview on NPR's Science Friday today. Conrad is a mountaineer who is about to re-summit Everest, and he responded to host Ira Flatow's question about whether he's seen evidence of climate change on Everest with this:

"How does a mountain hear? Mountaineers!"

And then segued into describing what he's seen changing on the mountain. (Paths used in the 1970's have melted, the cryosphere is breaking up at high elevations, etc.)

Best non-shocking, non-alienating, 3rd grade pun-utilizing response to a question about climate change. Ever.