"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."