Tuesday, June 7, 2011
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!
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!
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
"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.)
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.)
Thursday, May 5, 2011
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:
-- 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.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, April 8, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, March 28, 2011
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.
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