"America cannot resist this transition [to sustainable energy sources]; we must lead it."

Standing, applauding. Thank you, President Obama!

We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries - we must claim its promise. That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure - our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.

From the January 21, 2013, inaugural speech 

Key to water management adaptation? Mostly good management.

Check out an excellent blog post "Climate change and California water – past, present and future" (Jan. 13, 2013) by Professor Jay Lund from UC Davis' Center for Watershed Sciences.

He makes a few excellent points, with the bottom line that good management for climate change is mostly just good management. He points out the fact that climate change isn't the only signal that managers will have to monitor: "In the past 100 years, California water management has changed tremendously, driven by changes in population, economic structure, technology, and social and environmental objectives."

He also points out that we don't necessarily need any more reservoirs here in California: "with some changes in reservoir management, existing large reservoirs on most of California’s rivers can largely accommodate seasonal shifts in runoff." And, an important detail for those wringing their hands over California's warming climate: precipitation and other unknowns are probably more important to monitor than temperature.

Change in total precipitation is more important than warming alone. The physical, economic and ecological instability of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta probably poses more risk to California’s water supply than climate warming.

Next weekend I expect to be heading up to the California Water Law Symposium at UC Davis, where I'm sure I'll hear more wisdom from Professor Lund's corner.

Congratulations Oakland on your new Climate Action Plan!

Congratulations Garrett Fitzgerald, Oakland's Sustainability Coordinator, and the rest of Oakland's Public Works Sustainable Oakland Department, and the Oakland Climate Action Coalition (now the Local Clean Energy Alliance) and the rest of the active community supporters, for the unanimous passage of the "Oakland Energy and Climate Action Plan" at the Oakland City Council meeting last night. Read the draft version here, which will be the same as the final, I presume, unless the CEQA process changed something. Sustainability maven Rebecca Kaplan moved for its passage and, except for the one person excused from the meeting (Jane Brunner), it was all ayes.

The eight people giving comments before the passage of the plan all had praise to offer, but also a few constructive criticisms, including the need for the plan to address the need for more trees in Oakland with a master plan for planting. That comment came from a representative of Urban Releaf, from Richmond, CA. After the plan passed, Garrett and the Urban Releaf contingent reconnoitered in the hallway, and I got to hear Garrett tell the woeful tale of how a few years ago Oakland was up for $50,000 in matching funds for urban greening from CalFire, but it was lost because the expenditure, approved at the City Council, was misclassified by a clerk and therefore disappeared along with the opportunity for the matching funds. City layoffs have left the Public Works Department with no institutional memory about the original plan for those funds.

On a positive fiscal note, I learned at the meeting that $35 million in unexpected revenue from economic growth has shown up in Oakland's coffers, and the City Council is gearing up to allocate it. Trees won't be on the priority list before basic infrastructure maintenance and safety, but it's just to say that Oakland should not despair of its ability to renew itself.

Collaboratory for Adaptation at Notre Dame

I've been remiss in updating this blog for a few weeks while the election season has been rolling on, adamantly ignoring climate chance until Sandy suddenly put it on the agenda. I've been fascinated watching how people are using or misusing science to link Sandy with climate change. I'll hopefully get back to exploring that in another blog post. But for now... look! Shiny!

A new research collaboration resource! Check out the Collaboratory for Adaptation to Climate Change, apparently launched in April 2011 and put into active use in August 2011, housed at University of Notre Dame. It's funded by the university and the NSF.

It took two seconds to start an account, and now I'm going to start exploring the events listings, online resources, and taking their "who are you?" poll. It seems to have a very fast, user-friendly interface, and all my favorite tools and trainings seem to be featured. I wonder if they are coordinating with CAKE?

The Human Right to Water Affirmed in California

Congratulations, staff of the Community Water Center! You have worked long and hard to win yesterday's victory, when California Governor Brown signed the Human Right to Water Bill, AB 685 (see AB 685 with recent markups), introducing into the Water Code this language:

"It is hereby declared to be the established policy of the state that every human being has the right to safe, clean, affordable, and accessible water adequate for human consumption, cooking, and sanitary purposes."

This could be an important leverage point for rural and unincorporated communities as California warms and becomes more arid.

Before now domestic use of water was prioritized in California water policy; however, that included all domestic use, including watering lawns and filling swimming pools.

In 2011 Governor Brown signed other legislation recommended as part of a Human Right to Water Bill Package:

• AB 983, the Access to Safe Drinking Water Act, to better serve communities lacking safe, affordable water;
• AB 938, about public water systems;
• AB 1221, about the State Water Quality Control Fund and the State Water Pollution Cleanup and Abatement Account; 
• SB 244, about local government, land use, general plans, and disadvantaged unincorporated communities

California's Adaptation Planning Guide Officially Out!

The announcement just hit my inbox-- the California Adaptation Planning Guide (nee Policy Guide) has been officially released! The announcement text:

The California Climate Adaptation Planning Guide (APG) has been finalized and is now available to the public through the California Natural Resources Agency website.  The APG, developed through a partnership between the California Natural Resources Agency, the California Emergency Management Agency, with technical support from California Polytechnic State University – San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly) and funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, provides guidance to support regional and local communities in addressing the unavoidable consequences of climate change.

As a member of the APG Advisory Committee, I have been eager to see this finished and released. This is apparently the very first adaptation guidance funded by U.S. FEMA. If it proves useful, hopefully other states will apply and get funded to do the same.

Congratulations to everyone at Cal-EMA, Natural Resources and Cal Poly who worked hard on this for the past year.

More studies showing species having unexpected responses to climate change

UC Berkeley's Grinnell Resurvey Project has generated data which allows researchers to assert some unexpected truths about species' responses to climate change.

The general wisdom is that species will move upslope/north to retreat from warming conditions. But that isn't how some species are responding. Two new studies -- "The push and pull of climate change causes heterogeneous shifts in avian elevational range" (Tingley, Koo, Moritz, Rush, and Beissinger) published Aug. 6, 2012, in Global Change Biology, and "Anthropogenic refugia ameliorate the severe climate-related decline of a montane mammal along its trailing edge" (Morelli, Smith, Kastely, Mastroserio, Moritz, and Beissinger) from Aug. 15, 2012, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B -- look at this puzzle. The first study found as many as 25% of species have shifted in ways not predicted, considering temperature changes. Lead author Morgan Tingley says, "We find that precipitation changes can have a major, opposing influence to temperature in a species’ range shift." The second study looks at Belding's ground squirrel, an animal perceived to be relatively common in the Sierras which has apparently disappeared from 42% of the places where it was recorded in the early 1900s by the original Grinnell survey. Local extinctions appeared more likely where winters are warmer and rain more frequent. UC Berkeley's Toni Morelli elaborates, "[T]he rate of decline is much greater than that seen in the same region for the pika, a small mountain-dwelling cousin of the rabbit that has become the poster child for the effects of climate warming in the contiguous United States."

Eerily, Tingley pointed out in this Aug. 15 article announcing the two studies' release, "More worrisome are the species that have not shifted. How are they adapting? Are they moving, but we just can’t detect it? Or are they slowly declining as environmental conditions gradually become less ideal where they live?"

Meanwhile, the ground squirrel seems to be doing particularly well in places modified by humans-- artificial oases like Mono Lake County Park. In the end, human land management choices might play a bigger role in the survival of a species than global changes in temperature or rain. It should make our state and local governments reconsider the importance of preserving open space-- you never know what species is making its last stand against climate change there.