As we prepare for “potential billion-dollar storm” Hurricane Sandy, Ed Markey’s staff on the Natural Resources Committee has put together a report on ““The New New England: How Climate Change Jeopardizes the Northeast’s Economy and Environment.” I’ll be reading with interest.
To repeat the obvious: Of course no individual weather event can be chalked up to climate change. But the severity of such events, in the aggregate, are indeed being exacerbated by climate. Climate change => weather on steroids.
And as the report says, this has massive impacts on the quality of life and economy of our home in New England.
Full press release below the fold:
As Historic Storm Approaches New England, Rep. Markey Releases Report on Climate Change’s Effects on Region
Sea-level Rise, Extreme Storms, Other Climate Effects Threaten New England Lives, Livelihoods
WASHINGTON (October 25, 2012) – Weather forecasters are now saying the likelihood of Hurricane Sandy hitting New England in some fashion is increasing, delivering what could be the worst weather conditions since the Perfect Storm of 1991. Climate change scientists, meanwhile, have released study after study saying the extreme weather effects and changing climate of New England will result in storms that are more intense, with worse floods, and damaging sea-level rise, among other effects.
Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) today released a report that pulls together the latest studies on climate change’s negative effects on New England, painting a picture of a region already changed, and in danger of losing essential characteristics and economic engines.
“If climate change continues unchecked, Hurricane Sandy won’t be our October surprise, it could be the new normal for New England, where dangerous storms and other climate effects put lives and livelihoods in danger,” said Rep. Markey, who is the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee and the co-author of the only climate change bill to pass a chamber of Congress. “The Perfect Storm was supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime event, but climate change is increasing the chances of these sorts of historic extreme weather events.”
The report, “The New New England: How Climate Change Jeopardizes the Northeast’s Economy and Environment,” was written by the Democratic staff of the Natural Resources Committee, at the direction of Rep. Markey.
Some of the major findings of the report include:
–Precipitation in New England is becoming increasingly erratic – extreme rain and snowfall events are on the rise, making damaging floods more likely. Extreme downpours and snowfalls have increased by 85 percent since 1948.
–Rates of sea-level rise from North Carolina to Massachusetts are two to four times faster than the global average, causing more erosion an storm threats now and potential inundation in the future.
–The Northeast is heating up rapidly. January to August 2012 set a new record for high temperatures both on land and in the ocean. Without action to curb carbon pollution, this warming is expected to continue. By the end of the century, Massachusetts summers could feel like North Carolina’s.
–Ocean temperatures in the Northeast during the first half of 2012 were the warmest on record, which can fuel stronger storms.
Climate changes in New England are changing the economic climate in key industries throughout the region. The Markey report finds that:
–By 2100, Maine will likely be the only state cold enough to sustain ski resorts, putting thousands out of work and losing billions of dollars for the New England economy.
–In 2012, New England maple syrup production was down 27 percent from the previous year, leading to an approximately $17 million loss to the industry.
–Invasive beetles, changing forests, droughts, and increasing wildfires could change the face – and palette of fall foliage – of New England’s forests, leading to falling tourism visits and dollars.
–As sea levels rise and storms become more severe, many of Boston’s best-known landmarks will be threatened, including Faneuil Hall, Quincy Market, North Station, Fan Pier, Copley Church, John Hancock Tower and the Public Garden.
–Warming waters are already potentially altering the makeup of marine life off New England’s coasts, leading to severe reductions in fish like cod, and massive increases in lobster stocks.
“We have some of the best skiing, fishing and foliage in the world in New England, and it all is at risk due to climate change,” said Rep. Markey. “In order to save our traditions, we need more innovations that will cut the carbon pollution that is changing the very face of our planet.”
Discuss
35 Comments . Leave a comment below.I guess if it turns out to be a dud then we don’t have to worry about this issue.
/sarcasm
Use of weather events in this way, even with a mumbled proviso, is poor tactics. It opens the door to a cold snap in January or a low-hurricane year being treated as “evidence against” by a lot of the people you are trying to reach as an activist.
Americans understand global warming’s influence on extreme weather: http://www.livescience.com/23831-global-warming-spurs-extreme-weather.html
This point was made early in the post:
I have heard people say, when it’s cold for a day or two in summer, that it “proves” there’s no global warming. Editorial cartoonists even do this. But people are starting to notice that there are more of these extreme storms, and odd weather patterns (e.g. snow often coming up the coast the last few years from Carolinas). Here in Massachusetts we’ve had two earthquakes, two tornadoes, and a few hurricanes. One event doesn’t prove anything, but we have a pattern of more extreme stuff.
I caught Bill McKibben on Bill Maher’s show recently. Ex-GOP Rep. Mark Foley (Fla.) asked him, isn’t it true that weather’s weird sometimes and it might be really cold in Florida the same day it’s 100 degrees in Chicago? McKibben nailed him: That’s why we look at patterns in the aggregate, and we see that for 115 straight months the average temp has been higher than the average for that month throughout the 20th century.
It’s scary. Scarier still is the right-wing shill from CNN on the Bill Maher panel who said he’s more worried about the Stalin-esque dangers of “collective action” to address the problem than the changing climate.
The storm-specific point made is by the BLOGGER and reporters not the report itself. Storm or no storm, I suspect this report would have been released this week. Timing was just coincidental.
Empires have fallen due to climate shifts much smaller than we are/are going to experience. Expect mass migrations. Canada might well someday have to button it its borders.
n/t
I believe that a lot of the problems the environmental movement has in this debate stems from earlier successes. I think a lot of environmental successes began by galvanizing public support with a healty dollop of fearmongering. Rachel Carson exaggerated a wee bit in Silent Spring. Greens suddenly have no more respect for science than Republicans when it comes to genetically modified vegetables. Alar in my apples!
This is how climate change started in the late 80s: as global warming, during a really hot summer. We’re all going to roast. Death count in Chicago! But then this kind of blew up. There were cold summers. Wait, it isn’t global warming, its climate change! And cold winters– well, climate isn’t weather. Until there is a hurricane, and then it kind of is, because the climate isn’t weather thing drops to the footnotes– then its an opportunity to talk about global warming, I mean climate change.
The instinct as activists is always to search the news cycle to find a great hook– how can we get people to care about our issue? But in this case, the instict to activism, coupled with the media’s profound allergy to complexity and nuance, winds up making the science look to most people like the sceince of nutrition (red wine protects against cancer, oops no it doesn’t, butter is bad for you, nope margarine is bad and butter is good, whit wine is good but also bad, garlic protects against heart disaease, no it turns out it just tastes good).
At this point, as time passes, people who REALLY CARE A WHOLE LOT about this issue are concerned that things haven’t changed all that much. So they dial up the “we’re all gonna die!” rhetoric. We can’t be modest and subtle, we have to ACT RIGHT NOW! But this is profoundly counterproductive– and 20 years of this approach have yielded quite little indeed, globally.
Meanwhile, the BIG solution, to which we were all dismayed the USA did not participate, the Kyoto protocal, has been a a complete bust in Europe, where it was embraced. And the US, despite receding popular support for anti-greenhouse gas initiatives, is actually making progress, but inadvertently as a result of cheap shale gas replacing coal as a power source (a shift opposed by environmentalists).
Climate’s influence of weather is in the probabilities, which is a hard concept to convey, especially through the “After the break, is your pet psychic?” media. But advocates should refrain from post-hoc triumphalism after every storm, and adopt a more modest tone (Nate Silver’s approach with respect to probabilities in baseball and politics comes to mind).
Because it sure seems like the approach adopted by Mr. Markey’s staff here has been long demonstrated to be ineffective.
… the ‘opinions differ’ equivocation of the media? This in the context that as soon as these issues expressed themsleves in legislation it gave the opportunity for opposing viewpoints a vastly overweighted (relative to the science opinion) ‘equal’ seat at the committee hearings.
I think it is more of a function of (i) the seeming shifting of positions (Global warming, which causes more snow and cold weather); combined with (ii) overstated confidence early.
These are understandable phenomena, if you make the effort to understand them. “Global warming” is accurate at scale, but causes changes in climate that might make a particular place more cold at a given time. , and this became more understood as the problem became better understood. But “global warming” seemed to be described with certainty 20 years ago, and then “climate change” wound up seeming like an ass-covering climbdown.
Nor do I suggest that the seeming confidence, early, was a problem with the scientists. Rather, I think it was a problem with some activists looking for their “hook” (which they found when 1988 had a hot summer), and the inability of media to report anything competently, or without resort to sensationalism. (In NYC, they were saying that global warming was causing urban violence, because drug/gang violence increased during the summer.) I also think that certain activisits did little to discourage the sensationalism because a good little scare gets had theretofore gotten the legislation out of committee.
So, when we had some cold summers and winters a few years later, and the story seemed to shift, people began to think of it like another round of The Population Bomb, which is to say, BS.
The issue with the media is sensationalism, not “equivocation.” Frankly, the manner in which the differing opinion is presently denounced– as if it were heresy–is profoundly counterproductive.
Please don’t mistake me: I am not saying that this is right. I am just saying that it is, and pretending it is not does not seem to be producing satisfactory results.
I get all that.
Nevertheless, the science is settled and compelling. The media of the rest of the world, especially including Europe agree. Even the Chinese are investing staggering amounts of money in renewable low-carbon energy technology.
So what is it about the American media that brings it to such a different stance, and about the American public that causes it to embrace the denier lunacy?
of resistance as a failing of the enviro message is just way off, either in terms of substance or of emphasis. There are zillionaires and media moguls who are funding this stuff, and propagating climate denial like roaches. The Koch brothers spend *sh@#$loads* of money on this. Rupert Murdoch apparently has a good 30-40% of the population eating out of his hand, and then there are the copycats: We live in a country where people can ingest ConservaPorn 24/7 — WRKO in the morning, Rush in the midday, Fox at night.
And the rest of the commercial media panders to prejudices as well — in the sense that they provide false balance for fear of offending and losing some of their consumers.
Chalking this up to a failure of messaging is misplaced. Our only fault is that we don’t have eccentric billionaires and media moguls printing money for our side.
I think my second paragraph in the post was perfectly clear and direct and accurate. I don’t know what you’re complaining about.
that climate change legislation passed the House and got a majority in the Senate — just couldn’t get to the outrageous supermajority that Mitch McConnell requires.
between the variety of research conclusions on what diet is best, and the near-unanimity in the scientific community about climate change.
If it’s yielded little it’s because we’ve got an entire major political party in this country devoted to making sure nothing gets done, and another one that isn’t fighting too hard since voters don’t like being asked to change their consumption habits or pay more for transportation, etc.
At some point it will become impossible to ignore. The only question is how much damage will be done, and irreversible, by then.
For me there nothing “triumphal” about any of it, and the importance of each individual storm comes from its reinforcement of a pattern of more, and more extreme, disruptive climate events. Opinion polls say increasing numbers of Americans, even in places like Oklahoma, are starting to notice.
But what is your goal?
You are trying to convince 300 million people that, in essence, they must surrender much of the prosperity of modernity, and radically change fundamental things about their culture and lifestyle. That $12/gallon for gas is good, and $100/gallon is better. Of course people are going to resist that.
Using a storm to emphasize a pattern of more extreme weather events just means that a period without such storms– which is going to happen– will have exactly the opposite effect.
The rest of the civilized world (including China) accepts the reality of anthropogenic global warming.
The “prosperity” you refer to is fleeting and unsustainable — like the heroin addict’s buzz, the illusion of well-being is VERY temporary and will be followed by a crash as night follows day. The rest of the world gets this — the American public (manipulated by enormous amounts of right-wing funded propaganda) does not.
Finally, the $12/$100 gallon gas MUST be evaluated in the context of alternatives. The price point to make renewable alternatives attractive is under $12. The cost, to the economy, of subsidizing the transition is many many times smaller than the cost of losing virtually every coastal city to rising sea levels.
I agree with you that focusing on this particular storm is counter-productive. Nevertheless, the AGW problem is urgent and huge. The fact that this hugely important presidential campaign doesn’t even mention it is a significant — even catastrophic — failure of our much-vaunted democratic political system.
US democracy, together with our alleged free market, has brought us to precisely the worst possible outcome. The question is what we’re going to do about it.
and hold conferences, but don’t actually do anything. We don’t accept it, hold fewer conferences, and don’t actually do anything.
Man, you’re just spouting. You don’t know what you’re talking about at all. Talk about unsupported assertions.
The countries that ratified Kyoto brought down their CO2 emission levels:
RGGI has reduced northeastern states’ CO2 production, while providing economic benefits for consumers — including me — through the MassSave program.
California is reducing its CO2 emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, due to a law passed in 2006 by the legislature and Gov. Schwarzenegger.
Not just talk, unlike your uninformed assertions. This can get done.
UK actually met their target; some of continental Europe saw a reduction, but is missing the target. Austria and Canada quit the entire Kyoto program because THE US DIDNT JOIN and (oh by the way, because they didn’t make reductions). Spain is going to miss, even though their economy is shrinking.
Meanwhile, guess which country is making the most progress during the last few years– the actual effective period of the Kyoto treaty?
I’m sorry, but this comment is well below your usual high standard.
I call your attention to material such as TRENDS IN GLOBAL CO2 EMISSIONS: 2012 Report, from the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. There is nothing particularly special about this piece, it happens to be among the first hits from Google.
The US has emitted FAR MORE than Europeans, on a per-capita basis, for a long time. According to this report, CO2 emissions from the EU were about 7.5 tonnes per capita in 2011. Emissions in China rose to 7.2 tonnes per capita. The US emissions? An appalling 17.3 tonnes per capita.
The EU has had higher gasoline prices, driven by higher taxes, for a long time. They have significantly better public transportation systems, and residents of the EU are much more able to walk and ride bicycles.
The United States is second only to Australia in CO2 emissions per capita among major nations (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita)"citation). We are arguably the world’s most egregious polluter, and yet you seem to suggest that we should wait for the rest of the world to act. I’m not sure I understand how anyone who understands the science of climate change can, in good conscience, advocate the complacency that your comment reflects.
I am, frankly, surprised and disappointed by your response.
Instead of complaining that others aren’t doing it for you?
Right here and right now.
I think we need to go all out in developing alternatives fuel sources, invest heavily in mass transit as is done in many other nations, etc.
Your point – focusing on the individual storm as “incontrovertible proof” of a problem won’t work – is well-taken. I think the emerging patterns will, in the next few years, be all the “incontrovertible proof” most people need. An individual murder does not indicate a serial killer. A large series of murders with the same M.O. does. That’s the point I’ve tried to make in this thread.
It really doesn’t have to cost more. It only has to cost more because this country has a culture of greed and and corporate dominance that is applauded for scraping the last penny of prosperity from workers who work hard and play by the rules. Wind is free. Sunshine is free. Yet, we can only manufacture and sell the already existing technology to consumers at – according to somervilletom – three times the cost of generating fuel made from expensive fossil fuels. It just doesn’t make any sense. It really doesn’t.
The only thing that doesn’t “make sense” is your steadfast refusal to acknowledge economics.
We can only sell gasoline at current prices because of massive direct and indirect subsidies to the oil industry. How much would gas cost if the US stopped spending TRILLIONS of dollars “preserving the security” of oil producing regions? How much will you and every other consumer pay when all of our coastal cities are underwater? How much will all of us pay for food when climate change pushes the temperate zones northward into glaciated regions with essentially NO fertile soil — while the North American breadbasket turns into a drought-stricken sun-baked wasteland?
I’ll tell you what “doesn’t make any sense” — refusing to invest the startup costs needed to make renewable energy available at affordable prices. What doesn’t make any sense is continuing or worsening our unsustainable fossil fuel addiction while the evidence of its catastrophic consequences mounts around us.
“Under” $12 a gallon is just as likely to mean $4.25 as $11.99. I don’t know the number and neither do you. What I do know is that what we are doing right now is sure-fire suicide for ALL of our progeny.
Americans like to consume. We like the freedom to drive our own cars wherever and whenever we please. Avoid telling people they have to do with less, but rather make products more efficient so people will use less by default without feeling the pinch. Promote clean energy industries and policies that make sure that jobs lost in traditional energy are at least made up for in green industries.
Yours is the conversation we need to have, and the correct direction for a solution.
The premise that we can solve our fossil fuel addiction “without feeling the pinch” is dangerously delusional.
From do with less so they’ll have more to “avoid telling people they have to do with less” in just 60 years.
Throughout the world’s history the problem always has been “too little.” Too little food, etc. Today in America it really seems, for the first time, like the problem is too much.
Too much crap food giving too many calories. Spending too many hours sitting on our asses at jobs, and in cars, to burn the cheap calories or to enjoy life. Working those hours to buy too much stuff that we cram into our too-big houses that cost require too much energy to heat.
This is less of an issue in Mass. but when you see these people around the country on House Hunters who feel entitled, at 23, to a 4,000 square foot house for about $200K, you start to think this is not sustainable.
We used to be, as a nation, tough and strong and willing to sacrifice for the right cause. Now we’re increasingly lazy and selfish and unwilling to forgo anything at all. So I fear Christopher’s approach, if we want to get anything done, is the right one. But I don’t like what it says about us.
Sorry Christopher, but the approach you suggest doesn’t begin to address the problem. If it were that easy, it would already be happening.
The free-market model has already failed, and significant government intervention is needed to set it back on track. The heroin addict likes the buzz — and our “freedom to drive our own cars wherever and whenever we please” is far more destructive. The heroin addict hurts only himself or herself, our fossil fuel addiction will kill ALL OF US.
There are costs associated with every freedom, and we have been refusing to admit the ENORMOUS costs of our current approach. When we, through government intervention, force the price of fossil fuel to reflect its true costs (specifically, the present value of its replacement cost and its impact on the planet) then renewable energy becomes a bargain. Yes, there will be a period (years or perhaps a decade) when government subsidies to consumers will be needed to help consumers make the transition. The total cost of those subsidies is dwarfed by the total cost of continuing the current insanity.
I want to get off fossil fuels as much as you do, but propose a different way to go about it. Don’t raise gas taxes through the roof, but rather require greater fuel efficiency and possibly eventually cars that run on something else entirely. I don’t trust the market entirely either, but government should transfer subsidies currently given to traditional energy industries to green energy industries. I would love to invest more in mass transit as well with more routes, times, etc., but there are still times when I can’t run my schedule around a bus or train timetable. We need to make people WANT to move this direction by making those ways cheaper, but not meanwhile punishing those of us who have lives that require cars, but can’t just go get a different car at the drop of a hat. This is definitely one of those times where politics is the art of the possible.
The key barrier to affordable alternatives to gasoline for cars is unpredictable future (and artificial) reductions in the cost of gasoline.
I wonder if perhaps the imposition of a carbon tax that creates a gradually but constantly rising price for gasoline, combined with subsidies to consumers for using renewable alternatives, does the trick. For example, many states today offer “Renewable Energy Credits” for home heating, cooling, and hot water. Perhaps renewable energy credit programs targeted at automobiles could be created and expanded (I understand that some states have them now).
I still disagree with your language. We are not talking about “punishing those of us who have lives that require cars”, we are instead talking about acknowledging the reality of the current situation. The “punishment” is imposed by the nature of the universe. Nobody “punishes” a driver for trying to take a 30MPH curve at 80MPH — the crash happens because the driver is attempting the impossible.
Our lives that “require cars” are similarly impossible so long as those cars are fueled by gasoline.
…is that I CAN make decision on the spot to do the smart thing and take the curve at 30 rather than 80. If I do take it 80 then my stupidity could lead to consequences for which I have nobody to blame but myself. Plus I could very easily seriously injure somebody else and would rightly be faulted and maybe even charged. I cannot just decide to drastically reduce my driving (and I already do basic stuff like make multiple stops in one trip) or wake up one morning and decide to trade in my car for one more efficient. We are the most prosperous and at least potentially most innovative country on the planet. Surely we can figure out how to have the quality of our lives and the quality of our planet’s life not be a zero-sum game.
This is actually more pernicious than a zero-sum game. It’s more like a n-person game, where the columns are “Nobody else does” and “Everybody else does”, and the rows are “I don’t” and “I do”, and where the cost of saying “I do” is significant.
There are four outcomes that can be arranged in a matrix (sadly, I don’t have time to work out the pseudo-html to make one here):
Top Left (I don’t/Nobody else does): Everybody loses big
Top Right (I don’t/Everybody else does): Everybody wins — my decision doesn’t hurt because there’s just one of me
Bottom Left ( I do, Nobody else does): Everybody loses big — my decision doesn’t help because there’s just one of me
Bottom Right (I do, Everybody else does): Everybody wings big
The bottom right is the best outcome, the top left is the worst.
The dilemma is that a rational person, analyzing this matrix for self-interest, will choose “No”. The cost of saying “yes” is high, and it only pays off if everybody else does — yet if everybody else does then the cost of my saying “yes” is wasted because it adds so little.
Regarding your complaint about my analogy, I suggest that the reason you’re going 80 is that you’re trying to make a very important meeting. If you mistakenly conclude that the consequences of missing the meeting are “too high” and ignore the impossible curve, then you will crash. You are suggesting that the consequences of raising the price of fossil fuel are “too high”. I argue that the result is that we will crash.
In any case, the car crash or missing the meeting isn’t “punishment”, at least as I understand the word. “Punishment” is an arbitrary pain willfully imposed by an authority. The reason we need to raise the price of fossil fuel is because the alternatives are so much worse. That isn’t “punishment” as I understand the word.
…and do my part to get there to the extent it is possible in my life. I’d like to think I would never endanger myself or others for a mere meeting I’m running late for. Raising gas taxes ARE precisely pain imposed by an authority (the government) to manipulate our habits. At least that seems to be the prevailing view here. Rather than raise prices of what we shouldn’t do, I would say at least at first make what we should do cheaper (ie carrot rather than stick). Do I dare suggest mass transit be completely tax-funded and thus free in the out of pocket sense? After all, most roads and highways are.
It has long been clear that human action is driving climate disruption–there is no longer any credible case to the contrary–denial has become a bad joke that puts us all at risk when congressional Republicans use it as an excuse for inaction.
By the way the global average temperature has been above the twentieth century norm for 331 months in a row. “September marked the 331st month in a row with a global temperature above the 20th-century average. The last below-average temperature for any month was February 1985.”http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/10/15/record-warm-september-globe/1634361/
The key thing is to place massive and sustained and continuous pressure on all political leaders as well as the congress going forward. I would personally favor a carbon tax, because such a tax could reserve some revenue for pensions, health care, and job retraining for coal miners and employees of the oil industry.
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