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Washington
(CNN) -- Flooded rail lines. Bigger, more frequent droughts. A rash of
wildfires. Those are some of the alarming predictions in a White House
climate change report released Tuesday, part of President Barack Obama's
broader second-term effort to ...
Federal Report: Warming Disrupts Americans' Lives
Global warming is rapidly turning America the beautiful into America the
stormy, sneezy and dangerous, according to a new federal scientific
report. And those shining seas? Rising and costly, the report says.
Climate change's assorted harms "are expected to become increasingly
disruptive across the nation throughout this century and beyond," the
National Climate Assessment concluded Tuesday. The report emphasizes
that warming and all-too-wild weather are changing daily lives, using
the phrase "climate disruption" as another way of saying global warming.
Still, it's not too late to prevent the worst of climate change, says
the 840-page report, which the White House is highlighting as it tries
to jump-start often-stalled efforts to curb heat-trapping gases.
White House science adviser John Holdren called the report, the third
edition of a congressionally mandated study, "the loudest and clearest
alarm bell to date signaling the need to take urgent action." Later this
summer, the Obama administration plans to propose new and controversial
regulations restricting gases that come from existing coal-fired power
plants.
Some fossil energy groups, conservative think tanks and Republican
senators immediately assailed the report as "alarmist." Senate
Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said President Barack
Obama was likely to "use the platform to renew his call for a national
energy tax. And I'm sure he'll get loud cheers from liberal elites —
from the kind of people who leave a giant carbon footprint and then
lecture everybody else about low-flow toilets."
Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana said the report was supposed
to be scientific but "it's more of a political one used to justify
government overreach."
The report — which is full of figures, charts and other
research-generated graphics — includes 3,096 footnotes to other mostly
peer-reviewed research. It was written by more than 250 scientists and
government officials, starting in 2012. A draft was released in January
2013, but this version has been reviewed by more scientists, including
twice by the National Academy of Science which called it "reasonable,"
and has had public comment. It is written in a bit more simple language
so people can realize "that there's a new source of risk in their
lives," said lead author Gary Yohe of Wesleyan University in
Connecticut.
Environmental groups praised the report. "If we don't slam the brakes on
the carbon pollution driving climate change, we're dooming ourselves
and our children to more intense heat waves, destructive floods and
storms and surging sea levels," said Frances Beinecke, president of the
Natural Resources Defense Council.
Scientists and the White House called it the most detailed and U.S.-focused scientific report on global warming.
"Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has
moved firmly into the present," the report says. "Corn producers in
Iowa, oyster growers in Washington state and maple syrup producers in
Vermont are all observing climate-related changes that are outside of
recent experience."
The report looks at regional and state-level effects of global warming,
compared with recent reports from the United Nations that lumped all of
North America together.
"All Americans will find things that matter to them in this report,"
said scientist Jerry Melillo of the Marine Biological Laboratory, who
chaired the science committee that wrote the report. "For decades we've
been collecting the dots about climate change, now we're connecting
those dots."
In a White House conference call with reporters, National Climatic Data
Center Director Tom Karl said his two biggest concerns were flooding
from sea level rise on the U.S. coastlines — especially for the
low-lying cities of Miami, Norfolk, Virginia, and Portsmouth, New
Hampshire — and drought, heat waves and prolonged fire seasons in the
Southwest.
Even though the nation's average temperature has risen by as much as 1.9
degrees since record keeping began in 1895, it's in the big, wild
weather where the average person feels climate change the most, said
co-author Katharine Hayhoe, a Texas Tech University climate scientist.
Extreme weather like droughts, storms and heat waves hit us in the
pocketbooks and can be seen by our own eyes, she said.
The report says the intensity, frequency and duration of the strongest
Atlantic hurricanes have increased since the early 1980s, but it is
still uncertain how much of that is from man-made warming. Winter storms
have increased in frequency and intensity and have shifted northward
since the 1950s, it says. Also, heavy downpours are increasing — by 71
percent in the Northeast. Heat waves, such as those in Texas in 2011 and
the Midwest in 2012, are projected to intensify nationwide. Droughts in
the Southwest are expected to get stronger. Sea level has risen 8
inches since 1880 and is projected to rise between 1 foot and 4 feet by
2100.
Climate data center chief Karl highlighted the increase in downpours,
which are jumping by 30 percent to 60 percent elsewhere in the country
besides the Northeast. He said last week's drenching, when Pensacola,
Florida, got up to two feet of rain in one storm and parts of the East
had three inches in one day, is what he's talking about.
"The projections for these kinds of changes are to continue as the globe
continues to warm and the atmosphere is able to hold more water vapor,"
Karl said.
Since January 2010, 43 of the lower 48 states have set at least one
monthly record for heat, such as California having its warmest January
on record this year. In the past 51 months, states have set 80 monthly
records for heat, 33 records for being too wet, 12 for lack of rain and
just three for cold, according to an Associated Press analysis of
federal weather records.
The report also says "climate change threatens human health and
well-being in many ways." Those include smoke-filled air from wildfires,
smoggy air from pollution, and more diseases from tainted food, water,
mosquitoes and ticks. And ragweed pollen season has lengthened.
Flooding alone may cost $325 billion by the year 2100 in one of the
worst-case scenarios, with $130 billion of that in Florida, the report
says. Already the droughts and heat waves of 2011 and 2012 added about
$10 billion to farm costs, the report says.
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Online:
The National Climate Assessment: http://ncadac.globalchange.gov
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