U.N. Climate Report: Expect Extreme Coastal Flooding Every Year

Donald Trump - who has denied the reality of climate change and sought to reduce limits on carbon emissions and to weaken clean water and clean air laws - is now, belatedly, facing a formal impeachment inquiry.  But while this massive political event begins, something that will more directly impact millions of Americans was outlined in a new United Nations Climate Change report. Rising sea levels, increased heat waves, and multiple other adverse impacts are becoming ever more of a reality and coastal cities are looking at annual coastal flooding events in the not too distant future. The report ought to be a clarion call, but one cannot help but fear that all Republicans will be focused on is protecting their toxic and utterly unfit leader - in short, fiddling while Rome burns, if you will.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the disturbing report.  Here are excerpts:  

Climate change is already causing staggering impacts on the oceans and ice-filled regions that encompass 80 percent of the Earth, and future damage from rising seas and melting glaciers is now all but certain, according to a sobering new report from the United Nations.

The warming climate is already killing coral reefs, supercharging monster storms, and fueling deadly marine heat waves and record losses of sea ice. And Wednesday’s report on the world’s oceans, glaciers, polar regions and ice sheets finds that such effects only foreshadow a more catastrophic future as long as greenhouse gas emissions remain unchecked.

Given current emissions levels, a number of serious impacts are essentially unavoidable, says the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Extreme floods that have historically struck some coastal cities and small island nations once every 100 years will become an annual occurrence by 2050, according to the IPCC. In addition, if emissions continue to increase, global sea levels could rise by more than three feet by the end of this century — around 12 percent higher than the group estimated as recently as 2013. . . . “The conclusion is inescapable: The impacts of climate change on the ocean are well underway. Unless we take very serious action very soon, these impacts will get worse — much, much worse.”

More than 100 scientists from around the world contributed to the latest report by the IPCC, which found that profound and potentially devastating consequences lie ahead for marine life, Arctic ecosystems and entire human societies if climate change continues unabated.

The findings also come as world leaders gathered this week at the United Nations for a much-anticipated “climate summit” aimed at injecting new momentum into the flagging effort to persuade countries to do more to move away from fossil fuels and toward cleaner forms of energy. While dozens of smaller nations did unveil plans for coming years, the world’s largest emitters have stopped short of committing to transformational changes.

“The climate emergency is a race we are losing — but it is a race we can win if we change our ways now,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres told world leaders Tuesday in his latest attempt to spur action.

One of the document’s most striking findings involves the rise in sea level, which is now being driven mainly by the rapid melting of ice in Greenland, Antarctica and the world’s smaller glaciers. Sea level rise is accelerating, and the world could see 3.6 feet in total sea level rise by the year 2100 in a very high-emissions scenario. In 2013, the IPCC had estimated that value at slightly over three feet.

But the truth is that even these estimates may be too small, because when scientists behind the report looked at an alternative method for gauging how much seas could rise — simply canvassing the views of experts — even larger estimates emerged. The group’s findings only highlight “likely” amounts of sea level rise, meaning they do not represent worst-case scenarios.

For some major coastal cities, a historical 100-year flood event will happen annually by the year 2050. That includes large cities such as Jakarta, Manila, Bangkok, Lima, Singapore, Barcelona and Sydney, the report says. In the United States, cities facing fast-moving sea-level danger include Los Angeles, Miami, Savannah, Honolulu, San Juan, Key West and San Diego.

“The world’s coasts provide a home to around 1.9 billion people and over half of the world’s megacities — all of which are in grave danger if we don’t act immediately to prevent rising temperatures and sea levels,” Hildalgo said in a statement. “Extreme high temperatures, coastal flooding, and more frequent natural disasters are becoming the new normal. ... This is what the climate crisis looks like now.”

Ice loss is accelerating in Greenland and Antarctica, scientists found. Permafrost, which contains enormous amounts of carbon that can be released as it thaws, has warmed to “record high levels.” Summer Arctic sea ice extent is now probably lower than at any time in “at least 1,000 years,” and the oldest, thickest ice has already declined by 90 percent.

And then there is the entire world ocean. “Over the 21st century, the ocean is projected to transition to unprecedented conditions,” the report states.

The ocean is losing oxygen, growing more acidic, taking up an increasing amount of heat, and becoming more stratified, with warm water at the surface preventing cooler, nutrient rich waters from rising. All of these changes have profound consequences for marine ecosystems.

Lynn Scarlett, the vice president for policy and government relations at the Nature Conservancy and a top-ranking Interior Department official during the George W. Bush administration, said the grim findings in Wednesday’s report should be a call to action.

The East Coast May Become the Gulf Coast in Terms of Future Weather

While Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer,  and many in the GOP continue to admit the reality of global warming and climate change, many living on the nation's coastlines beg to differ.  Now, a new study suggests that in addition to higher sea levels, coastal cities need to be planning for sharp changes in the seasonal  temperatures and rainfall.  Meanwhile, Mid-West farmers will see significant decreases in rainfall as the east coast becomes much wetter. A piece in The Atlantic looks at what our children and grandchildren may witness in their lifetimes. One has to wonder what it will take to make climate change deniers open their eyes. Here are highlights:

Sixty years from now, climate change could transform the East Coast into the Gulf Coast. It will move Minnesota to Kansas, turn Tulsa into Texas, and hoist Houston into Mexico. Even Oregonians might ooze out of their damp, chilly corner and find themselves carried to the central valley of California.

These changes won’t happen literally, of course—but that doesn’t make them any less real. A new paper tries to find the climate-change twin city for hundreds of places across the United States: the city whose modern-day weather gives the best clue to what conditions will feel like in 2080. It finds that the effects of global warming will be like relocating American cities more than 500 miles away from their current location, on average, mostly to the south and toward the country’s interior.

For instance, the Philadelphia of the 2080s will resemble the historical climate of Memphis. By the time kids today near retirement age, Philadelphia’s average summer will be about 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it is now. Winters in Philly will be nearly 10 degrees more temperate. Memphis’s scorching, sticky weather provides the best guide to how those climatic changes will feel day after day.

Meanwhile, Memphis’s climate will come to resemble that of modern-day College Station, Texas, by 2080.

“Everything gets warmer,” says Matthew Fitzpatrick, an author of the paper and a professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. “I don’t think I’ve seen a place that doesn’t.” In the West and Midwest, cities also tend to get drier as the Great Plains shift east. So Chicago comes to Kansas, Denver drifts to Texas, and San Francisco starts to feel like Los Angeles.

[N]o city will perfectly match its climate twin, especially when it comes to rainfall. Many cities in the South simply do not have a good twin: “The climate of many urban areas could become unlike anything present” in North America, the paper says.

In the Northeast, you can envision the future as one big Arkansas-ification. The paper finds that if the world meets its goals under the Paris Agreement, then Washington, D.C., will enter the 2080s feeling a lot like Paragould, Arkansas. But if the world follows a worst-case scenario, then D.C. will more closely resemble northern Mississippi—and New York City will feel like Jonesboro, Arkansas.

[T]he eastern U.S. will become hotter and wetter, while the [Midwest] will become drier and hotter,” she told me. Her own research focuses on eastern bluebirds, which have historically spent the summer in New York before migrating south for the winter. But “they’ve started staying in New York” for the winter, she said, “so I know it’s getting warmer there.”

She also warned future New Yorkers about what Jonesboro has in store: “Summer-wise, it’s like Florida here. And I cannot imagine New York like Florida … it’s hard to think about how humid it will be.”

“If I have grandkids and they lived in the same place I do,” he said, “they might not recognize this climate that we’re living in now.”

U.S. Climate Report Warns of Dire Consequences

Yesterday a damning report on climate change was released by federal agencies (the report can be found here) that paints a frightening picture for the future if serious changes are not made to strengthen environmental laws and greatly reduce carbon emissions - all things that are the opposite of the Trump/Pence agenda.  The date of the release by the White House was thought to be aimed at having the dire warnings lost in the madness of Black Friday and the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.  If nothing else, the Trump/Pence regime can be counted on to be deceptive and disingenuous at all times.  But back to the report.  For those living in coastal areas, sea level rise will be a major problem.  Meanwhile Midwestern farmers - the racist, neanderthals who put Trump in office - will see major economic problems as climate change reduces harvests and endangers live stock (no doubt the red state leaches will want federal bailouts with funds derived from blue states). The report is massive and looks at the prospects for every area of the country.   Here are excerpts from the New York Times on the report:

WASHINGTON — A major scientific report issued by 13 federal agencies on Friday presents the starkest warnings to date of the consequences of climate change for the United States, predicting that if significant steps are not taken to rein in global warming, the damage will knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the American economy by century’s end.

The report, which was mandated by Congress and made public by the White House, is notable not only for the precision of its calculations and bluntness of its conclusions, but also because its findings are directly at odds with President Trump’s agenda of environmental deregulation, which he asserts will spur economic growth.

[I]n direct language, the 1,656-page assessment lays out the devastating effects of a changing climate on the economy, health and environment, including record wildfires in California, crop failures in the Midwest and crumbling infrastructure in the South. Going forward, American exports and supply chains could be disrupted, agricultural yields could fall to 1980s levels by midcentury and fire season could spread to the Southeast, the report finds.

[T]he report says, climate change could slash up to a tenth of gross domestic product by 2100, more than double the losses of the Great Recession a decade ago.

Scientists who worked on the report said it did not appear that administration officials had tried to alter or suppress its findings. However, several noted that the timing of its release, at 2 p.m. the day after Thanksgiving, appeared designed to minimize its public impact.

“This report will weaken the Trump administration’s legal case for undoing climate change regulations, and it strengthens the hands of those who go to court to fight them,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton.

The report is the second volume of the National Climate Assessment, which the federal government is required by law to produce every four years. . . . . The results of the 2014 report helped inform the Obama administration as it wrote a set of landmark climate change regulations. The following year, the E.P.A. finalized President Barack Obama’s signature climate change policy, known as the Clean Power Plan, which aimed to slash planet-warming emissions from coal-fired power plants. At the end of the 2015, Mr. Obama played a lead role in brokering the Paris Agreement.

But in 2016, Republicans in general and Mr. Trump in particular campaigned against those regulations. . . . . . Since winning the election, his administration has moved decisively to roll back environmental regulations.

The report puts the most precise price tags to date on the cost to the United States economy of projected climate impacts: $141 billion from heat-related deaths, $118 billion from sea level rise and $32 billion from infrastructure damage by the end of the century, among others.

The authors put forth three main solutions: putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions, which usually means imposing taxes or fees on companies that release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere; establishing government regulations on how much greenhouse pollution can be emitted; and spending public money on clean-energy research.

The report covers every region of the United States and asserts that recent climate-related events are signs of things to come. No area of the country will be untouched, from the Southwest, where droughts will curb hydropower and tax already limited water supplies, to Alaska, where the loss of sea ice will cause coastal flooding and erosion and force communities to relocate, to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, where saltwater will taint drinking water.

More people will die as heat waves become more common, the scientists say, and a hotter climate will also lead to more outbreaks of disease.

Two areas of impact particularly stand out: trade and agriculture.

The nation’s farm belt is likely to be among the hardest-hit regions, and farmers in particular will see their bottom lines threatened.

“Rising temperatures, extreme heat, drought, wildfire on rangelands and heavy downpours are expected to increasingly disrupt agricultural productivity in the U.S.,” the report says. “Expect increases in challenges to livestock health, declines in crop yields and quality and changes in extreme events in the United States and abroad.”

The report says the Midwest, as well as the Northeast, will also experience more flooding when it rains, like the 2011 Missouri River flood that inundated a nuclear power plant near Omaha, forcing it to shut down for years.

Other parts of the country, including much of the Southwest, will endure worsening droughts, further taxing limited groundwater supplies. Those droughts can lead to fires, a phenomenon that played out this fall in California as the most destructive wildfire in state history killed dozens of people.

The report predicts that frequent wildfires, long a plague of the Western United States, will also become more common in other regions, including the Southeast.

Nov. 6, 2018 May Determine the Survival of Coastal Louisiana and Virginia

Virginia's Cedar Island that is disappearing.

Red depicts areas of Louisiana being lost to sea level rise.

A column in the New Orleans Times-Picayune dove tails with my earlier post about the declining or stagnating values of waterfront homes in Tidewater Virginia.  While focused on the Mississippi delta in Louisiana the same concerns apply to portions of the Atlantic coast of Virginia's Eastern Shore that are literally disappearing as well as the coastline all around the Chesapeake Bay.  After New Orleans, Norfolk is the second most threatened major US city at risk from rising sea levels.  As the column notes, elections do indeed have consequences and if a climate change denying Republican majority remains in Congress after the 2018 midterm elections, many property owners will see increasing threats to the property and rising flood insurance rates as the Trump/Pence regime continues to dismantle environmental regulations, allows increasingly polluted water and air, and does nothing to address climate change and the threat it poses to millions of Americans living in coastal regions. The thrust of the column is that it is utter crucial that individuals be elected to Congress who are living in objective reality and who not only recognize the threat but will push for legislation to address it.  One can readily substitute names like Scott Taylor, Rob Witman, David Brat and other Republican members of Virginia's Congressional delegation for those in the column because they all are supportive of the same climate change denying GOP agenda.  Here are column excerpts:

The truism that elections have consequences will never be more accurate than this Nov. 6 when residents living in the congressional districts of U.S. Reps. Steve Scalise, Clay Higgins and Garret Graves go to the polls.

This includes all or parts of Jefferson, St. Bernard, Orleans, St. Tammany, Plaquemines, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. James, Vermillion, St. Mary’s, Cameron and Calcasieu parishes. In other words, the entire sinking, crumbling, drowning Louisiana coastal zone.

A vote for any of these congressmen by anyone living in those parishes is a vote virtually guaranteeing your flood risk and insurance will be rapidly climbing, your home values will be dropping, local businesses will be relocating, new businesses will not be coming, the state’s ambitious coastal master plan will be dramatically scaled back – and your grandchildren will have to find someplace else to live.

Here’s why.

Last week the world’s authority on climate change issued a new report saying greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 40 percent in the next 10 years or the planet will be locked into some of the worst impacts of warming before the end of the century – and that includes a dramatic acceleration in sea level rise that will swamp our coast.

The state’s own map of this disaster (page 74 of the 2017 plan), shows most of everything below Interstate 10 from Lake Charles to Slidell under water by 2067 – about the time the next generation hopes to retire. And this happens even if the $92 billion coastal plan is funded and finished.

But Scalise, Graves and Higgins have consistently opposed climate regulations, and pledge to continue to do so.  In what amounts to a case of criminal arrogance, these politicians — none of whom has a science degree — are asking you to believe they know more about climate science than the experts.

Indeed, Scalise recently co-authored a House resolution pledging to oppose any form of carbon pricing — which even emission emitters like Exxon Mobil now support. Scalise said such regulations "would be detrimental to American families and businesses.”

He clearly wasn’t thinking about the American families and businesses in the parishes of his district, which includes all or parts of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Lafourche and Terrebonne. If you superimpose a map of Scalise’s 1st Congressional District over what Louisiana says will be left in that area without emissions, Scalise could be out of a job.

These are the parishes that are already witnessing forced migrations and plummeting real estate values, whose highways now flood not just during storms but on stiff southerly winds. These are the parishes desperately seeking funding for levees, floodwalls and elevated highways to help them cope with the disaster they know is already underway.

But Scalise, Graves and Higgins don’t want to vote for the only sure way the world knows to reduce those impacts. These politicians — heavily supported by emitters of these emissions — say it would cost some industries too much money and cost some people their jobs. But how many jobs will be left when the area is under water?

Perhaps Scalise, Higgins and Graves are just parroting the leader of their party, President Donald Trump — another politician without any science credits. He threw cold water on the report, saying he doubted the science because he believes some scientists have political agendas (unlike politicians like him.)

This is the president man who takes the word of murdering autocrats like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and China’s Xi Jinping — but calls into question the ethics of Louisiana’s coastal scientists.

So, yes, if you live on Louisiana’s coast and vote for any of these three on Nov. 6, you’re likely to have consequences — some very wet ones.

Ditto for Virginians living on the coast who vote for any Republicans on November 6, 2018. 

Sea Level Rise - Forward Thinking Solutions Needed

Climate change and rising sea levels may be myths in the minds of Republicans and the Christofascists who cling to biblical fantasies, but for those of us living on the coast, it's all too real and the risks of flooding are all too real.  So far, most cities in the Hampton Roads area - Norfolk is the exception - have done nothing to address the growing problem of higher tides and increased storm damage.  That leaves residents to fend for themselves - the husband and I over the last five years have waterproofed the first floor of our home up to chair rail height, installed three industrial sump pumps and a whole house generator to power the pumps should we lose power, and built our own flood doors to put in place in the event of an approaching hurricane or sever northeaster.  The Virginia General Assembly has done nothing to date other than Republicans forbidding the use of the terms "climate change" and "sea level rise" - "areas of repetitive flooding' is the only allowed term.  An editorial in the Washington Post makes the case that progressive, forward think solutions need to be developed despite GOP intransigence.  Here are some highlights:

“THIS IS really happening,” NASA’s Thomas P. Wagner told the New York Times in May, describing the collapse of ice formations in western Antarctica. Since then, the news has only gotten worse.

According to a new paper in Geophysical Research Letters, the ice loss in a particularly vulnerable Antarctic region has accelerated over the past two decades — to 18 billion tons a year, three times the 20-year average. A Mount Everest’s worth of ice has slipped away every couple of years, researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California at Irvine found, comparing data from four different sources.

All of these findings are bad news for sea levels, which could rise on the high end of scientists’ estimates over the coming decades if Antarctica continues down the path it seems to be on. That would inundate coastal communities in the United States and elsewhere.

As with so many alarming natural hazards, directly attributing some or all of western Antarctica’s ice loss to climate change is still a difficult business. But that is not a reason for comfort. Even in the surprising circumstance that there is no connection in this particular case, humans have no interest in policies that risk raising sea levels further.

Instead of using various uncertainties as excuses to do little or nothing — including questions about how all sorts of natural systems will react to a warmer world — leaders should hedge against major risks, just like big corporations do all the time.

There is nothing conservative about betting the climate on self-serving hopes that things will turn out fine, forcing future generations to live with whatever consequences result. There is nothing conservative about the subsidy the federal government gives carbon-intensive industries when it allows them to release greenhouse gases for free into the common air.

Yet Republicans are gearing up to protect that federal giveaway tooth-and-nail. The Senate’s incoming majority leader, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), has promised major fights with the White House on Environmental Protection Agency climate rules. GOP leaders in various states, backed by industry lobbying groups, are coordinating legal and political attacks of their own, aiming for delays and, possibly, cancellation of the rules. 

It’s fine if Republicans want to get rid of the EPA’s regulations, which aren’t the cheapest way to cut carbon emissions. But in that case, they should enact another, more efficient anti-carbon policy with similar or greater ambition. Doing anything else would be sheer malpractice — and proof that the GOP does not deserve the public’s trust.

Norfolk Sea Level Rise: Lure of Waterfront Homes Lessens, Homeowners Get Innovative

November 12, 2009

For years in the Hampton Roads owning a waterfront home has been the goal of many and waterfront homes have demanded premium prices as a result.  Now, with rising sea levels, some are rethinking that goal and existing homeowners are finding that a waterfront property may be more of a challenge to sell if the home has flooded previously.  As sea levels continue to rise, this phenomenon will not be limited to Norfolk and other Hampton Roads cities, but will effect many localities on the east coast - Miami and New York City are but two major metropolitan areas with threatened waterfronts.  As noted before, the husband and I have made major modifications/improvements to our home to address the threat of flooding: water resistant materials from the floor to chair height throughout the entire first floor and marble floors that cam be simply mopped up throughout the first floor; three large industrial sump pumps to address any water that might get into the house; and a whole house generator to keep the pumps running in the event of a hurricane power  outage.  A piece in the Virginian Pilot looks at what some are doing in Norfolk neighboehoods.  Here are highlights:

Soon after Mary-Carson and Josh Stiff got married last year, they began talking about buying a house.  Josh, 30, wanted to live in Norfolk to be near his law office. Mary-Carson, 28, wasn't so sure. Sea level rise and the chronic flooding that plagues the city worried her.

"My concern was, it might not be a wise place to invest in general," she said.

Her worry was grounded in her work. A consultant at the College of William & Mary Law School's Virginia Coastal Policy Clinic who now works part time as policy director for the local environmental group Wetlands Watch, Mary-Carson has been immersed in sea level rise policy work for months. She's well-acquainted with the piles of studies, reports and charts that show Norfolk is one of the country's most vulnerable cities.

I think everyone in Hampton Roads has rose-colored glasses when it comes to a picturesque home on the waterfront, with a dock and a boat and a kayak. That life is sweet and has a place in my heart, but it's no longer what I dream about."

The newlyweds forged a compromise. They would search for a home in Norfolk to be near Josh's office. But it could not be in a flood plain, susceptible to rising seas, storm surge and escalating flood insurance prices.

Their decision is one glimpse into the changing dynamics of coastal real estate. A growing awareness of sea level rise and flooding, coupled with rising flood insurance premiums as the federal government phases out subsidies, has the potential to reshape segments of the Hampton Roads market.

Real estate agent Kathy Heaton found herself on the flip side of the growing concern, and perhaps at the forefront of a new trend.  For months, the Nancy Chandler and Associates agent had been trying to sell a home in the desirable Norfolk neighborhood of Larchmont. The problem: Like many homes in that area, it's in a high-risk flood plain. Flood insurance could run up to $3,500 based on estimates she's seen.  That would add almost $300 to a monthly mortgage, an amount many buyers Heaton has encountered would rather put into the cost of a home.
 
About a quarter of properties in Norfolk - just over 17,000 - are in high-risk flood plains, with values totaling 34 percent of the tax base, according to city figures.  The number of homes that repeatedly flood, so-called "repetitive loss" properties, has increased from about 200 in 2002 to almost 900 today, said Lenny Newcomb, the city's zoning administrator.

The Larchmont home has been so difficult for Heaton to sell that a creative solution is in the works that could be a model for flood zone homes in the future.  The idea is to make changes to the home to reduce flood damage and drive down insurance rates.

In this case, contractors would move the furnace, hot water heater and electric panel from the basement of the 1920s home into a newly created utility room in the upper part of the house. The basement would then be filled in, and vents would be added to allow floodwater to move in and then out from under the house.  The work would cost about $15,000, said Mike Vernon, director of business development for Flood Mitigation Hampton Roads, a new company that would do the job.

Local climate change deniers - most of whom are Republicans - say "Norfolk has always flooded," ignoring the fact that things are getting much worse at a steady pace.  Sticking one's head in the sand does not make a problem go away. With the Commonwealth of Virginia still lacking any plan to deal with sea level rise, many homeowners will need to come up with their own plans to protect their properties and maintain their values.  The husband and I have spent a lot of money on our home but as one friend said, if we had not done so, "who is going to buy it/"