Coping with climate change: A national summit

Environment

Volumn 50, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 59-65

  Bierbaum, Rosina M ^a,b,c,d,e,f  

^a University of Michigan's   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY CORPORATION FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH   (United States)

^c FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS   (United States)

^d Environmental and Energy Study Institute

^e Energy Foundation

^f AAAS   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 48449086067     PISSN: 00139157     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3200/ENVT.50.4.59-65     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (31)

1. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2007 (Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), http://www.ipcc.ch/ (accessed 14 January 2008).
2. Nobel Foundation, The Nobel Peace Prize 2007, http://nobelprize. org/nobel _prizes/peace/laureates/2007 (accessed 14 January 2008). The IPCC and Al Gore were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about manmade climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."
3. A summary of the Bali meetings and the agreements reached can be read at http://unfccc.int/meetings/cop_13/items/4049.php (accessed 14 January 2008).
4. Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change, Confronting Climate Change: Avoiding the Unmanageable and Managing the Unavoidable, report prepared for the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (Research Triangle Park, NC: Sigma Xi; and Washington, DC: United Nations Foundation, 2007), http://www.unfoundation.org/SEG (accessed 14 January 2008).
5. The proceedings of "Coping with Climate Change: National Summit" will be distributed by Island Press. Full coverage of the summit is available at http://www .snre.umich.edu/climate_change (accessed 14 January 2008).
6. Much of this section is drawn from S. Tierney, "Adaptation and the Energy Sector," presentation prepared for "Coping With Climate Change: National Summit," School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 8-10 May 2007, http://www.snre.umich.edu/sites/ webservices.itcs.umich.edu.drupal. snre/files/Energy%20Sector.pdf (accessed 14 January);
7. and U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), Effects of Climate Change on Energy Production and Use in the United States: Synthesis and Assessment Product 4.5, Public Comment Draft (Washington, DC: Department of Energy, Office of Biological & Environmental Research, 2006). See also final report of 18 October 2007, http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap4-5/ final-report/default.htm (accessed 7 May 2008).
8. These generalized estimates of increased demand cannot yet account for the effect of changes in humidity, changes in and effects on peak loads, human migration patterns and resultant effects on regional energy systems, changes in behavior of energy use, or the effect of increased energy demand for pumping and moving water.
9. CCSP, note 6.
10. CCSP, note 6.
11. See C. Philibert, Technology Penetration and Capital Stock Turnover: Lessons from IEA Scenario Analysis (Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and International Energy Agency, 2007), http://www.iea.org/textbase/papers/2007/capital_stock.pdf (accessed 14 January 2008).
12. The August 2003 Midwest blackout affected nearly 50 million people in the United States and Canada. Governments from both countries established the U.S.- Canada Power System Outage Task Force to understand the causes of the blackout and learn from the event. See the final report, U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force, Final Report on the August 14, 2003 Blackout in the United States and Canada: Causes and Recommendations, https://reports.energy.gov/ BlackoutFinal-Web.pdf, accessed 7 May 2008).
13. The California energy crisis of the early 2000s was a result of a number of factors; one was that western droughts reduced hydropower availability for the region. More information is available from the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform, "Fact Sheet: The California Energy Crisis: Myths and Facts," http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20040826162949- 24024.pdf (accessed 14 January 2008).
14. A 500-megawatt facility generates about one million gallons per day of wastewater, with about 70 percent of this wastewater coming from cooling tower blowdown. See California Energy Commission, Environmental Performance Report of California's Electric Generation Facilities, P700-01-001, http://www.energy.ca.gov/reports/2001-06-28_700-01-001.html (accessed 14 January 2008).
15. Much of this section is drawn from J. Scheraga, "Opportunities to Anticipate and Adapt to the Effects of Climate Change on Water Quality," presentation prepared for "Coping With Climate Change: National Summit," School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 8-10 May 2007, http://www.snre.umich.edu/sites/webservices. itcs.umich.edu.drupal.snre/files/Water%20Quality %20Sector%20-%20Scheraga.pdf (accessed 14 January 2008).
16. Heavy rainfall has been associated with waterborne disease outbreaks throughout the United States. For example, changes in precipitation and runoff, combined with land-use practices, have been known to affect the transport of the water-borne disease Cryptosporidium.
17. Pollution related to agricultural practices can be reduced by using wastes for fuel, implementing no-till agriculture, capturing methane, spreading manure, and increasing drainage ponds (although mosquitoes and diseases could become a problem).
18. National Assessment Synthesis Team, U.S. Global Change Research Program, Climate Change Impacts on the United States: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/Library/nationalassessment/overview.htm (accessed 14 January 2008).
19. Such an assessment was mandated to be conducted every four years by The U.S. Global Change Act of 1990, Title 15, Chapter 56A - Global Change Research (16 November 1990), http://www.gcrio.org/gcact1990.html (accessed 14 January 2008).
20. Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, Scientific Assessment of the Effects of Global Climate Change on the United States (Washington, DC: National Science and Technology Council, 2008), http://ostp.gov/cs/nstc (accessed 14 January 2008). In 2007, a judge in the U.S. District Court in Oakland, California, ordered this scientific assessment be published in May 2008 after the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace, and Friends of the Earth brought a lawsuit in 2006.
21. The National Research Council noted that there has been little progress in assessing impacts on human well being and vulnerabilities, providing knowledge to support decisionmaking and risk analyses, and communicating results and engaging stakeholders in a two-way dialogue. Committee on Strategic Advice on the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, National Research Council (NRC), Evaluating Progress of the US CCSP Program: Methods & Preliminary Results (Washington, DC: NRC, 2007).
22. Increased frequency of extreme heat events associated with climate change will stress the current electricity grid with the likelihood of more frequent power outages on a local and regional level. The scope of the problem will be determined by the frequency, scale, and duration of extreme heat events; the extent to which longterm measures are taken to reduce stress on the grid and increase its redundancy and resilience; and the degree to which affected communities have developed effective emergency response and adaptation strategies in advance. The scope and nature of the problem is complicated by the increased vulnerability of certain groups to heat stress due to lack of access to cooling options, preexisting health conditions, or non-acclimation to extreme heat.
23. While water resources have long been an issue in the Southwest, climate change will only exacerbate the pressure on those resources in the region. Issues to consider include the multistate conflict over water rights among Arizona, Colorado, and California; the sovereignty Native Americans enjoy over their lands and the fact that any adaptation measures will require their active engagement; the ongoing pressure for urban development in the Southwest; the patchwork of water laws that exist at the local, state, and federal levels; strong cultural identities within certain sectors, such as grazing and agriculture; potentially inadequate infrastructure to deal with increased droughts and extreme events; and the current lack of integration between sectors (such as energy and agriculture, water and energy, and human health and water).
24. Apalachicola, Florida, was used as a case study to explore this scenario. It is one of thousands of communities along the coast of the United States facing challenges from sea-level rise and is one of the last working ports along the Apalachicola Bay, on Florida's panhandle. It has been subject to hurricanes, increasing water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, and an increase in red tides. Climate change will exacerbate multiple ongoing stressors, including development pressure, pollution, wetlands loss, and a significant decline in fisheries. The oyster and shrimp industries in these communities will be particularly hard hit.
25. Individuals, communities, and regional systems will feel the impacts of changing peak runoff in the Pacific Northwest. Particularly hard hit will be the agricultural, fisheries (salmon and other), electricity generation and distribution, tourism, transportation, and public health sectors. Water storage for multiple uses will be one of the most difficult issues to address as the magnitude of droughts and floods increases. Also, as snowpack decreases, wildfires will become more abundant and detrimental to the built and natural environments. Land use decisions, particularly in the western areas of the region, will have significant influences on the overall impacts of climate change. The West needs water for hydroelectricity generation, industrial, and municipal use. Enhancing supply will involve technological, modeling, and institutional advances to determine whether more water storage should be added, or if improvement of the existing storage and demand-side management efforts will suffice.
26. The economies of states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and upstate New York have experienced significant transitions that reduce dependence on extractive industries, like forestry, and increased dependence on amenity-based industries, like tourism. The Great Lakes contribute significantly to this tourism industry by supporting both lakefront development and a large recreational fishery. In addition, 40 million people get water directly from the lake in the United States and Canada, the lakes support an important shipping industry, and the water from the lakes is used to cool power plants. Changing lake levels could have significant impacts on all these uses.
27. National Assessment Synthesis Team, note 16.
28. While the National Assessment intended to have each region answer the following four questions, only the first two were generally answered. The summit attempted to move participants into answering the last two questions (see http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/nacc/background/naccbackground2.htm, accessed 7 May 2008): What are the current environmental stresses and issues that form the backdrop for potential additional impacts of climate change? How might climate variability and change exacerbate or ameliorate existing problems? What new problems and issues might arise? What are the priority research and information needs that can better prepare the public and policy makers for reaching informed decisions related to climate variability and change? What coping options exist that can build resilience to current environmental stresses, and also possibly lessen the impacts of climate change?
29. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Climate Assessment Tool (BASINS/CAT) can be used to conduct standard assessments ("What would be the effect of climate change on X?") and sensitivity analyses ("What would we have to believe is true for X to happen?"). A sample application of BASINS/CAT to conduct standard assessments is to ask how increases in precipitation of 10 percent, 20 percent, and 30 percent over historical conditions will influence non-point pollution loading to a stream. A sample application of BASINS/CAT to conduct sensitivity assessments (which reverse the question to assess what type of change would need to occur for a valued system endpoint to be affected) is to determine the change in annual precipitation or timing of runoff that would need to occur to require revision of a reservoir operation plan. See http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/BASINS (accessed 10 June 2008).
30. "It Is 5 Minutes to Midnight," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 63, no. 1 (January 2007): 66.
31. UN Millennium Development Goals, http://www.un.org/ millenniumgoals/index. html (accessed 7 May 2008).