New US climate report dire, but offers hope

Seth Borenstein, Associated Press Yahoo News 16 Jun 09;

WASHINGTON – Rising sea levels, sweltering temperatures, deeper droughts, and heavier downpours — global warming's serious effects are already here and getting worse, the Obama administration warned on Tuesday in the grimmest, most urgent language on climate change ever to come out of any White House.

But amid the warnings, scientists and government officials seemed to go out of their way to soften the message. It is still not too late to prevent some of the worst consequences, they said, by acting aggressively to reduce world emissions of heat-trapping gases, primarily carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

The new report differs from a similar draft issued with little fanfare or context by George W. Bush's administration last year. It is paradoxically more dire about what's happening and more optimistic about what can be done.

The Obama administration is backing a bill in Congress that would limit heat-trapping pollution from power plants, refineries and factories. A key player on a climate bill in the Senate, California Democrat Barbara Boxer, said the report adds "urgency to the growing momentum in Congress" for passing a law.

"It's not too late to act," said Jane Lubchenco, one of several agency officials at a White House briefing. "Decisions made now will determine whether we get big changes or small ones." But what has happened already is not good, she said: "It's happening in our own backyards and it affects the kind of things people care about."

Lubchenco, a marine biologist, heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In one of its key findings, the report warned: "Thresholds will be crossed, leading to large changes in climate and ecosystems." The survival of some species could be affected, it said.

The document, a climate status report required periodically by Congress, was a collaboration by about three dozen academic, government and institute scientists. It contains no new research, but it paints a fuller and darker picture of global warming in the United States than previous studies.

Bush was ultimately forced by a lawsuit to issue a draft report last year, and that document was the basis for this one. Obama science adviser John Holdren called the report nonpartisan, started by a Republican administration and finished by a Democratic one.

"The observed climate changes that we report are not opinions to be debated. They are facts to be dealt with," said one of the report's chief authors, Jerry Melillo of Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole, Mass. "We can act now to avoid the worst impacts."

Among the things Melillo said he would like to avoid are more flooding disasters in New Orleans and an upheaval of the world's food supply.

The scientists softened the report from an earlier draft that said "tipping points have already been reached and have led to large changes." Melillo said that is because some of the changes seen so far are still reversible.

Even so, Tom Karl of the National Climatic Data Center said that at least one tipping point — irreversible sea level rise — has been passed.

A point of emphasis of the report, which is just under 200 pages, is what has already happened in the United States. That includes rapidly retreating glaciers in the American West and Alaska, altered stream flows, trouble with the water supply, health problems, changes in agriculture, and energy and transportation worries.

"There are in some cases already serious consequences," report co-author Anthony Janetos of the University of Maryland told The Associated Press. "This is not a theoretical thing that will happen 50 years from now. Things are happening now."

For example, winters in parts of the Midwest have warmed by 7 degrees in just 30 years and the frost-free period has grown a week, the report said.

Shorter winters have some benefits, such as longer growing seasons, but those are changes that require adjustments just the same, the authors note.

The "major disruptions" already taking place will only increase as warming continues, the authors wrote. The world's average temperature may rise by as much as 11.5 degrees by the end of the century, the report said. And the U.S. average temperature could go even higher than that, Karl said.

Environmental groups praised the report as a call for action, with the Union of Concerned Scientists calling it what "America needs to effectively respond to climate change."

Scott Segal, a Washington lobbyist for the coal industry, was more cautious: "Fast action without sufficient planning is a route to potential economic catastrophe with little environmental gain."

Associated Press Writer Dina Cappiello in Washington contributed to this report.
U.S. Global Change Research Program: http://tinyurl.com/m4rdnp

Act now on global warming, US government report urges
Yahoo News 16 Jun 09;

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Americans must take quick action to slow climate change or face a future in which devastating weather extremes affect everything from water supplies to food production, a US government report said Tuesday.

Global warming, which the report blames largely on human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases, has already brought weather and environmental changes including higher temperatures and sea levels, retreating glaciers, and earlier snowmelt, says the report by the US Global Change Research Program, a grouping of government agencies and the White House.

With no changes to human energy usage, which the report says is a key factor in driving global warming, rising temperatures will bring with them more frequent extreme heat waves, such as the one that swept Europe in 2003, claiming tens of thousands of lives.

Hurricanes will become fiercer as they gather greater strength over warmer oceans.

Regions that have already seen an increase in precipitation are likely to have even higher levels of rain and snowfall while arid areas, such as the largely desert southwestern region of the United States, could experience more droughts.

Unchecked climate change will have a huge impact on agriculture, as the heart of US farming, the Midwest and Great Plains, becomes hotter and drier.

Temperature rises in the United States will also bring with them increased demands on the energy system, as more people use air-conditioning to beat the heat.

Although the report urges Americans to take immediate action to halt the advance of global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the impacts of climate change cannot be wholly undone, it warns.

"No matter how aggressively heat-trapping emissions are reduced, some amount of climate change and resulting impacts will continue due to the effects of gases that have already been released," the report says.

The report, titled "Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States," tackles the subject of climate change from a global and a uniquely US angle "to show that the US cannot be viewed as an island when you are talking about climate change," said Jerry Melillo, one of the lead authors on the project.

"One big message we're trying to get across is that not only is climate change happening now, but it's happening in your backyard," said Melillo, a researcher at the Marine Biology Observatory in Massachusetts.

Government Study Warns of Climate Change Effects
John M. Broder, The New York Times 16 Jun 09;

WASHINGTON — The impact of a changing climate is already being felt across the United States, like shifting migration patterns of butterflies in the West and heavier downpours in the Midwest and East, according to a government study to be released on Tuesday.

Even if the nation takes significant steps to slow emissions of heat-trapping gases, the impact of global warming is expected to become more severe in coming years, the report says, affecting farms and forests, coastlines and floodplains, water and energy supplies, transportation and human health.

The study was prepared by the United States Global Change Research Program, a joint scientific venture of 13 federal agencies and the White House. Under a 1990 law, the group is required to report every 10 years on natural and human-caused effects on the environment. The current study, which began in the George W. Bush administration, builds on the findings of the 2000 one.

The study, overseen by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, will be posted at www.globalchange.gov/usimpacts.

Some of the effects being seen today and cited in the report are familiar, like more powerful tropical storms and erosion of ocean coastlines caused by melting Arctic ice. The study also cites an increase in drought in the Southwest and more intense heat waves in the Northeast as a result of growing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other climate-altering gases in the atmosphere.

Reduced mountain snowpack means earlier melt-offs and reduced stream volumes across the West and Northwest, affecting residential and agricultural water supplies, habitats for spawning fish and reduced hydroelectric power generation, the study found.

But the speed and severity of these effects in the future are expressed with less certainty in the report and will depend to some extent on how quickly the United States and other nations move to reduce emissions.

“What we would want to have people take away is that climate change is happening now, and it’s actually beginning to affect our lives,” said Thomas R. Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a principal author of the report. “It’s not just happening in the Arctic regions, but it’s beginning to show up in our own backyards.”

Dr. Karl said that unless the country acted soon to reduce emissions and to adapt to inevitable effects of a changing climate, the costs would be severe.

“Our destiny is really in our hands,” he said. “The size of those impacts is significantly smaller with appropriate controls.”

Dr. Karl said the section of the 188-page report dealing with human-health effects generated the most discussion and uncertainty among the agencies. The study said rising average temperatures would cause more heat-related illnesses and deaths, along with some reduction in deaths from extreme cold.

The study also showed that higher temperatures combined with air pollution would cause a higher incidence of asthma and other respiratory ailments.

Michael C. MacCracken, a leader of the 2000 study and a principal outside reviewer of the current one, said in an e-mail message that the new report was a useful overview of the state of current climate science in the United States, but “there is not much that is new.”