lightblueline

As Santa Barbara prepares to welcome James Hansen on February 5, we can read an interview he did which aired on February 2 on the program Living on Earth.

Dr. Hansen describes the scenario where ice sheet melting in the past resulted in a sea level rise at the rate of one meter every twenty years. When lightblueline talks about the vulnerability that climate change brings to coastal cities, this type of nonlinear process is precisely the target of our action. We are not predicting a seven meter rise in a century, even though this has happened in the past. We are predicting that the "business as usual" scenario of carbon generation will result in a global climate where we cannot be certain that the polar ice sheets will remain intact over the next several hundred years. The vulnerability to sea level rise is the same whether it takes seven decades or seventeen decades. We share a common future in Santa Barbrara that our children's children will face. We have only a few years to turn the situation around.

Recently the National Academy of Sciences held a review of the current and future scientific needs for satellites that provide data about the Earth system and its climate. This review concluded that since 2000 NASA's Earth science satellite program has been failing to meet the needs of scientists to a steady and improving data resource. In an editorial in the Boston Globe (January 31, 2007), Derrick Z. Jackson describes this as President Bush's "Sputnik Moment," and quotes the NAS report's cochair:

"'Since 2000, this thing has gone off a cliff,' said Berrien Moore, cochair of the National Academy of Sciences panel on studying Earth from space and director of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space at the University of New Hampshire. Moore said the Bush administration has created a 'perfect storm' with the 'collapse of the earth science budget, down 30 percent at NASA,' and the inept development of a polar-orbiting environmental satellite system by NOAA and the Pentagon. The system is three years behind schedule and $3 billion over budget, and many climate-detection instruments have been thrown out to slash costs.

The Washington Post (February 2, 2007), like a thousand other news outlets, reviewed the latest report by the IPCC. This report offers the highest confidence to date that humans are affecting the global climate. On the topic of sea-level rise the Post says,

"The report was the first of four to be released this year by the panel, which was created by the United Nations in 1988. It found:

_Global warming is "very likely" caused by man, meaning more than 90 percent certain. That's the strongest expression of certainty to date from the panel.

Even as the final touches of the IPCC report, scheduled to be released on February 2, are being hammered out, CNN.Com (from an AP report, February 29, 2007) notes that scientists are aready warning that the IPCC report does not adequately address the impacts on sea-level rise of melting Polar ice sheets:

"...The early versions of the report predict that by 2100 the sea level will rise anywhere between 5 and 23 inches. That's far lower than the 20 to 55 inches forecast by 2100 in a study published in the peer-review journal Science this month. Other climate experts, including NASA's James Hansen, predict sea level rise that can be measured by feet more than inches.

The Washington Post maintains an archive on its reporting about climate change:

The Threat of Climate Change

This archive includes articles about policy, science, and impacts. It traces the Bush Administration's stance on climate change over the years.

The International Herald Tribune [January 16, 2007] reported on new scientific evidence for the melting of the Greenland ice shelf. New islands, formerly believed to be part of a penninsula are now being exposed by the retreating ice.

"Hans Jepsen is a cartographer at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, which produces topographical maps for mining and oil companies. (Greenland is a largely self-governing region of Denmark.) Last summer, he spotted several new islands in an area where a massive ice shelf had broken up. Jepsen was unaware of Schmitt's discovery, and an old aerial photograph in his files showed the peninsula intact.

The EPA offers extensive information on the potential effects of sea-level rise.

"Do We Need to Do Anything About Sea Level Rise Now?

The primary mission of the EPA Sea Level Rise reports has been identifying instances where it is rational to prepare now for the coastal consequences of climate change, even though most of those consequences are decades away--or more. The Overview Chapter in the 1984 publication Greenhouse Effect and Sea Level Rise: A Challenge for this Generation outlines the case for taking adaptive actions: At least some global warming and accelerated sea level rise are inevitable because of historic emissions, the inertia of the oceans, and the economy's current dependence on fossil fuels. (In the mid-1980s there was not yet a consensus that the global surface temperature is rising.) Therefore, communities and individuals will have to eventually adapt to consequences of global warming such as sea level rise. The primary question is whether to wait or take action now. The chapter on "...Before and After a Coastal Disaster" shows that the decision whether to rebuild after a coastal disaster might depend on whether property owners believe that they can rely on the government to fund efforts to hold back the sea. The Economics Chapter estimates the possible costs of sea level rise for Charleston and Galveston, and concluded that anticipating sea level rise could cut in half the eventual costs. In the Forward, EPA's original Administrator, William Ruckelshaus, points out that democracies often find it difficult to prepare for looming problems until a catastrophe occurs. "The ultimate danger is that by remaining reliant on "the catastrophe theory of planning" in an era producing catastrophes of a magnitude greater than in the past, we can place our institutions in situations where precipitate action is the sole option – and it is then that our institutions themselves can be imperiled and individual rights overrun."

Local residents have several options for helping to mark Earth Day and fight against human-induced climate change. The Daily Nexus (January 16, 2007) reports:

"As many local organizations are putting the finishing touches on their own projects and Earth Day celebrations, a coalition of campus groups is making its own eco-conscious efforts to commemorate the holiday by launching a new interactive program designed to educate UCSB students about global warming.

The Office of the Vice Chancellor, UCSB Libraries, and the Santa Barbara Public Library have joined together to form the three-month long UCSB Reads for Earth Day campaign, which begins Jan. 25 with the on-campus distribution of 3,000 free copies of Elizabeth Kolbert’s Field Notes from a Catastrophe : Man, Nature, and Climate Change - a book about global warming.

With water rising at the Golden Gate Bridge and snowpack melting earlier in the year, California faces a double dilemma caused by climate change. The Contra Costa Times, January 22, 2007 describes how climate scientists are predicting a rocky future for California's waters users and coastal residents:

"More than 150 peer-reviewed scientific papers have been published on climate change and California's water, studies that range from technical reports meant to improve how scientists can more accurately regionalize climate change projections, to how Californians might adapt to them, to documenting changes already taking place.

Scientists from NCAR and UCAR are among those who are responsible for the IPCC report coming out in February. The Rocky Mountain News (January 20, 2007) interviewed them on the process and the results:

"Change will last centuries

The concept of climate-change commitment has been around for about 20 years. What's new is that some of the latest, most sophisticated climate models now confirm the dire predictions of earlier, cruder simulations.

In a 2005 report in the journal Science, NCAR researcher Tom Wigley said that even if greenhouse gas levels could be magically stabilized today, sea levels would rise 10 to 20 inches per century for the next 400 years or more, imperiling coastal regions.