Climate Change's Biggest Threats Are Those We Aren't Ready For: Report

The Huffington Post
12/3/13

By Kate Sheppard

WASHINGTON -- Climatic changes -- and the results of those changes -- could occur within decades or even sooner, and they are becoming a greater concern for scientists, according to a new paper from the National Academy of Sciences.

"The most challenging changes are the abrupt ones," said James White, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado in Boulder and chair of the report committee. White and several coauthors of the paper spoke at a press conference Tuesday morning.

The paper focuses on those impacts due to climate change that can happen most quickly. Among these are the rapid decline in Arctic sea ice that scientists have seen in the last decade and increased extinction pressure on plants and animals caused by the rapidly warming climate.

Many such changes, according to Tony Barnosky, a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, are "things that people in this room will be around to see." He emphasized that scientists are "really worried about what's going to happen in the next several years or decades."

"The planet is going to be warmer than most species living on Earth today have seen it, including humans," said Barnosky. "The pace of change is orders of magnitude higher than what species have experienced in the last tens of millions of years."

Other, more gradually occurring changes can still have abrupt impacts on the ecosystem and human systems, such as the loss of fisheries or shifts in where certain crops can be cultivated. Rapid loss of ice, for example, would mean that sea levels rise at a much faster rate than the current trend, which would have a significant effect on coastal regions. A 3-foot rise in the seas is easier to prepare for if it happens on a 100-year horizon than if it happens within 30 years.

"If you think about gradual change, you can see where the road is and where you're going," said Barnosky. "With abrupt changes and effects, the road suddenly drops out from under you."

The paper did offer two bits of good news. One, scientists don't believe that climate change is likely to shut down the Atlantic jetstream, a possibility that had been discussed in some scientific research. They also don't believe that large, rapid emissions of methane from ice and Arctic soil will pose a serious threat in the short term, as had been considered previously.

"Giant methane belches are not a big worry," said Richard Alley, a professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University and committee member. "These really are systems that will affect us in the future, but they don't look like they're going to jump really fast."

The paper recommends increased investment in an early-warning system for monitoring abrupt impacts, such as surveillance programs to facilitate closer tracking of melting ice and methane releases, for example. Right now, investment in those systems is lacking in the U.S., and monitoring programs have been cut in recent years.

"The time has come for us to quit talking and actually take some action," said White. He noted that in the modern age, there are cameras everywhere, yet "remarkably very few of those watching devices are pointed at the environment."

"We ought to be watching that with the same zeal we watch banks and other precious things."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/03/abrupt-climate-change_n_4378864.html

 

Give me your message for the U.S. Dept. of Energy? I’ll deliver it tomorrow.

If there is anything you would like to say to the U.S. Department of Energy, tell me today and I’ll deliver it tomorrow.

U.S. Department of Energy Deputy Secretary Daniel Poneman will be in Charleston tomorrow.  He will be at the dedication of Clemson University’s Energy Innovation Center, an 82,000 sq.ft. wind turbine drivetrain testing facility. 

Following the dedication I will be meeting him at a business roundtable of local business owners to discuss climate and energy issues.  Mr. Poneman, Sandy Bridges (owner of Palmetto Hammock) and I will hold a brief press opportunity following the roundtable.

So email me with your message for the Department of Energy.  sbchamber@scsbc.org 

Report: Warmer temperatures, hurricanes, floods in store for South

“Rising sea levels. The ocean is expected to rise 1 to 5 feet by the end of the 21st century, making seaside property more vulnerable to storm surges and flooding. The exact rate of sea level rise will depend, in part, on how fast the polar ice sheets melt.”

The State
November 13, 2013

By SAMMY FRETWELL

2013-11-13T04:57:57Z COLUMBIA, S.C. — Poisoned seafood, scorched forests, flooded homes and crumbling bridges are just some of the problems the Southeast can expect as the earth's climate changes and temperatures heat up in future decades, according to a study released Tuesday.

The 341-page report, based on the expertise of more than 100 scientists and researchers, is considered the most comprehensive study to date of how global warming is affecting the South - and what Southerners can expect.

The findings are worth paying attention to, especially in the South's high-growth states, researchers said.

"There are going to be more people here to experience the impacts the climate models are projecting," said Kirstin Dow, a University South Carolina geography professor and one of the report's primary authors.

By mid-century, heat waves are projected to be more frequent across the Southeast, Dow said, with the number of consecutive days exceeding 95 degrees rising by anywhere from 97 percent to more than 200 percent.

Overall, average annual temperatures in the region could rise by up to 9 degrees this century, with summer temperatures increasing by more than 10 degrees, the study said.

Research shows that average temperatures already have risen 2 degrees in the region during the past 40 years, with temperatures the warmest on record between 2000 and 2010.

Global warming is a topic of intense political debate because controlling it could lead to more regulation of industries, but scientific data and research show that the phenomenon is virtually indisputable.

Since the rise of industrialization more than a century ago, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from man-made activities have built up in the atmosphere and trapped heat, which has increased worldwide temperatures. That, in turn, is contributing to an array of problems, from rising seas to drier weather.

Scientists involved in the southeastern climate report said rising earth temperatures can't be ignored in the 11-state area they studied. Researchers suggested cutting the amount of greenhouse gas pollution in the South, making buildings more energy efficient and protecting wide swaths of forests to soak up carbon dioxide.

Dow said higher temperatures could have a variety of impacts on the region, ranging from more diseases in fish to making air quality worse as smog-forming pollutants rise. Rising temperatures and drought will make crops thirstier. That will make it harder to grow crops without irrigation, the study said.

Even so, Republican state Sen. Larry Grooms of South Carolina was skeptical about the consequences for his state.

"If you're talking about (rising temperatures) causing disease and famine, and so forth, that's simply not the case," he said. "All you have to do is look to other states with a slightly warmer climate.

"There's a reason why a lot of people move to Florida."

The southeastern study includes 14 chapters, looking at various aspects of global warming in the region. Those working on the study included university scientists and federal researchers from departments such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Unsafe seafood is one global warming threat people should pay attention to, researchers said.

The study said a toxin associated with warm oceans and tropical fish has in the past decade been found in South Carolina. This suggests the disease, known as ciguatera, is moving north in association with rising sea surface temperatures, the study said. The disease is tied to the spread of toxic algae blooms.

"Climate change may lead to the expansion of ciguatera fish poisoning in tropical areas, as well as more temperate zones," the report said.

The study doesn't mention a specific case of ciguatera poisoning, but in 2004, researchers found that a married couple became ill from eating a toxin-tinged barracuda caught along the South Carolina coast. Ciguatera poisoning can cause nausea, vomiting and neurological problems, and in extreme cases, can last for years, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Oysters and clams also are at risk of contracting diseases related to warmer water temperatures. Researchers say marine pathogens known as vibrio are a threat. Infections associated with vibrio are expanding in Gulf Coast shellfish. The trend is tied to the number of days when water temperatures rise above typical levels. Some types of vibrio can cause diarrhea and liver disease.

Other impacts expected by the end of the 21st century, include:

-More wildfires. Higher temperatures are expected to dry out forests, making them more susceptible to catching fire. Wildfires have in recent years presented a notable threat in the Myrtle Beach, S.C., area, where homes have burned to the ground.

-Worn out roads and wrecked bridges. Hotter conditions are expected to make asphalt heat up and roads to wear down, while rising seas will threaten to wash out bridges in coastal areas.

-More devastating hurricanes. The number and intensity of hurricanes is expected to increase as ocean waters get warmer.

-Rising sea levels. The ocean is expected to rise 1 to 5 feet by the end of the 21st century, making seaside property more vulnerable to storm surges and flooding. The exact rate of sea level rise will depend, in part, on how fast the polar ice sheets melt.

-Toxic algae blooms. At least five different varieties of marine toxins have moved into the region or shifted northward toward the Carolinas. These toxins not only can threaten fish, but some can cause respiratory problems or rashes in people exposed to them.

-Dying sea life. Increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could make the ocean more acidic, which would likely limit the growth of corals, shellfish and crustaceans.

Keith Ingram, a University of Florida researcher and co-author of the study, said some past skeptics of global warming appear to be softening their positions.

"Over the last couple of years we've started getting more and more questions from farmers about climate change because they see it," said Ingram, who studies agriculture at Florida. "We see the same thing in coastal communities, where they see flooding already."

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2013/11/12/3094459/new-climate-change-research-takes.html#storylink=cpy

UN climate report: Humans are ‘dominant’ cause of global warming

The Hill's Energy & Environment Blog
By Ben Geman              

A United Nations climate science panel has concluded there’s at least a 95 percent chance human activities are the main driver of global warming over the last six decades.

 
“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia,” states Friday’s report from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).



“Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, in global mean sea level rise, and in changes in some climate extremes,” the report finds. “It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/325043-united-nations-report-humans-are-dominant-cause-of-global-warming#ixzz2g6kOD3Hi

Climate costs rise like sea levels with delayed action on climate change

The Hill's Congress Blog

By Sandra Bridges 

Many of the readers have visited Charleston’s Market, just a couple blocks from the harbor, where my business is located. Tourism is our lifeblood as it is for our city.  So when our low-lying area of Charleston is flooded from heavy rain and tourists think twice before wading through more than a foot of water to shop, I’m concerned and very worried about even worse flooding problems in the future.

Charleston, like all of South Carolina’s coastal tourism communities, is significantly threatened by rising sea levels due to climate change. While my business today can survive the minor flooding, the next generation of small businesses and those through the end of this century will not survive even if sea levels only rise two to three feet, which most scientists accept. If seas rise by six feet by the end of the century, the upper end of today’s predictions, the businesses here in Charleston’s Market will be under four feet of water at high tide. I put a piece of blue tape pretty high up on my front door to show where the waters could rise.

This is obviously upsetting to me.

Just as disappointing is what I’m seeing out of Congress to try to reduce the impacts of climate change--pretty much nothing.  But it’s even worse than that. Some of our elected officials have helped stifle and block action on climate change in Congress. Then, they’ve tried to take away money so federal agencies can’t even work on climate as if ignoring the biggest environmental challenge we face will make it go away.

The House Subcommittee on Energy and Power is holding a hearing on climate change on the 18th but unfortunately its agenda appears to be focusing on how much the government has, in their view, overspent to study climate change, to try to prepare for its impacts and to lessen possible hardships on businesses like mine.

One of the things members of this committee are complaining about is the government using a cost benefit estimate called “social cost of carbon”, when proposing regulations on carbon pollution.  I’m not sure why this is controversial since the House has passed numerous bills calling for cost-benefit analysis aimed at federal pollution standards.

Maybe this “social cost of carbon” should more appropriately be called the “real cost of carbon.” It’s just a way of estimating how much families and businesses are paying, or will pay, for damages caused by carbon pollution. Carbon pollution drives climate change. It’s fueling extreme weather and raising sea levels. These are real costs that small businesses like mine and those to come will pay if we don’t address climate change.

The social cost of carbon puts a price tag on that damage and it also shows the benefits we can get from federal standards that cut carbon pollution. So, for example, it can help show the benefit of keeping a business like mine open. Certainly no one can argue that there isn’t an economic value to keeping small businesses, the backbone of our economy, open for business.

I am participating in an effort led by the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce to call the rising seas problem to the attention of my customers.  About half of the small businesses contacted in vulnerable coastal communities in my state have put up signage on the issue and even blue tape to show where the high tide is expected to be by 2100.

Most small business owners across the county understand that something needs to be done to address climate change that is causing extreme weather conditions and rising seas. The reason is, when we get hit by major weather disasters, many small businesses can’t recover. Our profit margins are such that we get knocked out completely. One-third of small businesses nationally report they’ve been affected by extreme weather and according to a poll by the American Sustainable Business Council 63 percent of small business owners support EPA efforts to limit carbon pollution from power plants.

While some in Congress focus on how much it will cost to address climate change, they’re looking at the wrong numbers. Better to examine how much it’s already costing our communities and our economy. Better to explore how much more it will cost the longer we stick our heads in the sand of our beaches that will be washed away. They could start by looking at the blue tape on my door.

Bridges is co-owner of the Palmetto Hammock & Resort Shoppe, Charleston, South Carolina.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-a-environment/322787-climate-costs-rise-like-sea-levels-with-delayed-action-on-climate-change#ixzz2fGoof46P

“What I’m looking for is a climate-change denier with a lot of money.”

National Geographic Magazine
September 2013

Rising Seas

As the planet warms, the sea rises. Coastlines flood. What will we protect? What will we abandon? How will we face the danger of rising seas?

By Tim Folger

(Excerpts)

In May the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 400 parts per million, the highest since three million years ago. Sea levels then may have been as much as 65 feet above today’s; the Northern Hemisphere was largely ice free year-round. It would take centuries for the oceans to reach such catastrophic heights again, and much depends on whether we manage to limit future greenhouse gas emissions. In the short term scientists are still uncertain about how fast and how high seas will rise. Estimates have repeatedly been too conservative.

Global warming affects sea level in two ways. About a third of its current rise comes from thermal expansion—from the fact that water grows in volume as it warms. The rest comes from the melting of ice on land. So far it’s been mostly mountain glaciers, but the big concern for the future is the giant ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. Six years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report predicting a maximum of 23 inches of sea-level rise by the end of this century. But that report intentionally omitted the possibility that the ice sheets might flow more rapidly into the sea, on the grounds that the physics of that process was poorly understood.

As the IPCC prepares to issue a new report this fall, in which the sea-level forecast is expected to be slightly higher, gaps in ice-sheet science remain. But climate scientists now estimate that Greenland and Antarctica combined have lost on average about 50 cubic miles of ice each year since 1992—roughly 200 billion metric tons of ice annually. Many think sea level will be at least three feet higher than today by 2100. Even that figure might be too low.
----------------------------------------

In a state exposed to hurricanes as well as rising seas, people like John Van Leer, an oceanographer at the University of Miami, worry that one day they will no longer be able to insure—or sell—their houses. “If buyers can’t insure it, they can’t get a mortgage on it. And if they can’t get a mortgage, you can only sell to cash buyers,” Van Leer says. “What I’m looking for is a climate-change denier with a lot of money.”
------------------------------------------

Unless we change course dramatically in the coming years, our carbon emissions will create a world utterly different in its very geography from the one in which our species evolved. “With business as usual, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will reach around a thousand parts per million by the end of the century,” says Gavin Foster, a geochemist at the University of Southampton in England. Such concentrations, he says, haven’t been seen on Earth since the early Eocene epoch, 50 million years ago, when the planet was completely ice free. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, sea level on an iceless Earth would be as much as 216 feet higher than it is today. It might take thousands of years and more than a thousand parts per million to create such a world—but if we burn all the fossil fuels, we will get there.

No matter how much we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, Foster says, we’re already locked in to at least several feet of sea-level rise, and perhaps several dozens of feet, as the planet slowly adjusts to the amount of carbon that’s in the atmosphere already. A recent Dutch study predicted that the Netherlands could engineer solutions at a manageable cost to a rise of as much as five meters, or 16 feet. Poorer countries will struggle to adapt to much less. At different times in different places, engineering solutions will no longer suffice. Then the retreat from the coast will begin. In some places there will be no higher ground to retreat to.

By the next century, if not sooner, large numbers of people will have to abandon coastal areas in Florida and other parts of the world. Some researchers fear a flood tide of climate-change refugees. “From the Bahamas to Bangladesh and a major amount of Florida, we’ll all have to move, and we may have to move at the same time,” says Wanless. “We’re going to see civil unrest, war. You just wonder how—or if—civilization will function. How thin are the threads that hold it all together? We can’t comprehend this. We think Miami has always been here and will always be here. How do you get people to realize that Miami—or London—will not always be there?”

Read more

Is climate change humanity's greatest-ever risk management failure?

TheGuardian.com
August 23, 2013

By Dana Nuccitelli
 

Humans are very good at managing risks, except when it comes to the greatest risk we've faced - climate change

Humans are generally very risk-averse. We buy insurance to protect our investments in homes and cars. For those of us who don't have universal health care, most purchase health insurance. We don't like taking the chance - however remote - that we could be left unprepared in the event that something bad happens to our homes, cars, or health.

Climate change seems to be a major exception to this rule. Managing the risks posed by climate change is not a high priority for the public as a whole, despite the fact that a climate catastrophe this century is a very real possibility, and that such an event would have adverse impacts on all of us.

For example, in my job as an environmental risk assessor, if a contaminated site poses a cancer risk to humans of more than 1-in-10,000 to 1-in-1 million, that added risk is deemed unacceptably high and must be reduced. This despite the fact that an American man has a nearly 1-in-2 chance of developing and 1-in-4 chance of dying from cancer (1-in-3 and 1-in-5 for an American woman, respectively).

To that 42 percent chance of an average American developing cancer in his or her lifetime, we're unwilling to add another 0.001 percent. The reason is simple - we really, really don't want cancer, and thus consider even a small added risk unacceptable.

Yet we don't share that aversion to the risks posed by human-caused climate change. These risks include more than half of global species potentially being at risk of extinction, extreme weather like heat waves becoming more commonplace, global food supplies put at risk by this more frequent extreme weather, glaciers and their associated water resources for millions of people disappearing, rising sea levels inundating coastlines, and so forth.

This isn't some slim one-in-a-million risk; we're looking at seriously damaging climate consequences in the most likely, business-as-usual scenario. The forthcoming fifth IPCC report is likely to state with 95 percent confidence that humans are the main drivers of climate change over the past 60 years, and the scientific basis behind this confidence is quite sound. It's the result of virtually every study that has investigated the causes of global warming.

Yet in a recent interview with NPR, climate scientist Judith Curry, who has a reputation for exaggerating climate science uncertainties, claimed that based on those uncertainties,

"I can't say myself that [doing nothing] isn't the best solution."

This argument, made frequently by climate contrarians, displays a lack of understanding about risk management. I'm uncertain if I'll ever be in a car accident, or if my house will catch fire, or if I'll become seriously ill or injured within the next few years. That uncertainty won't stop me from buying auto, home, and health insurance. It's just a matter of prudent risk management, making sure we're prepared if something bad happens to something we value. That principle should certainly apply to

Uncertainty simply isn't our friend when it comes to risk. If uncertainty is large, it means that a bad event might not happen, but it also means that we can't rule out the possibility of a catastrophic event happening. Inaction is only justifiable if we're certain that the bad outcome won't happen.

Curry is essentially arguing that she's not convinced we should take action to avoid what she believes is a very possible climate catastrophe. That's a failure of risk management. I wonder if she would also advise her children not to buy home or auto or health insurance. Maybe they'll be a wasted expense, or maybe they'll prevent financial ruin in the event of a catastrophe.

Climate change presents an enormous global risk, not in an improbable one-in-a-million case, but rather in the most likely scenario. From a risk management perspective, our choice could not be clearer. We should be taking serious steps to reduce our impact on the climate via fossil fuel consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions. But we're not. This is in large part due to a lack of public comprehension of the magnitude of the risk we face; a perception problem that social scientists are trying to determine how to overcome.
 

At the moment, climate change looks like humanity's greatest-ever risk management failure. Hopefully we'll remedy that failure before we commit ourselves to catastrophic climate consequences that we're unprepared to face.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/aug/23/climate-change-greatest-risk-management-failure?goback=%2Egde_2158603_member_269001497#%21

You’re invited to hear Bill McKibben in Charleston

The South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce is pleased to co-sponsor a free lecture by Bill McKibben in Charleston on October 16^th at 6PM.   McKibben is the founder of 350.org and has been called by Time Magazine “the planet’s best green journalist”. 

The title of the lecture is “The Climate Heats Up” and it comes just months after the Small Business Chamber launched our sea level rise education project (www.scbars.org) along the S.C. coast.  There is no bigger threat to the state’s small business coastal tourism industry than rising seas resulting from climate change.  If the nation doesn’t take significant steps soon to transition to a clean energy economy, the cost to the state and cities to deal with a sea level rise of up to 6 feet or more by the end of the century will be astronomical.  However, even with such a mammoth and expensive effort of resilience our coastal tourism economy will suffer immensely.

The Small Business Chamber has 10 reserved seats for the McKibben lecture that will otherwise be general seating with no reservations.  If you would like to join us in our reserved seating area, please email me at sbchamber@scsbc.org. 

Details for the event are as follows:

What: Bill McKibben Lecture: "The Climate Heats Up"

When: Wednesday, October 16, 2013 at 6pm

Where: Physician's Auditorium on the College of Charleston Campus, 66 George St., Charleston, SC

Doors will open at 5pm.  Limited general seating is available, so please plan to arrive early.  

Pollution Economics

The New York Times
August 10, 2013

By DIRK FORRISTER and PAUL BLEDSOE

WITH more than a million people in China dying prematurely each year from breathing its dirty air, and with warming temperatures portending rising sea levels and disruptions to food production, the centrally planned Communist country is experimenting with a capitalist approach to address the problem: it is creating incentives so that the market — and not the government — will force reductions in emissions.

The United States invented this approach in the 1990s to deal with acid rain. The effort was tremendously successful in reducing sulfur dioxide emissions that were poisoning lakes and streams, contaminating soils and accelerating the decay of buildings, at a cost lower than even its advocates anticipated.

But the United States has taken a policy detour that has hurt its efforts to reduce greenhouse gases. Congress has spurned the cap-and-trade approach China is trying, even though it is widely recognized as a cheaper way to lower emissions. As a result, President Obama has had little choice but to turn to government regulation to reduce these pollutants. Consumers will pay a higher price for electricity as a consequence.

China, the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, has begun its effort in the southern city of Shenzhen, paving the way for a national Chinese market in a few years. Like Europe, which voted to extend and improve its emissions market, and Australia and New Zealand, Shenzhen chose a carbon market as the most efficient way to lower its greenhouse gas emissions.

Under the Shenzhen program, the government will set limits on carbon dioxide discharges for 635 industrial companies and 197 public buildings that together account for about 40 percent of the city’s emissions. Polluters whose emissions fall below the limit can sell the difference in the form of pollution allowances to other polluters. These companies must decide whether it is cheaper to reduce emissions or pollute above their limit by buying allowances, whose price will be set by supply and demand. But the pressure will be on, because the limits will decrease over time. Six more regional pilot programs are planned over the next year.

More than 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions are now subject to carbon pricing systems. About 60 other states, provinces or countries are considering similar approaches, according to a recent World Bank report.

Carbon cap-and-trade programs align environmental goals with market incentives. Conventional regulatory approaches “cannot ensure achievement of emissions targets, create problematic unintended consequences, and are very costly for what they achieve,” says the economist Robert N. Stavins, director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.

So how did America detour away from emissions markets, which are the preferred approach of many economists, climate and consumer advocates, and many electric utility companies that own and operate power plants?

It all comes down to politics. Before the last recession, political support was building for a carbon market, with various Republicans, including Senator John McCain, his party’s 2008 presidential nominee, supporting a market-based approach. After House Democrats approved a cap-and-trade bill in 2009 that put a price on fossil-fuel emissions, the issue became a target of the Tea Party. In the midst of the worst economy in 75 years, the Senate declined to take up the measure, and cap and trade became a dirty term on Capitol Hill.

Even so, several states already have turned to this approach. California’s effort began in January. Nine mid-Atlantic and Northeast states use it under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

In Washington, faint whispers of a carbon tax are still occasionally heard as a solution for budget and environmental problems in a single policy. But even if that were to happen, the tax would probably be small and would not guarantee the reduction in emissions needed. Like a tax, carbon markets can also generate revenue that can be rebated to consumers or used to lower other taxes.

The United States can still move back into a leadership position in the effort to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Learning from the experiences of the European Union and other programs, America can avoid the hiccups that hampered early efforts.

As the effects of a warming climate become increasingly apparent and the costs of adaptation rise, inaction will become an untenable political position. Markets play to America’s strengths. As the first President Bush said about his policy of emissions markets for controlling acid rain, markets “harness the creativity and ingenuity of the private sector.” What could be more American than that? Just ask the Chinese.

Dirk Forrister is president and chief executive officer of the International Emissions Trading Association. Paul Bledsoe is a senior fellow in the energy and climate program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/10/opinion/pollution-economics.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130810&_r=0

NOAA: 2012 among 10 hottest years

The Hill's Energy & Environment Blog
August 6, 2013

By Zack Colman

Last year was one of the 10 hottest on record for the planet, according to a new federal report that could provide new fuel for President Obama's climate change push.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-led study said 2012 was either the eighth or ninth hottest on record globally, depending on the data set used. Temperatures in the United States specifically were the warmest on record.

"Many of the events that made 2012 such an interesting year are part of the long-term trends we see in a changing and varying climate-carbon levels are climbing, sea levels are rising, Arctic sea ice is melting, and our planet as a whole is becoming a warmer place," acting administrator Kathryn D. Sullivan said in a statement.

Read more

Climate Change Preparedness and the Small Business Sector

American Sustainable Business Council
Small Business Majority

July 25, 2013

U.S. small businesses – widely recognized as the backbone of the U.S. economy – are particularly at risk from extreme weather and climate change and must take steps to adapt, according to a new report from Small Business Majority (SBM) and the American Sustainable Business Council (ASBC).

Titled “Climate Change Preparedness and the Small Business Sector,” the report concludes: “Because small businesses are distinctly critical to the U.S. economy, and at the same time uniquely vulnerable to damage from extreme weather events, collective actions by the small business community could have an enormous impact on insulating the U.S. economy from climate risk.”

From page 8 & 9 of the report:

Frank Knapp, Jr., CEO, South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce, and Sandra Bridges, Co-Owner, Palmetto Hammock & Resort Shoppe

Charleston, South Carolina

Frank Knapp, Jr., President and CEO of the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce, is leading an initiative throughout coastal South Carolina to educate the public on the vulnerability of the area’s local economy to sea level rise, which is predicted to rise 6 feet by 2100, according to NOAA. Knapp’s initiative, known as South Carolina Businesses Acting on Rising Seas (SCBARS), stems from the economic impact that sea level rise could have on this region, and includes grassroots advocacy efforts to garner support from local businesses.  The initiative, of which ASBC is a partner, educates the public by visibly illustrating with signs in local neighborhoods where sea level could reach by 2100. SCBARS encourages tourists to be local advocates for preserving the South Carolina coast.

One local business that Knapp has worked with is Palmetto Hammock & Resort Shoppe, a retail store selling outdoor equipment, apparel and accessories in the historic market district of Charleston, SC.  Palmetto Hammock is jointly owned by Carl Dupree and Sandra Bridges, and was established in 2003. 

Bridges’ small business is located in a favorite shopping area for both residents and tourists, and is housed in a freestanding building with 1,000 square feet of retail display space. According to Knapp, the building Palmetto Hammock is located in is projected to have four feet of sea water at high tide at the end of the century. To raise awareness about this risk for tourists and other businesses in downtown Charleston, Bridges has posted a sign on her store’s front door, and blue tape that indicates the level at which the sea could reach by 2100.

For Bridges, there is little she can do to prepare her business for the potential physical impacts of sea level rise, but participating in Knapp’s SCBARS’ effort is one way to bring attention to the issue and its possible impact on tourism and local business in Charleston.

With more than 190 miles of coastline and 600,000 acres of tidal wetlands, South Carolina is especially susceptible to the effects of sea level rise and storm surge due to hurricanes and tropical storms. The state’s beaches and coastal communities are critical to South Carolina’s economic well-being, providing recreational opportunities, commercial port access, commercial fisheries, and a foundation for the state’s flourishing tourism economy.

In fact, a 2010 report to the Environmental Protection Agency reported that tourism has emerged as South Carolina’s primary growth industry, and state economic officials estimate that one job is created for every 120 visitors. Tourists to the Grand Strand, Hilton Head, and Charleston areas alone account for approximately $5 billion of the $9 billion spent by tourists in the state each year.

Bridges notes that while tourists are not currently bothered by wading through the occasional flood, attitudes may change if this becomes a more frequent or severe occurrence.

Read more….

 

Blue Tape Marks Climate Change Risks for Coastal Businesses

Bloomberg Businessweek
July 25, 2013

By John Tozzi

 

Sandy Bridges, the owner of Palmetto Hammock in Charleston’s historic market district, is accustomed to flooding in her gift shop, so she keeps the floor clear of the hammocks, clothing, and tourist knick-knacks she sells. The 150-year-old building she occupies is two blocks from Charleston Harbor, and if it rains when the tide is high, the water comes up to her doorstep and sometimes over it. “The wooden flooring is old ship’s decking,” she says. “They understood we were going to get wet.”

The 19^th century South Carolinians who built on the Charleston peninsula didn’t anticipate how wet. Scientists expect sea levels to rise between 8 inches and 6 feet by the end of this century, putting low-lying coastal businesses at risk. To make the threat of climate change clear to her customers, Bridges joined a campaign last week to mark where the high tide in 2100 would be if the worst of those scenarios comes true. A strip of sky-blue tape near the handle of her door indicates the spot. “Where I’m standing right now, the water would be up to my chest,” she says.

About 90 businesses so far have agreed to put tape, decals, or posters in shop windows. The campaign is part of a larger effort to draw attention to the risks that climate change poses to small businesses. “The tourism industry in our state is primarily a small business industry,” says Frank Knapp, president of the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce, which is recruiting businesses along with the American Sustainable Business Council. “There’s not much greater threat to our tourism industry  

than a destroyed coast.”

Photograph by Kate Thornton for Bloomberg Businessweek

The American Sustainable Business Council and another advocacy group, the Small Business Majority, plan to release a report Thursday showing that “small businesses with fewer locations and limited resources are particularly vulnerable to devastating extreme weather events,” according to a news release from the group.

It’s not hard to imagine Charleston’s low-lying retailers under water, especially after seeing hurricanes flood homes and businesses from New Orleans to New Jersey. When Hurricane Hugo landed in South Carolina in 1989, Bridges says, the property she now occupies had water up to the attic. She knows that businesses near the sea live with the risk of devastating storms, but she’s hoping it’s not too late to keep the coastline from permanently creeping upland. “If the water keeps rising, I feel there’s not going to be much hope to maintain this area,” she says.

Knapp’s group, which has about 5,000 members, hopes that changing tourists’ hearts and minds will prod Washington to act. Visitors to the campaign’s website can send messages to lawmakers urging them to curb carbon emissions and support clean energy sources. There’s little hope of that happening in the current Congress, where Republicans are trying to block White House plans to limit power plant pollution.

Knapp wants at least to show what’s at stake for coastal businesses in the “very red state” of South Carolina. “This is about protecting the South Carolina coastal tourism economy,” he says. The damage from climate change, Knapp says, won’t be felt “in my lifetime. It might be in my daughter’s. It’s definitely in my grandkids’.”

original article

South Carolina Businesses Acting on Rising Seas

Today was big day for the South Carolina Small Business Chamber in our efforts to protect our small business tourism industry from the coming impact of rising seas due to climate change.

This morning we rolled out our new sea level rise education project at a press event in Charleston.  The project, called South Carolina Businesses Acting on Rising Seas (SCBARS), is a partnership with the American Sustainable Business Council that is providing the funding.

In the last several weeks the SCBARS team has been identifying businesses up and down our coast that NOAA-supplied data indicates are expected to be directly impacted by a 6-foot rise in sea level by 2100.  We’ve been knocking on their doors and educating the owners about the threat.

We ask them to post signs for the tourists to make them aware of the future danger.  Our goal is to turn the tourists into an army of advocates for protecting our coast by asking them to go to SCBARS.org.  From the website people can send letters to their Congressional delegation and President calling on them to take action to reduce carbon pollution and transition the U.S. to a clean energy economy.

The response from these businesses has been very encouraging.  This week we start delivering the signs and hopefully will get permission to place blue tape on the inside or outside of their buildings showing where the high tide will be in 2100 if nothing is done about climate change.

While this was going on in Charleston, I was meeting with the Myrtle Beach Sun News editorial board to tell them about SCBARS.

It was a good day for our small business tourism industry and with the help of our SCBARS project hopefully there will be more good days for future generations of coastal small businesses.

UN: 2000s brought climate 'extremes'

The Hill
July 3, 2013

The first decade of the 21st century was the warmest on record and “continued an extended period of pronounced global warming,” according to the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

The group’s new report says the decade ending in 2010 was marked by “dramatic climate and weather extremes,” such as the European heatwave of 2003, 2010 flooding in Pakistan and droughts in several regions.

The findings arrive as President Obama is seeking traction for his wide-ranging second-term climate agenda that includes new regulations on power plant emissions.

The report notes that nine of the 10 years between 2001 and 2010 were among the warmest 10 since “modern measurements” began in 1850.

It also finds that warming has sped up over the past 40 years, noting “the decadal rate of increase in the global temperature accelerated between 1971 and 2010.”

“The global temperature increased at an average estimated rate of 0.17°C per decade during that period, while the trend over the whole period 1880–2010 was only 0.062°C per decade,” the report states.

“Furthermore, the increase of 0.21°C in the average decadal temperature from 1991–2000 to 2001–2010 is larger than the increase from 1981–1990 to 1991–2000 (+0.14°C) and larger than for any other two successive decades since the beginning of instrumental records,” the report adds.

WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud used the decade-scale averages to rebut climate skeptics who are increasingly calling attention to the slowdown in the rate of surface warming over the last 10 to 15 years even as greenhouse gases accumulate.

“The last decade was the warmest, by a significant margin,” he told The Associated Press. “If anything we should not talk about the plateau, we should talk about the acceleration.”

Elsewhere, the report takes stock of the nexus between climate change and extreme weather.

“While climate scientists believe that it is not yet possible to attribute individual extremes to climate change, they increasingly conclude that many recent events would have occurred in a different way — or would not have occurred at all — in the absence of climate change,” it states.

“For example, the likelihood of the 2003 European heatwave occurring was probably substantially increased by rising global temperatures,” it adds.

http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/309123-un-report-2001-2010-hottest-on-record-dramatic-extremes

 

Small business owners support Obama’s clean energy and environmental policies, poll shows

The Washington Post
June 27, 2013

By J.D. Harrison

Most small business owners support some of the climate control and clean energy plans outlined this week by the Obama administration, according to a poll released Thursday.

More than three-fourths (79 percent) of small employers think the the government should set a national goal to increase energy efficiency by half over the next decade, and nearly twice as many believe government incentives for clean energy innovation should be a high or top priority than believe they should be a low or non-priority.

The results are part of a report released by the American Sustainable Business Council, a business advocacy and research organization. David Levine, the group’s chief executive, noted that most of the responses did not vary based on respondents’ political persuasions.

“Small business owners across the country and across the political spectrum believe that clean energy makes sense not only for the environment, but it makes good business sense, too,” Levine said in an interview. “There’s a recognition that these clean energy policies really are better for their financial bottom lines.”

During a speech in Washington on Tuesday, Obama announced several ambitious proposals aimed at reversing recent climate changes and making the country more self-sufficient. Most notably, he ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to limit carbon dioxide emissions for coal- and gas-powered utilities by 2015.

“I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that’s beyond fixing,” Obama told students during the event at Georgetown University.

Small business owners support that objective, too. Nearly two-thirds think the EPA should cap emissions in existing power plants, including 86 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of Republicans.

More than half of employers believe the government should also encourage banks to consider environmental criteria when evaluating loan applications and investment opportunities, according to the poll, which was based on 515 responses from employers with fewer than 100 employees. Sixty-three percent support a government mandate that would require 20 percent of electricity to be generated from sustainable energy sources.

It’s a slightly surprising stance from a group that is often considered purely anti-regulations and anti-government involvement, but one small business owner noted that these rules would mainly affect large energy and electricity producers, not firms on Main Street.

Susan Labandibar, president of Tech Networks of Boston in South Boston, Mass., added that devastation from recent natural disasters, including Hurricane Sandy and the twisters in the Midwest, has probably prompted some small employers to take climate shifts more seriously.

“Small businesses are uniquely vulnerable to severe weather events, and there has been a huge amount of disruption from some of these storms,” Labandibar said, noting that her own firm was hit hard by Sandy.

Meanwhile, Levine says the overarching “businesses-hate-regulations” notion has been fueled by policy discussions that have more to do with political sparring than reviving the economy.

“This shows that, when you ask some of these questions outside of the political arena, you get a different take than what you hear in Congress,” he said. “We need to change the dialogue in Washington, and get away from party-line rhetoric and talk more about what’s actually good for business and what’s actually good for the economy.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/small-business-owners-support-obamas-clean-energy-and-environmental-policies-poll-shows/2013/06/27/37248e60-de9d-11e2-b2d4-ea6d8f477a01_story.html