Unable to stop climate change, EPA prepares for it – ‘Too bad we didn’t do more a few decades ago to keep all of this from happening’
By Philip Bump
8 February 2013 (Grist) – “We live in a world in which the climate is changing.” This statement from the EPA, the first line in its draft “Climate Change Adaptation Plan” [PDF] released today, is basic. But that the EPA is saying it is important. For two reasons. The first is that the agency is advancing an argument it will need to make more forcefully later this year as it pushes for curbs on greenhouse gas pollution that could stem some of the worst effects of that changing climate. Though the draft report is dated June 2012, it only came out today — less than a week before a State of the Union address in which Obama is expected to call for climate action. And, second, the EPA needs to get ready for what a warmed world looks like.Until now, EPA has been able to assume that climate is relatively stable and future climate will mirror past climate. However, with climate changing more rapidly than society has experienced in the past, the past is no longer a good predictor of the future. Climate change is posing new challenges to EPA’s ability to fulfill its mission.
“Until now,” huh? If you say so. Over the course of 55 pages, the agency outlines the ways in which its mission — protecting America’s air and water — will be threatened by climate change. For those who’ve been tracking the issue, it’s largely what you’d expect. It’s important to note: This is not a document meant to suggest how the EPA will prevent climate change. It simply says “here’s what will happen as the world warms” and then considers how that will affect its mission. An appendix outlines and prioritizes the challenges, breaking them into three categories based on likelihood: “Likely,” “Very likely,” and “Certain.” What prediction fits into which category is interesting — and suggests just how conservative the EPA is still being. Certain effects
- Ocean acidification
Very likely
- Increasing extreme temperatures
- Sea-level rise
- Increased water temperatures
- Loss of snowpack
- Changes in temperature
Likely
- Increased tropospheric ozone pollution in certain regions
- Increased frequency or intensity of wildfires
- Increasing heavy precipitation events
- Effects on the stratospheric ozone layer
- Effects on response of ecosystems to atmospheric deposition of sulfur, nitrogen, and mercury
- Increasing intensity of hurricanes
- Decreasing precipitation days and increasing drought intensity
- Increasing risk of floods
- Melting permafrost in Northern Regions
Why is increased ocean acidification the only “certain” outcome? Because the National Research Council of the National Academies identified it as “[o]ne of the most certain outcomes from increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.” [more]
Another stupid report!!! Here was my comment to Grist this morning: "…the EPA needs to accelerate scientific research to indicate how increased ozone and other pollutants 'will affect ecosystem growth'".
The science, and the EPA, are behind the curve as usual. Ozone is ALREADY affecting "ecosystem growth" which is a cute way of stating the rather more alarming and plainly observable fact that TREES ARE DYING from absorbing pollution. ALL of them, all over the world.
A much longer explanation of this was recently published at Greg Laden's science blog http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2013/01/29/whispers-from-the-ghosting-trees/
This topic is about as popular as the ongoing, global trend in sperm reduction, because the implications are unimaginably dire. Only the infinitely powerful capacity of humans to deny the obvious can explain why it isn't being discussed in polite company.
Same choice or set of choices as always:
– Drive a car or have a habitable planet.
– We always choose the car. We have always chosen the car. We will choose the car and clutch it in our hands as we die.