By Paul Roberts / For The Herald
The latest National Climate Assessment, the fifth such report by the U.S. government, is an excellent source of information on climate change. It includes improved graphics and accessibility, communicating the latest scientific research and trends.
The assessment is the product of The Global Change Research Act of 1990. The act requires research into global warming and its impacts on the environment, economics, health and safety. It directs the president to establish an interagency research program — “The U.S. Global Change Research Program” — to study global change and produce a report to the president and Congress every four years. The first assessment was released in 2000, and the fifth was released in November.
The report’s broader purpose is to synthesize scientific information to inform a broad audience of decision-makers across the country. These include national, state, local and tribal governments, city planners, public health officials, farmers, business owners, water utilities, media and more. This information is vital to account for “impacts, risks and vulnerabilities associated with a changing global climate” and long-term trends impacting planning for sustainability, mitigation and adaptation.
The assessment gathers and integrates information from over a dozen federal agencies including: Commerce, NOAA, NASA, Agriculture, Energy, Defense, Transportation and more. An expert internal review of the most recent assessment was conducted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
The big take-aways from the assessment are that the effects of a warming world — heat, droughts, storms, floods, fires, sea level rise — are evident now. And, they are increasing in frequency and intensity. “Across all regions of the US, people are experiencing warming temperatures and longer-lasting heatwaves,” it reports.
For years, conventional thinking was that impacts from global warming would appear sometime in the future; later in this century. The report clearly shows these events and trends are happening and accelerating now, and will continue. Moreover, the only sure response to mitigate global warming and these events is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Preferably, as fast as possible. When the emissions stop, so too will the warming.
There is not sufficient space here to adequately summarize the wealth of information included in assessment. However, some key elements are listed here:
• The more the planet warms, the greater the impacts. Each increment of warming leads to more damage, health risks and greater economic loss. Reducing emissions reduces the risks. Rapid emission reductions are expected to have immediate health and economic benefits. Reaching net zero is necessary to stop global warming.
• Greenhouse gas emissions fell 12 percent from 2005 to 2019. The trend was largely driven by changes in electricity generation, reduction in coal and increases in renewables.
• Current climate changes are unprecedented over thousands of years, and are caused by the cumulative effect of human activity, burning fossil fuels from the 1850s to the present. “Rising global emissions are driving global warming, with faster warming in the U.S.”
• Improved modeling and attribution science are improving our understanding of warming trends and the role of climate change in specific events, e.g. Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and the Pacific Northwest heat dome in 2021. (See Eco-Nomics, No. 4, “Assessing climate change’s acceleration, attribution” The Daily Herald, Sept. 2, 2023.)
• Enhanced modeling highlights the cascading effects and interconnectedness of climate change on food, energy and water systems.
• Risks from extreme events are increasing in terms of health and economic losses. These include “heat-related illnesses and death, costlier storm damages, longer droughts that reduce agricultural productivity and strain water systems and larger more severe wildfires that threaten homes and degrade air quality.”
• The climate assessment includes a section for each region of the nation. The Northwest section — Chapter 27 — describes how climate change is, and will continue, having impacts on: reduced water supply for agriculture, energy and its ecosystems; extreme heat, wildfires and smoke impacting health and local economies; economic impacts to natural resources including fisheries and tribal resources and interests. Frontline communities are disproportionately burdened by climate change including tribes and indigenous communities. These are place-based communities dependent on natural resource economies. Climate change is having an outsized impact and cascading effect on them.
“With each additional increment of warming, the consequences of climate change increase,” the assessment reports. “The faster and further the world cuts GHG emissions, the more future warming will be avoided, increasing the chances of limiting or avoiding harmful impacts to current and future generations.”
We have a choice to move decisively reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Doing so will not be easy or cheap. However, the cascading effects of climate change are vastly more expensive than a business as usual approach that threatens our existence.
Paul Roberts is retired and lives in Everett. His career spans over five decades in infrastructure, economics and environmental policy including advising Washington cities on climate change and past chair of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency board of directors.
Eco-nomics
“Eco-nomics” is a series of articles exploring issues at the intersection of climate change and economics. Climate change (global warming) is caused by greenhouse gas emissions — carbon dioxide and methane chiefly — generated by human activities, primarily burning fossil fuels and agricultural practices. Global warming poses an existential threat to the planet. Successfully responding to this threat requires urgent actions — clear plans and actionable strategies — to rapidly reduce GHG emissions and adapt to climate-influenced events.
The Eco-nomics series is focusing on mitigation and adaptation strategies viewed through the twin perspectives of science and economics. The series will return in January.
Find links to the series thus far at tinyurl.com/HeraldEco-nomics.
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