Report: Climate change threatens more than half of California’s real estate

 

by Celia Lamb | Sacramento Business Journal

A University of California Berkeley report released Thursday estimates that $2.5 trillion of California real estate is threatened by climate change.

Real estate and insurance represent the largest sectors at risk from climate change in the state, according to the report. It found that the state has $4 trillion in real estate assets, of which $2.5 million are at risk from extreme weather events, sea level rise and wildfires. The projected annual price tag is $300 million to $3.9 billion over this century, depending on how the global temperature rise.

Six additional sectors, including water, energy, transportation, tourism, agriculture and public health would incur tens of billions of dollars per year in direct costs and expose trillions of dollars of assets to collateral risks, according to the report.

“Our report makes clear the most expensive thing we can do about climate change is nothing,” said lead author UCB adjunct professor Davis Roland-Holst.

The report, “California Climate Risk and Response,” was funded by Next 10, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. The report is available here.

Climate change may carry huge price tag for California

By Margot Roosevelt | LA Times

Eroding beaches, disappearing snowpacks, subdivisions decimated by wildfires — climate change in California could be expensive.

For the first time, the costs of global warming’s projected effects in the nation’s largest state have been quantified: About $2.5 trillion of real estate assets in California are at risk from extreme weather events, sea level rise and wildfires, with a projected annual price tag of between $300 million and $3.9 billion, according to a new report, “California Climate Risk and Response,” written by UC Berkeley researchers Fredrich Kahrl and David Roland-Holst.

The final number will depend on how much the Earth warms under various scenarios and whether the nations commit to slashing greenhouse gas emissions.

“This is a good review of existing studies,” said Anthony Brunello, a California Resources agency official. “It assesses the real, comprehensive statewide impacts for the first time.”

Brunello and other California officials are already busy planning a comprehensive “Climate Adaptation Strategy” to commit the state to concrete prevention measures. Six task forces covering biodiversity and habitat, infrastructure, oceans and coastal resources, public health, water, forestry and agriculture will release adaptation strategies for public comment next month.

“Our report makes clear the most expensive thing we can do about climate change is nothing,” Roland-Holst said. But he adds, “This is not a Doomsday report . . . . If we make the right investments, we can avert much of the damage in any scenario.”

California is also moving to adopt comprehensive regulations to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 15% below today’s level. But that would only put a dent in the trajectory of climate change, unless dramatic measures are undertaken nationwide and across other continents, according to scientists.

The report covers seven economic sectors and envisions issues such as the collapse of the ski industry, a water-starved hydroelectric system and an increase in warming-related smog. The research was funded by Next 10, a nonprofit set up by high-tech entrepreneur F. Noel Perry.

UN: Brown clouds over Asia worsen global warming

 

By TINI TRAN | AP

BEIJING — A thick brown cloud of soot, particles and chemicals stretching from the Persian Gulf to Asia threatens health and food supplies in the world, the U.N. reported Thursday, citing what it called the newest threat from global warming.

The regional haze, known as atmospheric brown clouds, contributes to the melting of Himalayan glaciers, reduces sunlight, and helps create extreme weather conditions that impact agricultural production, according to the report commissioned by the U.N. Environment Program.

These so-called “brown clouds,” caused by the burning of fossil fuels, wood and plants, play a significant role in exacerbating the effects of greenhouse gases in warming up the earth’s atmosphere, the report said.

“Imagine for a moment a three-kilometer-thick (1.8-mile-thick) band of soot, particles, a cocktail of chemicals that stretches from the Arabic Peninsula to Asia,” said Achim Steiner, U.N. undersecretary general and executive director of the UN program during a news conference on the findings.

“All of this points to an even greater and urgent need to look at emissions across the planet because this is where the stories are linked in terms of greenhouse emissions and particle emissions and the impact that they’re having on our global climate,” he said.

The phenomenon complicates the climate change scenario globally because the brown clouds also help cool the earth’s surface and “masks” the impact of global warming by an average of 40 percent, the study said.

Though it has been studied closely in Asia, the latest findings, conducted by an international collaboration of scientists, reveal that the brown cloud phenomenon is not unique to Asia, with pollution hotspots seen in North America, Europe, South Africa and South America.

The enormous cloud masses can move across continents within three to four days, said lead scientist, Veerabhadran Ramanathan, with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California in San Diego.

“The main message is that it’s a global problem. Everyone is in someone else’s backyard,” said Ramanathan.

The report also noted that health problems associated with particulate pollution, which include cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, are linked to nearly 350,000 premature deaths in China and India every year, said Henning Rohde, a University of Stockholm scientist who worked on the study.

Kansas: Climate change brings Kansans dire prediction

 

By KAREN DILLON | The Kansas City Star

Over the next century, eastern Kansas will get warmer and drier.  Western Kansas will get warmer and a lot drier.  The first in-depth analysis of climate change in Kansas, released Tuesday, offers a bundle of future worries as well as a bleak outlook for agriculture in the state.

In fact, water needs for crops in western Kansas will more than double to about 8 inches per year, according to the climate projection analysis for the Climate and Energy Project (CEP).

“We are not agriculture experts, but we are certain that a change in the water balance of 8 inches is pretty significant for farming communities and other communities,” said Johannes Feddema, a climate researcher at the University of Kansas.

And although some scientists question the value of such climate modeling, one agriculture expert said the projections, if true, would reduce western Kansas to desert conditions.

“It would have dramatic consequences as far as agriculture is concerned,” said Chuck Rice, an agronomy professor at Kansas State University. “It would affect the viability of agriculture in the state of Kansas.”

Feddema and Nathan Brunsell, also a KU climate researcher, conducted the regional analysis for the CEP, whose mission is to stimulate discussion about the energy future of Kansas.

Nancy Jackson, executive director of Lawrence-based CEP, said her group found in a poll last year that most Kansans didn’t understand how climate change would affect their region, so she asked the researchers to conduct the analysis.

Kansans had heard “a lot about melting sheets and polar bears,” Jackson said. “They heard a lot about sea rise. Most Kansans really didn’t have a clear sense on how climate change would impact them specifically.”

Feddema and Brunsell used nearly two dozen climate models and then tested those models against Kansas historical climate data from 1950 to 2000. They discussed three major findings at a news conference Tuesday:

•Temperatures. Across the state, temperatures already are warming slightly, especially in summer and fall.

Their research projects that current temperatures will increase in all parts of the state by 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, and some regions will see even higher increases — southwest Kansas could warm by 8 degrees.

By about 2060, average winter temperatures probably will be above freezing. The number of days when the temperature falls below 65 degrees Fahrenheit and people turn on their furnaces could decrease as much as 25 percent by 2100.

And days when temperatures are above 65 could increase by half.

Higher temperatures increase human health problems, such as heart disease, respiratory illness and the spread of epidemic disease, the report noted. Fewer hard freezes means an increase in insects such as mosquitoes and ticks. That will lead to more pesticides and more expenses as well as more harm for the environment.

The analysis noted that warmer conditions also would increase the growing season, but the benefits are canceled out by the increased need for water.

•Precipitation. The amount of precipitation will stay the same, but climate change produces more extreme weather patterns. In eastern Kansas, winter and spring precipitation will increase; in western Kansas, spring precipitation will decrease.

Because of increased temperatures, evaporation will take a toll on both sides of the state.

Southwestern Kansas could see a “water deficit” — the water needed for crops — of as much as 8 inches per year. Currently, the water needed for irrigation is up to 4 inches in some places.

Read on here.

Colorado: City plan takes on climate change

 

BY KEVIN DUGGAN | The Coloradoan

Making a difference in the fight against global warming requires local action.  That was one of the messages presented Wednesday during an open house on the city of Fort Collins’ draft Climate Action Plan, which spells out goals for reducing citywide greenhouse gas emissions in the years to come.

Strategies in the plan, which the City Council will consider adopting next month, include reducing vehicle miles traveled, pushing recycling programs with the goal of keeping 50 percent of the waste generated in the city out of the county landfill, and promoting energy efficiency.

The Climate Action Plan calls for reducing citywide carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent of 2005 levels by 2020 – matching a state goal – and by 80 percent by 2050.

The city’s emissions of carbon dioxide in 2007 were estimated to be 2.65 million tons, according to the draft plan.

Implementing some of the strategies in the plan would cost the city about $250,000 a year, said Lucinda Smith, a senior environmental planner with the city’s Natural Resources Department. But those measures wouldn’t be enough to meet the goals.

Fort Collins resident Joe Rowan said the plan lacks detailed information about the costs of meeting its goals, which he said aren’t realistic.

“It’s virtually impossible to nail with any certainty what things are going to cost 10 years from now – we can’t tell you what things will cost three months from now,” he said. “What assumptions were made there?”

Kevin Cross of the Fort Collins Sustain-ability Group said he supports the plan, although it is projected to meet only 55 to 80 percent of goals the city had set for 2012.

“I’d like to see it expanded to meet the goal 100 percent,” he said.

The arid West is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and is likely to see warmer temperatures and drier conditions in the years to come, said Stephen Saunders, president of the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization.

Saunders told the audience of about 60 people gathered at the Northside Aztlan Community Center for the open house that decisions by local governments matter when it comes to addressing climate change.

Activities controlled at the local level, including traffic management, growth management and building codes, impact energy use and by extension greenhouse gas emissions.

Fort Collins is considered a statewide leader on the issue, he said, because it has a plan and the community resources to pull it off.

“For others you are a model, and that matters,” he said.