New Puget Sound climate study: Older projections coming true, more changes ahead – Tacoma News Tribune

Posted on December 3, 2015 by Al Bergstein

More local updates on climate change science and it’s impacts. We are now entering a period where the first waves of local data and predictions are behind us, and we can start to compare those predictions with real data. The problems we are going to have with river flows, snowpack and salmon are going to take very hard work to mitigate, if they can be at all.  Anyone wishing to jump in can contact me about opportunities. Many exist. A lot of us have been spending years of our lives contributing to prioritization of issues, and meetings to debate those priorities. It’s a small group that rotates through, due to lack of interest by the general public in participating and we are always willing to have new people contribute as they can.

If you are in a hurry, simply go to the link of the report and read the Executive Summary.

Closer to home than the thousands of world leaders in Paris to discuss how to limit the scale of human-caused global warming, the consequences of climate change underway around Puget Sound have been detailed in an in-depth scientific study. The report, issued in November [https://cig.uw.edu/resources/special-reports/ps-sok/] by the University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group, found projections in a 2005 study on potential warming effects have come to pass, its authors said. The consequences threaten cornerstones of South Sound life from worsening floods and droughts to diminishing salmon stocks and snowpacks. Derrick Nunnally reports. (Tacoma News Tribune)

http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article47561745.html

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Facing Rising Waters, A Native Tribe Takes Its Plea To Paris Climate Talks – NPR

Posted on December 3, 2015 by Al Bergstein

Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula has been in the news lately, as an unfortunate “poster child” of ocean rise and climate change. The Quinault Nation has been the first community in the lower 48 that has been forced to move their homes due to what is clearly being attributed to ocean rise. (certainly there are very good reasons to say that Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina also represented climate change created superstorms, this is the first example I’ve seen of a 1:1 relationship).

While the Republican dominated Congress fiddles while their constituents burn, and supposed leaders like Ted Cruz are about to hold a Congressional hearing on climate change that will only include testimony from scientists who oppose the findings of the 97% of scientists that believe in climate change, we only have to look west to the coast, and our neighbors under siege from rising waters. It’s clear that Cruz is not representing his constituents, but the economic forces aligned against taking action. But back to the coast and a report from superb regional journalist Ashley Ahearn.

International leaders gathering in Paris to address global warming face increasing pressure to tackle the issue of “climate refugees.” Some island nations are already looking to move their people to higher ground, even purchasing land elsewhere in preparation. In the U.S. Northwest, sea-level rise is forcing a Native American tribe to consider abandoning lands it has inhabited for thousands of years. The Quinault Indian Nation, whose small village lies at the mouth of the Quinault River on the outer coast of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, now relies on a 2,000-foot-long sea wall to protect it from the encroaching Pacific Ocean. Ashley Ahearn report. (NPR)

http://www.npr.org/2015/12/01/455745765/facing-rising-waters-a-native-tribe-takes-its-plea-to-paris-climate-talks

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Urban Planners take note – Greenland’s Collapsing Glacier Could Raise Sea Levels More than A Foot – Guardian

Posted on November 13, 2015 by Al Bergstein

Within the next decade, apparently, this melting glacier is likely to raise sea levels more than a foot. Very likely to cause higher high tides, more coastal inundation. Think of the coastal land  of Jefferson County, and think of what might be at threat. Port of Port Townsend comes to mind. Hwy 20 into town near the ferry dock. Planners need to start taking this melting very seriously. Especially when faced with angry homeowners that insist on living 50′ from the mean low tide. The cost of moving should be on them, not the taxpayers.

A major glacier in Greenland that holds enough water to raise global sea levels by half a metre has begun to crumble into the North Atlantic Ocean, scientists say.

The huge Zachariae Isstrom glacier in northeast Greenland started to melt rapidly in 2012 and is now breaking up into large icebergs where the glacier meets the sea, monitoring has revealed.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/12/collapsing-greenland-glacier-could-raise-sea-levels-by-half-a-metre-say-scientists?utm_source=Sightline%20Institute&utm_medium=web-email&utm_campaign=Sightline%20News%20Selections

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