Month: May 2014

A question often asked about climate litigation is, when does the steady drip of legal  actions based on climate damages reach the kind of critical mass that tobacco litigation, after 30 or so years of failed attempts, reached in the 90s?

This case is interesting in that, it comes from an insurance company – one of the few sectors of the economy that, like the oil industry, has more money than God.

Reuters:

A major insurance company is accusing dozens of localities in Illinois of failing to prepare for severe rains and flooding in lawsuits that are the first in what could be a wave of litigation over who should be liable for the possible costs of climate change.

Farmers Insurance filed nine class actions last month against nearly 200 communities in the Chicago area. It is arguing that local governments should have known rising global temperatures would lead to heavier rains and did not do enough to fortify their sewers and stormwater drains.

The legal debate may center on whether an uptick in natural disasters is foreseeable or an “act of God.” The cases raise the question of how city governments should manage their budgets before costly emergencies occur.

“We will see more and more cases,” said Michael Gerrard, director of the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in New York. “No one is expected to plan for the 500-year storm, but if horrible events are happening with increasing frequency, that may shift the duties.”

Gerrard and other environmental law experts say the suits are the first of their kind.

 

National Journal:

Miami will likely be underwater before the Senate can muster enough votes to meaningfully confront climate change. And probably Tampa and Charleston, too—two other cities that last week’s National Climate Assessment placed at maximum risk from rising sea levels.

Even as studies proliferate on the dangers of a changing climate, the issue’s underlying politics virtually ensure that Congress will remain paralyzed over it indefinitely. That means the U.S. response for the foreseeable future is likely to come through executive-branch actions, such as the regulations on carbon emissions from power plants that the Environmental Protection Agency is due to propose next month. And that means climate change will likely spike as a point of conflict in the 2016 presidential race.

Continue reading “Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel: Rubio on Climate Change”

Dr. Mauri Pelto is one of the world’s most distinguished and respected glaciologists. I asked him to chat this week following news about unstoppable glacial melt in Antarctica.

 

The developing El Nino may bring some drought relief to the southwest, but for now, conditions are dire.

Vox.com:

Fully half of the mainland United States is now facing drier-than-usual conditions, with 15 percent of the country experiencing “extreme” to “exceptional” drought.

What’s more, California is facing one of its worst dry spells on record — with every single part of the state now in drought. Dry conditions may be one reason why massive wildfires are now breaking out in California a few weeks earlier than usual. The drought is also hurting the state’s crucial agricultural sector.

The situation is particularly dire in California, which is on track to suffer one of its worst droughts in at least 500 years.

According to the US Drought Monitor, every single part of California is now facing “severe,” “extreme,” or “exceptional” drought — the first time that’s happened in the monitor’s 15-year history.

What happened? Much of the state was already in drought during 2013, but conditions worsened considerably this year. A blocking ridge of high pressure kept California hot and dry during the normally wet winter. That means there was far less snow falling on the Sierra Nevada mountains — and hence less snow melt providing water during the spring.

Continue reading “The Drought in Maps”

Fast Company:

If the Solar Wind Downdraft Tower is ever built in the Arizona desert, it truly will be a wonder of the modern world. At 2,250 feet, it would be taller than the new Freedom Tower in New York (1,776 feet), and 1,000 feet higher than the Empire State Building. It would have 120 huge turbines at its base, and enough pumping capacity to keep more than 2.5 billion gallons of water circulating. And it would have colossal power output: the equivalent of wind turbines spread over 100,000 acres, or as big as the Hoover Dam.

That’s the plan, anyway. Continue reading “Wind Power Tower Proposed for Desert Areas”

Exquisitely timed for this week’s bad news about Antarctic melt.  When we last looked in on the North Carolina legislature, they were outlawing the study of sea level rise impacts on coastal real estate.

Now, a Solomonic compromise has been reached.

The State:

ATLANTIC BEACH — Hoping to avoid a repeat of the uproar sparked in 2010 when a state science panel warned of a possible 39-inch rise in sea level by the end of this century, the N.C. Coastal Resources Commission decreed Thursday that the next official forecast will look no farther than 30 years into the future.

“We could add credibility to the study if we limit the time frame we’re asking people to consider,” commission chairman Frank Gorham III said.

Many critics of the panel’s earlier forecast had attacked its premise that the recent slow rate of sea-level rise would begin a dramatic acceleration sometime later in this century. They ridiculed a “hockey stick” curve used to portray a rapid rise that would submerge much of the coast by 2100. Continue reading “Great Moments in Political Science: North Carolina Will Look at Sea Level, but Only 30 Years Out”

Jetstream walks into a bar…

My sister in Frankfort, Michigan called me today to complain about snow.

Meanwhile, droughts, flooding, and fire continue, as the jet takes on what senior meteorologist Paul Douglas calls “a drunken pattern”.
And the Ice sheets creep, creep, creep.

Above, map as of may 15 from University of Maine Climate Re-Analyzer.

Below, more analysis from Paul Douglas.

Continue reading “The Jetstream is a Nasty Drunk”

LATimes:

As if Angelenos didn’t have enough to worry about as above-normal temperatures and tinder-dry landscapes produce extreme fire danger, experts on Tuesday warned that the warm weather has led to greater exposure to rattlesnakes.

The reasons are twofold: the combination of heavier rains several years ago and prolonged periods of warmer-than-usual weather could lead to greater numbers of the venomous snakes, while at the same time, hot, drought-like conditions are drawing them out of hibernation earlier than usual, experts said.

Already, the effects are being felt.

The state has recorded 84 venomizations this year compared with 82 for all of 2013, officials said.

“If you see a rattlesnake, don’t try to pick it up, don’t try to move it somewhere else, don’t try to do something heroic with the snake,” said Cyrus Rangan, assistant medical director for the California Poison Control System. “Don’t even get close to take a picture either because when you get too close to a snake, that’s when they think about biting you.”

Continue reading “I, For One, Welcome Our New Reptilian, Rattling Overlords”

Climate Deniers like to be seen beating their breasts and rending their garments about how dealing with climate change will hurt third world countries.
As always, it is the opposite that is true.

NBC News:

Climate change will be a significant factor in sovereign credit ratings and is already putting them under downward pressure, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services warned on Thursday.

It argued that climate change – and particularly global warming – will hit countries’ economic growth rates, their external performance and public finances.

“Climate change is likely to be one of the global mega-trends impacting sovereign credit worthiness, in most cases negatively,” it said in a report.

Recent bouts of extreme weather – from Typhoon Haiyan in the Phillipines to the bitterly cold winter in the United States and heavy flooding across Britain — have drawn attention to the financial and economic effects of climate change.

They have also highlighted the growing cost of natural disasters. According to reinsurer Munich Re, overall losses in East Asia, for instance, used to be below $10 billion per year, but over the past decade have regularly topped $20 billion – and peaked at over $50 billion.

But despite this surge in extreme weather, S&P has not, to date, revised the rating of a country as a result.

“However, assuming that extreme weather events are on the rise in terms of frequency and destruction, how this trend could feed through to our ratings on sovereign states bears consideration,” it said in the report.

According to S&P, poorer and lower-rated countries will be the hardest hit by climate change. All of the 20 nations ranked most-vulnerable by S&P are emerging markets, with the vast majority in Africa or Asia.

“This is in part due to their reliance on agricultural production and employment, which can be vulnerable to shifting climate patterns and extreme weather events, but also due to their weaker capacity to absorb the financial cost,” S&P said. It added that this could contribute to rising global rating inequality.

Vietnam, Bangladesh and Senegal topped the list of countries most vulnerable to climate change, whereas developed nations – the United States and Europe – were at the bottom of the ranking.