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January 22, 2018
Dozens of regions in the western United States are dealing with a significant decline in snowpack this season, raising fears of water supply constraints. Image courtesy of NASA.
The next wave of greenhouse gas emission reduction policies could lead to a price on carbon for the entire west coast of the United States. On January 9, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee proposed a state-wide carbon tax, calling for action against the "damaging health effects of carbon pollution." Inslee's proposal would place a $20 per ton tax on carbon, with that valuation increasing 3.5 percent annually above the rate of inflation. Oregon's legislature is slated to consider a "cap and invest" system, which would limit the amount of carbon industrial polluters can emit before having to purchase emission allowances. Advocates see Oregon's 2018 legislative session as the best opportunity yet to adopt the system, though specific details of the plan are still under development. California had previously approved its own cap-and-trade program. Some critics of Washington's tax have called for more of the revenue generated to be reinvested in communities that will be disproportionately affected by higher energy prices and climate impacts.
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Reuters
Dozens of basins across the western United States have experienced snowpack 50 percent lower than average for this time of year. The snow melt feeds into the Colorado River, which provides water for 40 million people stretching from Denver to Los Angeles. The west's growing population has strained water supplies, but the decline in snow is making a difficult situation worse. The snowpack's usual pattern of freezing and gradual melting is being disrupted by higher temperatures. As the snow line recedes, precipitation is taking the form of rain instead of snow, resulting in less stored water to draw from later. Many reservoirs lack the capacity to accommodate the extra rain, forcing managers to release it to avert flooding. Climatologists caution that there have been down snow seasons before and further study is needed, but the overall trend is troubling. According to a 2017 study in Nature, western snowpack could decrease by an average of 60 percent over the next 30 years due to a combination of anthropogenic and natural warming.
Bloomberg
The United Kingdom currently leads the world in offshore wind energy development and could offer practical lessons to coastal communities in the United States hoping to jump-start their economies. Massachusetts plans on generating 1,600 megawatts of electricity from offshore wind by 2027, despite having no such generating capacity today. Three different companies have submitted proposals for the state's first offshore wind farm, which would cover a quarter of the state's goal. For Grimsby, England, a fishing town struggling to stay afloat, the seven wind farms that have been constructed off its coast to date invigorated the local economy. The town's port is now full of crews responsible for operating and maintaining the offshore turbines. Martyn Boyers, operator of the Grimsby fish market, said the fishing community was skeptical at first, but soon embraced the economic benefits of wind. Boyers said, "If we can do it in a place like Grimsby, which was steeped in history, and only fish, you can do it anywhere. It's an opportunity."
WBUR-Boston
In western Iran, years of declining water resources and unpopular water transfer projects sparked a protest of 200 people outside a provincial governor's office. The protest was part of a nation-wide movement in response to a variety of societal and economic issues, but some experts argue that climate change and the government's approach to water scarcity played a noteworthy role. The dramatic decline in precipitation and an increase in temperatures have dried up lakes, created dust storms, and caused struggling farmers to seek out employment in cities. Environmental activist Yusef Farhadi Babadi, said, "People in my area do not want to politicize their environmental concerns, but water shortages and pollution of the air and rivers are seen as political crises." According to Iran's Drought and Crisis Management Center, 96 percent of the country's land area is experiencing "prolonged drought conditions." Protests over water diversion practices, dam construction, and pollution in Iran's agricultural regions have led to the involvement of government military units to quash dissent.
LA Times
A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) found that federal science advisory panels have been significantly diminished during the Trump administration versus its predecessors. Out of the 73 panels assessed in the report, 14 percent saw their memberships decline since 2016 while their number of meetings decreased by 20 percent. In 2017, nearly two-thirds of the panels examined met less often than what their charters require. Although the science advisory panels do not write policy themselves, they play a key role in delivering scientific information to federal policy makers. Andrew Rosenberg, director of UCS's Center for Science and Democracy, said, "[The panels] inform the public, too, and [their work] becomes part of the administrative record. So a Secretary can't say, 'I didn't know about this when I made a decision.'" The makeup of the panels has also changed. Since Scott Pruitt became EPA Administrator, the agency's Science Advisory Board has seen a 29 percent decrease in members drawn from academia and a 17 percent increase in members from private industry.
InsideClimate News
The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has continued to assert its position that climate change is a serious national security threat and the military must prepare for these impacts accordingly. This view is in direct conflict with President Trump, who has sought to withdraw the nation from the Paris Climate Agreement and slash funding for domestic and international climate programs. Although DOD is working to reduce its carbon footprint and become more resource efficient (it remains the single largest institutional user of fossil fuels in the world), some key members of Congress are trying to increase the size of the military even further. However, the latest National Defense Authorization Act to fund the military was signed into law containing language naming climate change as a "direct threat" to national security and a congressional reporting requirement on military installation vulnerabilities. Past DOD reports have noted climate change's role as a "threat multiplier," contributing to food and water scarcity, the spread of disease, and mass migration, which can amplify the chance of conflict in already unstable regions. A study by the American Security Project found that 70 percent of the world's nations recognize climate change as a threat to their own security.
Pacific Standard
Laurence Fink, the founder and chief executive of the investment firm BlackRock, published a letter on January 16 calling upon financial leaders to take a more active role in addressing societal issues. The letter said, “Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose. To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.” BlackRock is the largest investor in the world and manages more than $6 trillion in assets, making Fink's voice highly influential in the global financial sector. BlackRock will purportedly add staff to monitor whether companies act upon Fink's call to action. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, associate dean at the Yale School of Management, observed, "It is huge for an institutional investor to take this position across its portfolio," calling it "a lightning rod." A past example of BlackRock's influence came in 2017, when the firm supported a shareholder proposal to override Exxon's disclosure policy on climate change to expose the company's strategy and risk exposure.
New York Times
The new Geostationary Carbon Cycle Observatory (GeoCARB) satellite currently under development stands to significantly improve the scientific community's capacity to study the global movement of greenhouse gases. The satellite is scheduled to launch in the early 2020s and will collect 10 million observations daily of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and solar-induced fluorescence for use by researchers. GeoCARB will also be able to measure methane leaks, a problem that costs the natural gas industry up to $10 billion annually. The satellite's low-Earth orbit will focus on a geographic area ranging from the tip of South America to Hudson Bay in Canada. GeoCARB will be only a third or a quarter of the cost of a traditional mission because it will rent space on a commercial communications satellite, making it an appealing project amidst today's constrained federal budget priorities. David Crisp, a senior scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said, "Our job is to actually make the tools that the policymakers need so that they can make good decisions."
Scientific American
A new study appearing in the journal Nature "all but rules out very low and very high climate sensitivities," according to lead author Peter Cox of the University of Exeter. Although the study predicts that the planet is unlikely to heat up by 4-5 degrees Celsius by 2100, scientists warn that even a temperature increase of 1.5 degrees C above the benchmark will still bring significant adverse consequences, including more severe storms and droughts. The predicted range associated with how much the Earth's average surface temperature may increase due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels had previously been set at 1.5-4.5 degrees C by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The new study's methodology generated a narrower range of 2.2-3.4 degrees C. However, the study did not account for sudden climate shifts caused by the planet itself, such as the accelerated thawing of permafrost or the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Cox clarified, "There is indeed evidence that the climate system can undergo abrupt changes or ‘tipping points.'"
Guardian
A new paper in the journal Science Advances has uncovered additional details behind a massive animal die-off, where unusually high temperatures served as the catalyst. Over the course of three weeks in 2015, more than 200,000 saiga antelope died without warning in central Kazakhstan. A bacteria called Pasteurella multocida type B was known to be present in the adult saiga at the time. The latest evidence states that a 10-day stretch of high heat and humidity caused the bacteria in the saiga to multiply rapidly, leading to hemorrhagic septicemia and a swift death. Richard Kock, a professor at the Royal Veterinary College in London, recalled, "You went from one or two animals to within three or four days — thousands. And then they were all dead by the seventh day." The 30,000 surviving saiga were thought to have been outside of the "climate envelope" that initiated the outbreak. Kock added that a similar event for the critically endangered saiga could result in "total extinction."
NPR
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