The Climate Crisis Future

More on the "Fix It" Component

It's unlikely to be much consolation for those currently in the deep freeze of a late and fierce winter, but according to the figures just in, the world has just experienced the warmest January ever recorded. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the combined global land and ocean surface temperature was 1.53 degrees Fahrenheit (0.85 Celsius) warmer than the 20th-century average of 53.6 degrees F (12 C) for January. Land surface temperature was a record 3.40 F (1.89 C) warmer than average. The combined land and ocean figures surpass the previous record set in 2002 at 1.28 F (0.71 C) above average.

That there's more trouble ahead was further emphasized by a story in today's Guardian that asserts: New studies of Greenland and Antarctica have forced a UN expert panel to conclude there is a 50% chance that widespread ice sheet loss "may no longer be avoided" because of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere... Such melting would raise sea levels by four to six metres, the scientists say. It would cause "major changes in coastline and inundation of low-lying areas" and require "costly and challenging" efforts to move millions of people and infrastructure from vulnerable areas. The previous official line, issued in 2001, was that the chance of such an event was "not well known, but probably very low".

In a way this is the sound of another shoe dropping, since the IPCC summary for policymakers didn't include the effects of ice sheet loss in their estimates of future sea level rise. Some scientists criticized the panel for this. But this is unlikely to be the last news coming out of the full report.

The full effects of melting ice sheets and rising sea levels may not be felt for centuries--but some very serious effects will likely be felt much sooner. Just what that means can be illustrated by a local example--a set of maps of the projected effects of Climate Crisis rising sea levels in the San Francisco Bay, assembled by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission for a major feature in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle.

According to these maps, Parts of Corte Madera, San Rafael, Hayward and Newark and much of the Silicon Valley shoreline would be under water, including a portion of Moffett Field, the site of NASA Ames Research Center, where Google wants to build a 1 million-square-foot campus. Also threatened are the locations of proposed new stadiums for the San Francisco 49s and Oakland As.

But also: Wastewater treatment plants for more than a dozen cities in the South Bay, including San Jose, and the industrial ponds for the Valero oil refinery in Benicia and the Chevron refinery in Richmond, would be inundated by the projected rise in the bay.

The projections are based on rise level rise that is a fraction of the ultimate possibility of 6 meters. Most of them concern a 1 meter rise, which could occur in several decades. The article points out that the construction of seawalls and levees could limit that damage, but the cost in construction and maintenance would be in the billions of dollars. The decisions of what to do, when and how to do it, are the kind of decisions that communities and government on all levels are going to have to face.

But such specific problems also may help focus on the need to do the "Stop It"(from getting much worse in the future by slashing greenhouse gas emissions) actions at the same time as the "Fix It efforts (fix what needs to be fixed now or in the near future, from the already inevitable effects). Those studying these problems in San Francisco are saying that ultimately the extent to which big fixes are needed will be governed in part by how high the sea levels get, and that in turn may yet be governed by global heating caused by future emissions. So in the long run it may cost less to Fix It, if the Stop It strategies are successful.

Even the 1 in 2 chance that "widespread" melting of ice reservoirs will occur means that the worst, or perhaps even the very bad, can be averted. In fact, the 50% odds are themselves a good metaphor for what we need to do: we need to work on the Fix It and Stop It components with equal committment.