The Administration has put together a terrific new website, globalchange.gov, on its landmark 13-agency report, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States. Every possible summary and graphic you could want is there – heck, they even have the embed codes for their slideshow:
GlobalChange.Gov-US Impacts Summary
[vodpod id=Video.16092247&w=425&h=350&fv=]
If you didn’t catch the live webcast, then the next best thing is this liveblogging by Anne Polansky, Sr. Associate for Climate Science Watch, at DailyKos.
I happened to catch a little bit of the pre-webcast, in which Obama’s science advisor John Holdren said this report was the “most up-to-date, authoritative, and comprehensive” analysis of the impacts of human caused global warming on the United States. Holdren later said, climate disruption is “already affecting things we value, and will affect every region” of the country.”
Climate Science Watch’s Rick Piltz, whistleblower extraordinaire, explains why this report is even more newsworthy – 8 years of Bush administration climate-science muzzling:
This is the first climate science report to come out under the Obama administration and the most significant US climate impacts assessment since the first National Assessment issued in 2000. The Bush-Cheney administration essentially suppressed the 2000 National Assessment report and abandoned support for the scientist-stakeholder interaction it had initiated.
Holdren gave Jane Lubchenco the final words. And they made clear that even if the NYT doesn’t get it, the NOAA administrator certainly does:
This report is a game-changer.
All of the foot-dragging we’ve seen stems from the perception that climate change is a problem that is down the road, that it will happen sometime in the future, that the problem is remote. The report states unequivocally that climate change is happening now, and in our own backyards. It affects things people care about. The report is good science, science that informs policy. The science does not dictate policy. We must act sooner than later….
Climate change affects you and the things you care about.
Hear! Hear!
The Union of Concerned Scientists has “combed through the report to produce one national and eight regional fact sheets based on findings explained throughout the report”:
- National Assessment
- Northeast Assessment (Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia)
- Midwest Assessment (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Wisconsin)
- Northwest Assessment (Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Western Montana)
- Great Plains Assessment (Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas (Central), Wyoming)
- Southeast Assessment (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas (Gulf Region), Virginia)
- Southwest Assessment (Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, West Texas, Utah)
- Alaska Assessment
- Islands Assessment (Hawaii, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Palau, the Samoan Islands of Tutuila, Manua, Rose, and Swains; and islands in the Micronesian archipelago, the Carolines, Marshalls, and Marianas)
More to come.
Related Posts:
- Our hellish future: Definitive NOAA-led report on U.S. climate impacts warns of scorching 9 to 11°F warming over most of inland U.S. by 2090 with Kansas above 90°F some 120 days a year – and that isn’t the worst case, it’s business as usual!
- High Water: Greenland ice sheet melting faster than expected and could raise East Coast sea levels an extra 20 inches by 2100 – to more than 6 feet.
