Global Warming Happening Faster, Affecting More says new report

Global Climate ChangeYesterday, the Obama administration released what is being called "the most comprehensive report yet" on the effects of global climate change in the United States. The release of the report, one of the grimmest we've seen yet, was overshadowed by the news that President Obama had swatted a fly during an interview with CNBC's John Harwood. The fly maneuver was rather cool to watch, and I have to admit to calling my boys to come watch when the video clip aired last night on the news. And then it aired again. And again. And again. Since I knew I'd be writing this entry this morning, I kept waiting for some little bit or piece about the release of the new Global Climate Change report - nothing. This morning, I resorted to Google to get some report about the reaction to the report. The results were... interesting. I typed in "obama administration releases global warming report jun 16" and I found... an article published in the UK Guardian. By contrast, a search for "obama swats fly" returned page after page of links to the embedded video. That says something about us and the things that interest us, and I'm not sure that I like what it says.

Now, granted, when I rephrased the search query - after finding the actual title of the report by following a link to it in the Guardian UK article - I did find considerably more links to news stories about the report. Google reports 653 news results for the search query under Google News. Still, shouldn't it have been easier to find? The title, by the way, is Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, and it reports on exactly what we are seeing and what we can expect to see in ten years, in fifty years and in a hundred years as an effect of global climate change. It has been in the works for well over a year, started under the Bush administration, but it will undoubtedly be touted as Obama scare tactics by opponents to global climate change.

And scary it is. For one thing, according to the report the effects of global warming are hitting us far faster and sooner than we imagined. A lot more has already happened than has been widely reported. For instance, Time.com reports

The federal assessment shows that over the past few decades, winters in the Midwest have warmed by a few degrees, and the number of winter days without frost has increased by about a week. Sea levels have already risen by 8 inches or more in some coastal areas of the U.S., and under the business-as-usual scenario, they could rise 3 to 4 feet by the end of the century — enough to put much of Florida, including the Everglades and the Keys, under water.

As for the future, things look even bleaker. Average temperatures will rise between 7 and 11 degrees F. by the end of the century. In the Northeast, we can expect heavier and more frequent downpours, longer summers and more frost-free days. The summers will get hotter with cities like Hartford and Philadelphia seeing 20 or more days over 100 F. each year.

The climate changes will have far-reaching effects, touching key industries and agriculture in every region of the country. While the Northeast will get wetter, the Southwest will get - and already is getting - dryer. Industries as diverse as ski tourism and cranberry farming are threatened. Maine lobsters could become - well, not extinct, really. They'll just pull up stakes and move further north where the weather is more to their liking.

The Climate Change report is released each year, but until this year it gets little fanfare. It's usually a hefty report full of technical jargon that obscures the real meaning. That's not the case with this report. The Obama administration has stripped out a lot of the incomprehensible-to-most lingo and made the report accessible - which could be uncharitably described as "dumbed it down". It's scary reading complete with lots of visual aids.

Want to know what climate change will do to your part of the country (and my apologies to those of you who aren't in the U.S. or on the continent)? Here are links to the regional fact sheets released in conjunction with the report:

Alaska Factsheet
Coasts Factsheet
Great Plains Factsheet
Islands Factsheet
Midwest Factsheet
Northeast Factsheet
Northwest Factsheet
SoutheastFactsheet
Southwest Factsheet

The links are all to pdf files, just so you know.