The growing leadership of women in water. The Colorado River’s persistent drought and efforts to sign off on a plan to avert worse shortfalls of water from the river. And in California’s Central Valley, promising solutions to vexing water resource challenges.
These were among the topics that Western Water news explored in 2018.
We’re already planning a full slate of stories for 2019. You can sign up here to be alerted when new stories are published. In the meantime, take a look at what we dove into in 2018:
Researchers at Climate Central have put together a handy tool
which lets you see just how bad summers will get by 2100, if
global warming predictions are accurate and nothing is done to
stop the upward trend.
But now comes the harder part for many Californians: In 2015, AB
32 will begin to cover companies that produce transportation
fuels, including gasoline. That means oil companies will begin
paying for the greenhouse gases their products emit, a cost the
oil companies say they will pass on to consumers.
From the San Bernardino County Sun, in a commentary by Thomas
Elias:
California ranchers are now among the first interest groups to
realize that like it or not, global warming can no longer be
denied with any semblance of accuracy. For very gradually,
ranchers are seeing the grasslands they depend upon to feed their
cattle begin to shrink and convert naturally to shrub land.
Acting Commissioner Lowell Pimley provides the second in a series
of podcasts. In this question and answer session he discusses
climate change and drought.
From the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW):
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) is hosting
its third speaker series with a presentation on the effects of
climate change on salmon and steelhead trout in the American
River. The event will be held at the Nimbus Hatchery Visitor
Center in Rancho Cordova on July 17 at 7 p.m.
California’s evolving cap-and-trade market may soon have a new
player: rice farmers. …
The program, called the Rice Cultivation Projects Compliance
Offset Protocol, is slated to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2015,
and run for a 10-year period.
NASA’s new spacecraft to sniff carbon dioxide in the earth’s
atmosphere reached orbit on Wednesday after launching from
Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
From the Environmental Defense Fund EDF Voices: People on the
Planet blog, in a post by Rebecca Shaw:
Nobody escapes climate change, especially not farmers. The
report released this week by a group of prominent and politically
diverse business leaders and public officials stood out, in part,
because of the alarming losses it forecasts for America’s
agricultural industry.
Climate change is likely to exact enormous costs on U.S. regional
economies in the form of lost property, reduced industrial output
and more deaths, according to a report backed by a trio of men
with vast business experience.
From the Los Angeles Times, in a commentary by Karin Klein:
The Arctic is ground zero for climate change research because the
effects of warming were seen first this far north, and continue
to be experienced here most dramatically.
Attendees of the U.S. Conference of Mayors will vote Monday on a
resolution that encourages cities to use natural solutions to
“protect freshwater supplies, defend the nation’s coastlines,
maintain a healthy tree cover and protect air quality,” sometimes
by partnering with nonprofit organizations.
San Francisco’s Ocean Beach may be one long stretch of sand, but
no fewer than six government bureaucracies are tasked with
keeping it and the neighboring Great Highway from washing away as
winter storms and rising seas batter them.
While Congress is still mired in climate-change denial, insurance
companies have no doubt about climate change. For them, the only
question is: Who pays for its effects?
“A recent study conducted by scientists from the U.S. Geological
Survey and published in the Journal of Geophysical Research –
Biogeosciences found that a combination of climate and human
activities (diversion and reservoirs) controls the movement of
carbon in two large western river basins, the Colorado and the
Missouri Rivers.”
“The Obama administration’s announcement Monday of sweeping new
rules aimed at curbing global warming emissions from power plants
could boost profits at Silicon Valley companies that make solar
panels, energy efficiency software and other clean technology.”
“When California launched its landmark global warming law in the
final years of the George W. Bush administration, it was a risky
act of defiance from a state frustrated by federal inaction on
climate change.”
