“California will face billions of dollars in spending to cope
with the consequences of rising sea levels if low-lying
communities along the coast are ultimately submerged, as
scientists predict, Gov. Jerry Brown said Tuesday.”
From the Los Angeles Times, in a commentary by Scott
Martelle:
“With triple-digit temperatures expected in parts of Southern
California on Tuesday and Wednesday, it seems like an appropriate
time to welcome you all to the new climate-warmed fire season.”
“A large section of the mighty West Antarctica ice sheet has
begun falling apart and its continued melting now appears to be
unstoppable, two groups of scientists reported on Monday.”
“A slow-motion and irreversible collapse of a massive
cluster of glaciers in Antarctica has begun, and could cause sea
levels to rise across the planet by another 4 feet within 200
years, scientists concluded in two studies released Monday.”
“Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell today [May 8] unveiled
the National Climate Change Viewer, a climate-visualization
website tool from the Interior Department’s U.S. Geological
Survey.
“President Barack Obama is holding interviews on the White House
lawn today with meteorologists from across the country to
publicize a new administration report that says the effects of
‘human-induced’ climate change are already being felt across the
country — with rising seas along the coastline and wildfires
scarring the West.”
“A new federal report on climate change released by the
White House does not focus, as previous reports did, on
predictions about the future but instead offers stark
descriptions of the here and now: shorter winters, intensified
storms, deepening drought, more frequent heat waves.”
“The effects of human-induced climate change are being felt in
every corner of the United States, scientists reported Tuesday,
with water growing scarcer in dry regions, torrential rains
increasing in wet regions, heat waves becoming more common and
more severe, wildfires growing worse, and forests dying under
assault from heat-loving insects.”
“Climate change is already being felt in every region of the
United States, resulting in hotter summers, shorter winters,
extreme precipitation, even worsening allergies that will change
the way Americans live, according to a government report released
Tuesday.”
“Dwindling water for farms, longer fire seasons and coastal
flooding of homes and businesses await California as climate
change intensifies, according to a federal report released
Tuesday that details how global warming is damaging every region
of the country.”
“Global warming is rapidly turning America the beautiful into
America the stormy, sneezy and dangerous, according to a new
federal scientific report. And those shining seas? Rising and
costly, the report says.”
“The satellite images viewed by President Obama before a meeting
with eight Western governors were stark, showing how snowpack in
California’s mountains had shrunk by 86 percent in a single
year.”
“Saying that climate change has moved from an issue for the
distant future to one ‘firmly in the present,’ a federal
scientific panel Tuesday released a report cataloging the impacts
of such changes, saying some would actually be beneficial ‘but
many more are detrimental.’”
From the Los Angeles Times, in a commentary by Amir
Alexander:
“Only a few thousand specialists in the world are qualified to
offer deeply informed opinions about climate change, but this has
not prevented millions of us from taking a stand on both sides of
the issue.”
“In a troubling new discovery, scientists studying ocean waters
off California, Oregon and Washington have found the first
evidence that increasing acidity in the ocean is dissolving the
shells of a key species of tiny sea creature at the base of the
food chain.”
From the San Francisco Chronicle, in a commentary by Gabriel
Metcalf:
“How much do you care about the future? If you’re like most
people, you do care – but maybe not so much that you are willing
to make radical changes to your life for the sake of things that
will happen a hundred years from now.”
“While researchers have sometimes connected weather extremes to
man-made global warming, usually it’s not done in real time. Now
a Utah State University study is asserting a link between climate
change and both the intensifying California drought and the polar
vortex blamed for a harsh winter that mercifully has just ended
in many places.”
“As millions around the world celebrate what is labeled the
biggest secular holiday, Earth Day, local leaders say the
successes since 1970 are many, but the problems — particularly
the 800-pound gorilla of global climate change — have grown into
a daunting challenge.”
From the Marin Independent Journal, in a commentary by Sandy
Wallenstein, Hannah Doress and Douglas Mundo:
“Because Marin County is a peninsula, sea-level rise
caused by climate change has special relevance to us — both to
our bay-facing and coastal communities, but also to inland
communities affected by flooding.
“And all of us will be affected by impacts to core
infrastructure such as Highway 101, water and sanitation
systems and possible isolation by flooding.”
