Cargill Salt Pond Development a Bad Idea for San Francisco Bay
On a recent trip to Coyote Hills, a park on the east side of the San Francisco Bay, with a class of kindergarteners, we learned about marshland and a bit about salt ponds. Standing on the top of a hill, we looked out across the bay, and touching a flower one boy remarked that it “feels beautiful.” I was reminded of the mind of 5 year-olds and how sometimes they hit each other without realizing and you have to remind them to be aware of their surroundings. Coyote... Read More
Sea Level Rise a Threat to U.S. Coastal Cities
This map shows where increases in sea level could affect New Orleans, Virginia Beach, Va., Miami, Tampa, Fla., New York and Washington, D.C. The colors indicate areas along the coast that are elevations of 1 meter or less (russet) or 6 meters or less (yellow) and have connectivity to the sea. (Map by Jeremy Weiss, University of Arizona) A team of researchers at the University of Arizona has projected how future sea level rise will impact 180 of the... Read More
Book Review: A World Without Ice
Three million years ago, during the mid-Pliocene epoch, sea levels were 100 feet higher than they are today. During this period, there was no ice in the Northern Hemisphere, no sea ice in the Arctic Ocean nor in Greenland. And global temperatures at that time? Only about four to six degrees warmer than today. Such figures gave me pause, as I was about 2/3 of the way through A World Without Ice by Henry Pollack a professor of geophysics at the University... Read More
Managed Retreat from Rising Sea Levels Begins at Surfers Point
What is likely the first example of what lies ahead for many coastal communities worldwide, Ventura, CA is beginning its retreat from the ocean. Sea levels are projected to rise at least 45-55 inches this century, wreaking havoc on coastal infrastructure. Surfers Point, Ventura, CA (Photo: Flickr user Michael McCarty) 20 years ago Ventura built a bike path along the beach next to the famous surf spot Surfers Point, but within only a few years erosion... Read More
California Council Adopts Sea Level Rise Projections
Projected SLR in Monterey, CA (in blue) The California Ocean Protection Council, has released a draft resolution that calls for state agencies to account for sea level rise (SLR) of up to 55 inches by 2100 in their planning processes. They based their SLR projections on a publication by Vermeer and Rahmstorf in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science. A 100-year storm event coupled with SLR caused by climate change could cause as much... Read More
Deep Ocean Warming is Leading to Sea Level Rise
Photo credit: NOAAA NOAA news release draws attention to an upcoming report in the Journal of Climate regarding substantial warming in the deep ocean that has been recorded over the last 20 years, leading to sea-level rise. The findings are significant as much of the attention that has been given to ocean warming has been focused on shallow depths, and signs of warming at greater depth reveal more substantial changes underway. Roughly 80% of greenhouse... Read More
Visualizing Climate Change at the Ventura Boardwalk
Do You Know How Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Will Impact YOU? As a surfer, I often think about how my local surf spots—as well as the world’s most famous surf breaks—may change completely in the future due to sea level rise. Last week, though, as I got out of the water at Surfer’s Point in Ventura, CA, climate change was the last thing on my mind—until I saw my first SLAP stick. A SLAP stick on the Boardwalk SLAP stands for the Sea... Read More
Tuvalu and Goliath
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference in Copenhagen is now 5 days old. As expected, the gathering of 193 country delegates and a combined 16,500 international negotiators, NGO representatives, activists, and journalists at the Bella Center is showcasing some of the most difficult political and economic challenges facing the global community today. Given the importance of curbing climate change from unabatedly... Read More
The Copenhagen Diagnosis
Hot off the press is a new global climate change synthesis report by some of the world’s leading scientists. The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Updating the World on the Latest Climate Science is a review of the hundreds of scientific papers published since the 2007 IPCC fourth assessment report (AR4), and presents a sobering update on the state of the global climate. What this report convincingly shows, is that AR4 was perhaps too conservative in its... Read More
