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Unable to stop climate change, EPA prepares for it – ‘Too bad we didn’t do more a few decades ago to keep all of this from happening’

Saturday, February 9, 2013 10:40

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(Before It's News)

Desdemona Despair

By Philip Bump
8 February 2013

(Grist) – “We live in a world in which the climate is changing.”

This statement from the EPA, the first line in its draft “Climate Change Adaptation Plan” [PDF] released today, is basic. But that the EPA is saying it is important.

For two reasons. The first is that the agency is advancing an argument it will need to make more forcefully later this year as it pushes for curbs on greenhouse gas pollution that could stem some of the worst effects of that changing climate. Though the draft report is dated June 2012, it only came out today — less than a week before a State of the Union address in which Obama is expected to call for climate action. And, second, the EPA needs to get ready for what a warmed world looks like.

Until now, EPA has been able to assume that climate is relatively stable and future climate will mirror past climate. However, with climate changing more rapidly than society has experienced in the past, the past is no longer a good predictor of the future. Climate change is posing new challenges to EPA’s ability to fulfill its mission.

“Until now,” huh? If you say so.

Over the course of 55 pages, the agency outlines the ways in which its mission — protecting America’s air and water — will be threatened by climate change. For those who’ve been tracking the issue, it’s largely what you’d expect. It’s important to note: This is not a document meant to suggest how the EPA will prevent climate change. It simply says “here’s what will happen as the world warms” and then considers how that will affect its mission.

An appendix outlines and prioritizes the challenges, breaking them into three categories based on likelihood: “Likely,” “Very likely,” and “Certain.” What prediction fits into which category is interesting — and suggests just how conservative the EPA is still being.

Certain effects

Ocean acidification

Very likely

Increasing extreme temperatures

Sea-level rise

Increased water temperatures

Loss of snowpack

Changes in temperature

Likely

Increased tropospheric ozone pollution in certain regions

Increased frequency or intensity of wildfires

Increasing heavy precipitation events

Effects on the stratospheric ozone layer

Effects on response of ecosystems to atmospheric deposition of sulfur, nitrogen, and mercury

Increasing intensity of hurricanes

Decreasing precipitation days and increasing drought intensity

Increasing risk of floods

Melting permafrost in Northern Regions

Why is increased ocean acidification the only “certain” outcome? Because the National Research Council of the National Academies identified it as “[o]ne of the most certain outcomes from increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.” [more]