IUFRO press release:

The critical role of forests as massive “sinks” for absorbing greenhouse gases is “at risk of being lost entirely” to climate change-induced environmental stresses that threaten to damage and even decimate forests worldwide, according to a new report released today. The report will be formally presented at the next session of the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) taking place 20 April-1 May 2009 at the UN Headquarters in New York City.

“Adaptation of Forests and People to Climate Change – A Global Assessment” was coordinated by the Vienna-based International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) through the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF), an alliance of 14 international organizations that each has substantial forestry programs.

Authored by 35 of the world’s top forestry scientists, it provides the first global assessment to date of the ability of forests to adapt to climate change and is expected to play a key role in next week’s UNFF discussions. The report presents the state of scientific knowledge regarding the current and projected future impacts of climate change on forests and people along with options for adaptation.

“We normally think of forests as putting the brakes on global warming, but in fact over the next few decades, damage induced by climate change could cause forests to release huge quantities of carbon and create a situation in which they do more to accelerate warming than to slow it down,” said Risto Seppälä, a professor at the Finnish Forest Research Institute (Metla) and Immediate Past President of IUFRO, who chaired the expert panel that produced the report.

The report is here [224 page, 3.6 MB PDF]. See the press release link above for versions in French, Spanish, German, and Finnish. That same page also has links to a policy brief, “Making forests fit for climate change”, in various languages.

Is it my imagination, or is the climate chaos impact on forests, particularly in terms of triggering yet another Big, Scary Feedback, suddenly getting a lot more attention?

Whether this is news to the world or just to me, it feels like we’ve colored in a couple more tiles in the climate mosaic. And as we’ve seen so many times in recent months, it’s not resolving into a pretty picture.

The US Climate Change Science Program has release Abrupt Climate Change, a.k.a. “CCSP, 2008: Abrupt Climate Change. A report by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research”.

From the report’s synopsis:

For this Synthesis and Assessment Report, abrupt climate change is defined as:

A large-scale change in the climate system that takes place over a few decades or less, persists (or is anticipated to persist) for at least a few decades, and causes substantial disruptions in human and natural systems.

This report considers progress in understanding four types of abrupt change in the paleoclimatic record that stand out as being so rapid and large in their impact that if they were to recur, they would pose clear risks to society in terms of our ability to adapt: (1) rapid change in glaciers, ice sheets, and hence sea level; (2) widespread and sustained changes to the hydrologic cycle; (3) abrupt change in the northward flow of warm, salty water in the upper layers of the Atlantic Ocean associated with the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC); and (4) rapid release to the atmosphere of methane trapped in permafrost and on continental margins.

This report reflects the significant progress in understanding abrupt climate change that has been made since the report by the National Research Council in 2002 on this topic, and this report provides considerably greater detail and insight on these issues than did the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC AR4). New paleoclimatic reconstructions have been developed that provide greater understanding of patterns and mechanisms of past abrupt climate change in the ocean and on land, and new observations are further revealing unanticipated rapid dynamic changes of moderns glaciers, ice sheets, and ice shelves as well as processes that are contributing to these changes. This report reviews this progress. A summary and explanation of the main results is presented first, followed by an overview of the types of abrupt climate change considered in this report. The subsequent chapters then address each of these types of abrupt climate change, including a synthesis of the current state of knowledge and an assessment of the likelihood that one of these abrupt changes may occur in response to human influences on the climate system.

The report is here [8.7MB, 477 page PDF], and the report’s home page, where you can download just portions of the document, is here.

And from the Executive Summary:

Based on an assessment of the published scientific literature, the primary conclusions presented in this report are:

• Recent rapid changes at the edges of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets show acceleration of flow and thinning, with the velocity of some glaciers increasing more than twofold. Glacier accelerations causing this imbalance have been related to enhanced surface meltwater production penetrating to the bed to lubricate glacier motion, and to ice-shelf removal, ice-front retreat, and glacier ungrounding that reduce resistance to flow. The present generation of models does not capture these processes. It is unclear whether this imbalance is a short-term natural adjustment or a response to recent climate change, but processes causing accelerations are enabled by warming, so these adjustments will very likely become more frequent in a warmer climate. The regions likely to experience future rapid changes in ice volume are those where ice is grounded well below sea level such as the West Antarctic Ice Sheet or large glaciers in Greenland like the Jakobshavn Isbrae that flow into the sea through a deep channel reaching far inland. Inclusion of these processes in models will likely lead to sea-level projections for the end of the 21st century that substantially exceed the projections presented in the IPCC AR4 report (0.28 ± 0.10 m to 0.42 ± 0.16 m rise).

• There is no clear evidence to date of human-induced global climate change on North American precipitation amounts. However, since the IPCC AR4 report, further analysis of climate model scenarios of future hydroclimatic change over North America and the global subtropics indicate that subtropical aridity is likely to intensify and persist due to future greenhouse warming. This projected drying extends poleward into the United States Southwest, potentially increasing the likelihood of severe and persistent drought there in the future. If the model results are correct then this drying may have already begun, but currently cannot be definitively identified amidst the considerable natural variability of hydroclimate in Southwestern North America.

• The AMOC is the northward flow of warm, salty water in the upper layers of the Atlantic, and the southward flow of colder water in the deep Atlantic. It plays an important role in the oceanic transport of heat from low to high latitudes. It is very likely that the strength of the AMOC will decrease over the course of the 21st century in response to increasing greenhouse gases, with a best estimate decrease of 25-30%. However, it is very unlikely that the AMOC will undergo an abrupt transition to a weakened state or collapse during the course of the 21st century, and it is unlikely that the AMOC will collapse beyond the end of the 21st century because of global warming, although the possibility cannot be entirely excluded.

• A dramatic abrupt release of methane (CH4) to the atmosphere appears very unlikely, but it is very likely that climate change will accelerate the pace of persistent emissions from both hydrate sources and wetlands. Current models suggest that a doubling of northern high latitudes CH4 emissions could be realized fairly easily. However, since these models do not realistically represent all the processes thought to be relevant to future northern high-latitude CH4 emissions, much larger (or smaller) increases cannot be discounted. Acceleration of release from hydrate reservoirs is likely, but its magnitude is difficult to estimate.

I’ve barely had a chance to skim the document, but it seems to be a very sober, science-driven take on the situation. I was particularly happy to see chapter 3, Hydrological Variability and Change, which addresses the topic that I think gets far too little attention, drought.

See also Joe Romm’s take on it.

Some very bad news about the state of the world’s coral reefs:

A downward trend tied to warming seas has not reversed and the world has now lost nearly one-fifth of its coral reefs, according to a global survey released Wednesday.

Much of the rest could be destroyed within 40 years by increasingly acidic seas if warming continues unchecked, the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network stated in its report.

“The report details the strong scientific consensus that climate change must be limited to the absolute minimum. If nothing is done to substantially cut emissions, we could effectively lose coral reefs as we know them, with major coral extinctions,” network coordinator Clive Wilkinson said in a statement.

…

The International Union for Conservation of Nature, which maintains a list of threatened species worldwide, cited warming as the latest and most serious threat to coral, already damaged by destructive fishing methods, nonnative species and pollution like raw sewage.

“If nothing changes, we are looking at a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide in less than 50 years,” Carl Gustaf Lundin, head of the IUCN Global Marine Program, warned in a statement. “As this carbon is absorbed, the oceans will become more acidic, which is seriously damaging a wide range of marine life from corals to plankton communities and from lobsters to seagrasses.”

Among the enviroscenti this is hardly a surprise. You can find dozens, probably hundreds, of articles published in the last few months talking about the rampant devastation of the world’s coral reefs caused by anthropogenic climate chaos, even if they didn’t report it with such sharp details. In fact, I think it’s clear that for those of us who follow environmental issues closely, the reefs have become a symbolic measuring stick of just how much damage we’re doing to the atmosphere and everything that depends on it (including us) by spewing out tens of billions of tons of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

Pondering this a bit, amidst a lot of other pondering of such issues that I’ve been doing lately, I have to ask: What would it take to make mainstream consumers and voters care about this, especially at a time when so many of them are justifiably terrified of the economy? Even in good times I think it would be incredibly difficult to convince mainstreamers that this is not just a topic worthy of their attention and passion, but something that should cause them to (gasp!) change their behavior. It’s all so abstract–we partake in our “normal” daily activities here, invisible CO2 is emitted (sometimes a great distance from us, such as at a coal-fired electricity plant), and over decades it builds up enough to raise the planet’s temperature and turn the ocean acidic. Surely this is a plot for some big-buck Sci-Fi movie that requires Bruce Willis or Tommy Lee Jones or Nicholas Cage to fly a space ship into an asteroid, right?

The coral reefs present just one example of a pattern we see repeatedly endlessly: Scientists discover some environmental issue. It gains more and more attention in the form of funding for further studies, and we discover that it’s worse than we thought, whether because of the imminence of the problem or the difficulty/expense in ameliorating it. It quickly becomes a Big Issue among the enviroscenti, but it never makes the leap to mainstream awareness, unless someone like Al Gore comes along and all but physically forces us to pay attention. Then those motivated by finances or ideology jump into the fray, and the next thing you know we have slick TV ads that reassuringly tell us not to worry our little heads because CO2 or coal or whatever is, in fact, a Good Thing.

And here’s where I have to make a confession: I’ve given up talking to people in social settings one-on-one about energy and environmental issues, unless I know in advance they’re interested and receptive. It’s just not worth trying to break through that brick wall with one glass hammer after another. Perhaps I will recover from this funk, as I have the previous N times, convince myself that this time I really have found an effective way to break through to people, and reach for yet another glass hammer.

How do you cope with this issue? Did you ever try to “fight the good fight”? Did you fight it and surrender? Are you still fighting?

Thanks to some ongoing research, mentioned below, the relationship between water and global warming is coming into sharper focus. Sadly for us, the picture we’re seeing as layers of uncertainty are peeled away is nothing to be cheerful about.

I’ve mentioned many times that the primary, near-term human impact of global warming will not be some ridiculously overblown instant climate catastrophe, as depicted in The Day After Tomorrow, or even swamped coastal cities (but that iconic danger has also taken a new turn, as one source below points out). Rather, we’ll see something much more subtle but every bit as dangerous: Shifts in precipitation patterns and temperatures that lead to some densely populated areas having much less water for drinking, crop irrigation, sanitation, and electricity generation. The two main mechanisms at work are as simple as they are devastating:

• Less rainfall in some areas causes drought conditions. (I did say these were simple.) The US West and Southeast and Australia, among other areas, are already reeling from years-long droughts, with no relief in sight.
• Less snowfall in some mountain areas, and the snow that does fall melting quicker thanks to higher temperatures, means that many areas will have much less water from normal runoff of melt water during summer months. This further magnifies the drought conditions and reduces the amount of water we can tap for cooling thermoelectric generation (fossil fuels plus nuclear), which today accounts for roughly 40% of the freshwater draw in the US. It also reduces the amount of electricity we can generate with hydroelectric plants.

But the water/global warming relationship is more complex than that. Let me cite three recent articles as examples of how much we’re still learning about the role of water in our global climate:

Melting ice now main driver of rising sea levels: study:

Runoff from ice caps in Antarctica and Greenland along with melting mountain glaciers have replaced expanding oceans as the main driver of rising sea levels, according to a new study.

The rate at which the global ocean water mark rises could have a devastating impact on hundreds of millions of people living in low-lying areas around the world.

Earlier research had shown that sea levels crept up and average of 3.1 millimetres (0.12 inches) per year from 1993 to 2003.

More than half of that increase came from a process called thermal expansion whereby the ocean gains in mass as climate change pushes global temperatures upward.

The other half, climate scientists calculated, was caused by land ice, especially dwindling glaciers in mountain ranges such as the Himalayas and Andes.

The new study, drawing on data from two new observational systems, shows that thermal expansion — which is cyclical over periods measured in decades — essentially stopped after 2003.

But sea levels continued to rise, though at the slightly diminished rate of 2.5 millimetres (0.1 inches) per year.

Which left scientists wondering: if the water had stopped expanding, what was now driving the continuing elevation of the world’s oceans?

The answer, it turns out, are the only two masses of ice on Earth big enough to qualify as ice sheets: Greenland and Antarctica. Both are up to three kilometres (two miles) thick, and Greenland — the smaller of the two — is about the size of Mexico.

“During the last decade, Antarctica and Greenland only contributed about 0.5 mm (0.02 inches) per year to rising sea levels whereas today it is about 1.0 mm (0.04 inches) per year,” said Anny Cazenave, a scientist at France’s National Centre for Space Studies and lead author of the paper.

Water vapor confirmed as major player in climate change:

Water vapor is known to be Earth’s most abundant greenhouse gas, but the extent of its contribution to global warming has been debated. Using recent NASA satellite data, researchers have estimated more precisely than ever the heat-trapping effect of water in the air, validating the role of the gas as a critical component of climate change.

Andrew Dessler and colleagues from Texas A&M University in College Station confirmed that the heat-amplifying effect of water vapor is potent enough to double the climate warming caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

With new observations, the scientists confirmed experimentally what existing climate models had anticipated theoretically. The research team used novel data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite to measure precisely the humidity throughout the lowest 10 miles of the atmosphere. That information was combined with global observations of shifts in temperature, allowing researchers to build a comprehensive picture of the interplay between water vapor, carbon dioxide, and other atmosphere-warming gases. The NASA-funded research was published recently in the American Geophysical Union’s Geophysical Research Letters.

“Everyone agrees that if you add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, then warming will result,” Dessler said. “So the real question is, how much warming?”

The answer can be found by estimating the magnitude of water vapor feedback. Increasing water vapor leads to warmer temperatures, which causes more water vapor to be absorbed into the air. Warming and water absorption increase in a spiraling cycle.

Water vapor feedback can also amplify the warming effect of other greenhouse gases, such that the warming brought about by increased carbon dioxide allows more water vapor to enter the atmosphere.

“The difference in an atmosphere with a strong water vapor feedback and one with a weak feedback is enormous,” Dessler said.

Study Examines Effects of Global Warming on Oceans:

Polar ice is part of a positive feedback loop that exacerbates climate changes. As temperature increases, ice melts. Since ice is white, Arctic melting decreases the reflectivity of the Earth. As a result, more solar radiation gets absorbed, further increasing temperatures and perpetuating the cycle. The opposite is true for temperature decreases.

According to the study, a new trend in Arctic melting is affecting the Atlantic Ocean. The primary change has been an abnormally large influx of water originating from the Pacific and traveling through the Arctic.

Water in the Pacific Ocean is less salty than water in the Atlantic. Approximately once every decade, some water from the Pacific travels through the Arctic and spills into the Atlantic.

However, in 1989, the freshwater infusion was more powerful than expected. Proposing that greenhouse gases were the main cause of this anomaly, Greene said, “Greenhouse gases are contributing to more fresh water in the Arctic Ocean [since global warming can lead to] greater precipitation, runoff, melting tundra and melting ice.”

The study identified two major symptoms of this change: a dramatic movement in the oceanic biosphere and a “regime shift” in the composition of Atlantic water.

The 1999 freshwater infusion had some peculiar characteristics. In May of that year, specimen of Neodenticula seminae, a species of boreal plankton, were detected in the Atlantic Ocean. N. seminae had been absent from the northern Atlantic fossil record for 800,000 years. However, since its discovery, the species has proliferated along the Eastern seaboard.

…

Since the water remains stratified for longer, the Atlantic growing season has been extended. The study observed a recent surge in copepods, one of the main predators of phytoplankton.

However, not all species have benefited from this transition. The study hypothesized that the infusion of fresh Arctic water has played a role in the dramatic fall in cod stocks in the northwest Atlantic.

The study also discussed the effects of the regime shift on the global oceanic conveyor belt. Approximately 10 years ago, scientists seriously discussed the possibility of an extreme disruption in NADW possibly halting global heat redistribution. However, the study reported, “results from more recent climate change models have downplayed the likelihood of this scenario, at least in the near future … NADW formation and the global ocean’s [conveyor belt] are likely safe from abrupt change during the 21st century.”

However, Greene is cautiously optimistic. “A great reduction or even a complete shutting down of NADW formation [are] real possibilities in the coming centuries … change would likely be quite abrupt.”

In spite of the powerful implications of the study, Greene warned strongly against taking the study for more than it was worth. He criticized several publications for distorting or sensationalizing the point of the paper.

You can decide for yourself just how much good news or bad news is in these and similar news items regarding global warming, but the one inescapable conclusion I draw from them is that we’re continuing to tweak (or jostle or kick, depending on one’s views) our planet’s biosphere at a terrifying rate, given the nature of the discoveries we’re still making. Seems like something we should stop doing, doesn’t it?

I’ve just started reading Chris Wood’s Dry Spring: The Coming Water Crisis of North America. While I can’t provide a full review based on just the first two chapters, it seems to be a very good treatment of the topic for a mainstream audience.

Frequent readers of TCOE know that whenever I talk about my personal short list of must-read authors, Bill McKibben is always right at the top. Well, he’s at it again, this time with a piece in Mother Jones, The Most Important Number on Earth:

Sooner or later, you have to draw a line. We’ve spent the last 20 years in the opening scenes of what historians will one day call the Global Warming Era—the preamble to the biggest drama that humans have ever staged, the overture that hints at the themes that will follow for centuries to come. But none of the notes have resolved, none of the story lines yet come into clear view. And that’s largely because until recently we didn’t know quite where we were. From the moment in 1988 when a nasa scientist named James Hansen told Congress that burning coal and gas and oil was warming the earth, we’ve struggled to absorb this one truth: The central fact of our economic lives (the ubiquitous fossil fuel that developed the developed world) is wrecking the central fact of our physical lives (the stable climate and sea level on which civilization rests). For a while, and much longer in the US than elsewhere, we battled over whether this was true. But warm year succeeded warm year and that fight began to subside. Instead, the real question became, is this a future peril, the kind of thing you take out a reasonably priced insurance policy to guard against? Or is it the oh-my-lord crisis you drop everything else to deal with? Will Hitler be happy with the Sudetenland, or is the world going to spend every cent it has, not to mention tens of millions of lives, fighting him off? Trouble, or TROUBLE? These last 12 months, we’ve found out.

It was September 2007 that the tide began to turn. Every summer Arctic sea ice melts, and every fall it refreezes. The amount of open water has been steadily increasing for three decades, a percent or two every year—it’s been going at about the pace that the hairline recedes on a middle-aged man. It was worrisome, and scientists said all the summer ice could be gone by 2070 or so, which is an eyeblink in geologic time but an eternity in politician time. In late summer of last year, though, the melt turned into a rout—it was like those stories of people whose hair turns gray overnight. An area the size of Colorado was disappearing every week; the Northwest Passage was staying wide open all September, for the first time in history. Before long the Arctic night mercifully descended and the ice began to refreeze, but scientists were using words like “astounding.” They were recalculating—by one nasa scientist’s estimate the summer Arctic might now be free of ice by 2012. Which in politician years is “beginning of my second term.”

The key phrase, really, was “tipping point.” As in “I’d say we are reaching a tipping point or are past it for the ice. This is a strong indication that there is an amplifying mechanism here.” That’s Pål Prestrud of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research-Oslo. Or this, from Mark Serreze, of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado: “When the ice thins to a vulnerable state, the bottom will drop out…I think there is some evidence that we may have reached that tipping point, and the impacts will not be confined to the Arctic region.”

“Tipping point” is not, in this context, an idle buzzword. It means that the physical world is taking over the process that humans began. We poured carbon into the atmosphere, trapping excess heat; that excess heat began to melt ice. When that ice was melted, there was less white up north to reflect the sun’s rays back out to space, and more blue ocean to absorb them. Events began to feed upon themselves. And in the course of the last year, we’ve seen the same thing happening in other systems. In April, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a report showing that 2007 had seen a sudden and dramatic surge in the amount of methane, another heat-trapping gas, in the atmosphere. Apparently, one reason is that when we burned all that fossil fuel and began raising the temperature, we also started melting the permafrost—melting eight times more of it in some places over two decades than had thawed for the previous 1,000 years. And as that frozen soil thaws, it releases methane; enough of it now bubbles out to make “hot spots” in lakes and ponds that don’t freeze during the deepest part of the Siberian winter. The more methane, the more heat, the more methane. Wash, rinse, repeat.

…

And we have a number—350. The most important number on earth. If the Internet has a cosmic purpose, this could be it—to take that number and spread it everywhere on the planet, so that everyone, even if they knew little else about climate change, understood that it represented a kind of safety, a bulwark against the monsoon turning erratic, the sea rising over their fields, the mosquito spreading up their mountain.

I’m part of a group of people calling ourselves 350.org. Our goal is simple—to try to get people everywhere to spread that number. We’ve started finding musicians and artists, athletes and video makers, and most of all activists, the kinds of people who are working to save watersheds or babies, or to educate girls or to block dams, or any of the other thousand lovely things that won’t happen if we allow the basic physical stability of the planet to come unglued. We need a lot of noise, and we need it fast, in the scant months—14 now—before the world meets in Copenhagen next December to draw up a new climate treaty. Because one clear implication of 350 is that that treaty is our last real chance to get it right. If we don’t, then all we’ll be dealing with is the consequences. Once the ocean really starts to rise, dike building is pretty much the only project.

It’s not clear if a vocal world citizenry will be enough to beat inertia and vested interest. If 350 emerges as the clear bar for success or failure, then the odds of the international community taking effective action increase, though the odds are still long. Still, these are the lines it is our turn to speak. To be human in 2008 is to rise in defense of the planet we have known and the civilization it has spawned.

I’ve quoted just the first and last grafs here. Please go read the whole thing. You can thank me later.

The 350 number is, of course, 350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. I’ve talked about this number repeatedly on this site, and how James Hansen (also on the must-read list) is convinced it is “the” magic number for CO2 buildup in the atmosphere, even though we’re currently at about 385 ppm and growing. See my post from yesterday, Document alert: Target Atmospheric CO2, for a brief excerpt from the latest paper on the topic from Hansen and his colleagues, plus links to the paper and its supplementary material.

Related posts on the general topic of 350 ppm and this latest work from Hansen, et al.:

• 350.org
• NASA’s James Hansen, et al, on what’s needed to avoid a total ice-melt on Earth
• Stabilize at 350 ppm or risk ice-free planet, warn NASA, Yale, Sheffield, Versailles, Boston et al

Some other items related to the general notion of what we’re doing to the planet, and, therefore, ourselves, by pouring 27 billion tons of CO2 into the air every year:

Southern Ocean close to acid tipping point:

Australian researchers have discovered that the tipping point for ocean acidification caused by human-induced CO2 emissions is much closer than first thought.

Scientists from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and CSIRO looked at seasonal changes in pH and the concentration of an important chemical compound, carbonate, in the Southern Ocean.

The results, published in today’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, show that these seasonal changes will actually amplify the effects of human carbon dioxide emissions on ocean acidity, speeding up the process of ocean acidification by 30 years.

…

Once the acidity of the Southern Ocean reaches a certain level, the shells of these and other calcareous marine creatures will start to dissolve.

“That’s a really bad point to get to,” says McNeil. “After that point, we can’t go back unless we suck the CO2 out of the atmosphere.”

This so-called ‘tipping point’ of acidification had been predicted to occur when atmospheric CO2 levels hit 550 parts per million, around the year 2060.

However, the new research shows levels of the carbonate that these creatures need to build and maintain their shells drops naturally in winter, due to natural variations in factors such as ocean temperature, currents and mixing, and pH.

This means the tipping point is likely to be reached at far lower atmospheric CO2 levels - around 450 ppm, says McNeil, which also happens to be the target set by the IPCC for stabilisation of CO2 emissions.

Translation: Even if we’re “lucky” and the magic 350 number is too low, we could still wind up dealing a devastating blow to the oceanic food chain.

(The paper mentioned above doesn’t seem to be online yet.)

The Southwest in the Anthropocene:

Until recently, natural landscapes varied as droughts came and went, warm years were followed by cold years and so on. Now, though, the actions of people have widened the parameters of this natural change, with potentially troubling results in places like the Southwest.

That’s what William deBuys, an author and conservationist who has spent decades working in and writing about the region, says in the current issue of Rangelands, a publication of the Society for Range Management. (You can download a pdf of his essay here.)

In particular he is talking about the mountains and rangelands of New Mexico. Always shaped by fire, lately they have been shaped by fire suppression. Always modified by grazing elk and other animals, now they are threatened by overgrazing of livestock. Always vulnerable to drought, now they are stricken by drought and heat together. And the heat is not the heat of a normal warm year, it is the heat of human-induced climate change, he says.

Translation: When you jostle a complex system (like Earth’s biosphere), it can change its behavior drastically, often in extremely inconvenient ways.

Global Warming Predicted To Hasten Carbon Release From Peat Bogs:

Billions of tons of carbon sequestered in the world’s peat bogs could be released into the atmosphere in the coming decades as a result of global warming, according to a new analysis of the interplay between peat bogs, water tables, and climate change.

Such an atmospheric release of even a small percentage of the carbon locked away in the world’s peat bogs would dwarf emissions of manmade carbon, scientists at Harvard University, Worcester State College, and the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology write in the current issue of the journal Nature Geoscience.

“Our modeling suggests that higher temperatures could cause water tables to drop substantially, causing more peat to dry and decompose,” says Paul R. Moorcroft, professor of organismic and evolutionary biology in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. “Over several centuries, some 40 percent of carbon could be lost from shallow peat bogs, while the losses could total as much as 86 percent in deep bogs.”

…

Each square meter of a peat bog contains anywhere from a few to many hundreds of kilograms of undecomposed organic matter, for a total of 200 to 450 billion metric tons of carbon sequestered in peat bogs worldwide. This figure is equivalent to up to 65 years’ worth of the world’s current carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning.

“Peat bogs contain vast stores of carbon,” Moorcroft says. “They will likely respond to the expected warming in this century by losing large amounts of carbon during dry periods.”

Translation: Have we pushed the boulder far enough down the hill that gravity will pull it away from us at an ever faster pace, no matter what we do now? No one knows yet with any degree of certainty.

So, what’s the point of this global warming mashup? Is this just another angst-fest, in which we all huddle around our monitors and rock gently, trying to wish all the Bad Things into the corn field? Is it yet another plaintive call to action, which far too few of us will answer?

Honestly, it’s up to you, because, as the saying goes: It is what it is. Scientists continue to peel back the layers of uncertainty around some of the most interesting questions in climate science, and the revelations they’re making are anything but cheering. As I’ve pointed out many times on this site, we’re going through a period when nearly all of the surprises related to global warming are very bad news, and these articles quoted above continue that unnerving trend. More CO2 in the atmosphere means more warming and polar melting, more changes to weather patterns (droughts in some places, floods in others), more threats to the oceans, and creeping ever closer to the ultimate climate tipping point where we’re carried away by unstoppable, self-reinforcing change.

If we choose to remain in denial and continue pouring immense amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, then the biosphere will continue to respond in a way that’s ultimately disastrous for much of life on Earth. The only unknown is how quickly those changes will happen and the exact form they’ll take. As the old saying goes, reality is that which, even when you refuse to believe it, continues to exist. And that may be the least convenient truth of all.

Carbon Dioxide Levels Already In Danger Zone, Revised Theory Shows:

If climate disasters are to be averted, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) must be reduced below the levels that already exist today, according to a study published in Open Atmospheric Science Journal by a group of 10 scientists from the United States, the United Kingdom and France.

The authors, who include two Yale scientists, assert that to maintain a planet similar to that on which civilization developed, an optimum CO2 level would be less than 350 ppm — a dramatic change from most previous studies, which suggested a danger level for CO2 is likely to be 450 ppm or higher. Atmospheric CO2 is currently 385 parts per million (ppm) and is increasing by about 2 ppm each year from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas) and from the burning of forests.

“This work and other recent publications suggest that we have reached CO2 levels that compromise the stability of the polar ice sheets,” said author Mark Pagani, Yale professor of geology and geophysics. “How fast ice sheets and sea level will respond are still poorly understood, but given the potential size of the disaster, I think it’s best not to learn this lesson firsthand.”

The statement is based on improved data on the Earth’s climate history and ongoing observations of change, especially in the polar regions. The authors use evidence of how the Earth responded to past changes of CO2 along with more recent patterns of climate changes to show that atmospheric CO2 has already entered a danger zone.

According to the study, coal is the largest source of atmospheric CO2 and the one that would be most practical to eliminate. Oil resources already may be about half depleted, depending upon the magnitude of undiscovered reserves, and it is still not practical to capture CO2 emerging from vehicle tailpipes, the way it can be with coal-burning facilities, note the scientists. Coal, on the other hand, has larger reserves, and the authors conclude that “the only realistic way to sharply curtail CO2 emissions is phase out coal use except where CO2 is captured and sequestered.”

In their model, with coal emissions phased out between 2010 and 2030, atmospheric CO2 would peak at 400-425 ppm and then slowly decline. The authors maintain that the peak CO2 level reached would depend on the accuracy of oil and gas reserve estimates and whether the most difficult to extract oil and gas is left in the ground.

Accessing the report is a bit convoluted, as it relies on those funky indirect links (i.e. you can’t do the “right click/save target as” trick. The report is here [15-page, 2.1MB PDF], and the supplemental material is here [zip file containing a single PDF, 1.8MB].

You can find the article in the journal it was published in is here (the article is in Volume 2).

When you obsessively read and write about peak oil (and global warming), as I do, it’s very easy to get so close to the topic, so thoroughly cocooned in your own vision of said Big, Scary Event that you don’t just miss big patterns (forests and trees, and all that), but you skip over some details that deserve a bit more discussion. This latter phenomenon came to mind recently in an e-mail exchange I had with Kory Sorrell, a TCOE reader and occasional commenter.

With permission, I’m quoting his observations on peak oil and where we’re collectively heading:

I would suggest that the peak oil debate has shifted a bit. There is little support for the idea that we can increase flow rates (that is what peak oil is about) significantly going forward, certainly not at the rate an extrapolated demand would require.

I believe peak oil theory gets a bit muddled — and folks started talking past one another — because it starts off as a geological concept, but one then has to start adding political (oil is largely a national resource) and economic influences like the export land model or current drops in demand due to the economy or changes in prices due to fluctuating currency valuation to get a more complete picture. Actual flow rates at any one time vary due to a number of causes, but putting this all together, some folks are suggesting we have hit at least Peak Oil Lite - we may not produce much more per/day going forward and this may trail off for a variety of factors, including resource nationalism, geological constraints, (eventual) decreases in demand. Whether this is good or not, I don’t know. I’ve seen suggestions that, all considered, it’s better to hit an earlier constraint, as we can deal with it sooner and face unremitting geological constraint later — in other words, at least political constraints can be mitigated, whereas there’s just no persuading the earth to yield more than it can.

Having read my share of peak oil books, articles and websites, I now focus more on (1) decline rates, since this informs our pace of adaptation — that’s why this upcoming IEA report is a Monster. One way or another, we will adapt, and the Doomsday scenarios are hardly inevitable, though I suspect we may have some unpleasant times, especially if we are looking at rapid decline scenarios. (I have a hunch that this early report will be qualified in several ways, but we’ll see). (2) The second thing I now focus on, already indirectly touched on, is forms of adaptation. The Hirsch Report is a great place to start, but that is primarily an assessment of mitigation through liquid fuels substitution (CTL, etc.). I think there is also a tremendous amount of change in the offing in terms of behavior — all the sorts of things Simmons, for example, suggests: telecommuting, carpooling, 4-day work week, moving closer to work, etc. — but also other changes that include reducing the number of cars on the road (China is already doing this in at least two ways: encouraging electric motorscooters (there are some 15 million in use now, I believe) and taking cars off the road by license plate number (800,000 per day)). And of course this is in addition to the just over the horizon gradual replacement of our fleet with much more efficient ICE cars and then all electrics. To put it much more briefly, we are going to rapidly diversify and electrify our transport sector to use less oil; the question is, how quickly can we start outrunning depletion? While the numbers are daunting — how do we make up for a 5% a year reduction (4-4.5 mbd)? — this is spread out over a lot of economies. Assuming that since the US has to make up 25% of that (since the US uses 25%), that is 1.125 mbd. Hard, maybe; impossible, no. Note in the Hirsch Report that 70% of all driving is /discretionary/:

In the short run, much of the burden of adjustment will likely be borne by decreases in consumption from discretionary decisions, since 67 percent of personal automobile travel and nearly 50 percent of airplane travel are discretionary.32

page 24, http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf

(In other words, to echo a recent article I read elsewhere, we’ll have to do something “radical” to conserve oil: stay home.)

To draw this to a point, I would invite responses to the following. As the above paragraph suggests, I have a somewhat middle of the road view of what’s in front of us. I think we really need to steel ourselves for some very difficult and sobering times, but I see Martenson’s “the next 20 years” to be a bottleneck, on the other side of which we may have genuine progress and a future worth fighting for. In other words, I do not see an inevitable Long Descent to a world of ever-less-energy, but a painful travail opening on to a lush energy future. This is a future with very little coal, lots of renewables and 4th generation nuclear power (see Kirk Sorenson’s website). It is also a world where we are coming down from our peak population (fast forward that population bulge Martenson depicts in the Crash Course). Obviously, we have plenty of opportunity to ruin this melioristic vision, have had plenty such opportunities already (the usual reference to the Cuban Missile Crisis will do), and will likely make this all a lot harder than is necessary. But even tempered thus, it seems to me that this “20 years from now” is entirely possible, maybe likely, and in any case is the future we should work for.

My take on this:

• I think we definitely tend to talk past each other in this debate, and part of the reason is the failure by people in different parts of the debate to ignore certain parts of the big picture. KS is right that what constitutes or triggers peak oil is far more complex than simply geology. I’ve made this point perhaps a billion times on this site, but given how seldom it’s recognized online (except in the most perfunctory way and then ignored),
• I’m firmly in the camp that says the sooner we hit peak oil for above ground reasons, the better. That leaves more carbon in the ground, where it can’t contribute to global warming, and it also leaves us more of a supply buffer for future years, in case we can’t find the political spine to transition away from oil as quickly as we “should”.
• The IEA report, which is due next week and has already been the subject of much press leakage (e.g. Highlights of the IEA report), will indeed be a Monster–at least for those of us who pay attention to such things. I fear that between mainstream consumers who’ve never heard of the IEA and some of their elected representatives[1], this will be just one more Monster that gets swept under the bed, at least in the short term. I will have more to say on the IEA report in time.
• We will indeed make very large changes in our behavior, but only after we’re sufficiently forced by economics to do so.[2] The tiny minority of people who lead significantly greener, less oil-dependent lifestyles will be a sliver of the market until either the free market or our elected representatives raise the cost of living a gray life.
• The key point in Sorrel’s e-mail, and the part that moved me to get his permission to post it, is his observation about how we’re in for some very tough times, but we’re not necessarily making a monotonic descent in terms of the quality of life. This is the crucial dividing line between the ever gleeful doomers and those of us who recognize the reality and seriousness of peak oil, but temper that with the knowledge of humanity’s ability to respond to a crisis. It’s also the point that triggers the bizarre e-mail I get from people who accuse me of being nothing more than the latest economist villain straight out of central casting, someone who thinks we can sit back, ignore peak oil and global warming and everything else so many fret about, and watch as the magic and glorious market solves our problems.

  Put another way, on the spectrum of views about peak oil, we have the peak oil deniers at the far right. Just to the left of them is a mix of camps, including those who think that peak oil will only happen 50 or 75 years from now, as well as those who think the rate of decline in production will be so gradual that natural market adjustments will gently ease us out of oil consumption without so much as mussing our hair.

  Further left is my crowd–the “peak oil is real, imminent, and a very serious problem” camp.

  Far to my left, in the “here be dragons” part of the map, are the doomers.

  I’m not entirely sure where one group should be placed, the people who think “the” problem we face is global warming and that peak oil is therefore a blessing because it will constrain our emissions. They probably belong to my right, between me and that mix of people who think peak oil is real but won’t be a major problem for a variety of reasons. This group, which is almost entirely devoted and passionate environmentalists, is definitely worth paying attention to, however, as they present a perfect example of why viewing such vast and complex problems as peak oil or global warming as standalone issues is so dangerous. Once again, blind men, meet the elephant.

Thanks to Kory Sorrell for the e-mail and permission to reproduce it.

[1] I note, with a mixture of resignation and horror, that in this week’s elections everyone’s favorite Senator, James “global warming is the greatest hoax in the history of mankind” Inhofe of Oklahoma, was returned to office via 56.7% of the popular vote.

[2] Regulation and legislation fall under economics, as the cost of violating the law and being caught and punished offsets all or part of the gains from cheating.

UN says warming threatens fish stocks:

Major world commercial fish stocks could collapse within decades as global warming compounds damage from pollution and overfishing, U.N. officials said Friday.
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A U.N. Environment Program report details new research on how rising ocean surface temperature and other climate changes are affecting the fishing industry. It says that more than 2.6 billion people get most of their protein from fish.

“You overlay all of this and you are potentially putting a death nail in the coffin of the world fisheries,” Achim Steiner, head of the program, said in a telephone news conference from Monaco.

The research sheds new light on an undersea flushing mechanism that helps renew fish stocks in three-quarters of the world’s primary commercial fishing grounds. Report author Christian Nellemann said global warming is disrupting this circulation.

“If this mechanism stops, we may risk a collapse in major fishing grounds” in the coming decades, he said.

Although threats to fish supplies from pollution and overfishing have been well-documented, Nellemann said this was the first time the combined effect of those problems and changing temperatures has been closely studied.

“We are seeing shifts in marine life that we have never observed before,” he said.

The UNEP report is available from their web site here. Links on that page provide access to the report and related, high-res graphics.

I suspect that when I talk about public policy on this site, I lose about half the readers. Think of it as the online equivalent of the old publishing axiom that every equation in a book intended for a mainstream audience cuts the readership by 50%. It’s an exaggeration, but not nearly as much of one as we would hope.

Anyway.

A couple of items related to public policy popped up recently.

The first is that Senator Clinton released her energy plan. You can find it on the energy page of her campaign site, or download it directly here (16 page, 90KB PDF).

Allow me to crib the summary posted by Joe Romm over on ClimateProgress (emphasis added):

• A new cap-and-trade program that auctions 100 percent of permits alongside investments to move us on the path towards energy independence;
• An aggressive comprehensive energy efficiency agenda to reduce electricity consumption 20 percent from projected levels by 2020 by changing the way utilities do business, catalyzing a green building industry, enacting strict appliance efficiency standards, and phasing out incandescent light bulbs;
• A $50 billion Strategic Energy Fund, paid for in part by oil companies, to fund investments in alternative energy. The SEF will finance one-third of the $150 billon ten-year investment in a new energy future contained in this plan;
• Doubling of federal investment in basic energy research, including funding for an ARPA-E, a new research agency modeled on the successful Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
• Aggressive action to transition our economy toward renewable energy sources, with renewables generating 25 percent of electricity by 2030 and with 60 billion gallons of home-grown biofuels available for cars and trucks by 2030;
• 10 “Smart Grid City” partnerships to prove the advanced capabilities of smart grid and other advanced demand-reduction technologies, as well as new investment in plug-in hybrid vehicle technologies;
• An increase in fuel efficiency standards to 55 miles per gallon by 2030, and $20 billion of “Green Vehicle Bonds” to help U.S. automakers retool their plants to meet the standards;
• A plan to catalyze a thriving green building industry by investing in green collar jobs and helping to modernize and retrofit 20 million low-income homes to make them more energy efficient;
• A new “Connie Mae” program to make it easier for low and middle-income Americans to buy green homes and invest in green home improvements;
• A requirement that all publicly traded companies report financial risks due to climate change in annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission; and
• Creation of a “National Energy Council” within the White House to ensure implementation of the plan across the Executive Branch.
• A requirement that all federal buildings designed after January 20, 2009 will be zero emissions buildings.

To start with the easy stuff, the increased R&D funding is a no brainer. I’m happy to see it, but anyone beyond a high school level of understanding of our situation knows this has to happen.

Cutting electricity use 20% by 2020 is a pretty decent goal, but I’m not bowled over.

55MPG and 60 billion gallons of liquid biofuels by 2030 sound very aggressive, but are they really? If the electrification of transportation happens at anywhere near the rate most people studying this expect, then both of those numbers will be moot in 23 years. Our new vehicles will get far more than 55 miles per gallon of liquid fuel, simply because they’ll be using ridiculously little liquid fuel. And 60 billion gallons of biofuels won’t be a big deal because we won’t need that much liquid fuel in 2030. The US uses about 140 billion gallons of motor fuel per year now, and I would be surprised if we’re using 60 billion gallons/year in 2030 after 20 years of adding ever increasing numbers of vehicles to the mix that depend on electricity for some or all of their energy needs. Anyone who thinks that Bill is the only Clinton with political smarts and a command of the policy issues should now go directly to the back of the class.

The Smart Grid City is another no brainer, albeit one with a spectacularly bad name. Again, the future of transportation is electrons, and we need to design, fund, and build the infrastructure to support that as soon as possible.

After reading Senator Clinton’s plan, the obvious question is: Do we see Al Gore’s hand in this? And to be even more pointed, do we see evidence here of a deal to keep Al out of the 2008 race? Frankly, I don’t much care. I’ve long ago concluded that unless there’s something completely unexpected, like a deadlocked convention, Al Gore simply won’t be running–he has far too much he can do for the environment, without the endless political limitations and hassles that come with being a sitting president. If he had a hand in formulating this policy, that’s fine. I doubt it happened that way, as I’ve heard all the public reports that Al and Hill aren’t exactly BFF’s.

The bottom line is that this is clearly a plan that recognizes the issues the US is facing, and seems to be leaning hard in the right direction. I was particularly happy to see the emphasis in the plan on efficiency (can’t use that nasty word “conservation” with Americans, so “efficiency” will have to do, just as “achieving oil independence” has to substitute for “saving our ass from peak oil”), and the opposition to new nuclear power subsidies.

The other item of interest also comes from Joe Romm’s site, The Political Climate is Changing, Part I:

Why is the political climate heating up? The candidates’ polls may be showing that voters have reached the proverbial “tipping point” on the issue. For example, a poll conducted last July by Yale University, Gallup and the ClearVision Institute registered some startling numbers that haven’t received enough public attention. Among its findings:

• 71% of respondents are personally convinced that global warming is happening;
• 69% believe global warming is caused at least in part by human activity;
• 48% believe that climate change already is having dangerous impacts on people;
• 68% of Americans favor an international treaty that requires the U.S. to cut its carbon dioxide emissions 90% by 2050;
• 85% support a higher CAFÉ standard, even if it raises the price of a new car by $500; and
• 75% of respondents said the presidential candidates’ position on global warming will be a factor in deciding whom to vote for.

My initial reaction was, “It’s about freakin’ time, people!”

My secondary reaction was, “Can a peak oil guy get some love around here? We’ve got more than one problem, ya know.”

The real value here, of course, is that nothing, and I mean not one thing, will alter public policy quicker on the e+e front than a shift in the views of voters. The actions of the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave aside, politicians do care what voters think, so getting the voters on board is critical.

The shape of things to come?:

Adapting to the impacts of climate change will be a painful process for people around the world. Adapting our homes and habits to the floods, droughts, storms, rising sea levels and hotter summers it heralds will mean giving up things we care about and the places we love. This year’s UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports show that rising global temperatures will alter the geography of where we live, whether it is in cities, flood plains or the coast. How and where the next generation will move is a major issue for international governments, even if they don’t know it yet.

…

A British child born today will be 50 on bonfire night, 2057. What will life be like for our 50-year-old citizen? Here is a plausible scenario:

Summer top temperatures will be around 38C (100F), winters will be shorter and floods more frequent. To combat the latter, the government will have already controlled where people live through the planning process. Houses, businesses and land already in risky areas will also have lost value because insurance companies will have withdrawn protection. People will simply choose not to live in risky areas. But climate change will still, as now, retain the ability to spring unforeseen weather surprises.

See the article for more detail, particularly the 2057 scenario.

This article highlights the main reason I get so angry with the “but global warming will mean more crops in some areas and fewer deaths from cold” morons. Of course every single effect of global warming won’t be bad–only a complete fool would see the world that way. Short of a global catastrophe, like a strike from an immense meteorite, there will always be localized benefits, even when the overall effect is overwhelmingly negative.

My point in bringing this up, and the source of my frustration with such pronouncements, is that the cost of adapting to the likely global warming effects–drought, floods, rising sea levels, increased severity of tropical storms–will far outstrip what many people are assuming.

Just to focus the discussion, take the example of thermoelectric electricity generation. We’ve seen numerous examples in the last few years of coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants having to reduce their electricity output because of low and/or too hot water supplies from rivers. What happens when these effects are enhanced by continued global warming? Not only are we facing extreme pressure to reduce CO2 emissions in new and existing electricity generation, but we also have to contend with this new threat to the production from old plants, including nuclear facilities. Will this result in a big push for low-water generating technologies (wind, solar, wave, tidal, and geothermal)? And how much more expensive will this additional factor make electricity in the next ten, twenty, fifty or more years?

On the broadest level, how do we protect or move the billions of people living in a drought-sensitive area or in low-lying coastal areas? If we can’t protect them in-place, which I suspect will be true for many, then where and how do we move them?

And what will we tell our kids and grandkids when they ask us what the hell we were thinking when we caused this mess?

Is the ocean carbon sink sinking?:

The past few weeks and years have seen a bushel of papers finding that the natural world, in particular perhaps the ocean, is getting fed up with absorbing our CO2. There are uncertainties and caveats associated with each study, but taken as a whole, they provide convincing evidence that the hypothesized carbon cycle positive feedback has begun.

Of the new carbon released to the atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion and deforestation, some remains in the atmosphere, while some is taken up into the land biosphere (in places other than those which are being cut) and into the ocean. The natural uptake has been taking up more than half of the carbon emission. If changing climate were to cause the natural world to slow down its carbon uptake, or even begin to release carbon, that would exacerbate the climate forcing from fossil fuels: a positive feedback.

The ocean has a tendency to take up more carbon as the CO2 concentration in the air rises, because of Henry’s Law, which states that in equilibrium, more in the air means more dissolved in the water. Stratification of the waters in the ocean, due to warming at the surface for example, tends to oppose CO2 invasion, by slowing the rate of replenishing surface waters by deep waters which haven’t taken up fossil fuel CO2 yet.

…

One factor that might be changing the pressure of CO2 coming from the sea surface might be the warming surface waters, because CO2 becomes less soluble as the temperature rises. But that ain’t it, as it turns out. The surface ocean is warming in their data, except for the two most tropical regions, but the amount of warming can only explain a small fraction of the CO2 pressure change. The culprit is not in hand exactly, but is described as some change in ocean circulation, caused maybe by stratification or by the North Atlantic Oscillation, bringing a different crop of water to the surface. At any event, the decrease in ocean uptake in the North Atlantic is convincing. It’s real, all right.

…

The warming at the end of the last ice age was prompted by changes in Earth’s orbit around the sun, but it was greatly amplified by the rising CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. The orbits pushed on ice sheets, which pushed on climate. The climate changes triggered a strong positive carbon cycle feedback which is, yes, still poorly understood.

Now industrial activity is pushing on atmospheric CO2 directly. The question is when and how strongly the carbon cycle will push back.

Once more: The more we learn about climate science, the more we understand just how urgent our situation is.

One key point that the deniers consistently overlook is in the end of the quoted text above: This time, it’s different. Before we started this immense, inadvertent experiment in geo-engineering, the interplay of system components was different. Warming caused CO2 caused more warming. This time, we have CO2 causing warming which will inevitably (possibly now) cause more CO2 and accelerated warming via a feedback loop.

See the article for more technical detail.

Drought tightens grip on Southeast (emphasis added):

If there’s a ground zero for the epic drought that’s tightening its grip on the South, it’s once-mighty Lake Lanier, the Atlanta water source that’s now a relative puddle surrounded by acres of dusty red clay.

Tall measuring sticks once covered by a dozen feet of water stand bone dry. “No Diving” signs rise from rocks 25 feet from the water. Crowds of boaters have been replaced by men with metal detectors searching the arid lake bed for lost treasure.

…

But little rain is in the forecast, and without it climatologists say the water source for more than 3 million people could run dry in just 90 days.

That dire prediction has some towns considering more drastic measures than mere lawn-watering bans, including mandatory rationing that would penalize homeowners and businesses if they don’t reduce water usage.

“We’re way beyond limiting outdoor water use. We’re talking about indoor water use,” said Jeff Knight, an environmental engineer for the college town of Athens, 60 miles northeast of Atlanta, which is preparing a last-ditch rationing program as its reservoir dries up.

Please go see the original article for the full text and especially the photos.

I have to admit that the magnitude of the problem in the southeast US caught me by surprise. Sure, I’ve mentioned the drought conditions there and in the US west, but it was only recently that I realized there was much more to this than just one of those “wacky weather stories” the mainstream press loves.

I’ve only been to Atlanta once, and that was over 20 years ago, to visit some relatives in a ‘burb called Dunwoody. But thinking back to that visit, I can’t imagine what would happen if a city of that size literally ran out of fresh water. And as bad as it is this year, the long-term prediction is for a dry winter, making next year an even worse nightmare.

Honestly, I don’t know how government officials cope with this. How hard do you come down in people who waste water? And what do you do if it looks like you’re down to just a couple of weeks, and not the 90 days, mentioned in the article before the water runs out? Do you evacuate hospitals? Do you order the mandatory shutdown of businesses and schools? What kind of plans can you possibly put into place to deal with the situation if the water runs out? How can you possibly truck in enough water to keep a city of that size functioning?

I sometimes joke on this site about how I’m very happy not to be the person dealing with some public policy mess. In this case, I’m definitely not joking–I’d be terrified of making a bad decision with that much at stake and causing human suffering because of some unforeseen detail.