Climate Report & Sea Levels (Part One)

Beaches, backyards, backwoods… a report says climate change is already affecting us.
This is The Environment Report. I’m Lester Graham.
Scientists say the effects of human-caused climate change can no longer be ignored. Their findings are part of a national report just released. Sadie Babit reports it outlines the current and future impacts of climate change in the U.S.



The U.S. Global Change Research Program’s report summarizes what scientists have been finding. As temperatures warm, sea levels are rising, crop production is changing and hurricanes are getting worse. Katherine Hayhoe is one of the report’s authors. She says we all need to curb greenhouse gas emissions and learn to adapt.

KATHERINE1: (So we need to figure out how to best prepare for the change that is coming.”) 5 sec

The report comes out while Congress is considering a major bill that would cap greenhouse gas emissions and reduce them over time. But Hayhoe says the timing is just a coincidence.

KATHERINE2:

Hayhoe says she does hope the report helps inform the debate in Washington.


(((STING)))
It's beach weather – and along the mid-Atlantic one of the most popular beaches is Ocean City, Maryland. For years engineers have been battling back the ocean to save the beach and the town. And as Tamara Keith reports, that fight is only going to get tougher and more expensive if predictions of sea level rise from climate change become a reality.

When the sea level rises – Ocean City feels it. It's on the front lines – a barrier island on the edge of the Atlantic.
AMB: water sounds.
Terry McGean is the city engineer for a town he describes as a working class resort.
ACT: Our industry is tourism, and the real reason people come here is the beach.
But in the 1980s, that beach was reduced to a narrow strip. Not so today, all thanks to a massive...and expensive...beach replenishment project. In 1991 countless tons of sand were brought in, dunes were built. But that wasn't the end of it.
To keep up with erosion, McGean says the beach here at Ocean City has already been renourished 4 times.
ACT: Approximately every 4 years we're doing a renourishment project. To give you an idea of the scale, that's 100,000 truck loads of material that we'll put on here. (T) Though it doesn't actually come on a truck? No. It's pumped in a dredge from out in the ocean.
It is a constant fight, because the waves keep coming, keep pulling the sand back out to sea. Scientists say this is partially just normal erosion. But some of it at least can be blamed on global climate change and sea level rise. Over time, they say, the share of the problem caused by climate change will grow.
(T) If you hadn't done the beach replenishment do you have any sense of what this would look like right now. There probably would have been no public beach left in many of these areas.

So far fending off the sea has cost 90-million dollars split amongst local, state and federal tax dollars. But engineers estimate some 240-million dollars in storm damage has been prevented.
ACT: Holding back the sea is an economic proposition. If you're willing to spend the money, the sand exists to elevate any given barrier island.
Jim Titus is the project manager for sea level rise at the Environmental Protection Agency. And he's been sounding the alarm about climate change for years. And he says policy makers and the public will eventually have to decide which beaches, which communities are worth saving.
ACT: The challenge for communities like ocean city is to persuade everyone else that they are one of those cities that are too important to give up. And then to get their residents to cooperate in doing what it takes to do to gradually elevate the entire community with a rising sea.
But if you think in geologic time like University of Maryland professor Michael Kearney does, there isn't a whole lot of hope for barrier islands like Ocean City.
ACT: It's essentially a pile of sand. There's really nothing permanent about it.
Kearney studies coastal processees.
ACT: The long term prospect of any barrier surviving the projected rates of sea level rise, even at the moderate rates – the so-called moderate rates, that the IPCC predicted is pretty slim.
Ocean City engineer Terry McGean just isn't buy it. He thinks Ocean City can survive sea level rise.
ACT: I think that we can design towards it and we can probably build towards it and with responsible actions we can live with it.
As long as there's enough sand and money to keep it going.
A little denial there. Kinda reminds me of the farmer whose mule died. The old guy scratched his head and said “Huh. Never did that before.”
That’s The Environment Report. I’m Lester Graham.