The US Global Change Research Program just released Volume II of the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4-II) last month. Per its authors, NCA4-II was written:
“… to help inform decision-makers, utility and natural resource managers, public health officials, emergency planners, and other stakeholders by providing a thorough examination of the effects of climate change on the United States…. It analyzes trends in climate change, both human-induced and natural, and projects major trends to the end of this century. Projected changes in temperature, precipitation patterns, sea level rise, and other climate outcomes are based on a range of scenarios widely used in the climate research community, referred to as Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs).”
Note that the report’s projections are based on a range of scenarios, from manageable to hellish. Unfortunately, news stories on NCA4-II tended to focus on the hellish, worst-case scenario of extreme warming (RCP8.5) and minimal adaptation to climate change. Hence, headlines like Climate change will have dire consequences for US, federal report concludes. In previous posts (here, here, and here), I concluded the worst-case scenario considered in NCA4-II is highly unlikely because it would require a reversal of current socioeconomic, mitigation, and adaptation trends. So shame on CNN, Vox, and the rest for their misleading articles.
And, no, fearmongering doesn’t help the greater cause of combating climate change. In fact, fearmongering can backfire by further alienating skeptics (who see right through the exaggerations) and triggering unproductive despair in others. Plus, you don’t motivate people by screaming the world is going to end unless we take radical action now*. You motivate people by generating doable ideas about how to make things better.
In that spirit, the remainder of this series will consist of brief excerpts from NCA4-II on existing or proposed adaptations to the effects of climate change. Without further ado…
One approach is to focus on better managing variability, which is likely the dominant source of operational uncertainty for many water systems… New York City, for example, altered existing operational guidelines to implement adaptive reservoir operations based on current hydrologic conditions to better meet new concerns for ecological flow requirements in addition to water supply goals.
The International Joint Commission adopted a new operating plan for Upper Great Lakes water levels; the plan is based on the ability to provide acceptable performance, as defined by stakeholders, over thousands of possible future climates. The plan includes forecast-based operations and a funded adaptive management process linking observatories and information systems to water-release decisions to address unanticipated change.
Chapter 4: Energy Supply, Delivery, and Demand
The energy sector is undergoing a transformation driven by technology, markets, and policies that will change the sector’s vulnerability to extreme weather and climate hazards. …These changes offer the opportunity to diversify the energy generation portfolio and require planning for operation and reliability of power generation, transmission, and delivery to maximize the positive effects and avoid unintended consequences.
For example, natural gas generation generally improves electric system flexibility and reliability, as gas-fired power plants can quickly ramp output up and down…The flexible dispatch of gas generation can partially address the intermittency introduced by wide-scale deployment of solar and wind generation…
In addition, the growing adoption of energy efficiency programs, demand response programs, transmission capacity increases, and microgrids with energy storage technologies is enhancing system flexibility, reliability, and resilience.
Next: Chapter 7: Ecosystems, Ecosystem Services, and Biodiversity
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* For an excellent discussion of how the sense of urgency can lead to bad policies, see: Riahi, K., E. Kriegler, et al. (2015). "Locked into Copenhagen pledges — Implications of short-term emission targets for the cost and feasibility of long-term climate goals." Technological Forecasting and Social Change 90: 8-23.