Raised climate change is now seeping into the daily lives of Americans with dangers “already widespread and worsening across every region of the United States,” says a massive new government report.
The National Climate Assessment, released every four to five years, was released Tuesday with details that bring climate change impacts down to the local level.
Unveiling the report at the White House, President Joe Biden blasted Republican lawmakers and their predecessors for disputing global warming.
“Anyone who deliberately denies the effects of climate change is condemning the American people to a very dangerous future. The effects will only get worse, more frequent, more violent and more expensive,” Biden said, noting that disasters cost the nation $178 billion last year. “None of this is inevitable.”
Overall, Tuesday’s assessment paints a picture of a country that is warming about 60% faster than the world as a whole, a country that is often hit by costly weather disasters and faces even bigger problems in the future.
Since 1970, the Lower 48 states have warmed by 2.5 degrees (1.4 degrees Celsius) and Alaska has warmed by 4.2 degrees (2.3 degrees Celsius), compared to a global average of 1.7 degrees (0.9 degrees Celsius), the report said. But what people really feel is not the average, but when the weather is extreme.
Gilda Jackson walks in a hay field on her property in Paradise, Texas, Aug. 21, 2023.AP
With heat waves, droughts, wildfires and heavy rains, “we’re seeing an acceleration of the effects of climate change in the United States,” said study co-author Zeke Hausfather of technology companies Stripe and Berkeley Earth.
And that’s not healthy.
Climate change is “harming the physical, mental, spiritual, and community health and well-being through increased frequency and intensity of extreme events, increased cases of infectious and vector-borne diseases, and decreased quality and safety of food and water,” the report said.
Compared to previous national assessments, this year’s uses much stronger language and “blatantly” blames the burning of coal, oil and gas for climate change.
A person carries sandbags through water as heavy rain causes flooded streets in Hoboken, NJ, on September 29, 2023.AP
The 37-chapter assessment includes an interactive atlas that zooms to the district level.
It found that climate change affects the safety, health and livelihoods of people in every corner of the country in different ways, with minorities and Native American communities often disproportionately at risk.
In Alaska, which is warming two to three times faster than the global average, shrinking snowpack, shrinking glaciers, melting permafrost, acidifying oceans and disappearing sea ice have affected everything from the state’s growing season, to hunting and fishing, with projections raising questions about whether some Aboriginal communities will need to be relocated.
The Southwest is experiencing more drought and extreme heat — including 31 straight days this summer when Phoenix’s daily high temperature reached or exceeded 110 degrees — reducing water supplies and increasing the risk of wildfires.
A barge moves on the Mississippi River, Nov. 8. 2023, near Cairo, Ill. AP
Northeast cities are seeing more extreme heat, flooding and poor air quality, as well as risks to infrastructure, while droughts and floods exacerbated by climate change threaten agriculture and ecosystems in rural areas.
In the Midwest, both extreme drought and flooding threaten crops and animal production, which could affect the global food supply.
In the northern Great Plains, extreme weather such as droughts and floods, as well as dwindling water resources, threaten an economy that depends largely on crops, cattle, energy production and recreation. Meanwhile, water shortages in the southern Great Plains are expected to worsen, while high temperatures are expected to break records in all three states by mid-century.
In the Southeast, minority communities and Native Americans — who may live in areas with higher exposure to extreme heat, pollution and flooding — have fewer resources to prepare for or escape the effects of climate change.
Heat waves envelope two women as they cross the street on July 17, 2023, in downtown Phoenix. AP
In the Northwest, warmer days and nights with less cooling have resulted in drier river flows and less snowpack, leading to increased risk of drought and wildfires. Climate disturbances have also brought damaging extreme rains.
Hawaii and other Pacific islands, as well as the US Caribbean, are increasingly vulnerable to extreme droughts and heavy rains as well as sea-level rise and natural disasters as temperatures warm.
The United States will warm in the future about 40% more than the world as a whole, the assessment says. The AP calculates, using other people’s global projections, that means America will be about 3.8 degrees (2.1 degrees Celsius) warmer by the end of the century.
Warmer average temperatures mean more extreme weather.
Pulling a sled with a container of fuel in the lagoon, Joe Eningowuk, 62, left, and his 7-year-old grandson, Isaiah Kakoona, headed to their boat through shallow water.AP
“The news is bad, but it’s not surprising either,” said Waleed Abdalati of the University of Colorado, a former NASA chief scientist who was not part of this report. “What we are seeing is a manifestation of the changes expected over the last few decades.”
The 2,200-page report comes after five consecutive months in which the world set monthly and daily heat records. It comes as the US has set a record with 25 different weather disasters this year that caused at least $1 billion in damage.
“Climate change has finally moved from an abstract future issue to a current, concrete and relevant issue. It’s happening now,” said the report’s lead author Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy and a professor at Texas Tech University. Five years ago, when the last assessment was released, fewer people were experiencing climate change directly.
This year’s survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that.
A structure is engulfed in flames as the so-called Highland Fire burns in Aguanga, Calif., Oct. 30. 2023.AP
In September, about 9 in 10 Americans (87%) said they had experienced at least one extreme weather event in the past five years — drought, extreme heat, severe storms, wildfires or floods. That’s up from 79% who said that in April.
Hayhoe said there was also a new emphasis in assessment on marginalized communities.
“It’s not a question … of what hits where, but more of a matter of who and how well that person can manage the impact,” said Abdalati of the University of Colorado, who saw many of his neighborhoods destroyed in the 2021 Marshall wildfires.
Biden administration officials emphasized that all is not lost and the report details actions to reduce emissions and adapt to what’s to come.
By cleaning up industries, the way electricity is produced and the way transport is powered, climate change can be dramatically reduced. Hausfather said when emissions stop, warming stops, “so we can stop this acceleration if we as a society get our act together.”
But some scientists say some of those assessments are too optimistic.
“The report’s graphic and bright outlook obscures the impending danger,” said Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson. “We’re not prepared for what’s coming.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
