[MCN] Climate and the redistribution of life on earth

Sun Jul 18 21:09:13 EDT 2021

Can we talk about local solutions?  

Can the Missoula and Bozeman City Councils pass an ordinance that requires all new homes to have solar panels or be part of a community solar or wind project?  If people can afford to buy a new place in Missoula or Boz Angeles, why can’t they roll the cost of solar panels into the cost of the house?

John Meyer
Executive Director & General Counsel 
Cottonwood Environmental Law Center
P.O. Box 412 Bozeman, MT 59771
John at Cottonwoodlaw.org
(406) 546-0149

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> On Jul 18, 2021, at 6:36 PM, Lance Olsen via Missoula-Community-News <missoula-community-news at bigskynet.org> wrote:
> 
> First, these 3 timely tidbits on life in drier times
> 
> 
> D2 - Severe Drought
> Grazing land is inadequate
> Fire season is longer, with high burn intensity, dry fuels, and large fire spatial extent
> Trees are stressed; plants increase reproductive mechanisms; wildlife diseases increase
> 
> D3 - Extreme Drought
> Livestock need expensive supplemental feed; cattle and horses are sold; little pasture remains; fruit trees bud early; producers begin irrigating in the winter
> Fire season lasts year-round; fires occur in typically wet parts of state; burn bans are implemented
> Water is inadequate for agriculture, wildlife, and urban needs; reservoirs are extremely low; hydropower is restricted
> 
> 
> D4 - Exceptional Drought
> Fields are left fallow; orchards are removed; vegetable yields are low; honey harvest is small
> Fire season is very costly; number of fires and area burned are extensive
> Fish rescue and relocation begins; pine beetle infestation occurs; forest mortality is high; wetlands dry up; survival of native plants and animals is low; fewer wildflowers bloom; wildlife death is widespread; algae blooms appear
> 
> Found at : 
> https://www.drought.gov/topics/snow-drought
> 
> 
> ——————————————————————————————————————————
> 
> Now the main course 
> 
> 2006 :
> “Climate change is not a new topic in biology ..... Observations of range shifts in parallel with climate change ... date back to the mid-1700s.”
> 
> “This review  …  deals exclusively with observed responses of wild biological species and systems ….  “
> 
> "A surprising result is the high proportion of species responding to recent, relatively mild climate change (global average warming of 0.6 C)." 
> 
> Parmesan, Camille. Ecological and Evolutionary Responses to Recent Climate Change. The Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics  2006. 37: pp. 637–69. 
> 
> ***************************************************************
> 
> 2006 :
> "Conservationists must therefore assess both current and future distributions of species.”
> 
> Araújo and Rahbek. How does climate change affect biodiversity? Science 2006).
> 
> ***************************************************************
> 
> 2007 :
> “Climate has long been identified as a primary control on the geographic distribution of plants (Forman 1964, Box 1981). Therefore, plant species may be expected to exhibit marked redistributions in response to climate change." 
> 
> "…. In addition, species are expected to be redistributed independently, forming new forest types with unique species combinations (Webb 1992, Williams et al. 2004).”
> 
> McKenney et al. Potential Impacts of Climate Change on the Distribution of North American Trees. 
> Bioscience  2007
> 
> ***************************************************************
> 
> 2011 :
> “Using a meta-analysis, we estimated that the distributions of species have recently shifted to higher elevations at a median rate of 11.0 meters per decade, and to higher latitudes at a median rate of 16.9 kilometers per decade. These rates are approximately two and three times faster than previously reported”
> 
> Chen et al. Rapid Range Shifts of Species Associated with High Levels of Climate Warming. Science 2011
>  
> ***************************************************************
> 
> 2013 
> “The rate of warming implies …  range shifts of up to several kilometers per year, raising the prospect of daunting challenges for ecosystems …”
> 
> Diffenbaugh and Field. Changes in Ecologically Critical Terrestrial Climate Conditions. Science. 2013
> 
> ***************************************************************
> 
> 2015: 
> "If you are an organization that has focused on conserving particular species in a particular place, as many of today's conservation organizations are, then something has to give—either you need to change your business model or revisit your conservation priorities. And neither is going to be easy for some of these groups," said Paul Armsworth, lead author and associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.
> 
> Full release:
> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150302105334.htm
> 
> ***************************************************************
> 
> 2015:
> “Serious thresholds are crossed when forests convert to vegetation types without trees... ”
>  
> Constance I. Millar and Nathan L. Stephenson. 
> Temperate forest health in an era of emerging megadisturbance. Science  21 August 2015
> 
> ***************************************************************
> 
> 2016:
> “We contend that traditional approaches to forest conservation and management will be inadequate ... in the 21st century. New approaches ... acknowledge that change is inevitable and sometimes irreversible, and that maintenance of ecosystem services depends in part on novel ecosystems, i.e., species combinations with no analog in the past.”
> 
> Golladay et al. Achievable future conditions as a framework for guiding forest conservation and management. Forest Ecology and Management . 2016
> 
> ***************************************************************
> 
> 2017:
> 
> “Human society has yet to appreciate the implications of unprecedented species redistribution for life on Earth …. Even if greenhouse gas emissions stopped today, the responses required in human systems to adapt to the most serious effects of climate-driven species redistribution would be massive.”
>  
> Pecl et al. 2017. Biodiversity redistribution under climate change: Impacts on ecosystems and human well-being. Science. 31 March 2017
> 
> ***************************************************************
> 
> 2018:  
> “Our results indicate that terrestrial ecosystems are highly sensitive to temperature change and suggest that, without major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, terrestrial ecosystems worldwide are at risk of major transformation.”
> 
> Nolan et al. Past and future global transformation of terrestrial ecosystems under climate change. 
> Science 31 August 2018 
> 
> ***************************************************************
> 
> 2021:
> “Plan direction, which emphasizes ecological integrity and resilience, will be critical to minimizing the undesirable effects of these increasing and interacting stressors. Nevertheless, managers and the public should expect climate change to drive profound and often surprising changes on ecosystem structure, function, and composition in the coming decades.”
> 
> Here, the US Forest Service achieves a realistic public disclosure of climate risk, but it’s buried 173 pages deep, in Volume 1, Final Environmental Impact Statement for the 2020 Land Management Plan Custer Gallatin National Forest, Montana <<https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fseprd763586.pdf>>
> 
> **************
> 
> Greta Thunberg boils the basics down to just 5 words: “… and it will get worse”
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhQVustYV24
> 
> 
> She knows it will get worse because climate scientists had made the same point; e.g., ….
> 
> 
> Camilo Mora: “ ….  our choices for deadly heat are now between more of it or a lot more of it.”
> https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1161/circoutcomes.117.004233
> 
> Michael Mann: ““A new normal makes it sound like we have arrived in a new position, and that's where we're going to be. But if we continue to burn fossil fuels ... we are going to ... get worse and worse droughts, and heat waves, and super storms, and floods, and wildfires.”
> https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/climate-change-is-making-wildfires-more-extreme-heres-how
> 
> Kate Marvel: “The whole idea that everything’s going to work out isn’t really helpful because it isn’t going to work out ” said Kate Marvel a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Climate change is going to worsen to a point where millions of lives, homes, and species are put at risk she said. 
> https://newrepublic.com/article/151608/case-against-climate-pessimism
> 
> My own view: <<https://mountainjournal.org/why-rising-temps-mean-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it>>
> 
> -----------------
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