The environment in the news friday, 2 November, 2012

Lauren Morello, E&E reporter Greenwire: Wednesday, October 31, 2012

For many, reports of Hurricane Sandy's massive reach and destructive potential raised a simple question with a complex answer: Is this climate change?

The answer, experts say, is a qualified "yes."

Late-season hurricanes like Sandy aren't unusual. That the hurricane melded with a blast of Arctic air as it moved ashore, transforming into a powerful "post-tropical" nor'easter, is rare but not unprecedented. And scientists are quick to point out that they cannot yet definitively link an individual storm, like Sandy, to climate change.

But Kevin Trenberth, head of the climate analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said it is likely that man-made global warming made Sandy stronger than it otherwise would have been.

Ocean temperatures along the East Coast were roughly 5 degrees Fahrenheit above normal as Sandy approached, and about 1 degree of that can be attributed to global warming, Trenberth said. Warmer ocean temperatures mean warmer air, which holds more moisture as it heats up, providing more energy for a storm like Sandy.

"With higher temperatures in the ocean and warmer air, the potential for the storm is simply to be greater, more intense, with especially heavier rainfall as a consequence," Trenberth said. "This, I think, is very clear. There is the role of global warming in this."

Jonathan Overpeck, co-director of the University of Arizona Institute of the Environment, agreed, as the debate over climate change's influence on Sandy heated up on Twitter on Monday night.

"Can't say [man-made climate change] caused it, but hard to imagine it didn't influence it & its impacts," Overpeck wrote. In addition to warmer seas and warmer, moister air adding fuel to storms like Sandy, he noted, sea level has also risen "significantly."

Several recent analyses have concluded that a huge swath of the East Coast is a sea-level rise hot spot. Seas from Cape Hatteras, N.C., to Boston are rising three to four times faster than the global average, according to one study published this summer in Nature Climate Change.

By the end of the century, that could add 7 to 12 inches of sea-level rise within the hot spot by 2100, on top of the 1 meter, or roughly 3.3 feet, that many scientists project will occur globally by 2100.

"Average sea-level rise over the 20th century was 1.8 millimeters per year," said Ken Miller, a geologist at Rutgers University. "Today, it's 3.2 millimeters per year. It certainly is accelerating. The question now is what's it going to do over the next 50 to 100 years."

Many scientists believe seas could rise another foot by 2050, Miller said, a change that is probably enough to turn a one-in-100-year storm to a one-in-20- or one-in-30-year storm in coastal New Jersey.

For low-lying beach communities, a matter of inches can mean the difference between overtopped dunes or levees and escaping a storm relatively unscathed.

"One of the most devastating aspects of this storm was surge," said J. Marshall Shepherd, a University of Georgia atmospheric scientist and president-elect of the American Meteorological Society. "As sea level continues to rise, whenever we get a storm like this -- or even a garden-variety storm -- we are going to see more damage."

The challenge now for communities in Sandy's path will be adapting to what New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) called a "new reality."

"There has been a series of extreme weather incidents. That is not a political statement; that is a factual statement," Cuomo told reporters yesterday. "Anyone who says there's not a dramatic change in weather patterns, I think, is denying reality."

In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie (R) pledged to rebuild coastal communities, including the state's barrier islands, that were damaged as Sandy churned ashore, ripping out the boardwalk in the resort town of Seaside Heights and swamping low-lying Atlantic City.

"We'll rebuild it," he told reporters after a helicopter tour of the damage yesterday, the Asbury Park Press said. "No question in our mind, we'll rebuild it. But for those who are my age, it will be different."

A 'disconnect' between scientists and policymakers

For Shepherd, one of the "hidden stories" in Sandy's wake is the age of New York City's major infrastructure, including the sprawling subway system that links the five boroughs, which remains closed today as officials struggle to assess flood damage.

"Some of that infrastructure is not built for the storms of the future," Shepherd said. "For a lot of infrastructure in cities, they do engineering studies based on rainfall. But as our climate is changing, studies show it rains more and more intensely, we're seeing sea-level rise, and if we get stronger storms, our infrastructure is not built for them."

David Groves, a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corp., said that Sandy, like Hurricane Katrina before it, has exposed vulnerabilities that scientists were keenly aware of but may have surprised some coastal residents and government officials.

"The disconnect that exists is between scientists saying, 'This could happen,' and policymakers saying this is a high-enough priority to spend a lot of attention and resources on," Groves said. "It's always a challenge with things that don't happen very often and things that are devastating when they do."

Louisiana's devastating experience with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 prompted the state to begin working on a new 50-year plan to stabilize its coastline, which is vulnerable to the combined effects of sea-level rise, storm surge and land that is slowly sinking.

One of the keys for the effort, which Groves has advised, has been finding a way to talk about climate change's impacts without turning off those who doubt climate change exists.

"Louisiana is not known for being on the forefront of climate change adaptation planning," he said. "Early drafts of the master plan were actually silent on the term 'climate change.' We addressed climate change factors, but it wasn't central to the story -- even though it was in the analysis. I think it was important that people realized that this is a problem, and an issue that could be exacerbated by climate change, but the problem is still there."

Evan Lehmann, E&E reporter

Published: Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Sandy, the 1,000-mile-wide hurricane that ripped off roofs, flooded coastlines and poured salt water into the New York subway system, cost an estimated $30 billion. It is fueling questions in the insurance industry about the nation's response to its growing problem of expensive weather catastrophes.

It was the second storm in as many years to strike the East Coast with enough force to rank it among the 10 most damaging disasters in the nation's history, roughly matching the price of Hurricane Irene in 2011.

With a grim partnership operating between full-moon tides and storm-driven ocean water, Sandy plowed her way through a great deal of public and private infrastructure.

The impact on insurers is estimated at $5 billion to $10 billion, with government, businesses and uninsured homeowners shouldering as much as $10 billion to $20 billion, according to Eqecat, a firm that develops computer models used by insurers to assess catastrophe risk.

That puts Sandy in the company of devastating hurricanes Ivan ($16.7 billion in economic losses), Charley ($17.9 billion), Wilma ($18.6 billion) and Ike ($28.4 billion).

All of them are among the most expensive events to strike the United States. And they have all occurred since 2004, with Hurricane Katrina being the costliest catastrophe to ever hit the nation at an overall price of $145 billion in 2005.

That presence of cyclones combined with growing damage from tornadoes, thunderstorms, drought and flooding is raising the cost of insurance and challenging the budgets of public programs -- from emergency funding to federal flood insurance.

Sandy "reaffirms that large-scale catastrophe losses are becoming more frequent and are perhaps being distributed across larger areas of the U.S.," said Robert Hartwig, president and chief economist of the Insurance Information Institute. "The distribution of multibillion-dollar events seems to be expanding."

The rising toll from catastrophes and the resulting climb of insurance rates are driving a public debate about how to provide protection at an affordable price.

Supporters of legislation for a federal reinsurance program, as proposed by Democratic Rep. Albio Sires, whose New Jersey district was hit by Hurricane Sandy, will likely point to the storm as an argument for greater public involvement in protection.

States can buy reinsurance from the Treasury Department under Sires' legislation that, supporters say, would allow Washington to reduce the payout of emergency funding while providing disaster insurance that is more affordable and stable than the private alternative.

"Our country needs a long-term, self-sustaining solution to prepare and recover from these luckily rare, but catastrophic events," Sires said last month, noting Hurricane Irene's impact.

But the R Street Institute, a free-market think tank, says that outcome would ensure that "the impacts of the next Sandy would be even greater."

Should risk-prone construction be discouraged?

The group, which counts environmental organizations as allies, believes that a large federal catastrophe insurance program could encourage development in areas prone to hurricanes and other risks. Indeed, insurers point to the rapid rise of buildings in exposed areas as a key reason behind the climbing costs of disasters.

"The federal government should not be subsidizing environmentally destructive development or encouraging people to live in harm's way," said R Street President Eli Lehrer in a statement.

Instead, Lehrer suggests that Congress use the Coastal Barrier Resources Act of 1982 as a template for reducing damage. The law prohibits federal funding of roads, wastewater systems and other infrastructure along 3.1 million acres of coastal land. Lehrer noted that New Jersey's barrier islands were built up before the law was passed.

"The images we've all seen of the coastal barrier destruction caused by Hurricane Sandy make abundantly clear precisely what the law was created to avoid," Lehrer said.

While some scientists say it is difficult to blame climate change for producing specific storms, warmer temperatures are contributing to rising sea levels, heavier rain and, perhaps, an intensification of the most severe hurricanes.

Sandy represents an escalation in a trend of more extreme weather, said Cynthia McHale, director of the insurance program at Ceres, a group of institutional investors that want action on climate change.

How to promote storm resiliency

The group says it is not enough for insurers to just raise prices, which can discourage people from living in risky places. Ceres is urging the industry, one of the world's richest, to help states and communities develop smarter land-use policies that prevent construction in disaster-prone areas.

"We want them to be really engaged in the whole resiliency effort," McHale said of insurers.

If the pace of construction in floodplains is reduced, that might cool the rise of damage related to disasters, supporters say. Many in the insurance industry point to densely located assets as a primary reason for those climbing costs, and to climate change as a smaller risk.

"If there's an increase in the [weather] extremes, it may be related to natural cycles or because of some influence of the anthropogenic" factor, said Annes Haseemkunju, a meteorologist with Eqecat, the modeling firm. "But there's not really any real conclusion on that."

Other industry members disagree with that sentiment. Munich Reinsurance, for example, issued a report this month that encourages the industry to begin pricing for climate change risks in its insurance lines.

Sandy will also showcase the cost of disasters on taxpayers. The federal government issued emergency declarations for all the states struck by the storm, making disaster victims eligible for grants and low-interest loans. The federal government will likely spend billions more repairing roads and other infrastructure, including New York City's subway system, which was seriously flooded for the first time.

"The insured losses are going to be relatively small compared to [federal] cleanup costs," said Shahid Hamid, a hurricane finance expert at Florida International University. "That's where the real costs will be."

Originally published October 29, 2012.

GIRDWOOD, Alaska -- The Yup'ik Eskimo people of Alaska's St. Lawrence Island, a 90-mile-long piece of land in the middle of the Bering Sea, are at a crossroads in their long history.

For 2,000 years, they've lived on the island, a remnant of the Bering land bridge that once linked Asia and North America. As the world came to their doorstep, the residents of Savoonga and Gambell maintained a subsistence lifestyle focused on harvesting whale and walrus while adapting to the changes around them.

This summer, they witnessed the next chapter in Alaska's saga as Royal Dutch Shell's drilling ships navigated past their lands on the way to the oil fields of America's Arctic waters.

Now, as oil development begins in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, the people of St. Lawrence Island, like other Natives throughout Alaska, are seeking an increased voice in the federal and state plans for their future.

Savoonga resident George Noongwook, chairman of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, warned that new oil development in the Arctic could raise "life-and-death issues" for his people.

An oil spill or shipping accident could scare away migrating marine mammals and pollute local waters, making it difficult to continue subsistence hunting of bowhead whales and walrus. Hunting is a multifamily activity that serves as the villages' cultural anchor and provides 80 percent of the food they eat.

"Many of the risks of Arctic development are risks that could destroy our livelihoods and end our way of life forever," Noongwook, a Native musician and author, said this summer at the Arctic Imperative Summit in Girdwood.

But with the Western cash economy taking on greater importance in Alaska's Native villages, an increasing number of community leaders support Arctic oil development and construction of new coastal ports. They're counting on the businesses to provide local revenue and jobs.

North Slope Borough Mayor Charlotte Brower, a no-nonsense Inupiat Eskimo, grandmother and wife of a Barrow whaling captain, is among the Native leaders dismissing calls by Greenpeace and other environmental groups to turn the Arctic into a wildlife preserve.

"A healthy economy and a healthy ecology go hand in hand together like bread and water and the marine mammals and the sea," she said at the Girdwood conference. "If you think economic development is an environmental problem, try poverty."

As oil exploration, global warming and increased ship traffic begin to change the American Arctic, Alaska's Native people are adamant that future development must achieve an important balance between their cultural traditions and the benefits of the modern world.

Brower said the Native people are fighting for "a seat at the table in Arctic planning, a fair and stable share of the revenues generated from the development, and development that finds ways to support the culture and communities of the North Slope."

Native leaders are demanding increased local control at a time when Alaska is undergoing dramatic changes that will forever alter life in the rural communities.

In July, the Coast Guard set up its first summerlong operations in Barrow, the nation's northernmost town, to assess future national security, search-and-rescue and pollution control needs in the region. Now the Coast Guard is considering a more permanent presence in the Alaska North.

In late summer, Shell began the first new oil drilling in U.S. Arctic waters in more than two decades. The operation marked an important first step for the company, which invested more than $4.5 billion and faced repeated legal and regulatory setbacks. But Shell never gained the federal permits needed to sink wells into its oil reserves in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas because of nagging equipment problems.

Edward Itta, former mayor of the North Slope Borough, warns that if the energy companies focused on the Arctic uncover a huge oil field, Alaska's coastal communities could face an industry stampede that would bring new people and new problems to the villages.

"If they find those billions and billions of barrels of oil and gas, the whole thing changes," he said at the conference.

The oil exploration is occurring at a time when Alaska's ice conditions are undergoing a striking transformation. This summer, the North Pole sea ice melted to the smallest level ever recorded. Scientists said the September ice extent was nearly 20 percent smaller than a previous record set in 2007.

The Arctic's increasingly open waters are attracting long-haul shippers and tourism traffic to the region.

For the last century, Alaska's Native people were often ignored by federal officials who built military outposts and companies that extracted gold, oil and other mineral resources from the region. Today, however, Native leaders are forcing Shell, the Coast Guard and other outsiders to rewrite the rule books on operating in the Arctic.

"We as Inupiats want to control our own destiny," Itta said. "We want to be the ones who decide how far we go with this. We as a people want to dictate what economic opportunities are there for us."

That sentiment was echoed by people from Native communities all along Alaska's north and west coasts.

"The bottom line is how can our communities benefit," former Alaska Rep. Reggie Joule (D) said in an interview in Kotzebue, a village of 3,000 people located along Alaska's western shores.

"How can our people benefit? Where can we get the jobs? How can we develop our human resources as we develop the other resources?"

Kotzebue, Nome and a half-dozen other coastal towns are actively courting investors and government agencies to help them build deepwater ports to serve the growth in shipping, oil industry traffic and the military.

Several Native corporations are seizing the opportunity to earn money from the oil companies. The Olgoonik Native Corp., which is owned by the Native residents of Wainwright, is providing oil field services for Shell, ConocoPhillips and Statoil as the companies plan for offshore oil development.

Olgoonik Chairman Hugh Patkotak, who also works as a pilot for the North Slope Borough, said that with Shell beginning drilling 60 miles from Wainwright's shores, the corporation has a unique business opportunity.

"The corporation's mission, our very reason for existence, is to be profitable in order to return value to our shareholders," he said at the conference. "To fulfill that mission, we must continue to adapt to changing times and circumstance."

Land vs. sea

Alaska's Native communities have long had a love-hate relationship with the federal government, and those tensions continue today as the two sides negotiate the future of Arctic oil development.

Much of the friction is focused on the 200 million acres of Alaska -- more than half the landmass of the entire state -- that are managed by the Interior Department and the Forest Service. Federal regulators not only oversee the national park and forest lands, but also set the ground rules for oil and gas drilling in federal waters.

Itta recalled that when he was mayor of the North Slope Borough, federal regulators dismissed the Eskimos' demands that oil companies in the Beaufort Sea stop operations during the bowhead whale hunting season.

To force the Interior Department to recognize their needs, angry Native leaders worked with national environmental groups to oppose Shell's oil exploration plans. The resulting court battles delayed the company's drilling plans for two years.

Eventually, Shell agreed to suspend oil exploration during the fall whale season. But Interior has yet to adopt regulations requiring other oil companies to follow suit.

Inupiat leaders say that before offshore oil drilling begins, the federal government should open land-based oil development in northern Alaska, particularly in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

However, ANWR oil development has been repeatedly blocked by national environmental groups seeking to preserve the region's remote ecosystem. Those groups side with the Gwich'in Natives who live south of the refuge and fear that drilling would endanger the porcupine caribou herds that migrate through the region.

The North Slope leaders are also critical of Interior's recent proposal to limit oil leasing in Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve. They warn that the management plan is overly restrictive and could block construction of a pipeline from the Chukchi Sea to the Trans-Alaska pipeline.

Environmentalists praise the plan, which they say would protect important wildlife areas. The proposal would allow oil and gas leasing on roughly half the 22.5 million acres, while setting aside roughly 13 million acres as special management protection areas (E&ENews PM, Aug. 13).

But as oil drilling begins in the Arctic, some Native leaders continue to call for additional environmental protections. At the Arctic Imperative Summit, Itta recommended that the federal government bar drilling in parts of offshore Alaska.

"If you want to sustain the culture, you have to give the health of the whale and its habitat equal priority over oil and gas activities," Itta said. "This means probably putting significant protective status on chunks of the Beaufort and Chukchi sea."

He called on the Interior Department to craft new oil industry regulations specifically designed for the Arctic's unforgiving, icy conditions. "You can't just take the Gulf of Mexico standards that are all tropical in nature, tweak them up a little bit and send them up North and say that'll do," he said. "I urge real-life tests for oil spill containment in the Arctic in ice-infested waters."