Washington Post article on climate change

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On the Move to Outrun Climate Change

Self-Preservation Forcing Wild Species, Businesses, Planning Officials to Act

By Blaine Harden and t Eilperin

Washington Post Staff Writers

Sunday, November 26, 2006; A03

SEATTLE -- As the Bush administration debates much of the world about

what to do about global warming, butterflies and ski-lift operators,

polar bears and hydroelectric planners are on the move.

In their separate ways, wild creatures, business executives and

regional planners are responding to climate changes that are rapidly

recalibrating their chances for survival, for profit and for effective

delivery of public services.

Butterflies are voting with their wings, abandoning southern Europe

and flying north to the more amenable climes of Finland. Ski-lift

operators in the West are lobbying for leases on federal land higher

up in the Rockies, trying to outclimb snowlines that creep steadily

upward.

Polar bears along Hudson Bay are losing weight and declining in number

as the ice shelf melts and their feeding season shrinks. Power

planners in the Pacific Northwest, which gets three-quarters of its

electricity from hydroelectric dams, are meeting in brainstorming

sessions and making contingency plans for early snow melts, increased

wintertime rainfall, lower summertime river flows and electricity

shortfalls during hotter, drier summers.

With the issue of a warming planet shifting rapidly from scientific

projection to on-the-ground reality, animals and plants are being

compelled, along with businesses and bureaucracies, to take action

aimed at self-preservation. They are doing so even as the Bush

administration eschews regulations, laws or international treaties

that would require limits on carbon dioxide emissions, which

scientists say are the main cause of global warming.

A newly published synthesis of 866 peer-reviewed studies of the effect

of climate change on wild plants and animals has found what its

author, Camille Parmesan, an assistant professor of integrative

biology at the University of Texas at Austin, describes as a " clear,

globally coherent conclusion. "

Flora and fauna are migrating north or climbing to higher ground if

they can, said Parmesan, whose paper appears in the December issue of

the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics. If they

cannot move, she said, their numbers are often declining, their health

is getting worse, and some are disappearing altogether.

" Wild species don't care who is in the White House, " Parmesan said.

" It is very obvious they are desperately trying to move to respond to

the changing climate. Some are succeeding. But for the ones that are

already at the mountaintop or at the poles, there is no place for them

to go. They are the ones that are going extinct. "

Among the most affected species, Parmesan said, are highland

amphibians in the tropics. She said more than two-thirds of 110

species of harlequin frogs, which occupy mountain cloud forests in

Central America, have become extinct in the past 35 years.

Meanwhile, many pest species -- including roaches, fleas, ticks and

tree-killing beetles -- are surviving warming winters in increasing

numbers. " We are seeing throughout the Northern Hemisphere that pests

are able to have more generations per year, which allows them to

increase their numbers without being killed off by cold winter

temperatures, " said Parmesan.

Federal scientists say that the first six months of this year were the

warmest on record in the United States and that the five warmest years

over the past century have occurred since 1998. In her review of

studies measuring the impact of climate change on wild plants and

animals, Parmesan said this " sudden increase " in temperatures appears

to have been a tipping point, triggering substantial responses from a

broad range of species.

" The magnitude of impacts is so overwhelming that many biologists are

now calling this the single most important problem they need to work

on, " said Parmesan. " You can save all the habitat you want, but if it

is not any good climatically, what is the point? "

Though President Bush has said that human activity has contributed to

climate change, he has consistently rejected the idea of imposing

mandatory curbs on carbon dioxide emissions.

In an interview shortly after this month's congressional elections,

L. Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on

Environmental Quality, said the country would be better off setting a

voluntary goal -- such as increasing the use of renewable fuels --

than dictating industrial greenhouse-gas emission levels.

" Setting a reasonably ambitious target and then exceeding it is a good

way to make reasonable progress, " Connaughton said.

The Bush administration has outlined a strategic plan that calls for

developing technology that would reduce carbon dioxide pollution. It

now spends $3 billion a year on energy research and development. But

when adjusted for inflation, this money is a fraction of what the

federal government spent in the past. Researchers such as Reuel

Shinnar and Francesco Citro, two chemical engineers at the Clean Fuels

Institute at the City College of New York, estimate the country would

have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year to make the

transition to a carbon-free society.

From the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Northwest, the effects of

global warming -- along with the responses of animals, people,

businesses and bureaucracies -- are being woven into the fabric of

everyday life.

On Cape Sable, on the far southwestern edge of Florida, boaters,

sportsmen and scientists have watched as a rising sea level has

transformed a freshwater marsh into a portion of the sea.

Where there had been saw grass, the distinctive vegetation of the

Everglades, there are now mangrove trees, which thrive in salt water

and open water. Redfish inhabit areas that once had been wetland. The

endangered bird named after the area, the Cape Sable seaside sparrow,

has fled northward.

Using historic photos and tidal gauge records, University of Miami

professor Harold Wanless, chairman of the geology department, has

studied the changes. Between the sinking of the land and the rise of

the seas since the 1930s, the relative water level has risen nine

inches, he said.

" Freshwater marshes on Cape Sable are now evolving into more or less

open marine waters, " he said. " We're not talking about global warming

as something that will happen in the future. Its happening right now.

All the king's horses and all the king's men won't be able to put Cape

Sable together again. "

In the high country of western Montana, ski resort manager Tom Maclay

is trying to outrun climate change by persuading the U.S. Forest

Service to lease 12,000 acres across Carlton Ridge and Lolo Peak. The

land, which lies above property he owns, would allow his resort to

reach a top elevation of 9,100 feet.

Maclay is well aware how climate change is transforming his business

and how nearby resorts have suffered from a lack of snow in recent

years. At nearby Glacier National Park, the U.S. Geological Survey

quantifies the change, noting that there has been a 73 percent decline

since 1850 in the area of the park covered by glaciers. Many smaller

glaciers are now gone, it says, and larger ones have shrunk by about

two-thirds.

Maclay and his resort's chief executive, Jim Gill, are negotiating

with snowmaking manufacturers who are asking for tens of millions of

dollars for their services.

" Now with the snowline creeping up the hill, it's tougher and tougher

for the areas that are struggling at the margins to keep their base

areas full of snow, " Gill said. " If you don't have a good snowmaking

operation, you're not going to be able to compete. "

In the Pacific Northwest, which depends far more on hydroelectricity

than any region of the country, research findings on global warming

from the University of Washington's Climate Impacts Group have

prompted utilities, federal agencies and regional planning groups to

convene brainstorming sessions in the past year.

They are looking at possible ways of mitigating power shortages as the

summer flows of the region's rivers decline -- a result of less snow

in the mountains and early melt.

For decades, the Pacific Northwest has had a surplus of power to send

south to California during hot summer months. But if Northwest rivers

run low as summers get hotter, the region could end up competing with

California for power, said Fazio, a senior power systems analyst

for the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, a regional planning

group.

" More and more, global warming is becoming a serious part of the

planning process, " said Fazio.

Eilperin reported from Missoula, Mont. Staff writer Whoriskey in

Miami contributed to this report.