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Sustainable Stow Climate Change 14 Apr 2021
- The way climate change is affecting wild life right now in our area
- Joy Marzoff — the Joy of Nature
- Www.thejoysofnature.com
- MA is leading the way
- Climate Change
- Long term change, different than weather
- 2020 was the warmest year on record
- 2016 second highest
- 2019 third highest
- 10 of the last 10 years, have been the hottest on record and 19 of the last 20
- 130 degrees in Death Valley this year!
- Climate Science in 4 pictures
- Heat-trapping blanket
- Regular versus rampant carbon dioxide
- Oceans = climate’s heart
- Osteoporosis of the sea
- Sightline Institute as a good source
- Blanket of greenhouse gases
- Carbon dioxide, methane, CFC’s, etc
- Future conditions depend on our actions today
- Today’s choices
- File sources for power, transportation, and industry
- Land development
- Emission scenarios
- Future impacts
- More hot days
- Increased extreme precipitation
- Greater amounts of sea level rise
- Methane leakage from natural gas operations (stats from Environmental Defense Fund and PNAS)
- 59% natural gas production
- 8% processing
- 20% transmission and storage
- 13% local distribution
- Methane hot spots
- US 2020 Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters
- How many billion dollar weather events per year? Getting higher each year
- Wind, flooding, fires, cyclones, hurricanes, tornadoes
- Last 5 years: total cost in US $600B
- 5 year annual cost average $121B
- Last 10 years: $890B (135 events)
- Last 15 year: 1.04T (173 events)
- $80B in wildfires in 2020. 3.2 million acres were burned.
- Extreme weather in MA
- 20 tornadoes in 2019 in CT!
- Nearly 2 dozen in 2018
- Other trends:
- Too much or not enough water
- More hot days in summer / more dry days
- Warmer winters (change in snowfall vs rainfall
- Later / wetter spring
- Nor’easters increasing in frequency?
- The fires exploding in Oregon and Washington were unprecedent. Not typical for ares of the NW w/ temperate rain forests
- Smoke even made it to MA!
- Droughts around the world: Australia and S. Africa
- Last 2 years were hottest on record
- The dam cracked due to fires. They ran out of water!
- MA
- Parts of MA already in drought!
- As recently as Apr 6 — abnormally dry (this is normally a wet month)
- 2021 was 4th driest first half of March on record (1915 was #1)
- Dried up vernal pools seem to be decreasing amphibian and good insect populations
- Warmer winters — affecting our trees
- Warmer weather is shifting composition of our forests
- Current: spruce/fir, maple, beech, birch
- Over time, northern hardwoods will lose advantage
- more poison ivy! (More plants, longer growing season, stronger chemicals due to more carbon dioxide)
- Screws up hibernation
- Changing seasons around the world
- Netherlands — change in caterpillar hatching times affects migratory birds
- 0ver 14M acres of spruce killed by bark beetles
- Pine beetles impacting trees in US
- changing climate affect wild life
- Shifting precipitation, total amounts, intensify
- All causes changes in forest quality, understory, insect numbers, and fire patterns
- Birds and insect hatching getting out of sync
- Migration schedules getting messed up
- Great book: Walden Warming
- Growing season is longer, but so is ragweed
- Forsythia leaf-out is earlier this year
- More fungus diseases on animals and plants around us
- Sea Level Rise
- Warming causes land and sea ice to melt and sea water to expand
- Sea levels rising
- annual temperatures in Alaska getting warming
- Sea level in boston expected to rise by 7 inches to 1 foot 6 by 2050
- Most of MIT might be under water!
- Oceans = climate’s heart
- World’s ocean circulate heat and moisture
- Marine wild life impact
- Coral bleaching
- Ocean acidification
- Local marine life — lobsters getting disease and/or moving away
- Reduced calcium buildup for shells, clams, oysters
- More carbon and more fresh water dumping into ocean increases acidification
- Food chain disruption
- What can we do?
- Pluggable hybrid cars
- Solar panels
- Energy efficient heat pump systems
- Rain barrels (for watering the yard!)
- Efficient shower heads
- Eat less meat, more veggies
- Eat local when possible
- Waste less food - nearly 1/3 of all food in US is wasted, single biggest component of land fills
- compost!!!
- Reduce your use of plastics made from fossil fuels (reusable cloth bags)
- Loe.org article on Carbon fridges that produce HFC’s
- Join local land trusts
- Local community efforts like Sustainable Stow