A follow-up to yesterday

Two more dispatches from the front lines.

- From USA Today for Tuesday:

Global warming could cause dramatically hotter summers and a depleted snow pack in California, leading to a sharp increase in heat-related deaths and jeopardizing the water supply, according to a study released Monday. ...

The researchers used computer models they said illustrate the consequences of doing nothing, or adopting "relatively aggressive" policies such as the greater use of renewable energy sources rather than fossil fuels.

California can avoid the worst effects by quickly cutting how much carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases are released into the atmosphere, the scientists said. ...

Under the most optimistic computer model, periods of extreme heat would quadruple in Los Angeles by the end of the century, killing two to three times more people than in heat waves today; the Sierra Nevada snow pack would decline by 30% to 70%; and alpine forests would shrink 50% to 75%.

The most pessimistic model projects five to seven times as many heat-related deaths in Los Angeles, with six to eight times as many heat waves. Snow pack and high altitude forests would shrink up to 90%. ...

Among other predictions, the report says spring melt-off will come earlier, increasing the risk of flooding and decreasing how much snow-melt could be captured in reservoirs. The state will rely more on increasingly scarce groundwater, even as droughts become more frequent and more severe.

- From the BBC for Wednesday:

Europeans must learn how to live with a changing climate as well as seeking to limit its effects by cutting emissions, the European Environment Agency says.

An EEA report, Impacts of Europe's changing climate, says fewer than 50 years remain to act against the threat. ...

The EEA says the climate change under way now probably exceeds all natural climate variation for a thousand years. ...

It says the 2003 heatwave caused melting which reduced the mass of the Alpine glaciers by 10%, and harvests in many southern countries were down by as much as 30%.

The European Union says the world should act to try to prevent temperatures rising more than 2C above their 1990 level, an increase which it regards as the highest sustainable level.

The report says: "On present trends this target is likely to be exceeded around 2050."

The EEA's executive director, Professor Jacqueline McGlade, said: "This report pulls together a wealth of evidence that climate change is already happening and having widespread impacts, many of them with substantial economic costs, on people and ecosystems across Europe.

"Europe has to continue to lead worldwide efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but this report also underlines that strategies are needed, at European, regional, national and local level, to adapt to climate change." ...

"What the report shows is that, if we go on as we are, we have less than 50 years before we encounter conditions which will be uncharted and potentially hazardous."

The report says:

- by 2050, about 75% of the glaciers in the Swiss Alps will probably have disappeared
- at sea, there has been a northward shift of zooplankton species over the last 30 years by up to 1,000 km (625 miles)
- projections suggest annual river discharge will decline strongly in southern and south-eastern Europe, but increase almost everywhere in the north and north-east of the continent
- cases of encephalitis carried by ticks, and associated with a warming climate, increased from 1980 to 1995 in the Baltic region and central Europe, and remain high.

The report says human activities have raised the atmospheric concentration of one of the main greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, to 34% above its pre-industrial level.

To achieve the EU's goal of limiting the temperature rise to 2C by 2100, it says, global greenhouse emissions "need to be reduced substantially".

But it says: "Due to ongoing emissions of greenhouse gases, the observed rise in global temperature is expected to continue and increase during the 21st Century."

The EEA underlines the very long time it would take to slow the rate of climate change, because of the longevity of many gases.

It says: "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.

"Even if society substantially reduces its emissions of greenhouse gases over the coming decades, the climate system would continue to change over the coming centuries."

In other words, it probably is, as others have warned, too late to avert the damaging effects of our own screwing with the climate. The only question now is how severe that damage will be and how we can minimize it and if possible adapt to the rest.

Footnote, Unintentional Humor Dept.: Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the right-wing Competitive Enterprise Institute, called the report on California's future "another piece of climate alarmism."

He and Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, questioned the reliability of the computer models, and said the report fails to account for human ingenuity and adaptability.

In other words, the study is unreliable because it doesn't adopt the wingnuts' "Don't Worry, Be Happy" school of science and assume the development of some unknown, unforeseen technological means that will magically make everything all right. Maybe it should have also considered the possibility that Elizabeth Montgomery will suddenly emerge from the grave and wrinkle her nose at us.