Small Midwestern States To Be Hit Hardest By Climate Change: Report

The politics of climate change are difficult in the Senate, it's often said, because it's a regional issue: coal state senators are afraid their economies will be driven under if the price of dirty energy rises too quickly.

Climate change is, in fact, a regional issue, but not in the short-term way that the coal senators think, according to new analysis from The Nature Conservancy. The environmental group finds that rural Midwestern states will face the greatest consequences of climate change. The three that will face the steepest rise in temperature -- Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa -- are farm states whose soil will be significantly less productive as temperatures rise more than 10 degrees Fahrenheit there by 2100.

The rise by by 2050 -- only 41 years from now -- is also projected to be substantial. (Click here for an interactive map of the analysis.)

The two Republican senators from Kansas, which will be most ravaged by climate change, are unlikely to support legislation addressing it.

Sen. Sam Brownback, who is retiring from the Senate but continues to have statewide ambitions, has said that humanity has a religious imperative to reduce climate emissions, but he has also signed on to the "No Climate Tax Pledge" being pushed by Americans for Prosperity, which opposes climate change legislation. The pledge says that Brownback will "oppose legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue" -- which means any of the plans currently being considered.

Sen. Pat Roberts will also be a difficult vote for advocates to score.

In Nebraska, Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson often works to pull legislation in a more conservative direction and Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) isn't clamoring to support taking action to address climate change. Nelson signed a letter in June, along with nine other Democrats concentrated in the Midwest, saying he couldn't support the current version of the bill and outlining principles that would need to be met to get his vote.

Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the state that will face the third worst catastrophe, will be a key player on the Finance Committee, which hopes to claim jurisdiction over the distribution of the revenue that will be raised through a cap and trade system. His Democratic counterpart, Sen. Tom Harkin, is a much more likely yes vote.

The consequences to these farm states will be far reaching. As droughts become more common, their soil and climate will begin to look more like their neighbors' to the south in Texas and Mexico.

The ten-degree rise in temperature in the three states assumes that carbon emissions will continue their rate of increase. If the world's population somehow manages to reverse greenhouse gas emissions, the temperature is still expected to rise more than three degrees, which would still devastate those states' economies. A study released Thursday by Columbia University adds further concern about the viability of soybeans, corn and cotton -- the expected temperature rise over the next century from even a slow warming scenario could decrease crop yields by 30 to 46 percent.

"To many, climate change doesn't seem real until it affects them, in their backyards," said Jonathan Hoekstra, director of climate change for The Nature Conservancy. "In many states across the country, the weather and landscapes could be nearly unrecognizable in 100 years."

Ryan Grim is the author of This Is Your Country On Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America

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Comments

[Richard2]

10:38 AM on 09/13/2009

In other news, NOAA has just announced that for the June-August 2009 period, the weather in the upper midwest was either "Much Below Normal" or "Below Normal." Temperatures were down in the middle part of the country this year.

[RomeoMD25]

10:55 AM on 09/10/2009

Goldman Sachs to be carbon regulator?

So does this mean that freebooting Goldman Sachs could be the de facto regulator of the carbon market?

As the global warming bubble inflates and then bursts, will Goldman
Sachs self-regulate all the way to the bank… making record profits at the expense and misery of taxpayers and consumers

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the principal gas that trees and other plants need to survive, just like oxygen (O2) is the principal gas
that humans and other animals require.
Trees absorb CO2 and release O2-- animals inhale O2 and exhale CO2. See how nice this all works!

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is not to be confused with its poisonous evil cousin carbon monoxide (CO), which can kill humans and
animals in just a few minutes. Life as we know it could not exist without carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.

[Richard2]

06:51 PM on 09/09/2009

States hit hardest by Global Warming since 1998?

None. There is no evidence for a Global Warming impact since 1998.

Mean sea level in San Francisco Bay: see NOAA San Francisco and Alameda stations. Mean sea level in New York: see NOAA tide stations in New York state.

It would be nice if articles like this would simply say, "Midwest states might be hit harder" than others, if global warming occurs. The authors can't guarantee the warming is going to occur. Also, it hasn't occurred since the 1990s.

[RomeoMD25]

04:27 PM on 09/09/2009

There has been a change in direction by global warming alarmists, as shown by “Synthesis Report—Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges & Decisions,” published in Copenhagen and released in June.

In that report, those claiming there is a human-induced global warming crisis have abandoned air temperature as a measure of global climate and switched to ocean temperature.
The change in focus from air temperature to ocean temperature was predictable given the sustained decline in global air temperature over recent years.

The new report claims ocean temperatures are rising, and fast.

ANOTHER LIE!!

* According to Argo temperature measurements, the world’s oceans have shown a slight cooling since Argo became operational in 2003.

* The Argo data contradict claims humans are causing rapid global warming, because ocean temperatures are not rising as fast as predicted by global warming alarmists.

[RomeoMD25]

04:03 PM on 09/09/2009

The National Aeronautic and Space Agency (NASA) has determined Mars, Pluto, Jupiter, and the largest moon of Neptune warmed at the same time the Earth recently warmed.

Two hundred million years ago, when dinosaurs walked the Earth, the average carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere was 1800 ppm, five times higher than today.

All four major global temperature-tracking outlets (Hadley UK, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, University of Alabama-Huntsville, and Remote Sensing Systems Santa Rosa) have released updated information showing in 2007 global cooling ranged from 0.65 degrees C to 0.75 degrees C, a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. This occurred in a single year.

NASA satellites measuring global temperatures found 2008 to be the coldest year since 2000 and the 14th coldest of the past 30 years.

[RAStewart]

11:24 PM on 09/01/2009

It's funny how the climate-change deniers seem to be concentrated in the parts of the country that stand to be hardest hit by climate change. (Not so much ha-ha funny as stick-your-head-in-the-oven funny, you understand.)

Here's another irony to contemplate (and sorry, I'm focusing less on the Midwest here): It's been proposed, plausibly I think, that a big factor in the postwar growth of the South and Southwest has been air conditioning. It's easier to contemplate moving your family or your company to Atlanta, Houston, or Phoenix if you know you'll be able to sleep and work comfortably through all those months of temperatures in the 90s and 100s. Turn up the heat five or ten degrees, making it that much harder and more expensive to cool off the house, the SUV, and the office park, and I think you'll see the equation shift, and a lot of those individuals and businesses move back north. The people left behind may find themselves hot, sweaty, poor ... and no longer dominating American culture and politics.

Not much comfort in that, though, as the rest of the country will be in pretty bad shape by then.

[streamfortyseven]

05:12 PM on 09/05/2009

People were living in Atlanta 100 years before air conditioning became widespread in the 1960s. By the time that soil temps in Kansas go up by 10F, ninety years from now, peak oil will be a reality, and mechanized agriculture will be a thing of the past, unless someone figures out how to make a steam tractor, again. The Oglalla aquifer in Western Kansas and Nebraska, at present rates of irrigation and recharge, will be either used up or the water will be so saline or sulfate-contaminated as to be valueless in growing crops. Western Kansas and Nebraska will revert to grassland, suitable for raising cattle, but probably not grain and certainly not corn or beans. As for the rest of the state, it'll have the climate that North Texas has now. It'll still be possible to grow food, it's just that the kind of food will be different. If the change were to happen in 10 years, it would be catastrophic, because humans can't readily adapt that fast. 40 years is almost 2 generations, and people will adapt.

[RomeoMD25]

04:10 PM on 09/09/2009

The world's best meteorologists using the most advanced computers cannot predict local weather two weeks in the future.
So how can global warming proponents predict the entire world's climate 50 or 100 years in the future?

The answer is that they can't.

less than 2/1,000 of all CO2 is produced by human activity. So even if we wiped out every car,
power plant, jet liner, and human being from the face of the earth, there would be no noticeable effect on global CO2 levels.

The most important greenhouse gas by far is water vapor, which evaporates from oceans, lakes and rivers.
Water vapor accounts for up to 90% of the earth's greenhouse effect.

[fumes]

09:04 AM on 09/01/2009

~ I WAS WRONG ~

venus is not just like earth! http://www.physorg.com/news111240909.html

just once i'd love to hear a gloom-and-doomer admit this!

[ReedYoung]

12:36 AM on 09/02/2009

Then admit it, gloom-and-doomer, because it is you who's wrong.

quote:
The observed regional changes in south polar ice cover are almost certainly due to a regional climate transition, not a global phenomenon, and are demonstrably unrelated to external forcing. There is a slight irony in people rushing to claim that the glacier changes on Mars are a sure sign of global warming, while not being swayed by the much more persuasive analogous phenomena here on Earth…
/quote
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/10/global-warming-on-mars/

[fumes]

11:13 AM on 09/02/2009

yo reedyoung..

1) who said anything about mars??

2) and i'm not the gloom & doomer silly.. remember what side you're on!

3) and i thought you didn't go down rabbit holes.. you stay outside and call othersjachass

[Stephen Wahls]

12:01 AM on 09/01/2009

When our scientist can intervene in the affects of a small problem like a hurricane and make a positive and good change to its effects then is when we need to look at global climate not before otherwise we are just pissin in the wind.

[ReedYoung]

01:37 AM on 09/01/2009

That's silly. Hurricanes are more sudden, and strike with less warning than global warming caused by industrial carbon dioxide pollution, which was first hypothesized over 100 years ago and proven -- among all real scientists, corporate sellouts don't count -- around 1950 - 1960. I could lecture you until I'm blue in the face and you're asleep with boredom or quivering with rage, depending on your temperament, about nonlinear dynamics and predictability of phenomena, to try to prove to you that the inability to predict weather is irrelevant to the ability to predict climate, but if you won't read the following, by the American Institute of Physics, you're just not open to reason. Please, just read this from beginning to end before you make any more ignorant remarks about "pissin" in the wind or anywhere else. Anthropogenic global warming is proven. The science is settled. If you refuse to educate yourself that's all your fault.

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

[RomeoMD25]

04:06 PM on 09/09/2009

The overall polar bear population has increased from about 5,000 in the 1960s
to 25,000 today, and the only two subpopulations in decline are in areas where it has been getting colder over the past 50 years. Polar bears have survived long periods of time when the Arctic was much warmer than today. Yet alarmists say the bears cannot survive this present warming without help from government regulators.

[ReedYoung]

11:48 PM on 08/31/2009

My first reaction to this was "It serves them right!" Anybody else?

The problem with that, besides it's mean and absolves the Senators and House Representatives of any *leadership* responsibilities, is that they grow our food. Well, largely our junk food, but that's another story. The states that will be worst affected by global warming are important to industrial agriculture, and therefore to society. Even if you eat only locally grown organic food, this will pose an inconvenience that will be hard to ignore even if it is indirect. Somehow, we will have to reason with the people who keep electing the Archer Daniels Midland members of Congress.

[linaya]

03:08 AM on 09/01/2009

What do you know about the midwest to say something like "serves them right". People in the Midwest are honest and hardworking. Of course there are farmers in the midwest but there are also farmers in the South, in the West, and in CA for pete's sake. Drop your biases! People from every damn state in the country elect crappy people!

[ReedYoung]

03:26 AM on 09/01/2009

I think more *corn* is grown in the Midwest than in any other region of the United States, and I will readily admit to having a bit of bias against corn, sugar and fuel subsidies. Sorry about that last sentence of my previous comment, but I don't see any movement from midwestern states to ensure that your representatives aren't voting for bad national policies while they pander to Archer Daniels Midland for campaign fund bribes. On the contrary, I see otherwise good men, Dorgan and Durbin, pressured by corporate sponsors to keep wasting money and carbon dioxide on corn ethanol, and little or no pressure from their constituents to be rational on energy and environment.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=grass-makes-better-ethanol-than-corn

You seem nice. Please, don't waste your time taking me personally. I will absolutely not make any effort to be diplomatic. The stakes are much too high to pull any punches.

You can see from the next couple pages of this thread, or by reviewing the comments in my profile, I'm not here to make friends. I'm here to expose stupid and destructive policies and political trends. Lumping people together by their representatives' worst voting habits is convenient for that purpose. Annoying a couple people is an unfortunate side effect that I'm willing to accept.

[ThoughtfulTom]

09:13 PM on 08/31/2009

Wow. Are there really people still denying climate change? Do you believe in gravity?

A better solution for global warming is www.capanddividend.org

Check it out.

Tom

[Stephen Wahls]

11:54 PM on 08/31/2009

You would be foolish to deny climate change. You would be a fool to believe the scientist have climate mapped and are knowledgeable enough to do something intelligent about it.

[ThoughtfulTom]

02:25 AM on 09/01/2009

D-d-did ya read the link?

See a conversation involves people exchanging ideas - not you yammering your standard response regardless of input. No matter how many times you say if you can't predict the weather you can' t predict climate, there will still be folks accurately predicting climate (and gosh darn it, they keep getting it wrong - they have consistently understated the amount of warming and the devastation it is bringing).

Your response should somehow indicate having visited www.capanddividend.org

thanks,
Tom

[Donn Hunter]

04:06 PM on 08/31/2009

There is no doubt that global warming is occurring. I don't know if man can really do anything to change global warming. Perhaps we should be trying to prepare for the changes coming. At one time there was no ice year round in the arctic. There were no glaciers in Greenland. Greenland was green when first discovered by the Norsemen before the ice age. At the heighth of the ice age, ice covered much of America, perhaps as much of 3/4 in the mid west.
So again, maybe we should be trying to get prepared for the change rather than just debating the cause.

[mioffe]

04:17 PM on 08/31/2009

If you remember Katrina, when we need to evacuate around 1,000,000 people and all problems with that how you will prepare for next if it will happen?:
By The Associated Press Sat Oct 20, 2007, 4:30 PM ET, BANGKOK, Thailand: “Cities around the world are facing the danger of rising seas and other disasters related to climate change.
Of the 33 cities predicted to have at least 8 million people by 2015, at least 21 are highly vulnerable, says the Worldwatch Institute.
They include Dhaka, Bangladesh; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Shanghai and Tianjin in China; Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt; Mumbai and Kolkata in India; Jakarta, Indonesia; Tokyo and Osaka-Kobe in Japan; Lagos, Nigeria; Karachi, Pakistan; Bangkok, Thailand, and New York and Los Angeles in the United States, according to studies by the United Nations and others.
More than one-tenth of the world's population, or 643 million people, live in low-lying areas at risk from climate change, say U.S. and European experts. Most imperiled, in descending order, are China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan, Egypt, the U.S., Thailand and the Philippines.”

[Richard2]

06:56 PM on 09/09/2009

If you check the NOAA tide station for Los Angeles, you will note that the mean sea level is lower today than it was in 1998. Same is true for New York.

People can speculate on what will happen in the future. That is fine. But if you look at the hard data, the historical data, you can see with your own eyes that the AGW sea level rise hasn't occurred yet. It may never.

[BrettnCalgary]

07:04 PM on 08/31/2009

There is no way to prepare our ecosystem for the speed of the process. You and I can get ready to some extent in the short term, but not our whole ecosystem.

Btw, Greenland was not any more green when the Vikings found it than now, I don't know why people keep saying that, it's ludicrous.

http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/03/greenland-used-to-be-green.php

[texasteph12570]

01:50 PM on 08/31/2009

New Temperature Reconstruction From Indo-Pacific Warm Pool

ScienceDaily (Aug. 28, 2009) — A new 2,000-year-long reconstruction of sea surface temperatures (SST) from the Indo-Pacific warm pool (IPWP) suggests that temperatures in the region may have been as warm during the Medieval Warm Period as they are today.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090827131832.htm

[mioffe]

03:19 PM on 08/31/2009

Dear texasteph12570,
"Little pre-historical temperature data from tropical regions like the IPWP has been incorporated into these analyses, and the global extent of warm temperatures during this interval is unclear. As a result, conclusions regarding past global temperatures still have some uncertainties."

I think we have also a lot of uncertainties about what happen on continents right now.
On continents is always hotter in summer. It creates huge convection forces, which could provide heat movement from equator to poles area.
In this case even for Global cooling condition we have some possibilities of melting ice on mounts of Alaska, Canada, Europe, Russia the same as in South Hemisphere.

Unfortunatelly these posibilities also do not included in any models.

[fumes]

01:46 PM on 08/31/2009

dear mioffe..

i think a major disconnect in your conversation with reedyoung can be found here where he says:

''The energy required for the phase change from water to vapor is exactly equal the energy released by the opposite phase change, from vapor back to water.''

everyone knows it takes less energy to boil water at altitude than at sea level..

is always snow on everest mioffe..

[ReedYoung]

02:25 PM on 08/31/2009

Ha! Vaporization is not what happens at high altitude, condensation is. Just like boiling requires less heat at low pressure (the causal variable which varies roughly exponentially with altitude), condensation requires a vaporized water molecule to LOSE MORE HEAT in order to reach a lower temperature, before it can condense. So, you are disproved on that score.

But you also demonstrate ignorance of the phase change itself. A great deal more energy is input to a cube of ice at 32F to cause it to melt than to raise its temperature from 30F to 31F, 31F to 32F, etc. In short, you don't have a clue what you're talking about.

[mioffe]

02:50 PM on 08/31/2009

Dear ReedYoung,
"Ha! Vaporization is not what happens at high altitude, condensation is."
On every latitude, where we have droplets of water vaporization and condensation are dynamic processes, which could occur with the same droplets at the same time.
Which process will prevaile is matter of others conditions.

[fumes]

03:24 PM on 08/31/2009

ha indeed..

In a typical thunderstorm, approximately 5×108 kg of water vapor are lifted, and the amount of energy released when this condenses is about equal to the energy used by a city (US-2002) of 100,000 during a month.[citation needed]. ~from wiki

[mioffe]

02:38 PM on 08/31/2009

Dear fumes,
''The energy required for the phase change from water to vapor is exactly equal the energy released by the opposite phase change, from vapor back to water.''-it is true

"everyone knows it takes less energy to boil water at altitude than at sea level.." it is also true.

Where is the energy?

When water vapor is going up it create low pressure and therefore wind, which takes part of energy.
The same as water vapor gave parts of their energy to closest molecules and they also are going up, because of that, including GHG.
The full picture of what happen in reality is to complicated for 250 words limit.

"The climate of Mount Everest is naturally extreme. In January, the coldest month, the summit temperature averages about -36° C (about -33° F) and can drop as low as -60° C (-76° F). In July, the warmest month, the average summit temperature is -19° C (-2° F). At no time of the year does the temperature on the summit rise above freezing."
I wrote about snow only to stress extreme cold situation. Maybe for some reason there no snow, but I do not know that.

[fumes]

03:42 PM on 08/31/2009

is not always snow on everest mioffe??

[texasteph12570]

01:44 PM on 08/31/2009

ScienceDaily (Aug. 28, 2009) — Subtle connections between the 11-year solar cycle, the stratosphere, and the tropical Pacific Ocean work in sync to generate periodic weather patterns that affect much of the globe, according to research appearing this week in the journal Science.

if the total energy that reaches Earth from the Sun varies by only 0.1 percent across the approximately 11-year solar cycle, how can such a small variation drive major changes in weather patterns on Earth?

answer;

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090827141349.htm

[ReedYoung]

01:36 PM on 08/31/2009

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19000614/
"U.S. electric companies cause 10 percent of global emissions... "

NATIONALIZE THEM and replace all their coal furnaces with concentrating solar power, now.
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/04/01/can-concentrating-solar-power-outshine-fossil-fuels/
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-idealab5-2009aug05,1,2289105.story

Because they heat liquid, which has high *specific heat* ie heat retention, it does not "switch off" at night like photovoltaic solar, ie rooftop panels. Instead, it continues producing for seven hours after sundown, per cleantechnica.com article above. Windmills will make up the *small* midnight to early morning drop in available Watts -- far fewer windmills than predicted by T. Boone Pickens & others, who assume all coal plants must be decommissioned to transition to a clean energy economy.

The real "defeatists" and "doomsayers" are the coal and petroleum industry corporatists. They have opposed, slandered and marginalized real solutions in order to preserve their failed, scarcity-based business model, violating Civil Rights Law in the process.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/8/21/770551/-Lobbyists-Intimidation-Tactics-No-Laughing-Matter

All utilities depend on government contracts granting them coercive monopolies; this is a public trust and they have violated it.

WE HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO NATIONALIZE THEM ALL.

[mioffe]

01:50 PM on 08/31/2009

Dear ReedYoung, I am from former Soviet Union. I could tell you and everybody in the world, what happen in USSR after it Government "NATIONALIZE THEM ALL."
Don't be ridiculous, by destroying what is still work and provide heat, light and energy we need.
At first build the power plants "with concentrating solar power" and after that destroy. It will be better.
Believe me I am also against big power plants, as coal, as oil, NG and nuclear, but in now way I will asc to destroy them, before we have something instead.

[texasteph12570]

02:00 PM on 08/31/2009

here here.

[ReedYoung]

02:35 PM on 08/31/2009

Don't be ridiculous; don't try to substitute your former nationality for a logical, factual argument. You're from the Soviet Union just as much as I'm the Tsar Peter the Great.

Energy is already government-controlled by *coercive* monopoly. The question is not whether to get government to take over, it's whether to abandon the status quo, which is fascist, in favor of democratically established socialization of industries which are already not subject to free market economics.

http://www.reedyoung.org/politics/general_welfare/medical_care/2009/07/06/index.html

Transmission wires prevent capitalist competition for energy similar to exorbitant costs in health care. Both utility power and health care will NEVER operate by the utopian free market assertions of Milton Friedman, some of which are true of frisbees and Coca-Cola, but none of which apply to necessities.

These are human rights matters. Your PRETENSE that they are now, or could ever be, subject to simplistic laissez-faire economics is dishonest, and based on demonstrably false assumptions that you free market liars obscure from critique by name-calling "socialist" and lying about being from the Soviet Union as soon as government regulation is suggested.

You have no credibility.