SciAm - "Our Extreme Future" - Third Of Three In Series

[hatrack]

EDIT

Scientists hope that rigorously identifying climate change's contribution to individual extreme events can indeed wake people up to the threat. As the research advances, it should be possible to say that two extra inches (five centimeters) of rain poured down in a Midwestern storm because of greenhouse gases, or that a California heat wave was 10 times more likely to occur thanks to humans' impacts on climate. So researchers have set up rapid response teams to assess climate change's contribution to extreme events while the events are still fresh in people's minds. In addition, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is preparing a special report on extreme events and disasters, due out by the end of 2011. "It is important for us emphasize that climate change and its impacts are not off in the future, but are here and now," explained Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC, during a briefing at United Nations climate talks in Cancún last December.


The message is beginning to sink in. The Russian government, for instance, used to doubt the existence of climate change, or argue that it might be beneficial for Russia. But now, government officials have realized that global warming will not bring a gradual and benign increase in temperatures. Instead, they're likely to see more crippling heat waves. As Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told the Security Council of the Russian Federation last summer: "Everyone is talking about climate change now. Unfortunately, what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our history faced such weather conditions."

Doubts persist despite evidence

Among the U.S. public, the feeling is different. Opinion pollsand anecdotal reports show that most Americans do not perceive a threat from climate change. And a sizable number of Americans, including many newly elected members of Congress, do not even believe that climate change exists. Extreme weather? Just part of nature, they say. After all, disastrous floods and droughts go back to the days of Noah and Moses. Why should today's disasters be any different? Was the July 23, 2010, storm that spawned Les Scott's record hailstone evidence of a changing climate, for instance? "Not really," Scott says. "It was just another thunderstorm. We get awful bad blizzards that are a lot worse."


And yes, 22 of Maryland's 23 counties were declared natural disaster areas after record-setting heat and drought in 2010. "It was the worst corn crop I ever had," says fourth-generation farmer Earl "Buddy" Hance. But was it a harbinger of a more worrisome future? Probably not, says Hance, the state's secretary of agriculture. "As farmers we are skeptical, and we need to see a little more. And if it does turn out to be climate change, farmers would adapt." By then, adaptation could be really difficult, frets Minnesota organic farmer Jack Hedin, whose efforts to raise the alarm are "falling on deaf ears," he laments.

EDIT

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=extreme-future-predicting-coping-with-the-effects-of-a-changing-climate