Why tackle climate change

And atmospheric rivers are predicted to grow longer, wetter and wider in a warming climate. On Feb. The Russian River crested at For the fifth time in four decades, the town of Guerneville was submerged under the murky brown floodwaters of the lower Russian River. Events like these have drawn attention in recent years, but atmospheric rivers are not new.

They have meandered through the sky for millions of years, transporting water vapor from the equator toward the poles. In dry conditions, atmospheric rivers can replenish water supplies and quench dangerous wildfires.

In wet conditions, they can cause damaging floods and debris flows, wreaking havoc on local economies. Researchers have known for some time that flooding due to atmospheric rivers could cost a lot of money, but until our study no one had quantified these damages. Our data showed that in an average year, about 40 atmospheric rivers made landfall along the Pacific coast somewhere between Baja California and British Columbia. But there were a number of exceptions.

We used a recently developed atmospheric river classification scale that ranks the storms from 1 to 5, similar to systems for categorizing hurricanes and tornadoes. There was a clear link between these categories and observed damages. AR4 and AR5 storms caused median damages in the 10s and s of millions of dollars respectively. These billion-dollar storms occurred every three to four years. Our most significant finding was an exponential relationship between the intensity of atmospheric rivers and the flood damages they caused.

Each increase in the scale from 1 to 5 was associated with a fold increase in damages. Several recent studies have modeled how atmospheric rivers will change in the coming decades. The mechanism is simple: Greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere, warming the planet.

This causes more water to evaporate from oceans and lakes, and increased moisture in the air makes storm systems grow stronger. Like hurricanes, atmospheric rivers are projected to grow longer, wider and wetter in a warming climate. Our finding that damages increase exponentially with intensity suggests that even modest increases in atmospheric river intensity could lead to significantly larger economic impacts. Climate change affects rainfall patterns, meaning both drought and flooding will be more common, and more intense.

Globally temperature records have been broken in recent years, and flooding in the UK gets worse. More frequent and more intense extreme weather is a documented result of our greenhouse gas emissions, and the annual cost of flooding in the UK could increase fold by the s as a result of climate change.

We need to see politicians taking serious action on climate change, not looking for the next photo opportunity. They really are amazing; the Amazon, for example, is home to an astonishing 1 in 10 of all the known species on Earth. Yet over a third of the Amazon rainforest is already threatened by climate change. With anthropogenic climate change driven by human-caused emissions to the atmosphere, it stands to reason that we face compromised air quality. This affects human health, especially children.

Air pollution can lead to asthma, heart and lung disease. Solar panels, wave-energy conversion and wind farms are allowing us to harness the power of nature in a clean way, harvesting energy without harming our environment or destroying habitats.

Meanwhile nifty gadgets — like the Wall-E sized robot that can insulate your house to save energy — are helping to cut carbon in unexpected places. From more extreme weather to increasing food prices, to recreation and decreased opportunities to appreciate the natural world, people everywhere will feel the effects of climate change.

We are fortunate to live in a beautiful, diverse, nurturing, awe-inspiring planet. Our children, and all future generations, deserve the same. When there are weather disasters that are probably a reflection of climate change like wildfires or extreme storms , they tend to happen far away from where most people live. As a result, most people are not forced to grapple with the specifics of climate change, but rather can treat it as an abstract concept.

Fourth, the future is always more uncertain than the present. That is one reason people value the present so much more strongly. After all, if you save a lot of money for retirement, there is no guarantee that you will live long enough to enjoy it. In the case of climate change, there are skeptics who argue that it is not certain that the influence of human activity on climate will have the dire consequences that some experts have projected.

While all of these factors are working against us, there is hope. Bringing the future mentally close, so you begin to feel the specifics of a daily life disrupted by a change in global climate, will help reduce the psychological distance. Only when you and others experience this future threat in the present rather than something that is still a generation away will it have enough motivational force to get you to engage in actions that take more effort today, like taking public transportation or turning down the AC on a hot summer day.

Familiarize yourself with the reports and predictions you can start with the UN report , and think through and talk about how your daily life will be affected. It is also worthwhile to confront the uncertainty of the future head-on. If you or someone you know is skeptical that human activity is affecting the climate, contemplate the probability that global climate change is real.

Most skeptics think there is at least some chance that human activity is affecting the climate. Have them state their probability. At that point, I try to make the decision more specific. I ask whether they would be willing to forgo something today to invest in a disease that has a one in five chance of affecting a grandchild. And if so, then I ask how taking climate change seriously is different.

You can also initiate a serious discussion about values among your peers and within your organization. The idea that options in the present are more valuable than options in the future the essence of temporal discounting is an evaluation.