Category: Blog

Thank you, to everyone who participated in the Maryland Month of Action for Global Warming Solutions! Eight Town Hall Meetings were held all over the state of Maryland, with a total of over 650 attendees. In addition, there were step it up events, a nature hike (where we talked about climate change and invasive species), and several smaller community events, such as a forum on renewable energy in Mt. Airy.

The next thing that’s coming up? The commission report is due to come out on December 4th. On that day, we’ll be doing our final postcard drop for postcards to O’Malley (so if you have postcards that have been filled out, please mail them back to the CCAN office as soon as possible! The address is PO Box 11138, Takoma Park MD 20912).

Record Dry March, Record Flooding in June, Thunderstorms in January, Power Outages All the Time, Farmers Perplexed, and Everyone's Wondering: What's Up With Our Local Weather?

Welcome to Global Warming in Maryland, Virginia and D.C.

By Anne Havemann
Chesapeake Climate Action Network
www.chesapeakeclimate.org

In 34 years, my parents have never remembered their wedding anniversary. This year, however, as the rained pounded their roof and flooded their basement, they couldn't help but remember their honeymoon.

The 7.09 inches of rain recorded at D.C.'s National Airport during a 24-hour period ending Monday, June 26 is second only to when Hurricane Agnes passed through this region trapping my parents in their honeymoon suite 34 years ago.

Except this time it wasn't a hurricane. It was just severe rain. Unusually severe rain. Rain so severe it lasted nearly two weeks in the D.C./Baltimore region and left 300,000 people without power, killed five people, destroyed huge swaths of cropland, threatened dams, damaged roads and property, and left many long-time residents saying they'd never seen anything like it.

This, of course, followed the driest March on record in our region. Typically March is our wettest month of the year, when the Potomac swells and the aquifers recharge and farmers rejoice. But this year March was drier than the deserts of Arizona. No one can remember anything like this happening either. And this followed a mild winter that included freak thunderstorms in January and February. And all of this follows a pattern of very weird weather in this region dating back to the early 1990s but intensifying in recent years. Ask any farmer in Maryland or Virginia and they'll go on and on and on about the weird weather. Go ahead, next time you're at a farmers market, just ask one of the vendors. They'll tell you all about it.

So here's the question: At what point are we permitted to talk about the 600-pound gorilla in the room? Every week there's a new peer-reviewed study in yet another prestigious scientific journal linking a host of weather-related anomalies to global warming: hurricanes, forest fires, dying coral reefs, droughts and, of course, extreme rainfall. Here's what the U.S. EPA under George Bush has to say about future rainfall patterns in a warmer climate: "Evaporation will increase as the climate warms, which will increase average global precipitation. Soil moisture is likely to decline in many regions, and intense rainstorms are likely to become more frequent" (emphasis added).

And while it's impossible to link any single weather event directly and definitively to global warming, the pattern is unmistakable in our region and across the world. Why is everyone talking about the weather, from recent floods here to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans? It's because our climate has been radically destabilized by our use of fossil fuels. It's because global warming is happening now. It's happening here. It's all around us. We are fully immersed in the pattern of freaky, harmful, ongoing, anomalous weather right now.

The Washington Post headline on Tuesday, June 27, two days into the recent torrential downpours, announced: "Roads, Rails, Federal Offices Deluged: Floods Swamp Homes, Strand Drivers; Mud Closes Beltway." Two days later the headlines proclaimed: "No Rest for the Wet and Weary: Evacuation Ordered as Relentless Rain Fills Waterways; Some Federal Buildings Remain Closed." Then on Thursday, July 6, a full twelve days after the storms began, the headlines revealed: "Utilities Scramble to Keep Up: 'It's Been a Circus,' Pepco Says of Endless Series of Storms."

Lake Needwood Dam in north Rockville, Md. was deemed unsafe and drained. There were nearly 300,000 power outages in the twelve-day period from June 22 to July 6, completely overwhelming Pepco, the local utility. Even the White House did not escape the damage as a 100-year old American elm fell near the front door.

Perhaps most alarming is the foreshadowing of what global warming might do to our local food supply. Three days of fierce rains in Maryland's Dorchester County, an agricultural area along the Eastern Shore, killed as many as 80,000 chickens and caused as much as $8 million in damage.

The damage to agricultural operations across the Eastern Shore was so devastating, in fact, that the Maryland Emergency Management Agency is compiling estimates to determine whether the state qualifies for federal disaster assistance.

There is, of course, overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity — driving cars that burn gasoline, burning coal for electricity and heating our homes with natural gas — is driving global warming.This tells us two things: 1) that humans are capable of changing the Earth's climate, but 2) that we are also capable of stopping the change.

I, for one, am not ready to resign myself to bailing out my parent's basement every June and I am certainly not able to accept that tragedies wrought by Katrina-like hurricanes are inevitable.

We are surrounded by signs of a changing and unstable climate. Top climate scientists tell us that we have no more than 10 years to reduce greenhouse gases before global warming reaches a "tipping point" and becomes unstoppable.

Ten years is not a lot of time but it IS enough. We created global warming together, now it's going to take all of us working together to end it. What we need is a grassroots revolution demanding radically cleaner cars and a full use of wind farms and "bio-fuels" and a host of other steps. But none of this will happen if you don't get involved today.

To learn more about global warming impacts and solutions in the Chesapeake Region, visit www.chesapeakeclimate.org . Get educated and get involved today!!

Want to See Climate Change?
Look Out Your Front Door. It's here

An open letter from Mike Tidwell, CCAN Director

Has anyone noticed that our local weather in the D.C. region has turned truly screwy? We go from one bizarre weather condition to the next with almost no pause in between for "normal" conditions. It's too wet, too dry, too cold, too warm, too windy – nearly all the time. Hmmm? And scientists and average people all over the world, from Japan to Argentina, report similar strangeness. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times just wrote from Kenya that the Serengeti's April rains, so critical to that famous ecosystem, haven't shown up this spring. And they didn't come last year. There's just no normal weather anymore. Anywhere.

In the D.C. region nothing illustrates this better than the annual Martin Luther King parade. Last year, tired of the cold and grayness of January, the organizers decided to move the annual parade to early April. The result? This year on January 16th (the official King holiday) it was 70 degrees in D.C. Remember all that freakish winter warmth? Outdoor barbeques broke out all over the city on backyard decks still festooned with Christmas decorations. And on Saturday, April 7th, the date of the "warmer" and more hospitable MLK parade? There was actually snow on the ground. The parade majorettes and tuba players woke up to 34 degrees and a blanket of snow on the ground, the most April snow in DC since 1924.

And yes, I know: There's always been weird weather that occasionally defies the seasonal norms, sometimes dramatically. It's part of the natural unpredictability of weather. And if you listen to the dismissive climate rants of the Rush Limbaugh crowd, you'll yield to that inner voice that wants to reassuringly say: Don't worry. It's all normal. Everything's okay.

But I challenge you, right now, to recognize that what's happening to our local weather is not normal. There's satellite imagery showing the Greenland ice sheet is imploding, of course, and other data showing that large-scale hurricanes are becoming more frequent in the Atlantic. And if such profound changes are happening at the macro climate level due to global warming, how could they not be happening at the micro regional weather level?

The reality is this: changes are happening to our local weather. Right now. And you've seen the evidence with your own eyes. Just look at the last 13 months in the D.C. region. People so easily forget – and I think many want to forget — all the weather anomalies of the past few months and years. By doing so we're able to avoid acknowledging the truly disturbing pattern of local strangeness.

First off, anyone remember a year ago March? Who recalls that we had zero – absolutely zero – rain in Washington during that month? No measurable precipitation recorded at Reagan National Airport for all of March 2006. March is normally one of our wettest months of the year in D.C. But March 2006 was drier in D.C. than in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. Extremely odd.

Followed by what? Followed by rain in June 2006 the likes of which almost no one in D.C. has ever seen before. A record 14 inches fell for the month at National Airport. An astonishing 8 inches fell in 24 hours in late June. Sligo Creek where I live in Takoma Park became a roaring torrent, washing away entire pedestrian bridges and playgrounds and damaging roads. In nearly 20 years of living in Takoma Park, I'd never seen anything close to it.

Followed by what? A blast furnace of heat in July and August in DC and across much of the country. Remember that summer heat? Crops failed throughout the region. Even Christian conservative Pat Robertson was won over, saying the outlandish summer heat wave had finally convinced him that global warming was real. Heat records were set in dozens of states.

Followed by what? More highly unseasonable warmth in the autumn of 2006, especially December, which ranked as the 10th warmest ever in D.C., contributing to a yearlong streak nationwide that made 2006 the warmest year ever recorded in America. That warmth extended to MLK day this year and the strange January blooming of cherry trees in parts of D.C. Remember that headline?

Followed by what? Highly extreme COLD weather in late January and February. In fact, February of this year was the second coldest on record for the region.

Followed by what? Can anyone, anyone, anyone remember an April like the one we've had this year in the region? Snow or the threat of snow throughout the first two weeks of the month? Are you kidding me? Temperatures routinely in the 30s at night? Baseball players bundled up like Eskimos? A blanket of white stuff for the MLK parade? And then the Nor'easter from hell?

Are we getting the picture yet? There's more than just a pattern here. An entirely new and oddball weather regime seems to have fully unpacked its bags. Our weather, quite frankly, has become unrecognizable.

And unless we get off fossil fuels as soon as possible, this weather inconvenience will become a full-blown climate nightmare, scientists warn. Already, Allstate Insurance has stopped issuing new policies in coastal Maryland because of global warming-enhanced hurricanes. And the U.S. EPA says agricultural output could plummet in the region in coming decades due to deepening weather disruptions.

Mark my words, after this current April cold spell ends, there will be another weather novelty soon, perhaps in June and maybe again in August and then in October. Too cold, too hot, too wet, too dry, too windy. It's here. It's everyday. It's in our face. And it's time we finally used this daily reminder of a world gone haywire to push our leaders to adopt the clean energy policies we need — right now — to re-stabilize our fragile climate and so save our way of life while we still have time.

Sincerely

Mike Tidwell

Mike Tidwell is director of the nChesapeake Climate Action Network and author of The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America's Coastal Cities