LIHUE — Hawaii threw its weight in with five other U.S. states at a recent United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Poland in an effort to provide leadership in areas for which the federal government isn’t stepping up to the plate.
“We are a small state with big ambition and we believe that big ambition leads to big action,” said Anukriti Hittle, Hawaii climate change mitigation and adaptation coordinator.
Hittle attended the event with others representing California, Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington.
The Kauai community is looking at impacts and mitigations to climate change in things like the West Kauai Community Vulnerability Assessment.
That’s a project of the University of Hawaii Sea Grant College Program, UH Manoa Department of Urban and Regional Planning, and the County of Kauai’s Planning Department. It’s goal is to connect with community members who are familiar with the areas where they live and get their feedback on climate change.
“While the state of Hawaii is generating important information on hazards associated with climate change, the deep, longstanding understanding of these changes is the piece that is often missing,” said representatives of the assessment in announcing the meetings.
Combining local knowledge with climate change science will generate lists of potential impacts and best responses to things like sea level rise and stronger storm activity.
Alongside the potential impacts to infrastructure, buildings and other modern necessities, scientists are looking at ways to help preserve Kauai’s endangered species as the mosquito line creeps to higher elevations with warming temperatures.
That means the introduction of diseases like avian malaria, as well as habitat loss for endangered and endemic species. Ongoing research is looking into ways to save the birds, including mosquito control.
Statewide, the Hawaii Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Commission has produced an interactive, online map that shows predictions for sea level rise up to 3.2 feet — a prediction that’s set to come to fruition by the year 2100.
Lowering carbon emissions and tracking greenhouse gasses are both on the list of ways to help lessen the effects of climate change both at state and county levels throughout Hawaii.
At the Dec. 12 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, hosted by The Climate Registry and Climate Action Reserve, Hawaii’s Hittle joined many other representatives of U.S. states in acknowledging the urgency of the situation and the need for bipartisan environmental leadership to make headway on a solution.
“Climate change is front and center on our governor’s radar, and our Climate Change Commission believes putting a price on carbon is the most effective single action that will achieve Hawaii’s ambitious goals,” Hittle said.
•••
Jessica Else, environment reporter, can be reached at 245-0452 or at jelse@thegardenisland.com.
Nice boondoggle! Fly around the world in the most polluting form of transportation to blather on about climate change. No hypocrisy there…
Rather than wasting taxpayer money on expensive and unnecessary junkets (it’s “settled science” is it not?), save the money and use it to do something besides producing more hot air/pollution.
Nonsense!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/16/ten-years-ago-algore-predicted-the-north-polar-ice-cap-would-be-gone-inconveniently-its-still-there/
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The clever ruse of rising sea levels
Guest Blogger / 1 week ago December 6, 2018
Alarmists try to frighten people, and stampede them into terrible energy decisions
Jay Lehr and Tom Harris
For the past 50 years, scientists have been studying climate change and the possibility of related sea level changes resulting from melting ice and warming oceans. Despite the common belief that increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in our atmosphere could result in catastrophic sea level rise, there is no evidence to support this fear. Tax monies spent trying to solve this non-existent problem are a complete waste.
There is another widely held misconception: that all the oceans of the world are at the same level. In reality, sea level measurements around the world vary considerably, typically by several inches. Prevailing winds and continental instability are among the variables that make measurements difficult, but the varying results of rising sea levels are extremely accurate.
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States updated its coastal sea level tide gauge data in 2016 at the request of the previous administration. These measurements continue to show no evidence of accelerating sea level rise.
The measurements include tide gauge data at coastal locations along the West Coast, East Coast, Gulf Coast, Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, as well as seven Pacific Island groups and six Atlantic Island groups, comprising more than 200 measurement stations.
The longest running NOAA tide gauge record of coastal sea level in the U.S. is in New York City at Battery Park. Its 160-year record shows a steady sea level rise of 11 inches per century. A few miles away at Kings Point, New York is a station whose 80-year record shows about the same.
Both locations show a steady, unchanging sea level rise rate whether temperature has been rising or falling (see below figures). Indeed, The Battery measurements showed the same rate of sea level rise well before the existence of coal power plants and SUVs as today.
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The 2016 updated NOAA tide gauge record included data for California coastal locations at San Diego, La Jolla, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The measured rates of sea level rise at these locations vary between four inches and nine inches per century. NOAA data provide assessments with a 95% confidence level at all measured locations.
In contrast to these steady but modest real-world rising sea level rates, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that sea levels all over the world will almost immediately begin rising far faster than before. Not only do NOAA records contradict such claims for U.S. and selected island coasts; this pattern of steady but modest sea level rise is being observed all across the world, despite rising CO2 and fluctuating average global temperatures.
The IPCC and its supporters are not able to provide convincing evidence to support their concerns about dangerous warming-driven sea level rise, as rising temperatures have rarely pushed sea level rise beyond one foot per century. Current sea level rise trends have stayed essentially constant over the past 90 years, despite the rise of atmospheric CO2 levels from less than 300 parts per million (ppm) as the Little Ice Age ended and modern industrial era began, to today’s 410 ppm.
Dire predictions made decades ago of dramatically accelerating polar ice loss, and an ice-free Arctic Ocean, have simply not come to pass. Dr. Steven E. Koonin, former Undersecretary for Science in the Obama administration, noted in The Wall Street Journal on September 19, 2014: “Even though the human influence on climate was much smaller in the past, the models do not account for the fact that the rate of global sea-level rise 70 years ago was as large as what we observe today.”
We can test the rising-seas hypothesis with real data collected from ten widely-distributed coastal cities with long and reliable sea level records in addition to those listed above. Those cities are indicated on the map below.
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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_map, modified.
Each of these cities has well-documented, long-term sea level rise data, from which linear extrapolations can be made for the next 100 years. Here are three samples of the data available on the NOAA web site:
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The Ceuta, Spain data show a nearly flat trend. Most notably, the data show no correlation between CO2 concentration and sea-level rise. If the current trend continues for the next century, the sea level in Ceuta will rise only three inches. This is in sharp contrast to the 10-foot global rise in sea levels recently projected by former NASA scientist James Hansen.
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Like some other regions, Hawaii can see significant year-to-year fluctuations in sea level because of global oceanic currents or local plate tectonic movements. However, Honolulu has seen an average sea-level rise of only 5.6 inches since 1900. The sea level around Honolulu is projected to rise a mere 5.6 inches in the next 100 years, once again with no correlation to CO2 levels.
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In contrast to these other locations, the sea level trend in Sitka, Alaska has been downward, not upward. If the rate of change continues, sea level will fall nine inches over the next 100 years. Note that Sitka is only about 100 miles from Glacier Bay and 200 miles from the Hubbard Glacier on Disenchantment Bay. If melting glaciers were causing sea levels to rise, one would expect to see it in Alaska.
Of course, the Sitka anomaly could be due to rising land masses, as is the case in other parts of the world. Still other locations – such as the Norfolk, Virginia area – are prone to land subsidence, the result of groundwater withdrawals from subsurface rock formations and/or to isostatic changes in nearby areas that cause some land masses to rise while others fall in elevation.
Here is the forecast sea level rise over the next century for the remaining seven cities on the map:
Atlantic City, New Jersey – 16 inches
Port Isabel, Texas – 15.4 inches
St. Petersburg, Florida – 10.7 inches
Fernandina Beach, Florida – 8.3 inches
Mumbai/Bombay, India – 3.12 inches
Sydney, Australia – 2.7 inches
Slipshavn, Denmark – 3.6 inches.
The observational data and projected sea level trends for these ten coastal cities lead to three obvious conclusions:
1. There has been no dramatic sea level rise in the past century, and evidence-based projections show no significant or dangerous rise is likely to occur in the coming century.
2. There is no evidence to indicate that the rate of sea level rise (or fall) in any of these areas will be substantially different than has been the case over the past decades or even century.
3. There is no correlation between atmospheric CO2 concentrations and sea level rise. The steady but modest rise in sea level pre-dated coal power plants and SUVs, and has continued at the same pace even as atmospheric CO2 concentrations rose from 280 parts per million to 410 parts per million.
Claims about dangerously rising sea levels, and island nations being submerged by them – as a result of human fossil fuel use and manmade global warming – are nothing more than a clever ruse, designed to frighten people into demanding or accepting terrible energy policies.
Those policies would cause nations the world over to give up abundant, reliable, affordable coal, oil and natural gas … and replace these fuels with unreliable, weather-dependant, expensive wind, solar and biofuel energy. The results would be devastating – for economies, jobs, manufacturing, food production, poor families and the environment.
Dr. Jay Lehr is the Science Director of The Heartland Institute which is based in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition and is also a policy advisor to Heartland.
The scientific evidence of human caused climate change is both clear and convincing. The 4th National Climate Assessment volume I goes into great detail.
RG DeSoto’s source the Heartland Institute’s Dr. Jay Lehr and Mr. Tom Harris are not credible sources.
Mr. Harris reject the scientific evidence of human caused climate change and promotes phony conspiracy theories. For Example: Last June, Mr. Harris claimed “man-made carbon dioxide causing global warming” was a “myth” created by Maurice Strong. (Source “$312 Billion: Green Energy Makes Ontario the Most Debt-Ridden Province on Earth” by Dr. Tim Ball and Tom Harris, Jun 18, 2018, PJ Media)
Unfortunately for the Heartland Institute, they can’t keep their political conspiracy theories about climate change straight. On Oct 18, 2018, Dr. Jay Lehr and Mr. Harris blamed former Vice-President Al Gore for the “dangerous mythology of dangerous manmade global warming.” (Source “HOW AL GORE BUILT THE GLOBAL WARMING FRAUD” by Jay Lehr & Tom Harris, Oct 18, 2018, The Heartland Institute)