Memo – Addressing Biogenic Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Stationary Sources (2014)
Report – Framework for Assessing Biogenic CO2 Emissions from Stationary Sources
FEMA Recovery Guidance Advisory Base Flood Elevation for New Orleans – 2006
Recommended Residential Construction for Coastal Areas FEMA P-550 December 2009
The purpose of this design manual is to provide recommended foundation designs and guidance for rebuilding homes destroyed by hurricanes in coastal areas. In addition, the manual is intended to provide guidance in designing and building safer and less vulnerable homes to reduce the risk to life and property.
Department of Defense FY 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap
Department of Defense FY 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap
The responsibility of the Department of Defense is the security of our country. That requires thinking ahead and planning for a wide range of contingencies.
Among the future trends that will impact our national security is climate change. Rising global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, climbing sea levels, and more extreme weather events will intensify the challenges of global instability, hunger, poverty, and conflict. They will likely lead to food and water shortages, pandemic disease, disputes over refugees and resources, and destruction by natural disasters in regions across the globe.
In our defense strategy, we refer to climate change as a “threat multiplier” because it has the potential to exacerbate many of the challenges we are dealing with today – from infectious disease to terrorism. We are already beginning to see some of these impacts.
A changing climate will have real impacts on our military and the way it executes its missions. The military could be called upon more often to support civil authorities, and provide humanitarian assistance and disaster relief in the face of more frequent and more intense natural disasters. Our coastal installations are vulnerable to rising sea levels and increased flooding, while droughts, wildfires, and more extreme temperatures could threaten many of our training activities. Our supply chains could be impacted, and we will need to ensure our critical equipment works under more extreme weather conditions. Weather has always affected military operations, and as the climate changes, the way we execute operations may be altered or constrained.
While scientists are converging toward consensus on future climate projections, uncertainty remains. But this cannot be an excuse for delaying action. Every day, our military deals with global uncertainty. Our planners know that, as military strategist Carl von Clausewitz wrote, “all action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight.”
It is in this context that DoD is releasing a Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap. Climate change is a long-term trend, but with wise planning and risk mitigation now, we can reduce adverse impacts downrange.
Our first step in planning for these challenges is to identify the effects of climate change on the Department with tangible and specific metrics, using the best available science. We are almost done with a baseline survey to assess the vulnerability of our military’s more than 7,000 bases, installations, and other facilities. In places like the Hampton Roads region in Virginia, which houses the largest concentration of US military sites in the world, we see recurrent flooding today, and we are beginning work to address a projected sea-level rise of 1.5 feet over the next 20 to 50 years.
Drawing on these assessments, we are integrating climate change considerations into our plans, operations, and training across the Department so that we can manage associated risks. We are considering the impacts of climate change in our war games and defense planning scenarios, and are working with our Combatant Commands to address impacts in their areas of responsibility. At home, we are studying the implications of increased demand for our National Guard in the aftermath of extreme weather events. We are also assessing impacts on our global operations – for instance, how climate change may factor into our rebalance to the Asia-Pacific. Last year, I released the Department of Defense’s Arctic Strategy, which addresses the potential security implications of increased human activity in the Arctic – a consequence of rapidly melting sea ice.
We are also collaborating with relevant partners on climate change challenges. Domestically, this means working across our federal and local agencies and institutions to develop a comprehensive, whole-of-government approach to a challenge that reaches across traditional portfolios and jurisdictions. Within the U.S. Government, DoD stands ready to support other agencies that will take the lead in preparing for these challenges – such as the State Department, US Agency for International Development, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
We must also work with other nations to share tools for assessing and managing climate change impacts, and help build their capacity to respond. Climate change is a global problem. Its impacts do not respect national borders. No nation can deal with it alone. We must work together, building joint capabilities to deal with these emerging threats.
Politics or ideology must not get in the way of sound planning. Our armed forces must prepare for a future with a wide spectrum of possible threats, weighing risks and probabilities to ensure that we will continue to keep our country secure. By taking a proactive, flexible approach to assessment, analysis, and adaptation, the Defense Department will keep pace with a changing climate, minimize its impacts on our missions, and continue to protect our national security.
New storm surge map predicts worst-case scenarios for south Louisiana
New storm surge map predicts worst-case scenarios for south La.
The Worst Case Surge Map (PDF)
This map is developed by running thousands of storm models on different tracks. No single storm would flood all of these areas, but they are all subject to flooding from the right storm. As the story notes, the models ignore areas protected by levees. NOAA is working to assign risk to these areas, but as NOAA cannot say, this is a political decision, not a scientific one. The 100 year flood protection trigger for the National Flood Insurance Program is a political choice that tells us very little about the actual flood risk behind the levees. Levees are subject to failure, which is related to maintenance as much as original design and construction. While all the focus in Katrina was on the Corps of Engineers, the local levee boards had been responsible for the levees for years. The new levees are now under local control, and is very likely that they will degrade with each passing year. This happens through lack of day to day maintenance and through subsidence and sea level rise, which reduce the effective height of the levee. They can be overtopped now by a slow moving category 3 storm, which is certainly less than a 100 year event. The Corps of Engineers ran a limited model set to justify the 100 year designation because that is what Congress told them to do: take the money we gave you and provide 100 year protection. All the Corps can do is build what it can afford and then rate it as 100 year protection.
How wildfire risk management is like flood risk management – a report
Lessons for Wildfire from Federal Flood Risk Management Programs, November 2014
Slides – Solutions to Home Development in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI)
Original URL and other resources
Three Summary Findings
Our paper details 14 specific lessons, grouped here into three broad categories:
First, mapping fire risks is a necessary first step for managing risk. The federal government and some states have started producing and sharing fire-risk maps to better understand the extent of the problem. Such maps already are an element of Community Wildfire Protection Plans and are used in some states, but are not widely available or consistent across jurisdictions. Improving these risk-maps should be prioritized.
Second, the federal government should incentivize the adoption of risk reduction measures. This can be done by tying suppression dollars and disaster aid to minimum mitigation requirements or a rating program to reward communities that reduce wildfire risk. A bundle of incentives—such as higher levels of financial and technical planning assistance, and, where appropriate, funds for land purchases—would be given preferentially to higher ranking communities. A separate program could help fund community wildfire mitigation, as has been the case for floods.
Third, the federal government must pass some wildfire costs on to local governments. Incentives, while important, by themselves have a limited ability to reduce building in high-risk areas or encourage the adoption of cost-effective measures. Currently, federal dollars for reconstruction post-disaster, and for combating disasters as they unfold, create a moral hazard problem where local governments receive the benefits of allowing development in high-risk areas, but pay few of the costs of those actions. Requiring local governments to pay more disaster costs may induce them to invest more heavily in risk reduction.
Climate Change, Coastal Restoration, Coastal Restoration Mythology, Community Relocation, LA Plan, Sea Level Rise
Community Resettlement Prospects in Southeast Louisiana
From the report:
This paper is a multidisciplinary approach to framing the potential for community resettlement in Southeast Louisiana. The paper has three sections: a survey of legal mechanisms used by the federal government to relocate individuals and resettle communities; a history of community dislocation in Southeast Louisiana; and a demographic analysis of the Louisiana communities facing the highest risk of displacement. …
Despite a variety of legal mechanisms available to the federal government when it wishes to move people, history has shown that implementing and properly funding such projects takes many key elements lining up and remaining aligned for the duration of the project. A local history has led to inherent distrust of government programs that could potentially help Louisiana communities. Those in harm’s way have a demographic profile largely of marginalized populations. These issues combine to create in Southeast Louisiana a difficult environment for successfully moving people away from environmental hazards while allowing them to keep their communities and cultures intact.
Comment
The report assumes that the Master Plan will provide 500 year protection to the urban areas and 100 year protection to most of the rest, and that it will all get built on time, before there is another storm. This leaves 15% of the census tracks at risk, but that is only a tiny % of the population. In their final conclusions they seem to be saying that relocation is so expensive and difficult that maybe we should think about spending more money and protecting everything. Thus the report finds that it would be difficult to move the easiest populations. The Master Plan is unlikely to be built at all, and even if built, will not provide 500 year protection anywhere. This report must be read as saying that retreat, at least in the politically sensitive way that the authors desire, is impossible. This leaves the specter of retreat driven by catastrophic community disasters, which is not an attractive alternative. At heart, this report does not really engage that the alternative to relocation for these communities is obliteration. With that as an alternative, might it be possible to come up with a relocation/retreat strategy that is possible, if not ideal?
Problems are always easier to solve if you ignore the hard parts.
Understanding FEMA’s Rate-Setting Methods for the National Flood Insurance Program
Encroaching Tides – How Sea Level Rise and Tidal Flooding Threaten U.S. East and Gulf Coast Communities
Today scores of coastal communities in the United States are seeing more frequent tidal flooding. And as global warming drives sea levels higher over the next 15 to 30 years, flooding from high tides is expected to occur even more often and cause more disruption, particularly on the East Coast and, increasingly, on the Gulf Coast.
This flooding will redefine how and where people in affected areas live, work, and otherwise go about their daily lives. Coastal communities, and the nation as a whole, need to start planning today to cope with sea level rise and unprecedented tidal flooding, and to take swift and decisive action to limit longer-term damage to our coasts.
Also see: Overwhelming Risk
Community Resettlement Prospects in Southeast Louisiana
This paper is a multidisciplinary approach to framing the potential for community resettlement
in Southeast Louisiana. The paper has three sections: a survey of legal mechanisms used by the
federal government to relocate individuals and resettle communities; a history of community
dislocation in Southeast Louisiana; and a demographic analysis of the Louisiana communities
facing the highest risk of displacement.
The Federal government has displaced individuals and communities for a wide variety of
reasons – from public development projects to national security concerns – and used a variety
of statutory authority. The statutes enabling the dislocation often have proven much more
effective at relocating individuals than resettling entire communities; however, history shows
both relocation and resettlement programs have a difficult time succeeding. Both federal and
local support and funding often prove unreliable or unsustainable.
The history of population dislocation in Southeast Louisiana is generally one of failed
government-intervention. Some communities have been driven away by flooding. Some have
disappeared as a result of public works projects. Still others have maintained community
integrity in spite of a lack of government consideration and assistance. Where resettlement
efforts have been undertaken, they have been curtailed or limited for political or philosophical
reasons. This history has led to an ingrained public distrust of relocation or resettlement
projects.
Explaining Extreme Events of 2013 from a Climate Perspective
Attribution of extreme events is a challenging science and one that is currently undergoing considerable evolution. In this paper, 20 different research groups explored the causes of 16 different events that occurred in 2013. The findings indicate that human-caused climate change greatly increased the risk for the extreme heat waves assessed in this report. How human influence affected other types of events such as droughts, heavy rain events, and storms was less clear, indicating that natural variability likely played a much larger role in these extremes. Multiple groups chose to look at both the Australian heat waves and the California drought, providing an opportunity to compare and contrast the strengths and weaknesses of various methodologies. There was considerable agreement about the role anthropogenic climate change played in the events between the different assessments. This year three analyses were of severe storms and none found an anthropogenic signal. However, attribution assessments of these types of events pose unique challenges due to the often limited observational record. When human-influence for an event is not identified with the scientific tools available to us today, this means that if there is a human contribution, it cannot be distinguished from natural climate variability.
Achieving Justice and Human Rights in an Era of Climate Change Disruption
Achieving Justice and Human Rights in an Era of Climate Change Disruption – original link
International Bar Association
Global climate change is a defining challenge of our time. It poses an effective obstacle to the continued progress of human rights, which translates directly into a worsening of the existing inequities that afflict a world already riven with vast inequality, poverty and conflict. Dramatic alterations to the planet’s climate system are already impacting on the world’s inhabitants and its natural environment, disproportionately affecting those who have contributed least to it and who are also, for a variety of reasons, least well placed to respond.
Yet the main contributors to climate change – those with the largest carbon footprints, living and working in the world’s wealthier regions – are, by virtue of their wealth and/or access to resources, most insulated from it. In addition to which, climate change will strain the ability of many states, especially the poorest among them, to uphold their human rights obligations.
In November 2012, an IBA Task Force on Climate Change Justice and Human Rights was established to address this fundamental justice concern and support the IBA in assessing the challenges to the current national and international legal regimes on climate change.
This high-level Task Force, chaired by David Estrin and Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, and with invaluable contribution from Academic Advisor Stephen Humphreys, PhD, sets forth its analysis and recommendations through the Report, Achieving Justice and Human Rights in an Era of Climate Change Disruption.