James Island’s grisly connections with the slave trade draw thousands of tourists to this shrinking patch of Gambia each year. In high season as many as a hundred tourists a day take small, motorized pirogues out to this tiny island and hire guides from nearby villages to explain the horrors once endured there.

The island was used as a staging point for the slave trade. Hundreds of men, women and children were kept in dark and overcrowded houses around the edge of the island. There was a dungeon not more than 10 foot by six foot where up to 24 of the most troublesome slaves would be chained. Slaves were kept on the island for up to a month before a boat would arrive and ship them to Goree Island in Senegal from where they would make the crossing of no return across the Atlantic to the Americas.

Today James Island holds a ruined fort, a few baobab trees and a little jetty built for the tourists. There is no room for anything else because most of the island has been lost to erosion and rising sea levels in the tidal estuary. The slave houses have fallen into the sea and it is difficult to imagine the island was ever big enough for a garrison and hundreds of slaves at a time.

Gambians are doing their best to make something out of the country’s slave history. Alex Haley’s book Roots made a village not far from James Island famous and now visitors are swamped by offers from local guides to show them the sites. UNESCO has made James Island a world heritage site and all the hotels and tour operators offer ‘Roots’ tours to the island.

The guides at James Island don’t just show tourists around. They are also trying to protect the island from further erosion. If they are not successful, in the long term this testament to the horrific history of the slave trade will be lost.

It is a cruel double blow that, historically, Gambian people were exploited by the European powers as slaves, while today climate change, caused mostly by the developed world, is threatening a key way of generating income, much needed for the country’s development.

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No need to waste your money on the new apocalyptic thrillers coming soon to theaters. A new world map released Thursday by the British government, and unveiled at the Science Museum in London, provides plenty of real life doom and gloom -- and it's free!

The slick and colorful interactive graphic shows what a 4 degree C (7 degree F) rise in global temperature will mean for specific regions of the world. High, er, lowlights include: a high risk of forest fire danger in every populated continent; a decrease in rice yield of up to 30 percent in China, India, Bangladesh, and Indonesia; droughts that occur twice as often in southern Africa, southeast Asia, and the Mediterranean basin; an almost complete disappearance of near-surface permafrost in northern Siberia; more intense and destructive tropical cyclones. Oh, and the hottest days in North America are expected to 18-22 degrees F warmer.

The map also illustrates the potential effects of severe temperature increases on water availability, marine life, and sea level. 

Data for the map is based on the latest peer-reviewed research from climate scientists at the Met Office Hadley Centre, the U.K.'s foremost climate change research center, and other leading climate scientists. Their professional consensus, based on a study released last month by Britain's Met Office, is that unless we dramatically curb CO2 emissions the critical 4 degrees C mark could come as early as 2060.

(Note: To get to the interactive version of the map click on the image below.)

Photo: Met Office

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It's a wonder I continue to show up at Society of Environmental Journalists conferences when you consider how much of a downer some of these panels can be. And that's doubly true about the ones on climate change. This afternoon's session on global warming as a national security issue was an even darker affair than usual.

Leading off was retired Navy Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn, who's involved with a group of former generals and admirals known as the CNA Military Advisory Board: "What we're saying very clearly and very directly is 'This is a national security problem. ... Make no mistake, this is going to affect everybody in the world.'"

He continued: "Climate change is going to be a threat multiplier in unstable regions across the world."

Think about it: If you're in, say, Bangladesh and the ocean's rising and you can't grow food, where will you go? You might well try to get into India. The Indians don't want that, so you have a massive conflict there on the border.

It gets grimmer. Dennis Dimick, an erudite National Geographic editor who has steeped himself in the climate issue, noted that recent studies show it has been 15 million years since there was this much carbon in the atmosphere. And seas were 75 to 100 feet higher at that time. Carbon's now at something like 380 parts per million in the atmosphere. Even if it were capped at 450 ppm, as we'd be lucky to do, you're probably talking about an ice-free world.

That's huge! The disruption of water supplies can have massive implications. In the American West and across much of Asia, people count on annual snow fall and glaciers to melt to give them water to drink.

(Whew! See what I mean? Makes you feel like going on a search for razor blades and sleeping pills. Just shoot me now! There's hope, though: Check out this report, "The Economics of 350" (PDF), which I learned about in a different panel. It says we can control greenhouse gases without breaking the bank. In fact, it should only cost about 1 to 3 percent of the global GDP. But now ... back to disaster ...)

Even before seas rise, it's likely that wet places will get wetter, and dry places will get drier. So, in the Western United States, for example, how will we raise food if it gets even drier?

Said Dimick: "That's a national security issue. The water is tied into food. ... The systems you need are no longer viable. You get a slow, insidious decline in legitimacy" of governments as people get hungrier and hungrier.

Consider also that one of the supposed fixes for global warming -- carbon-free nuclear -- is predicated on having enough water around to boil to move the turbines to produce the juice. Is that going to be possible in places like the American West? Probably not.

Geoffrey Dabelko of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars posited that the world's poorest and richest nations are the ones that stand to lose the most -- the poor because they're already on the edge, the rich because their whole lifestyle is so carbon-intensive.

He foresees a world in which climate refugees -- there's that term again -- are created en masse. But he cautioned that it may not be obvious that they are in fact climate refugees. Did they leave because they were starving, or because they thought they'd get a better job in another country?

Said Dabelko: "Be suspicious of anyone who gives you a number of climate refugees" to expect. No way to do that for now.

If you're strong enough to keep delving in the climate forecasts, here's a pretty good report by McGinn's group that just came out. Me? I'm headed for the SEJ membership meeting. Thank God there's a cash bar.

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Our mismanaged world economy today has many of the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme takes payments from a broad base of investors and uses these to pay off returns. It creates the illusion that it is providing a highly attractive rate of return on investment as a result of savvy investment decisions when in fact these irresistibly high earnings are in part the result of consuming the asset base itself. A Ponzi scheme investment fund can last only as long as the flow of new investments is sufficient to sustain the high rates of return paid out to previous investors. When this is no longer possible, the scheme collapses -- just as Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion investment fund did in December 2008.

Although the functioning of the global economy and a Ponzi investment scheme are not entirely analogous, there are some disturbing parallels. As recently as 1950 or so, the world economy was living more or less within its means, consuming only the sustainable yield, the interest of the natural systems that support it. But then as the economy doubled, and doubled again, and yet again, multiplying eightfold, it began to outrun sustainable yields and to consume the asset base itself.

In a 2002 study published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a team of scientists concluded that humanity’s collective demands first surpassed the earth’s regenerative capacity around 1980. As of 2009, global demands on natural systems exceed their sustainable yield capacity by nearly 30 percent. This means we are meeting current demands in part by consuming the earth’s natural assets, setting the stage for an eventual Ponzi-type collapse when these assets are depleted.

As of mid-2009, nearly all the world’s major aquifers were being overpumped. We have more irrigation water than before the overpumping began, in true Ponzi fashion. We get the feeling that we’re doing very well in agriculture -- but the reality is that an estimated 400 million people are today being fed by overpumping, a process that is by definition short-term. With aquifers being depleted, this water-based food bubble is about to burst.

A similar situation exists with the melting of mountain glaciers. When glaciers first start to melt, flows in the rivers and the irrigation canals they feed are larger than before the melting started. But after a point, as smaller glaciers disappear and larger ones shrink, the amount of ice melt declines and the river flow diminishes. Thus we have two water-based Ponzi schemes running in parallel in agriculture.

And there are more such schemes. As human and livestock populations grow more or less apace, the rising demand for forage eventually exceeds the sustainable yield of grasslands. As a result, the grass deteriorates, leaving the land bare, allowing it to turn to desert. In this Ponzi scheme, herders are forced to rely on food aid or they migrate to cities.

Three-fourths of oceanic fisheries are now being fished at or beyond capacity or are recovering from overexploitation. If we continue with business as usual, many of these fisheries will collapse. Overfishing, simply defined, means we are taking fish from the oceans faster than they can reproduce. The cod fishery off the coast of Newfoundland in Canada is a prime example of what can happen. Long one of the world’s most productive fisheries, it collapsed in the early 1990s and may never recover.

Paul Hawken, author of Blessed Unrest, puts it well: “At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation.” The larger question is, if we continue with business as usual -- with overpumping, overgrazing, overplowing, overfishing, and overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide -- how long will it be before the Ponzi economy unravels and collapses? No one knows. Our industrial civilization has not been here before.

Unlike Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, which was set up with the knowledge that it would eventually fall apart, our global Ponzi economy was not intended to collapse. It is on a collision path because of market forces, perverse incentives, and poorly chosen measures of progress.

In addition to consuming our asset base, we have devised some clever techniques for leaving costs off the books -- much like the disgraced and bankrupt Texas-based energy company Enron did some years ago. For example, when we use electricity from a coal-fired power plant we get a monthly bill from the local utility. It includes the cost of mining coal, transporting it to the power plant, burning it, generating the electricity, and delivering electricity to our homes. It does not, however, include any costs of the climate change caused by burning coal. That bill will come later -- and it will likely be delivered to our children. Unfortunately for them, their bill for our coal use will be even larger than ours.

When Sir Nicholas Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank, released his groundbreaking 2006 study on the future costs of climate change, he talked about a massive market failure. He was referring to the failure of the market to incorporate the costs of climate change in the price of fossil fuels. According to Stern, the costs are measured in the trillions of dollars. The difference between the market prices for fossil fuels and an honest price that also incorporates their environmental costs to society is huge.

As economic decisionmakers, we all depend on the market for information to guide us, but the market is giving us incomplete information, and as a result we are making bad decisions. One of the best examples of this can be seen in the United States, where the gasoline pump price was around $3 per gallon in mid-2009. This reflects only the cost of finding the oil, pumping it to the surface, refining it into gasoline, and delivering the gas to service stations. It overlooks the costs of climate change as well as the costs of tax subsidies to the oil industry, the burgeoning military costs of protecting access to oil in the politically unstable Middle East, and the health care costs of treating respiratory illnesses caused by breathing polluted air. These indirect costs now total some $12 per gallon. In reality, burning gasoline is very costly, but the market tells us it is cheap.

The market also does not respect the carrying capacity of natural systems. For example, if a fishery is being continuously overfished, the catch eventually will begin to shrink and prices will rise, encouraging even more investment in fishing trawlers. The inevitable result is a precipitous decline in the catch and the collapse of the fishery.

Today we need a realistic view about the relationship between the economy and the environment. We also need, more than ever before, political leaders who can see the big picture. And since the principal advisors to government are economists, we need either economists who can think like ecologists or more ecological advisors. Otherwise, market behavior -- including its failure to include the indirect costs of goods and services, to value nature’s services, and to respect sustainable-yield thresholds -- will cause the destruction of the economy’s natural support systems, and our global Ponzi scheme will fall apart.

Adapted from Chapter 1, “Selling Our Future,” in Lester R. Brown, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009), available on-line at www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/books/pb4

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Climate activists in BangkokWWF Climate via FlickrFlooding in the Philippines yesterday displaced over 600,000 people. As if we didn’t need more of an urgent call to solve the climate crisis.

Increased intensity of flooding is among one of the may well-documented impacts of global warming. The implications have hit our organizing here at the UN in Bangkok too – as some activists had to go to support their families amidst crisis.

But Filipino groups are still here in full force, emboldened to call for the solutions their communities need – this morning The Peasant Movement of the Philippines and the National Federation of Peasant Women in the Philippines held a demonstration in front of the United Nations Climate Change Negotiations in Bangkok.

With vivid street theater, the groups called to abandon false solutions to climate change – such as biofuels.

Demonstrators this morning said “Climate change is not only jeopardizing our future but is being used by multi-national and trans-national corporations who are the main contributors to global warming to rake in more profit from our misery…vast tracts of agricultural lands around the world are being controlled and converted by plunderers into cash-crop plantations such as biofuels and other corporate schemes that forcibly drives us out from our land.”

Their calls for climate equity in negotiations were echoed by even more demonstrators today from Jubilee South and many others, calling on rich countries to pay their ecological and climate debt to the rest of the world. Activists from Thailand, Nepal, Philippines, Malaysia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Africa, and Latin America mobilized to push Northern countries to recognize their historical and disproportionate contributions to climate change, and the disproportionate negative impacts suffered by the Global South.

This concept of climate debt is increasingly gaining traction among international civil society, flipping on its head the idea of the debt owed by the South to the North from loans from international finance institutions.

As civil society groups call for financing and compensation for the averse affects of climate change for affected peoples, delegates inside the UN continue to debate on our 3rd day of the climate talks. The pressure is on, and the 600,000 people displaced in the last day only add to the urgency.

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A Saharawi fisherman on the beach north of Tarfaya in Morocco, just 70km from the Canary Islands.Tim Bromfield

Uniformed men patrol the beaches of southern Morocco at night. Their torches are trained on the Atlantic Ocean searching for boats overflowing with economic migrants heading for the Canary Islands.

From the beach just north of Tafaya, where we pitched camp, the windswept island of Fuertevetura is about 70 km off the African coast.

We met a fisherman who told us that some of the Nigerians, Mauritanians, Moroccans and others desperate enough to board these small boats succeeded in getting to Europe. Some, he said, get their papers and a few years later return home driving a car.

It can't be an easy journey. Others were not so lucky; the bodies of men, women and children regularly washed up on the beach. However, in the last two years, while the Forces Auxiliaires patrol the beaches, there have been fewer bodies.

Whether this means there are less people setting off on the journey or if they are just better equipped, it is difficult to say.

Climate change is likely to only increase the amount of people willing to risk this dangerous voyage. As desertification increases and lower rainfall makes farming less productive, life becomes more precarious for some Africans already living on the margin. In the future, perhaps more people will be inclined to try their luck in a leaky boat in the hope of a better and more prosperous life.

Europe is going to have to work hard to defend its borders against illegal immigrants whose livelihoods have been destroyed, in part, by a Western way of life.

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Photo: drivenbyboredom The “culture jamming” prankster troupe The Yes Men contributed to the Climate Week excitement in New York City this morning by distributing fake copies of the New York Post. The illicit special edition of the tabloid warned that climate change could unleash heat waves, flooding, and other disasters over the next decades.

The fake paper (also online) contains actual non-fake information, the group says:

The group says nearly a million copies were distributed by more than 2,000 volunteers.

And there’s one bona-fide non-prankish plain-old-journalism scoop:

Not bad. Does this mean it takes a fake newspaper to get out the real version of the news, with the urgency the story requires?

Here’s the group’s video:

"SPECIAL EDITION" NEW YORK POST from The Yes Men on Vimeo

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Update! The people have spoken; we have have a winner. Presenting the nifty Tracing Emissions mobile (and a gallery of entries).

Photo courtesy spike55151 via FlickStory: In June I wrote about Burning Embers, an art and design competition that invited students to create illustrations that reflected the causes and effects of climate change. The idea was that we need more compelling imagery than the sometimes-drab, sometimes-confusing graphics in policy reports. Well, four intriguing finalists have been selected—a video, a photo essay, a set of “animal cards,” and a mobile (the last is my favorite).

Ji Lee, creative director of the Google Creative Lab, did the judging for the organizer, the non-profit Artist as Citizen. Commenters on the Dot Earth blog of New York Times science reporter Andy Revkin will vote for the winner. Revkin pitched the early idea for a climate art competition after reporting on the problematic “burning embers” graph in a 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

Anyway, have a look at the four finalists—they’re all worthwhile. Then vote for a favorite at Dot Earth, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Thin Ice
M. Drennan, School of Visual Arts, M.F.A., Photography, 2009

Extinct
D. Kim, Parsons School of Design, B.F.A., Communication Design, 2009

Tracing Emissions
T. Holliday, S. Reagin, Pratt Institute, both M.F.A., 2011

Climate Change
M. Shapiro, New York University, B.F.A. Film, 2011:

Climate Change from ArtistAsCitizen on Vimeo.

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From right to left: Tim Bromfield, Lynn Morris, and Will Lorimer. The three are tracing the 1-meter countour around the Atlantic Ocean in hopes of educating British students about communities threatened by rising sea levels.Courtesy Atlantic RisingAtlantic Rising is a new charity backed by Britain's Royal Geographical Society. We are a three-person team creating a network between schools around the Atlantic coastline to raise awareness about the effects of sea level rise on coastal communities.

The network is being launched with an expedition around the Atlantic rim tracing the 1-meter contour line -- the Atlantic coastline as it will look in 100 years if sea levels rise as predicted. Along the way I and my colleagues -- Will Lorimer and Lynn Morris -- will be visiting schools and blogging on Grist from communities confronting sea level rise and its attendant threats of coastal erosion, flooding and salinity.

Our work will take us to places where sea level rise is already having a profound effect on people's lives. We will meet the residents of the Kroo Bay slum in Sierra Leone whose homes and cattle are perennially swept into the sea by storm surges. We will also be looking at what local communities are doing to adapt to the effects -- meeting people like the Sandlanders soccer team in Ghana who have set themselves the goal of reinvigorating their displaced community through league success. Stateside, we will see how business is booming for the house movers transporting buildings back from the encroaching waves of Chesapeake Bay and Key West.

We are also connecting 50 English speaking secondary schools in low lying communities around the Atlantic's rim. We have already visited 11 schools in Scotland, England and Wales and the most common question students asked is, "Why should I care about climate change?"

We hope to answer this question by putting these children in touch with their peers around the Atlantic who have very real experiences of climate change. And once they have made friendships across the ocean they will not just understand the issues but care enough to act. We are not embarking upon a lecturing tour, but are creating an Atlantic-wide partnership of schools that are enabled to work collaboratively on classroom projects within an online community.

We set out from Britain on September 1 and will be spending our first night under canvas near Mont Saint-Michel in France where the large tidal range is predicted to exacerbate local sea level rise.

You can find out more about our project at www.atlanticrising.org and we'll document the trip on this website over the coming months.

--

Follow the Atlantic Rising project on Twitter (@AtlanticRising) or Facebook.

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In the dog days of August, you can be forgiven for not wanting to think about how it could get hotter, much hotter, in summers to come. Nevertheless, Climate Central, a nonprofit focused on communicating climate science, released a study today forecasting what summers might look like in 21 American cities in 2050.

Climate Central's analysis predicts hotter Augusts for many of America's largest cities by mid-century. More >>The findings are startling, as the study found that even a modest amount of global warming would have a large effect on weather extremes, including extreme heat events. In a sobering set of tables, the group projected that Chicago and New York could experience more extreme heat in August 40 years from now than Atlanta experiences today. The real threat of these heat waves isn't higher power bills and sweaty armpits; it's the cascading set of health impacts they would inflict upon the vulnerable populations of American cities.

Extreme weather events can wreak havoc upon unprepared populations, such as the Chicago heat wave of 1995 and the 2003 European heat wave, which killed an estimated 40,000 people. These heat waves have proven especially deadly to vulnerable populations, such as the elderly and persons with respiratory illness. Health officials have found themselves besieged in unanticipated extreme weather events, as infants and the elderly succumb to extreme heat or from air pollution exacerbated by high temperatures.

Heat is a catalyst for the formation of smog, which is formed from a toxic soup of volatile organic compounds, tailpipe and smokestack exhaust, and strong sunlight. The lungs of infants, children, and the elderly are by far the most vulnerable to smog inhalation, which can lead to hospitalization and death.

According to a study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, a 1.8°F increase in maximum temperature corresponded to a 4.5 percent increase in respiratory hospital admissions in 12 European cities. But what does that mean for American cities?

Climate Centrals analysis shows that Denver, in August, would go from an average of seven days a month, above 90°F and one day over 95°F, to a dramatically different climate of twenty-three days a month over 90°F, twelve days a month over 95°F, and three days a month over 100°F. This could lead to massive increases in hospitalizations and rising death rates from those with heart and lung disease, diabetes, or pneumonia.

One factor that can reduce the death rate from extreme weather events, like heat waves, is air conditioning. One reason that the death toll was so high in the Chicago and European heat waves was that the urban populations were unprepared and many of the victims did not have climate control systems. Air conditioning almost certainly would have saved lives in those two events, but it's a solution that comes with its own costs.

Air conditioning drives peak demand for electricity in most industrialized societies and broader adoption could require the construction of expensive and polluting power plants. Air conditioners are also major drivers, along with black asphalt, of the urban heat island effect. According to the EPA, the annual mean air temperature of a city with 1 million people or more can be 1.8° to 5.4°F warmer than its surroundings. On a clear night, the temperature difference can be as much as 22°F.

In effect, climate control may reduce mortality from direct heat exposure, but could drive more global warming impacts, worsen air quality, and increase urban outdoor temperatures. This is what, in modeling, is called a feedback loop. Finally, increased energy demand could overwhelm the energy grid. A sustained power outage in a 100°F heat wave could be a public health disaster, with apartment buildings, rest homes, and public housing requiring emergency evacuation.

High temperatures affect more than people. Many tree species that are on the margin of a temperature zone will not be able to adjust to the new temperatures and may face catastrophic losses. Sure, tree huggers may be upset, but what does that mean for human health?

Urban tree cover is both a major factor in reducing the urban heat island effect and in scrubbing the air of particulate matter and dust. As natural air conditioners, their loss will increase the impact of the extreme weather events that Climate Central is projecting. The loss of shade trees also can have major impacts on home cooling costs, once again driving up electricity demand. The transition to new species of tree for urban tree cover could leave an entire generation of urban dwellers at increased risk from heat and air pollution. This is another feedback loop showing how the high temperature increases that Climate Central projects can have cascading effects on the human population.

One last impact from these elevated temperatures is on human behavior. Quite simply, there has long been a demonstrated link between elevated temperatures and aggression. The journal Environment and Behavior published research in the mid-eighties demonstrating a linear relationship between heat and horn honking, something anyone who has experienced summer driving can attest to. More recently, a study published in the journal established linkages between assault and high temperatures, with an article, "Global Warming and U.S. Crime Rates," finding annual temperatures were associated with rates for assault, rape, robbery, burglary, and larceny. So if the heat doesn't kill you, perhaps somebody else will.

Clearly, a cycle is emerging -- one triggered by extreme heat events that continually increases temperatures and the exposure of the human population to dangerous air pollution, behavior, and temperatures. So, what do we do about it?

Global warming activists would say that we should avoid the whole mess by passing a climate bill in the United States and forging a global climate treaty in Copenhagen. However, Climate Central's analysis is based on one climate model -- called A1B by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Greenhouse gas emissions have exceeded the A1B scenario this decade, making the projections conservative. So we may be living with their projections, even if we do reduce climate emissions by a considerable amount.

Well, here is the good news, as many of the solutions that will see communities through the tough times to come are known climate change solutions, too. Basically, while Chicago may go from four to fourteen over 90°F days, Mayor Richard Daley's effort to build the green roof and green space capital of the United States could lower urban temperatures, clean the air, and reduce electricity demand. Solar power produces maximum output during peak cooling demand, meaning the technology's mainstreaming into the market could alleviate the need for additional power plants.

Finally, energy conservation and passive cooling green buildings can both reduce global warming emissions, the heat island effect, and protect vulnerable inhabitants. The same goes for reducing parking lots and building up mass transit and walkable communities. The solutions to global warming, in this case, can also mitigate its consequences. But green design, renewable energy, and urban planning are not the only solutions we can work on. Eric Klinenberg, in his book on the Chicago heat wave, explored how:

So, to break the cycle of heat waves causing a cascading and rising death toll in American cities over the next century, we need to address climate change, but we can do so in a way that builds green space, and clean and healthy communities. We also need to rebuild our social infrastructure so that the elderly, the poor, people of color, and other abandoned populations can survive the coming red-hot American summers.

Madeline Kovacs, a Fired Up Media correspondent, assisted with the research for this piece.

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Climate Central’s analysis found that New York City will see a three-fold increase in the number of 90-degree-plus days in August by midcentury.Photo illustration by Tom Twigg / Grist

By some measures, the Chicago and New York of tomorrow are likely to be hotter than the Atlanta of today—at least in August.

Climate Central’s analysis of projected midcentury August temperatures for 21 major American cities, under a fairly conservative warming scenario, suggests some startling changes ahead.  Today, the only cities on the list where more than half of the days in an average August exceed 95° F are Phoenix and Dallas; by the 2050s, Houston, Sacramento, Tampa Bay, and Orlando could join them.  Today, seven cities break 90° F on at least half of the days of a typical August; by the 2050s, they could be joined by Atlanta, Denver, Indianapolis, Miami, and Philadelphia.  By midcentury, a dozen cities could average more than one day over 100° F per August, where today only three share that dubious distinction. (See below for a list of detailed results for all cities analyzed.)

These patterns match a broad finding in climate research that what seems to be a small amount of general global warming could have a large effect on weather extremes—including extreme heat events, which are forecast to become more frequent, more intense, and longer lasting (see U.S. Climate Change Science Program report).

Extreme weather and climate events can cause significant damages, and heat waves are considered public health emergencies. Hot temperatures contribute to increased emergency-room visits and hospital admissions for cardiovascular disease, and can cause heat stroke and other life-threatening conditions.

Events such as the Chicago heat wave of 1995 and the 2003 European heat wave [PDF], which killed an estimated 40,000 people, have proven especially deadly to vulnerable populations, such as the elderly and persons with respiratory illnesses.

Climate Central used established scientific methods (more detail on the next page) to take results averaged from 12 major global climate models and apply them to 21 American cities.  The resulting projections should be taken not as concrete predictions but rather as best guesses within a range of uncertainty.  However, all 12 models used are unanimous in projecting more hot days by the middle of the century than we have today.  For its projections, Climate Central used a moderate-high scenario of greenhouse-gas emissions.  The scenario and resulting projections of risk currently appear to be conservative, since global emissions have exceeded the scenario in recent years.

Find out more and watch city-specific videos at Climate Central.

  Average number of days each August over … 90°F95°F100°F City1980’s & 1990’sProjection: 2050’s1980’s & 1990’sProjection: 2050’s1980’s & 1990’sProjection: 2050’s Atlanta 11 25 2 14 0 3 Boston 3 8 0 3 0 0 Chicago 4 14 1 6 0 2 Cleveland 2 10 0 3 0 0 Dallas 26 29 19 26 10 19 Denver 7 22 1 12 0 3 Detroit 2 14 0 5 0 1 Houston 23 29 6 20 1 4 Indianapolis 5 18 1 8 0 2 Los Angeles 6 14 2 6 1 2 Miami 17 30 0 11 0 0 Minneapolis 2 8 0 3 0 1 New York 4 12 1 4 0 1 Orlando 19 29 1 18 0 1 Philadelphia 6 20 1 9 0 2 Phoenix 31 31 30 31 27 30 Sacramento 20 26 12 20 7 12 San Francisco 0 1 0 0 0 0 Seattle 1 5 0 1 0 0 Tampa Bay 22 30 2 22 0 2 Washington, DC 10 19 3 10 0 3

Analysis methods

Climate Central’s analysis is based on recent data from weather stations, regional-scale outputs from climate projection models, and a common technique for deducing best-guess local climate projections from regional ones.  In its essence, this method involves calculating differences between current and future global climate model simulations, and applying them to observed climate data from the same vicinity.

Climate Central first identified weather stations closest to each city on the list, and then found the nearest regional location with model projections available.

For current patterns, Climate Central looked at August daily high temperatures at each weather station for 1981-2000, counting the total days exceeding 90°, 95° or 100° F over those 20 years, dividing by 20, and rounding off.  The answers for each city were the average number of days reaching above each temperature in one August during the 1980s or 1990s—roughly today’s climate.  (Any given August might have many more or fewer hot days.)

For future projections, Climate Central averaged outputs from 12 major climate models at the available regional location nearest to each city for 2046-2064, and for 1981-2000 (simulated values, not actual ones).  We then calculated changes in the 20-year average monthly maximum temperature between these simulated future and current climates, and added the differences to the actual 1981-2000 weather station data from each city (already described).

This last step created new, simulated data for each city for 20 Augusts in the middle of this century.  We then applied the same method that we used with actual 1981-2000 temperatures to estimate the average number of days over each temperature threshold in this future scenario.

The resulting projections give long-term averages, not predictions for any individual year; actual outcomes will vary significantly from year to year due to the natural variability of climate.  Furthermore, because the modeling and methods used involve uncertainty, the projections should be taken as best guesses within a range of uncertainty.  True long-term averages will likely prove somewhat higher or lower than the projections here.  However, all twelve models are unanimous in projecting increased hot days from the present by the middle of the century.

All model outputs used were based on a medium-high greenhouse gas emissions scenario called “A1B” by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions this decade have exceeded the A1B scenario thus far.  This makes the projections here conservative, matching a future in which emissions are reduced compared to the current trend.

The techniques and general climate projections used are well established in the scientific literature (for example, see here and here).

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What's missing from this Wall Street Journal article about expensive taxpayer-funded congressional travel to exotic locations?  The fact that seven of the 10 representatives who spent about half a million bucks to go see climate-change-addled penguins actually voted against the House bill that seeks address the concern.

Despite jetting to New Zealand and the South Pole to observe the impacts of climate change (in some cases, with spouses in tow), the following representatives voted against the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill:

Bob Inglis (R-S.C.)
Frank Lucas (R-Okla.)
Charlie Melancon (D-La.)
Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas)
Mike Ross (D-Ark.)
Adrian Smith (R-Neb.)
John Tanner (D-Tenn.)

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Our planet's supply of safe drinking water is rapidly diminishing. We have reached peak oil (according to some experts). The polar ice caps are melting, causing sea levels to rise and threatening coastal areas and island nations everywhere.

The Great Squeeze, a documentary by director Christophe Fauchere (of 2007's film Energy Crossroads), is full of such apocalyptic observations, none of which should surprise anyone even vaguely environmentally minded.

The film is polished and put-together, chock-full of interviews with various professors and experts, and features powerful footage of displaced typhoon victims and third-world children picking through trash heaps. The problem with The Great Squeeze is that its subject matter is too broad, and its format and delivery are not unique enough to reach the legions of uninformed citizens who most need to hear what it has to say. Those of us inclined to pick up a documentary with the vague subtitle "Surviving the Human Project" are probably already on board with efforts to create a sustainable future. We don't need more swelling, ominous music, staggering world population statistics, or haunting shots of belching oil refineries to convince us.

The Great Squeeze made some brief but interesting observations that I wish had been explored more deeply. It discussed the modern concept of progress, which has only barely begun to shift away from being defined by levels of consumption and convenience -- barometers that developing countries have been monitoring for decades in an effort to emulate the American lifestyle. The film also touched on the fact that Americans have lost "the tragic sense of life" -- that is, that our expectation of instant gratification has wiped away the truth that life contains loss as well as consumption, hard times as well as happy times, and that often pain and sacrifice are required of us before we can move to a better place.

For those balking at the idea of transforming our economy into a clean, green one, this is the message they need to hear. But I fear that The Great Squeeze, like so much environmental advocacy journalism before it, drowns this point with too many familiar images of bleached coral reefs and paddling polar bears. It's no surprise to learn, then, that the production company, Tiroir a Films, is working hard to market the film to the academic community, where Energy Crossroads enjoyed some success, according independent producer Joyce Johnson.

Film Notes: The Great Squeeze was released in March. It won Best Long-Form Documentary at the Festival de Cine Ecologico y de la Naturaleza de Canarias (Spain) 2009. The producers are hoping to sign a broadcast deal with an independent channel and are focusing on distributing a version of the film tailored for academic settings. You can order a copy online.

Watch the film's trailer:

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Photographer/writer duo Benjamin Drummond and Sara Joy Steele have traveled to the Arctic and back to record the impacts of climate change. And while they realize we are facing a global problem, they’ve found that every community has a local story. Through their multimedia project “Facing Climate Change,” they aim to tell those stories via striking images, frank interviews, and alarming facts.

In this multimedia piece about wildfire suppression in the American West, Drummond and Steele talk with wildland firefighter Joe King about the costs of fighting wildfires and the ways climate change is adding fuel to the fire.

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As climate change melts the world's glaciers, some nations must redefine their national borders. Above, the Basodino Glacier near the Swiss-Italian border.Via Wikimedia Commons

Something really rather strange is happening to Switzerland, where I spent part of last week at an international conference. The mountainous country is shrinking as a result of global warming.

The Italian and Swiss governments have agreed to redraw parts of the border between the two nations -- fixed in 1861, when Italy became a unified state. Climate change is increasingly emerging as a cause of changes in national boundaries, something traditionally achieved by warring armies or the stroke of a colonial bureaucrat's pen.

The 463-mile border mainly runs through the Alps, and was often fixed along the crests of glaciers, where they form watersheds, or along the course of streams gushing out from them. But the glaciers are melting, moving the watersheds northwards into Switzerland. And, as a result, the streams are changing course.

The 5,150 or so glaciers of the Alps lost about a third of their total area between 1850 and the 1970s, and a further half in the few decades since; their volume fell by five percent during the exceptionally hot summer of 2003 alone. And the melting continues to accelerate. In the 13 years from 1991 to 2004, twice as much ice was lost in Europe than in the previous thirty years.

Prof. Roland Psenner, head of Innsbruck University's Institute of Ecology, predicts that glaciers will all but vanish from the Alps by 2050. And that, he says, is a conservative estimate; if they keep melting at the present rate, most could be gone by 2037. "The future looks rather liquid," he says.

Boundary changes, with shifts of about 100 meters, are being made near some of the mountain chain's most iconic peaks, including the evocative Matterhorn and Monte Rosa (whose name comes from a local patois word for glacier). "The border is moving because of the warmer climate," says Daniel Gutknecht, responsible for the coordination of national boundaries at the Swiss Federal Office of Topography.

In fact, the Swiss-Italian adjustment is only one of three border changes that the Alpine country is making with its neighbors to accommodate climate change. It has already concluded an agreement with Austria that also empowers the two countries to make regular changes as the glaciers melt further, introducing the concept of a movable border. Another deal is expected with France.

Dr. Mark Zeitoun, an expert on transboundary environmental governance at Britain's University of East Anglia, says it is "fantastic" that Switzerland and Italy are adjusting their borders through talks. "Elsewhere in the world you see a much more nationalistic attitude," he says.

Indeed, conflicts may well break out elsewhere as glaciers shrink. Worldwide the rate of melting doubled in just two years between 2004 and 2006, and Prof. Wilfrid Haeberli, director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service, speaks of "an accelerating trend with no apparent end in sight."

Concern particularly focuses on the India's borders with China and Pakistan, already disputed areas where the melting of glaciers could aggravate tensions. And the water shortages that are expected to strike a billion people as the Himalayan glaciers disappear are likely to prove an even more potent cause of conflict.

It is not just in the mountains where thawing threatens to cause international tension. The melting of the Arctic sea ice, which scientists expect to vanish altogether in summer within a few decades, possibly as early as 2013 -- is opening up new shipping routes and access to minerals and fossil fuels. A study by the U.S. Geological Survey, published in May, concluded that the Arctic has 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and 30 percent of its remaining natural gas.

Already, nations surrounding the newly liquid sea are rushing to stake their claims. Two years ago, a Russian submarine planted a titanium flag on the seabed, nearly three miles down at the North Pole, announcing: "We are here to define the outer limit of Russia's territory." This spring the country said it would be ready to use military force in pursuit of its Arctic ambitions.

The United States, Canada, Norway and Denmark (through its ownership of Greenland) all have competing claims. A couple of years ago both Canada and Denmark despatched expeditions and warships to defend their claims to the tiny and barren Hans Island in the Kennedy Channel between Greenland and Ellesmere Island.

The next few years are "critical in determining whether the Arctic's long-term future will be one of international harmony and the rule of law, or a Hobbesian free-for-all with dangerous political conflict," Dr. Scott G. Borgerson of the Council for Foreign Relations told a Senate committee in May.

Maybe the leaders of the competing countries should settle their differences with a race to the top of the Matterhorn.

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Conquering its vast wilderness has long been a dream of Russia's rulers, even the not-so-capitalist ones...Freedom Toast via FlickrOK, this is really a glorified retweet, but Brad Plumer has a fascinating post at the New Republic about Russia’s apparent enthusiasm for climate change:  “Many Russia leaders are actually excited about a warmer world where Siberia's thawed out, St. Petersburg's more livable, and state-owned mining companies can drill like crazy in the ice-free Arctic.”

Plumer walks through a dispatch from the Abu Dhabi newspaper The National that outlines what Russia stands to gain from a warming climate, and why the country may have little interest in curbing greenhouse gas emissions. He concludes:

Given our national histories, it’s easier to feel scared by Russia’s stance on climate than, say, Brazil’s. But still. Here’s hoping there are other ways to look at Russia’s position—i.e. reasons it will want to curb warming that aren’t covered by Plumer or a Gulf State newspaper.

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Former Sen. John WarnerMore senators and citizens might support a climate bill if it emphasized the national security challenges presented by climate change, former Virginia Sen. John Warner (R) argued on Tuesday.

At a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Warner joined former high-ranking military personnel and military analysts to stress that climate change poses national security threats, including the possibility of increased conflicts over scarce resources. The witnesses echoed previous reports from U.S. intelligence officials that have warned climate change could make the world a more dangerous place.

Warner, a veteran who served as secretary of the Navy from 1972 to 1974, cosponsored the Climate Security Act last year with Sen. Joe Lieberman; the bill failed to pass the Senate.

At Tuesday's hearing, Warner said it was crucial to work with other nations on climate policy. "If the American public perceives that we're going alone, and other nations aren't bearing part of the burden or costs, the American public could pull the plug on this legislation," he said.

But Warner stressed that Congress can't delay. "This is the time Congress has to forcibly lead," he said. "We can't follow the public. We've got to lead the public."

Retired Navy Vice Admiral Lee F. Gunn, president of the American Security Project, also urged swift action. "It's not simply about saving polar bears and preserving the beauty of glaciers," said Gunn. "It's about national security."

Gunn emphasized that even if there is some uncertainty about the impacts of climate change, there is a need to act. "Threats and risks never present themselves with 100 percent certainty," he said. "By the time they present themselves with that kind of certainty, something bad will have already happened on the battlefield."

Gunn and two other hearing witnesses -- retired Navy Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn of the Center for Naval Analyses Advisory Board and Sharon Burke, vice president of the Center for a New American Security -- said climate change could put a strain on the U.S. armed forces, pushing them into more military interventions and humanitarian missions.

Climate change could act as a "threat multiplier" in already unstable countries, they said. Depletion of resources like water could lead to more conflict and more failed states, and failed states could become havens for extremists, potentially increasing the risk of terrorism (see: Somalia).

Burke warned that reliance on foreign energy supplies is also a threat to national security. Even if dependence on foreign oil decreases, the U.S. could become reliant on lithium for lithium-ion batteries in electric cars if proper planning isn't done, she cautioned. And since the Department of Defense is among the largest consumers of energy in the country, the issue should be of particular importance.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters after the hearing that he is "confident" there will be a national security component to the climate bill that is taking shape in the Senate, though he couldn't yet say what the component would look like. He said he is working closely with Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) to author an overall climate package, and will be a cosponsor of the legislation.

Kerry said he believed he could get bipartisan support for including national security more explicitly in the climate bill. Yet only two of his Republican colleagues -- Dick Lugar (Ind.) and Bob Corker (Tenn.) -- were present at the hearing. Both Lugar and Corker have expressed a desire to address climate change, but have raised concerns about Democratic proposals and are considered swing votes on a climate bill this year.

During the hearing, Kerry spoke forcibly about national security threats posed by climate change. "Just as 9/11 taught us the painful lesson that oceans could not protect us from terror, today we are deluding ourselves if we believe that climate change will stop at our borders," he said.

"The future has a way of humbling those who try to predict it too precisely," he continued. "But we do know, from scientists and security experts, that the threat is very real. If we fail to connect the dots -- if we fail to take action -- the simple, indisputable reality is that we will find ourselves living not only in a ravaged environment, but also in a more dangerous world."

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Haleakala National Park in HawaiiPhoto courtesy Simonds via FlickrHawaii’s state legislature established a climate change task force last week to study the potential impacts of rising sea levels, eroding coast lines, ocean acidification, fiercer storms, and other expected affects of climate change, and to suggest response strategies.

Lawmakers overrode a veto by Republican Gov. Linda Lingle, who said the state couldn’t afford the project and that such task forces “study issues but rarely produce tangible results." The bill diverts $50,000 a year from a state tourism fund to support the task force.

In June, the federal government’s major Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States report forecasted severe effects on U.S. Pacific islands if climate change continues unchecked.

From the Hawaii bill:

See also: An editorial on climate change and Hawaii from Friday's Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

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The following essay was written by William B. Monahan, Senior GIS Scientist with Audubon California.

The Yellow-billed Magpie’s native habitat in California is threatened by climate change.Alison Sheehey / California Audubon SocietyThey traipse through forest, grass and wetland, through mud, rain and even snow. They carry binoculars and take careful notes of everything they see.

These are the folks—thousands of dedicated bird watchers—that for more than 100 years have been taking part in the Audubon Christmas Bird Count, documenting fluctuations in bird populations the old-fashioned way: counting birds one by one, year after year.

Old fashioned as it is, this data has proven invaluable for researchers through several generations. Now, we at Audubon California have found a way to use the work of these volunteers to shed new light on climate change, one of the most challenging issues for bird conservation today.

For years, people have made substantial investments in conservation—billions and billions of dollars—with their fingers crossed that their work won’t simply be erased by climate change in the coming decades. If we’re going to ensure a future for birds and habitats, then we need to understand the changes that are coming.

Modern science provides a number of tools that enable us to create viable models of the potential future impacts of climate change on the environment. However, sophisticated GIS mapping and climate data are even more useful when we have historical information to both generate and test complex models.

Enter all those birders standing in the rain diligently counting Sandhill Cranes, Wilson’s Warblers and hundreds of other bird species in California and across the United States.

The history of scientific discovery is generally one of newer technology and methods replacing old ones: the telescope replacing the naked eye, the transistor replacing the vacuum tube, etc.

But this new work in the area of climate change is different. Once we combine these two technologies—the decidely low-tech counting of birds and the high-tech computer modeling and mapping—we make some surprising discoveries that wouldn’t have been possible with either on their own.

Perhaps the most notable of these is the fact that while the consequences of inaction are still great, we have a startling amount of power to lessen the impacts of global warming on our wildlife and natural landscapes. While climate change could cause significant range declines in up to a third of California’s birds, these impacts can be greatly lessened for many species if we take immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Take, for instance, the Yellow-billed Magpie, a highly social bird that lives only in California’s Central Valley and Coast Ranges. This species could lose as much as 75 percent of its range under the worst emissions scenarios (a loss that in combination with other pressures such as habitat loss due to development would likely result in the bird’s extinction). However, the magpie could lose as little as 9 percent of its range if we take extra strong measures to reduce greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere.

Meanwhile, the California Gnatcatcher, long a barometer for conservation in California, could lose as much as 56 percent of its range, or as little as 7 percent, depending on how well we address climate change.

These findings are quite different from the apocalyptic predictions that often prompt people to ask what possible difference can it make if they drive a hybrid car or use compact fluorescent light bulbs on their porch. What this is telling us is that, with regard to the future impacts of climate change on birds and other wildlife, the die is not cast. Research is increasingly showing us how we can beat climate change to the punch, and protect much of what makes California and the United States special.

Thankfully, California lawmakers have already put this state ahead of the rest of the country when it comes to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, and there will be a move in the coming year to provide even further support to help birds and wildlife adapt to changes in the climate that are already underway. The rest of the country is following closely behind with legislation on the national level.

There are two ways you can help in this effort:

The first is by taking part this December in the Annual Christmas Bird Count (learn more at audubon.org), or in one of Audubon California’s volunteer science projects year-round.

You can also let your representatives in Washington know that you support the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (HR 2454, often called the Waxman-Markey bill), which represents this country’s first real effort to reduce global greenhouse gases. The Audubon Action Center has resources to help you contact your lawmakers.

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Track the debate and take action >>>Grist Editor’s Note

Climate Citizens call to action: If you receive a response to your letter or email to your senators, pass along the response to the Audubon Society and Grist. Climate Citizens is Grist’s accountability effort to make sure politicians in the nation’s capital speak openly and clearly to the voters about their views on climate change. Email Grist at

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