Excellent look at the possible effects of global warming here; with one of the major results being the loss of snow pack as the warmer temperatures turns the snow into rainfall, dramatically increasing the need to capture the run-off with the Auburn Dam.
An excerpt.
Cover Story: August 24, 2006
Hot futures
Is anyone considering the possibility that environmental effects from global warming could make Sacramento unlivable?
By Ralph Brave
Photo Illustration by Don Button
On an afternoon in the middle of May that reached an unseasonable 97 degrees, three planners for the city of Sacramento sat around the conference table in Room 3100 of the new City Hall, silent after detailing the predicted effects of global warming on the Sacramento region. The expected impacts include an additional two months of summer temperatures per year, with Sacramento experiencing 50 to 110 days of 95 degrees and above (currently the annual average is 18 such days); intrusion into and possible flooding of the Delta by saltwater due to Pacific Ocean sea-level rise and storm surges; a dramatic decline of water available for drinking and irrigation caused by a substantial loss of Sierra snowpack; et cetera.
The planners’ silence at the conclusion of their discussion served to highlight the ominous but unasked question: Is anyone considering the possibility that the environmental effects from global warming could make Sacramento unlivable?
When the question was explicitly posed, more silence followed and then was finally broken when city planner Helen Selph responded, “Not publicly,” a toss of her head and a smile indicating that her answer was half in jest. But only half.
Though no specific weather event can be definitively attributed to global warming, the lethal two-week heat wave in July seemed to confirm the worst fears about the changing climate and what it might portend for Sacramento. The convergence of the scientific evidence confirming global warming with real-world weather events like the heat wave is stimulating an unprecedented upsurge in activity in the Sacramento region by individuals, communities, businesses and government agencies to combat climate change.
“There’s so much innovative action on this issue happening here in California and across the U.S. at the grassroots level,” observed Larry Greene, executive director of the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District. “It’s a bright spot, something of which we can really be proud.”
Inquiries to community groups and local agencies in the Sacramento region bear out Greene’s observation. Marcy Barnett and a couple of interns run the Sacramento Area Green Business Program for Sacramento County, helping businesses from REI to Midtown’s Café Bernardo implement a certifiable range of energy-conservation, pollution-prevention and other environmental measures. At UC Davis, students successfully lobbied the university to launch a campus-wide greenhouse-gas-emissions inventory. A new single-family-home subdivision going up on Orchard Lane in South Natomas is designed with solar panels and conservation features to be “electric neutral.”
Still, given the facts and the cascade of studies on potential impacts, one has to wonder: What really will be required to counter global warming? And will all this activity be enough to keep Sacramento habitable?
A new paradigm Last month, the first state-mandated biennial report on the effects of global warming on California was released by the California Climate Change Center. Drafted by more than 70 leading scientists in the field, and financed in part by the California Energy Commission and the California Environmental Protection Agency, the report documented three scenarios resulting from global warming. Each of the scenarios was based on the level of greenhouse-gas emissions and the consequent rise in temperatures in the decades between now and the period 2070-2099. Taken all together, the scientific consensus for the range of predicted impacts, as compared with 1961-1990, were the following:
• 30-percent to 90-percent loss in Sierra snowpack
