WiLD Blog

A pressing issue that has recently been brought to the attention of city planners is the affects global warming will have on roads, rail and other transportation infrastructure of coastal cities.  For instance, where will San Diego airport be if sea level rises the predicted two feet over the next century?  The relocation plan for the city’s bustling airport will need to be put on the fast track, not only because of the unstable fill it’s built on, but the fact that it will essentially be under water, making it a perfect landing strip for sea planes, but commercial airlines…I think not.  Other airports that will be at risk for tidal inundation are New York’s LaGuardia airport and New Jersey’s Newark airport, some of the most highly trafficked places in our country. 

Presently, more than 60,000 miles of coastal highway in the United States are already subject to intermittent flooding due to rising water levels.  While a sea level increase averaging a foot per fifty years may seem inconsequential, it will exponentially increase the mileage of roads, rails, bridges, and entire cities at risk of flooding.  But man made transportation marvels aren’t the only thing that are at risk of being destroyed by an influx of sea water.  Salt sensitive habitats such as wetlands and fresh water lakes could be irreversibly damaged.  Species which thrive in the fresh or partly brackish water of marshes and other coastal ecosystems could essentially be wiped out, unable to adapt to the increased concentrations of salt. 

Officials at the National Academy of Sciences and the EPA are urging city planners to take into account the threats of global warming.  As the years go by and we begin to experience more fully the effects of rising temperatures and sea level, it is essential that we become a proactive society rather than a reactive one. 

Julie Novak

We are continuously seeing global warming becoming a more pressing issue and sea levels are rising which is believed by many to be in direct correlation with global warming. Recent reports from the U.S. government are warning planners that they should be rethinking threatened roads, rail lines, airports and other infrastructure along the U.S. coasts.
The greatest and most immediate impact of the increased heat, sea levels and precipitation rates is coastal flooding. The EPA has done similar studies that also found natural features such as beaches, wetlands and freshwater supplies also being at risk of destruction.
The new reports note that coastal areas are “thickly populated, economically important and gaining people and investment by the day, even as scientific knowledge of the risks they face increases.” The use of such knowledge by policy makers and planners is clearly insufficient. Planners need to now begin to come up with plans that will reinforce, move or replace on safer ground. “We need to think about it now,” said Dr. Schwartz, a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

The multiagency reports, draft assessments are intended to help policy makers start thinking and planning now. The report offers three different estimates for sea level rise by 2100: about 16 inches a century, a rate it said had already been exceeded about two feet.
As a first step for policy makers, the report said that transportation officials need to realize that climate patterns that prevailed in the past “may no longer be reliable guide for future plans.” Instead they should “incorporate climate change into their plans for capital improvements, maintenance schedules, emergency preparedness and so on.”

Despite this report being developed by the U.S. government, it still provides additional evidence as to why further coastal development throughout the Baja California Peninsula needs to be prevented or at least regulated. Our coastal region and ecosystem is completely connected and will face similar if not the same repercussions if major coastal flooding was to occur. The majority of growth and infrastructure throughout Baja’s coastal regions is very unplanned and developers are able to avoid regulation building standards that they would face in the U.S. If the U.S. government is suggesting the reinforcement or even the relocation of infrastructure that was professionally and comprehensively planned, what is the fate of present and future coastal development throughout the B.C. Peninsula?

Cory Keen

The Kyoto protocol bit the dust when President Bush withdrew the US’s signature from it in 2001. In this landmark agreement the EU, US, and Japan had committed themselves to reduce greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 2012(John Baylis and Steve Smith, The Globalization of World Politics: an Introduction to International Relations (Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 471. ) The US withdrawal was one of the first events in Bush’s legacy of disregard for the environment. It comes as no surprise, perhaps, that, almost eight years into his presidency, the US is ranked last among the G-8 nations (US, Canada, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, U.K.) and 39th out of 149 in a new study on environmental performance from scientists at Yale and Columbia Universities.

The chief culprits in the US are greenhouse gas emissions and smog. In the climate change category, the US ranked in the bottom 25 nations, along with India and China. The White House responded with a claim that it is implementing new rules which will address the ozone problem “in the next ten years…in a really big way.” However, they first recognized the problem “five years ago.” Five years? Why have they waited so long to take action? Could it be some sort of delay tactic?

Judging from the state of the union address, it looks like Bush is now concerned about climate change as well:

"And let us complete an international agreement that has the potential to slow, stop, and eventually reverse the growth of greenhouse gases. This agreement will be effective only if it includes commitments by every major economy and gives none a free ride. The United States is committed to strengthening our energy security and confronting global climate change. And the best way to meet these goals is for America to continue leading the way toward the development of cleaner and more efficient technology.

He has a point. Exempting developing countries such as China and India from emissions reductions is not right, considering their major emissions outputs. However, Bush’s actions, for example, the EPA’s recent opposition to California’s innovative emissions reductions laws show that this is all talk and no action. What remains after sifting through the doublespeak, his verbal acceptance that global warming exists, is very little concern for the environment indeed.

Thomas Holder

Seasonal dead zones threaten wildlife from the Washington coast down to California. “The undersea plague appears to be the symptom of global warming…low oxygen waters have extended north into Washington and crept south as far as the California state line…they appear to be as regular as the tides, a lethal cycle that has repeated itself every summer and fall since 2002” (Weiss, 2008).  Dead zones are areas of the ocean where the oxygen has been so depleted, that all life has essentially been suffocated.  The seasonal dead zones that have been forming off our coasts are thought to be caused, again, by global warming.  The atmospheric conditions which produce the nutrient rich California Current are changing.  The California Current’s productivity is driven by the upwelling of nutrient rich waters from the deep, a phenomena made possible by wind. As soon as this nutrient rich water hits the surface and is exposed to sunlight and oxygen, phytoplankton bloom, which is the main food source for many of the world’s small fish and shellfish, which are in turn food for larger marine life, thereby creating a healthy oceanic food web.

The dead zones are produced through the alteration of this natural process.  In increasing the ambient air temperature, “warm, rising air over the land makes the upwelling more frequent and more intense” (Bakun, 2008)   The upwelling is therefore prolonged and phytoplankton populations are in surplus.  Because of this prolonged phytoplankton production, access phytoplankton which are not consumed by fish die and float down to the sea floor where they rot, thereby producing noxious gases such as hydrogen sulfide.  This problem is further exacerbated by the affects of over fishing which cuts down on the natural number of fish who would be potentially feeding on this surplus of phytoplankton.  These anoxic zones are found from June through September and in 2006 covered an area the size of Rhode Island. 

Julie Novak

With rising pressures of global warming, many of the regions that are far from the equator are starting to feel more like deserts. Scientists have measured a rapid recent expansion of desert-like barrenness in the subtropical ocean areas. Here surface water temperatures are also steadily warming, which scientists cannot directly prove a link to human-driven climate change yet most strongly believe there is.

Roughly 20 percent of the globes ocean surface is relatively plankton-free throughout stretches of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. In 1998 only about 15 percent was found to be plankton free. A significant drop in the number of plankton in these regions essentially means a loss of many marine species. This change could be and likely is because the hotter surface waters or the changes in winds. Either of these factors could prevent deeper, nutrient-rich water from rising to nourish the plankton.

Some are claiming that this change could be temporary, due to the short span of observation that has been done. However it’s hard to ignore the fact that the change matches a slight but steady warming trend and also matches a pattern that scientists have predicted would occur under human-inflicted global warming. For now, there’s no way to link the atmospheric and oceanic changes, said Jeffrey J. Polovina, an oceanographer with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Honolulu.

Responding to Polovina’s claim, Isaac Held, a climate modeler at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J., displayed caution about seeking relationships between the ocean and atmospheric changes around the tropics, and also drawing conclusions about their relationship to global warming. He also states that “it is clear that in the coming few decades we are going to be continually confronted with observations of trends or events of just this type — relatively short records; much larger magnitudes than our models suggest.”

Despite these trends being considered as short records by some, it still seems necessary to treat these trends in oceanic surface temperatures and decrease in plankton as hints for future troubles that human-caused global warming will entail.

Cory Keen

The proposed 241 private toll road that would have destroyed 60% of San Onofre State Beach Park was the subject of a very monumental hearing February 14. As the California Coastal Commission anticipated a colossal turnout at the very critical toll road hearing, the usual Oceanside City Council Chamber location was substituted for the huge space of the Del Mar fairgrounds. Just after 11pm and nearly 14 hours of presentations from members of the Save Trestles campaign, the TCA and personal testimonies from the public, the California Coastal Commission voted 8-2 against the proposed 241 Toll Road extension deciding that certain aspects of the project failed to meet California’s coastal regulations. Their vote prohibited transportation officials from creating the first toll-way to run through a state park.

It is estimated that more than 3,500 people rallied to defend the park. It was the largest turnout for any meeting in the commission’s 36-year history for what we are calling the Woodstock of our Save Our Coast movement. People of all ages and socio-economic backgrounds swarmed in and around the hall decked out with slogan-riddled t-shirts and rally signs.

Surfline quoted former world champ Pete Townend stating that it was great to see “these real people who recognize San Onfore State Park’s true value in their lives, not just a bunch of paid sign holders in orange shirts who look like they’ve never seen the beach.” Here Townend was referring to the small number of road workers that were forced to support the 241-extension by their union. Similar surf celebrities could be found scattered throughout the crowds showing their support to the park such as Greg and Rusty Long, CJ and Damien Hobgood, and Evan Slater just to name a few.

This victory is deserving of huge thanks to the Save San Onofre Coalition for doing such an awesome job in this long-time building movement to defend San Onofre’s scenic views, endangered species and world-class breaks. Partners involved include: the Surfrider Foundation, Sierra Club, Wildcoast, Natural Resources Defense Council, Endangered Habitats League and countless other magnificent organizations.

Thomas Margo, the TCA’s chief executive officer, said he will appeal the commission’s decision to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. However, this is definitely the greatest victory we have seen yet, which has provided a great deal of hope for making the park’s protection permanent.

Cory Keen