Posted on: Thursday, 24 May 2007, 12:00 CDT
Global Warming Impacts Aren't Waiting for Future

By Douglas Fischer

SAN FRANCISCO - FORGET THE future. Global warming's impacts -- be they
sea-level rise, weird weather or vast ecological die-offs -- are well
under way here and now.

Warming trends over the past 50 years suggest the region will have to
rethink how it goes about restoring tidal wetlands, such as the vast
South Bay salt ponds. Some regions being lovingly restored now may
never emerge from low tide 20 to 50 years' hence.

On Wednesday meteorologists, oceanographers and ecologists with the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration presented an overview
of how the Bay Area will likely fare given global warming's expected
impacts.

Most striking was that the scientists did not rely on predictions and
models to make an impression. They just looked back at the past few
years.

Fishermen based out of Pillar Point and other commercial harbors are
already switching gear as warm-water species like jumbo squid move
north. Sperm whales -- rarely seen hereabouts -- are making regular
appearances, following the squid. Meanwhile the giant blue whales,
mainstays of the outer Farallon Islands, never showed last year.

And some evidence suggests humpbacks are switching to a fish diet,
suggesting the two whales -- mom and calf -- lost and struggling in
the Delta may just be the beginning.

Other examples:

-In last summer's heat wave that killed 140 people and fried nearly
10,000 Pacific Gas & Electric Co. transformers, daily highs were
neither notable nor the problem, said National Weather Service senior
meteorologist David Reynolds.
It was the nights. Many places in the Bay Area never got below 90
degrees.
"Transformers blew because we never before had to run air conditioning
24 hours a day for four days straight," Reynolds said.

-Sea level rise -- half a foot so far since 1900 and as much as three
feet in the next century -- will transform how we go about restoring
tidal wetlands, said Natalie Cosentino-Manning, a National Marine
Fisheries Service restoration specialist.
[ . . . ]
"Wouldn't it be better for society to just buy them out now than
figure out how to protect it (later)?"
Contact Douglas Fischer at or (510)
208-6425.

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