It’s pretty hard to be a climate change denier these days.
The signs of global warming are everywhere, from an ocean-washed road in Carlsbad to thousands of insurance policies canceled in San Diego to futuristic research from the deck of a decommissioned aircraft carrier in Northern California.
There’s no longer any legitimate debate about whether climate change is real, even if the extent of future impacts is uncertain. The real-time effects of the warming planet, and at least hoped-for measures to slow it down, are in plain sight — even if the connection isn’t always apparent at first blush.
Take the story in The San Diego Union-Tribune last week about how people displaced by the flooding in January risk losing their emergency lodging. That’s largely a matter of resources, bureaucracy and miscommunication, but it was a storm fueled by climate change that forced them from their homes.
None of this absolves government agencies, particularly the city of San Diego, from failing to provide a properly maintained and expanded flood-control infrastructure that might have mitigated the damage.
But experts largely agree that devastating storms like the one on Jan. 22 have become more intense due to climate change. The same goes for wildfires.
There are also more obscure, far-reaching effects of climate change that can be hard to fathom.
A study by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography published in Nature last week found that melting polar ice has slightly slowed the Earth’s rotation — and could affect how we keep time. The difference involved is only one second, but. . .
“This is an unprecedented situation and a big deal,” study author Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at Scripps said, according to The Associated Press. “It’s not a huge change in the Earth’s rotation that’s going to lead to some catastrophe or anything, but it is something notable. It’s yet another indication that we’re in a very unusual time.”
Global leaders have pledged to try to keep temperature rise to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. For a short period, the world recently ed that threshold. That’s viewed as a tipping point that risks the food supply and other necessities of life, while exacerbating the melting of glaciers and ice sheets that contributes to sea-level rise.
Heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions largely caused by fossil fuels continue to rise, despite the growth of green energy sources. Until efforts to seriously reduce the emissions take hold, measures are being tested to offset the damaged caused by greenhouse gases.
The New York Times this week launched a series of articles looking at how researchers are examining ways to manipulate nature to fight climate change.
They are studying blocking some of the sun’s radiation, testing whether adding iron to the ocean would carry carbon dioxide to the bottom of the sea and building huge machines to suck greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.
None of this is cheap, and the risks of unintended consequences — and questions about whether these ideas even work — loom large.
On Tuesday, scientists conducted the first outdoor test in the U.S. of technology designed to brighten clouds and bounce some of the sun’s rays back into space, thereby cooling the planet, according to the Times.
A device likened to a snow maker shot a mist of tiny aerosol particles into the air from the deck of the Hornet, a decommissioned aircraft carrier that is now a museum in Alameda.
The Biden istration is attempting to speed up a more traditional approach of combating climate change by focusing on cutting methane emissions. The istration took another step last week to target methane, considered a “super pollutant” that is many times more potent in the near-term than carbon dioxide. The new rules seek to crack down on methane leaks from oil and gas drilling operations on federal and tribal lands.
Increasingly, there has been a focus on adapting to climate change in addition to combating it. The pending decision by the city of Carlsbad to move a mile-long segment of Carlsbad Boulevard inland is the latest local example.
Waves and rocks regularly wash over a low section of what is also known as Old Highway 101 just south of Palomar Airport Road during winter storms and high tides, requiring lane closures, cleanups and repairs, according to Phil Diehl of the Union-Tribune.
Some city officials are urging quick action before grants for climate resiliency projects run out. Regardless, a city engineer said construction would still be years away.
Diehl noted that the city has been discussing road realignment for decades, well before climate change and global warming were commonly known .
Likewise, it was hardly a surprise last weekend when a portion of Highway 1 in Big Sur collapsed into the ocean. Segments of the famous scenic roadway have been tumbling into the sea, or blocked by landslides, for years. That’s not expected to stop.
The bill is starting to come due for deferred action to plan for sea-level rise, increased flooding and more intense wildfires.
Some insurance companies have been canceling policy renewals and putting a halt to writing new ones, while increasing s — and virtually pulling out of states facing serious climate threats, such as California and Florida.
Critics suggest insurers are doing this, at least in part, to leverage reduced regulation — and to shift more costs to customers and the pubic at large. Both California and Florida, among other states, have made changes to ease burdens on insurers.
But few people disagree that climate change has threatened the insurance industry’s sustainability.
Like climate change itself, the growing insurance problems are not easy to solve.
“There is no future in which we can price our way out of this crisis with just s,” Dave Winnacker, chief of the Moraga-Orinda Fire District in Northern California told CalMatters.
There’s no denying it: Climate change costs money.
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