Report: Global warming already impacting Calif.
By Paul Rogers, San Jose Mercury News
Rising ocean waters. Bigger and more frequent forest fires. More brutally hot summer days.
These aren’t the usual predictions about global warming based on computer forecasts. They’re changes already happening in California, according to a detailed new report issued Thursday by the California Environmental Protection Agency.
Climate change is “an immediate and growing threat” affecting the state’s water supplies, farm industry, forests, wildlife and public health, the report says. The 258-page document was written by 51 scientists from the University of California, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, U.S. Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, among other agencies and institutions.
A report released Aug. 8 points out how global warming is affecting California. Photo/LTN file
“Climate change is not just some abstract scientific debate,” said California EPA Secretary Matt Rodriquez. “It’s real, and it’s already here.”
Most Californians seem to agree. In a poll last month by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, 63 percent of the state’s residents said the effects of global warming are already being felt, while 22 percent said they will happen in the future. Eleven percent said they will never happen.