[GPSCC-chat] Morgan Hill Green Talk

[Wes Rolley]

This is scheduled to run on Friday. MH Times

I am always amazed by the ease with which we can be led to believe 
almost anything. All it takes is a well designed campaign and enough 
money to repeat it a few times. Take, for example, the attractive 
advertisements for Nutella. They feature a mother taking care of her 
children and she talks about the hazelnuts with a “touch of chocolate.” 
Of course the two main ingredients are sugar and palm oil, but how to 
you sell anyone on the good feelings you would get from that.

Another example is all of the insurance company ads that promote the 
ease with which they happily settle claims and, go paraphrase a BP 
Chairman, “give you your life back.” We all know that it is not 
necessarily in the interest if insurance company profitability to pay 
those claims quickly, if they pay them at all. So, for all of the 
publicity surrounding the gas line explosion in San Bruno, why are some 
of those without a home still waiting for their insurance companies to 
pay anything?

One insurance company is now advertising that you should ask a neighbor 
about their services. I hope someone asks me, because I always felt that 
they were on the side of getting claims settled cheaply and never on the 
side of getting the story right. At least that was my experience.

So what happens when we are confused about what to believe about weather 
and climate?

At times, it does not even take a well funded campaign to get us all 
confused. Consider the fact that almost every day for the past several 
weeks, we have had daily reminders of the cold and snow that had gripped 
the eastern United States while we enjoy relatively warm weather here... 
and local news anchors continue to remind us of how lucky we atre. What 
we don't hear, or see, is that large areas of North Eastern Canada and 
Greenland are experiencing daily temperature as much as 30 deg. F above 
normal.

What we get is a one sided view that climate change is not happening 
because we are not experiencing it here in America... while major areas 
of the rest of the world are feeling it's effects daily. In point of 
fact, ABC Nighty News did one story making the point that increased 
outbreaks of abnormally hot and cold weather, along with precipitation 
deluges and droughts are all to be expected on a warming planet.

But, if we really want to understand that story, maybe we need to turn 
to the insurance industry and see what they think of climate risk to 
business. Zurich Re: has probably done more actuarial work on this 
question than any other. Their assessment is that the long term costs to 
business from extreme weather events is significant and that this should 
shortly start showing up in the rates that business pays. It is notable 
that they no longer question the facts of climate change, but rather are 
organizing to help their clients assess and mitigate the risks.

It makes me wonder what risk is associated with San Francisco's attempt 
to develop Treasure Island into something special. It would seem to me 
that most of this reclaimed land is very vulnerable to sea level rise. 
It is also clear that the IPPC's earlier estimates of the amount of sea 
level rise by 2100 will most likely be seen before 2050, and maybe by 2030.

I know that I would not want to insure any Treasure Island project that 
had a long term payback.

What is this most likely to mean for Morgan Hill? Even the most radical 
estimates of sea level rise would not flood the Santa Clara Valley any 
time soon. However, it is clear that the Delta is very threatened, and 
with it much of California's Agricultural Economy as well as the 
drinking water for a major portion of California's population. Not only 
would the Delta's infrastructure be damaged, many of the pump inlets 
would now have saline water for extended portions of the year.

It may be that Don Gage is the most important official that we have now. 
He has been elevated to the role of Chairing the Board of the Santa 
Clara Valley Water District. I would hope that Gage takes a fresh look 
at the long term needs of our area and makes the State work to protect 
what is there now rather than spending $ billions on new ways to divert 
the water, abandoning the Delta and it's residents to their own fates, 
possibly uninsurable for climate risk.

As always, you know it will be California's tax payers who will shoulder 
cost of paying for bad judgment. We all need to minimize that risk at 
every opportunity.