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Report: Climate Change Imperils Nation’s Historical, Cultural Landmarks

Report: Climate Change Imperils Nation’s Historical, Cultural Landmarks

By Chris Adams, McClatchy Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Saying there’s a “race against time,” an advocacy group reported this week that climate change — leading to sea level rise and worsening wildfires — is putting some of the nation’s most significant historical sites at risk.

Highlighting archaeological and other historical sites in several states, a report released Tuesday by the Union of Concerned Scientists said that rising waters and raging flames could endanger some of the nation’s most-cherished locations.

“You can almost trace the history of the United States through these sites,” Adam Markham, director of climate impacts at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a co-author of the report, said in a statement. “The imminent risks to these sites and the artifacts they contain threaten to pull apart the quilt that tells the story of the nation’s heritage and history.”

Among the 30 sites at risk, according to the report:

—The huge prehistoric mounds of oyster and clam shells that dot Florida’s Gulf and Atlantic coasts. The report says Florida is one of the only places on Earth where coastal hunter-gatherers built shell structures as large and complicated as they are along Florida’s southwest coast. Across the state in Canaveral National Seashore, Turtle Mound is a massive shell structure that dates back at least 1,200 years. In both places, rising seas and worsening storm surge are endangering the shell structures.

—In St. Augustine, Fla., sea level rise, erosion and worsening storm surge threaten landmarks in the oldest city in the nation. The city, on the Atlantic coast, was the seat of Spanish rule in North America for 200 years. Without major engineering feats, the Castillo de San Marcos fort likely will become inaccessible if sea levels rise 3 feet; a major report earlier this month about climate change projected that sea levels could rise 1 to 4 feet by 2100.

—In California, Groveland and other Gold Rush-era towns are imperiled by wildfires. Citing a marked increase in giant wildfires, the report says climate change has driven up temperatures, caused earlier melting of winter snowpack and made forests drier for longer periods — making them ripe for fire. The report singles out Groveland, a town near Yosemite National Park that was imperiled by the devastating Rim fire in 2013.

Other locations highlighted by the group include the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in North Carolina; the Statue of Liberty in New York; and the Old and Historic District of Charleston, S.C. At Cape Hatteras and the Statue of Liberty, steps already have been taken to make the sites more resilient to climate change.

Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., the Union of Concerned Scientists is a nonprofit research and advocacy organization that seeks to “create innovative, practical solutions for a healthy, safe, and sustainable future,” according to its website.

The report in many ways echoes the U.S. National Climate Assessment, a major assessment released to a blizzard of attention earlier this month. That report was overseen by federal officials and represented the views of more than 300 experts and top Obama administration officials; it was instantly attacked by climate change skeptics, who accused the report of overreach.

In it, scientists detailed how climate change already has affected many parts of the country. The new report this week zeroed in on the current or potential impact on historical sites.

AFP Photo/Ted Aljibe

Experts Hope Tragedy Spurs National Efforts To Reduce Risk From Landslides

Experts Hope Tragedy Spurs National Efforts To Reduce Risk From Landslides

By Sandi Doughton, The Seattle Times

SEATTLE — Ten years ago, a panel of leading scientists called for a comprehensive, national program to reduce the risk from landslides — but the plan was never funded.

Now, experts are wondering whether the tragedy at Oso, Wash., will revitalize efforts to assess landslide hazards, communicate them to the public and help local communities improve land-use planning.

“I think there’s a chance,” said Peter Lyttle, landslide-program coordinator for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). “As in so many of these awful cases, it’s a teachable moment.”

But even the deaths of more than 40 people may not be enough to shift national priorities, said University of Washington political scientist Peter May, who served on the National Research Council (NRC) committee that authored the report in 2004.

“It might lead to innovative ways to use existing funds, but I don’t think it will lead to the creation of a serious, national program,” he said.

There has never been a groundswell of public support for efforts to lower the risk from landslides, May pointed out. And because slides strike sporadically and are usually isolated events, they rarely rise to the top of the list when politicians are drawing up budgets.

“It’s a difficult problem,” May said. “It’s only in the aftermath of events like Oso that alarm bells go off and people say, ‘Maybe we better do something about it.’ ”

The NRC committee recommended a $365 million, 10-year program coordinated by the USGS, with much of the money passed on to states. But actual funding for USGS’ landslide work has averaged less than a tenth of that amount over the past decade.

After several major landslides in the late 1990s, including one in La Conchita, Calif., that destroyed 14 houses, the USGS mapped out an ambitious landslide program at the direction of Congress. Based on data from the 1980s, the agency estimated 25 to 50 people are killed every year by landslides in the United States, with property damage exceeding $2 billion.

But those numbers are outdated, said Lynn Highland, of the USGS National Landslide Information Center.

Better measurement of the economic and human toll from landslides was one element of the program proposed by the USGS and endorsed by the science panel in 2004. Others included scientific research on landslides and their triggers, maps of high-hazard areas, and monitoring of the most treacherous areas to provide warnings for communities in harm’s way.

The plan also called for outreach programs to ensure that information reaches people at risk from landslides and the local agencies that oversee land use and development.

“One thing that makes landslide hazards different from earthquakes or hurricanes or other types of natural hazards is that it tends to be dealt with at a local level,” Lyttle said. “There are lots of arguments in just about every community in the nation about whether to strictly zone or not.”

In some parts of the country, landslide-mapping programs have been discontinued because of the possible impact on property values, said Scott Burns, a landslide expert at Portland State University.

But plans are already in the works for a new landslide hazard map of Snohomish County, where the recent tragedy occurred, Lyttle said.

The question of a revitalized landslide program will also be on the agenda in June at the annual meeting of the American Association of State Geologists, Lyttle said.

USGS scientist Jonathan Godt met last week with staffers who work for Sen. Maria Cantwell and Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington state, and Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado — which was hit by multiple landslides this past winter — to discuss possible ways to bolster landslide programs.

But money is tight, Lyttle said. “To carve out an increase for one program tends to mean that somebody has to find a place to cut.”

If nothing else, the Oso slide should spur mayors and other local elected officials to start asking questions about landslide safety, May said. “They should be talking about it and asking: ‘What are we doing? Should we be doing more?’ ”

Highland, of the National Landslide Information Center, is working on a pilot project to combine state landslide inventories as a small step toward a national inventory. But another project she planned to start this spring — to develop a new estimate of economic losses from landslides in Washington and Oregon — was canceled due to lack of funding.

Marcus Yam/Seattle Times/MCT

Potential For Heart Attack, Stroke Risk Seen With Marijuana Use

Potential For Heart Attack, Stroke Risk Seen With Marijuana Use

By Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times

Over a five-year period, a government-mandated tracking system in France showed that physicians in that country treated 1,979 patients for serious health problems associated with the use of marijuana, and nearly 2 percent of those encounters were with patients suffering from cardiovascular problems, including heart attack, cardiac arrhythmia and stroke, and circulation problems in the arms and legs. In roughly a quarter of those cases, the study found, the patient died.

In the United States, when young and otherwise healthy patients show up in emergency departments with symptoms of heart attack, stroke, cardiomyopathy and cardiac arrhythmia, physicians have frequently noted in case reports that these unusual patients are regular marijuana users.

Such reporting is hardly the basis for declaring marijuana use an outright cause of cardiovascular disease. But on Wednesday, cardiologists writing in the Journal of the American Heart Association warned that “clinical evidence … suggests the potential for serious cardiovascular risks associated with marijuana use.” And with a growing movement to decriminalize marijuana use, they called for data-collection efforts capable of detecting and measuring marijuana’s cardiovascular impact among American users of cannibis setiva.

“There is now compelling evidence on the growing risk of marijuana-associated adverse cardiovascular effects, especially in young people,” said Emilie Jouanjus, lead author of the French study, which was also published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. That evidence, Jouanjus added, should prompt cardiologists to consider marijuana use a potential cause of cardiovascular disease in patients they see.

In an editorial published Wednesday in the AHA journal, Drs. Sherief Rezkalla and Robert A. Kloner asked, “Do we really know enough about the cardiovascular effects of marijuana to feel comfortable about its use in patients with known cardiovascular disease or patients with cardiovascular risk factors,” including obesity, sedentary behavior, high blood pressure and worrisome cholesterol numbers.

Rezkalla and Kloner combed the recent medical literature for animal experiments, observational studies and case reports linking marijuana use in close temporal proximity with cardiovascular events. They cited evidence that marijuana use probably increases clotting factors in the blood and that heavy marijuana use may lead to significant changes in the tiny vessels carrying blood to the heart and brain, such that even after clearance of a major blockage, blood flow remains impeded.

Aside from heart attacks and strokes, case studies linked recent marijuana use in patients seeking care for increased angina, ischemic ulcers and gangrene associated with blocked blood flow to extremities and transient ischemic attacks, sometimes called “mini-strokes.” Notably these complaints often came from patients who were young and had no previous evidence of cardiovascular disease.

“We think the time has come to stop and think about what is the best way to protect our communities from the potential danger of widespread marijuana use in the absence of safety studies,” added Rezkalla, a cardiologist at the Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin, and Kloner, a cardiologist at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine. “It is the responsibility of the medical community to determine the safety of the drug before it is widely legalized for recreational use.”

AFP Photo/Desiree Martin