Unhappy Trails
To many of us, climate change has long been an abstract issue, with distant impacts. Not anymore. As Sightline's Eric de Place details in today's Seattle Weekly, the catastrophic damage wreaked by last October's floods on western Washington's hiking trails has brought climate change uncomfortably close to home. As the University of Washington's Philip Mote points out, no one can say for certain whether global warming caused October's floods. Nevertheless, the floods are the kind that scientists have been predicting-and what they expect in the future. Flood casualties include the Kennedy Hot Springs, the Monte Cristo ghost town, Baker Lake, footbridges and campgrounds in Mt. Rainier National Park, and backcountry trails in the Olympic Peninsula. In a Washington CEO article last year, Eric also detailed potential economic impacts of global warming on Washington state.
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