Daily Score

Last night, eating dinner at the Chinese place down the street, I had a window-side table where I could watch the sleet and pouring rain. It was all so wintry and miserable that I wondered if maybe we'd fixed that whole global warming thing.

But then -- dang it -- this morning I found a first-rate new report documenting how climate change is affecting the West. And unlike my idle speculations last night, it's not based on anecdote or wishful thinking: it's carefully researched, drawing on dozens of scienitifc studies and scores of hard data sources. The upshot, if you must know, is that the impacts are more profound here than in the East -- and that we're already feeling them.

This map really says it all:

Here's the full pdf: Hotter and Drier: The West's Changed Climate. It's a joint venture of the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Standard survey questions often uphold (or manufacture) false dichotomies. A case in point: the perpetual practice of pitting the environment against the economy. Nonetheless, these questions can reveal interesting trends over time. And every now and then, the numbers show that the public sees right through "either/or" questions that just don't add up - like recent research that shows Americans link economic opportunity to environmental protection.

First recent trends on that pesky "environment vs. economy" question:

According to a new Gallup Poll, conducted March 6-9, despite fears of a looming recession, Americans continue to favor protecting the environment even at the risk of curbing economic growth,  Putting protecting the environment over economic growth by 49 percent to 42 percent . But this seven-point margin is down from the 18-point margin of a year ago, when 55 percent favored the environment. Further, the 49 percent of Americans currently favoring the environment over growth is only two points above the historical low over the past couple of decades.

We've been watching the Mountain Pine Beetle for a while as it's feasted upon the pine forests of British Columbia, infecting nearly 710 million cubic meters of the "1.35 billion cubic meters of saleable pine in the province (CBC News)." It is difficult to imagine that a beetle, no bigger than a grain of rice, can cause so much damage.  Then again, when that beetle has over a trillion friends, it is not so difficult to fathom. But new reports from the provincial Ministry of Forests and the Council of Forest Industries indicate that the infestation may have reached its peak, thanks in part to recent cold weather and a declining food supply.

It's simply impossible to overstate how rapid -- and devastating -- the beetle's spread has been. But it's wrong to think of it as a "natural" phenomenon.  Rather, it's a regrettable -- if not entirely unforeseeable -- consequence of two entirely of human forces:  timber management practices that have left unusually high concentrations of the precise sorts of trees that beetles like to feast on; and a climate-warming trend that's been simply ideal for beetle reproduction.  In other words, the pine beetle has enjoyed an all-you-can-eat buffet.

The result:  ecological devastation on a truly massive scale.

A shocking visual: Clark cobbled together the following animation from this Canadian government report (pdf link) on the mountain pine beetle's infestation of British Columbia's interior forests.  The beetle epidemic started with scattered, isolated outbreaks in 1999, and within 6 short years spread to cover an area about three times as large as Vancouver island.  The red spots represent places affected by beetle outbreak.  If your internet browser lets you view animated graphics, you should see the infestation spread like cancer.