California leads the way on global warming

News reports make clear that global warming is here and is affecting our environment in profound ways. Average nighttime temperatures have risen, spring runoff from the Sacramento River has decreased, more wildfires are blazing and glaciers are shrinking in the Sierra Nevadas. All these are the consequences of climate change happening in California, according to a new report released Wednesday by the state's Environmental Protection Agency. Details of the report are disturbing, but the state is not taking the news lightly. California continues to lead the fight against man-made climate change by imposing new measures to curb harmful greenhouse gases.

Extreme weather events make global warming evident

"The extreme weather events of the last several years are not isolated incidents," Matthew Rodriquez, secretary of the California EPA said in the report. "They are suggestive of the significant and increasingly discernible impacts of climate change in California. The most dramatic impacts include wildfires that are larger and more frequent and the most severe drought since record-keeping began."
 
One of the more disturbing findings, the scientists note, is the increase in the average nighttime temperatures, which have increased by 2.3 degrees over the past century.
 
 Other findings in the report include:
 
• An increase in extreme heatwaves and accompanying droughts since 1950
• A ten percent decrease in snowpack since 1906.
• The Sierra Nevada's largest glaciers shrunk by nearly 70 percent.
• Lake Tahoe warmed by one degree since 1970 and has warmed ten times faster over the past four years.
• The mean sea level in San Francisco has risen 7 inches since 1924. 
• Oxygen depletion has also been detected in the water off San Diego.
• The five largest fire years since 1950 have all occurred since 2006.
Despite the long list of dire impacts presented in the report, the state has had some success in efforts to slow climate change by reducing harmful emissions, Rodriguez said.
"Our state’s pioneering efforts to curb emissions of greenhouse gases are working," he said. "Concentrations of the short-lived climate pollutant black carbon have dropped by more than 90 percent over the last fifty years."
Rodriguez also noted that California is on course to meet a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and is well on the way to meeting the additional reduction of emissions by a further 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, as laid out in the state's 2017 Climate Change Scoping Plan.
 
California lawmakers a step ahead
 
The unanimous vote by the California Energy Commission to require solar panels on new homes is a dramatic way the state may be able to meet the goal of achieving zero net energy, said state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) in a statement.
"By adopting this policy we can expand solar power throughout California, which is more crucial than ever as Donald Trump and the Federal Administration try to reverse all the progress we have made to combat climate change," Wiener said. "Once again, California is showing its leadership in our fight for a 100 percent renewable energy future." 
 
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