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With two months still left in 2012, the preliminary data indicate that the U.S. has thus far experienced eleven weather-related disasters each with damages of at least a billion dollars. Since 1980, only 2011 saw more billion-dollar weather disasters (14 in all). With the drought and Hurricane Sandy likely to be among the costliest weather-related disasters on record (i.e. since 1980), 2012 also is likely to edge out 1988 as the second costliest year in terms of billion-dollar weather-extremes.

Should cities be preparing for the consequences of climate disruption and rising sea levels?  As part of the PBS Newshour series on "Coping With Climate Change," Ray Suarez discusses the question with Joseph Romm of Center for American Progress and American Enterprise Institute's Kenneth Green.

For the 50 million of us who stood in the path of Hurricane Sandy and the rest who watched its devastation, isn't it time to ask our leaders how we can avoid a future where Frankenstorms like Sandy become the new normal?  We need common-sense strategies to prepare our communities to withstand a future with rising seas and with storms, droughts and wildfires on steroids.  We also must quickly harness American ingenuity to build a world powered by carbon-free energy that will stop pumping steroids into our climate system and lessen future risks.  We must do both and Sandy has reminded us that there's no time to lose. The future is here, a little early.

In 2009, a publicly funded assessment of the impacts of climate change, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, warned in its key findings that "coastal areas are at increasing risk from sea-level rise and storm surge." Now, just days after "Frankenstorm" Sandy pushed the most destructive and costly storm surge on record for the U.S. mid-Atlantic into the region's heavily populated coastal areas, the libertarian Cato Institute is treating Americans to a Halloween trick. It released today (31 October 2012) a slick study masquerading as an updated "Addendum" to the Federal report. In its key findings, Cato entirely drops any mention of storm surges and says the "[i]mpacts of observed climate change have little national significance."

A new report on climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability in coastal areas of the U.S. warns that coping with sea level rise and coastal disruption "will be a challenge for coastal economies that contributed $8.3 trillion to the GDP in 2011." It says that local governments will have to shoulder much of the burden of "making the critical, basic land-use and public investment decisions and ...working with community stakeholder groups to implement adaptive measures on the ground."

As the planet warms, heat waves are becoming more frequent and severe.  The problem is compounded in cities by the "urban heat island" effect -- the tendency for cities to be much warmer than the surrounding countryside.  In this 10 minute video, PBS Newshour reports on Chicago's efforts to cool the city down and dampen the rising need for air conditioning.  

Whether or not we take action to slow climate change and prepare for its impacts depends a lot on compelling images of what is happening to the planet around us, and on visualizing alternative futures. Few images can be as iconic, compelling and symbolic of climate change than the melting and disintegration of the world's ice sheets and glaciers. In the movie Chasing Ice, to be released on 9 November 2012, audiences will follow photographer James Balog and his crew in their determined efforts to capture those images in some of the harshest, most isolated -- and most beautiful -- areas of the planet.

We reported last week (26 September 2012), that sea ice in the Chukchi Sea north of Alaska had declined to the point where the National Ice Center had characterized an area preferred by walruses (Hanna Shoal) as open water. Without the sea ice they needed to rest on, walruses were headed ashore in search of a suitable area of coastal land where they could "haul out." We and others expected large numbers of walruses to haul out in the area of Point Lay, Alaska, where they have hauled out in recent years. But most of the walruses instead opted to continue swimming far to the West, to haul out in the vicinity of Russia's Cape Serdtse-Kamen -- joining other walruses already hauled out there. Though we cannot yet confirm that large numbers of walruses are hauling out at the remote cape, that certainly was the case last year. By mid-October 2011, an estimated (and astounding) 100,000 walruses from both the U.S. and Russian sides of the Chukchi, had hauled out there.

It's not too soon to start thinking about Earth Hour 2013!  From 8.30pm – 9.30pm on Saturday 23 March 2013, people around the world will turn off their lights for an hour in symbolic support for taking steps to address climate change and the other threats to our planet.  The official Earth Hour 2013 video captures the excitement of past Earth Hours and challenges us to take substantive actions beyond the hour.  The video features David Guetta’s “Without You.”