Climate change risk calculation comes home
November 12, 2022 6:50 AM Subscribe
Risk Calculators Launched to Help Americans Plan for Climate Change. (Bloomberg) "American communities facing a warmer future, with more intense floods, storms and wildfires, on Monday got two new digital tools that will aid officials in calibrating infrastructure and strategies to adapt."
The Climate Risk & Resilience Portal (ClimRR) "allows users to map future local climate conditions at mid- and late-century, with overlays of demographic data and other data sets to help plan for specific population needs."
Risk Factor Pro "lets users look at vulnerabilities to about 30 years out — the length of an average mortgage — and down to the level of every individual property. [...] While regular Risk Factor will show you the likelihood of flood or wildfire, Pro gives details like water depth in flood events and fire ember patterns, and how both will change over time."
The Climate Risk & Resilience Portal (ClimRR) "allows users to map future local climate conditions at mid- and late-century, with overlays of demographic data and other data sets to help plan for specific population needs."
Risk Factor Pro "lets users look at vulnerabilities to about 30 years out — the length of an average mortgage — and down to the level of every individual property. [...] While regular Risk Factor will show you the likelihood of flood or wildfire, Pro gives details like water depth in flood events and fire ember patterns, and how both will change over time."
There is more information on how those scores are calculated than I can possibly fathom here (PDF).
posted by mittens at 11:37 AM on November 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by mittens at 11:37 AM on November 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
How they're calculated, sure, but I want to know how to interpret them? 43 tells me absolutely nothing.
posted by subdee at 1:36 PM on November 12, 2022
posted by subdee at 1:36 PM on November 12, 2022
Anyway seems these are calculated at the county level, not the town or neighborhood level. Here's the map. All I wanted was a table showing which numbers correspond to what bands ("very high" "very low" etc) but seems that's too much to ask.
posted by subdee at 1:47 PM on November 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by subdee at 1:47 PM on November 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
Al Jazeera: The Campaign Against the Climate: Debunking climate change denial
posted by jeffburdges at 2:18 AM on November 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by jeffburdges at 2:18 AM on November 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
Incidentally I'm 200 pages into "The ministry of the future" and it is as good as everyone says it is. Kind of surprised there's no bibliography at the back but I recognize a lot of the proposed technocratic solutions, either from articles or from other books about climate change like Neal Stephenson's Termination Shock. It's great to read a book that isn't about one (magic bullet) answer to climate change but trying all of them.
posted by subdee at 12:28 PM on November 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by subdee at 12:28 PM on November 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
Thanks for the link to Risk Factor Pro btw... it's in a friendly format for individual homeowners, and I think I might even be able to send this to my (not climate change denying but not urgently worried) in-laws because it shows things like... the expected change in temperature over 30 years and your expected increase in energy bills.
Unless you're really deeply in denial, I think most people can accept that in 30 years, the temperature will rise and therefore your AC use and cooling costs will go up. And maybe if you're in a flood or fire zone your risks will go up there too.
Anyway according to this, my energy use will increase by 26% in the next 30 years, and if energy costs stay constant (which they won't) it will cost an extra $30 a year in AC costs, if we set the ideal temp to 78 degrees F inside. This is the kind of thing that old people who are skeptical could be convinced to care about!
Then there's a bit about how much the increased energy use will increase your carbon footprint, unless you switch to some % solar use etc. In our town we just passed an opt-out deal for community solar, so some percentage of our energy use will be coming from a community solar farm at a decreased cost to residents. This is the kind of thing that every town should be thinking about doing since it doesn't put any burden on residents, saves money, and reduces carbon emissions.
posted by subdee at 2:10 PM on November 13, 2022
Unless you're really deeply in denial, I think most people can accept that in 30 years, the temperature will rise and therefore your AC use and cooling costs will go up. And maybe if you're in a flood or fire zone your risks will go up there too.
Anyway according to this, my energy use will increase by 26% in the next 30 years, and if energy costs stay constant (which they won't) it will cost an extra $30 a year in AC costs, if we set the ideal temp to 78 degrees F inside. This is the kind of thing that old people who are skeptical could be convinced to care about!
Then there's a bit about how much the increased energy use will increase your carbon footprint, unless you switch to some % solar use etc. In our town we just passed an opt-out deal for community solar, so some percentage of our energy use will be coming from a community solar farm at a decreased cost to residents. This is the kind of thing that every town should be thinking about doing since it doesn't put any burden on residents, saves money, and reduces carbon emissions.
posted by subdee at 2:10 PM on November 13, 2022
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posted by subdee at 9:28 AM on November 12, 2022 [1 favorite]