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Climate Fwd:

NASA Ranks 2017 as the Second-Warmest Year on Record

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A drought in South Africa is so severe that Cape Town could run out of water in April.Credit...Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg, via Getty Images

After three consecutive years of record-setting global temperatures, 2017 turned out not to be a fourth record. That was expected, but global temperature data for last year — which government scientists made public on Thursday — showed that Earth’s long-term warming trend is continuing unabated.

NASA researchers said that 2017 was the second-warmest year on record, behind 2016 but topping 2014 and 2015. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which uses a different method to analyze temperature data, said that 2017 was the third-warmest, behind 2016 and 2015. Both data sets are in line with the overall trend that the Earth’s climate is warming because of human-caused climate change.

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Credit...Nadja Popovich/The New York Times

There’s something even more startling in the data. The heat that dogged 2015 and 2016 was exacerbated by El Niño, the Pacific climate pattern linked with higher-than-average temperatures. NOAA declared the return of El Niño in March 2015, and it ran through May 2016. But 2017 did not have El Niño turning up the thermostat. NASA’s data shows that 2017 was the warmest year on record without El Niño.

Check out the full story here, which we published today.


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Sunset in San Francisco. Some lawmakers are trying to encourage higher-density housing. Credit...Andrew Burton for The New York Times

There’s a fight brewing in California that has enormous consequences for the state’s climate policies. But it’s not about electric cars or renewable energy, it’s a battle over affordable housing.

Here’s the back story: San Francisco’s state senator, Scott Wiener, introduced a bill this month that would abolish a variety of local zoning restrictions around transit hubs in cities like San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles and San Diego. It would essentially make it much easier to build thousands of new midrise housing units near bus stops and train stations.

To call this bill contentious would be an understatement. Cities and towns have long been protective of their ability to control local development through zoning codes. Opponents of Mr. Wiener’s bill have warned that allowing unregulated development could destroy the character of their neighborhoods or displace vulnerable communities. “I would have a neighborhood with little 1920s, ’30s and ’40s single-family homes look like Dubai 10 years later,” Paul Koretz, a Los Angeles city councilman, told The Los Angeles Times.

Mr. Wiener has disputed those concerns and argues that California’s high housing costs call for bold action. Cities have made it too hard to increase density in urban areas, he says, which drives up housing prices and pushes people into the suburbs, forcing longer commutes.

It’s too early to predict how this debate will play out. But many analysts agree that California needs to rethink its land-use policies to meet its ambitious goals on climate change.

California has set a target of cutting emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, and in many ways it’s made impressive headway. It’s on track to get half its electricity from renewable sources like wind or solar. Officials plan to put more than 4.2 million electric cars on the road by 2030, up from 250,000 today.

And yet, even those herculean measures won’t be enough. As several recent studies note, the state will fall short of its climate target unless people also drive less; transportation is by far the state’s largest source of emissions. Adding more housing near transit stops could allow more people to be less dependent on car travel, reducing emissions significantly.

That’s easier said than done. While technological solutions like solar power and electric cars enjoy broad popular support, revamping housing and transportation is more controversial — it’s an issue that divides even environmentalists. (My colleague Conor Dougherty recently wrote a terrific piece about the bitter fights in Berkeley over increasing density.) This is one of the next big climate battles, and it’s one to watch closely.


This question was sent to us from Chris Brooks in Noblesville, Ind.:

I live far from the coasts. They will be spending billions/trillions on saving cities from rising seawater. Many have purposely put themselves in danger through coastal living. Why should I have to pay higher taxes to support their chosen lifestyles?

Four in 10 Americans live in coastal areas. Most of those areas, absent climate change, are no more dangerous than inland living. After all, no place is free of natural hazards. It’s climate change that has made many coastal locales more hazardous in recent years.

That said, it’s impossible to overlook the creeping expense. Last year was the United States’ costliest ever for extreme weather events: $306 billion in damage, much of that from hurricanes that struck coastal areas.

Guarding against future disasters will be expensive, too. A 2015 Rutgers Energy Institute report said protecting New York City alone from sea level rise would cost $120 billion. It is a hefty bill, but not one that will necessarily come from your tax dollars. In fact, so far, Congress has done little to help coastal areas adapt to rising waters, even though some at-risk states, like New York, contribute more to the federal coffers than they receive in federal spending.

And New York City, like many coastal areas, is an economic driver. Fourteen percent of the nation’s counties that are on a coastline produce 45 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.

That said, some coastal areas prone to damage, like in Florida, Texas and Louisiana, receive a lot of money from the federal government. Some places have repeatedly benefited from the Stafford Act, under which the Treasury foots the bill for repairing storm-damaged infrastructure. Other neighborhoods have been rebuilt multiple times through the government-run National Flood Insurance Program, which is broke.

In the future, the country has to decide if that’s sustainable. In the long run, it may be a more effective use of your tax dollars to pay for improvements or buyouts so these communities won’t need to be bailed out later. After Hurricane Sandy, New York State bought some at-risk properties, leaving behind wetlands to provide a buffer for future storms. But deciding who stays and who leaves isn’t limited to coastal issues.

Wildfires caused $18 billion in damage last year, partly because climate change is making wildfires more likely, and partly because more people are living in places that are likely to burn. Droughts in the Dakotas and Montana caused $2.5 billion in damage, and Midwestern storms $7.5 billion. In short, coastal cities are not alone in experiencing climate change’s effects. But unlike the apocryphal frog in the pot of water, as sea levels rise they can see the danger coming.

Do you have questions about climate change? We’ll answer them in this newsletter. Send us yours via the form at the bottom of our climate Q. and A.


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Kendra Pierre-Louis is a reporter on the climate team. Before joining The Times in 2017, she covered science and the environment for Popular Science. More about Kendra Pierre-Louis

Brad Plumer is a reporter covering climate change, energy policy and other environmental issues for The Times's climate team. More about Brad Plumer

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