Climate change heralds more wildfires, rising SF Bay waters

Palo Alto Online: If greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rate the San Francisco Bay will inundate 240 square miles of area lowlands, including East Palo Alto, San Francisco Airport and parts of Silicon Valley, by the end of the century. Intense floods that historically occurred once a century will come once a decade and Northern California will experience more and larger wildfires, as it already has.

This scenario was painted by policy planners and scientists Wednesday at a Stanford panel titled "Climate Change Hits Home." The panel honored environmental journalist Anton Caputo, who won the 2008 Risser Prize for his series on local impacts of climate change for the San Antonio Express-News.

"We're going to have to build levees — a lot of them," Will Travis, Executive Director of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, said. "They're going to have to be big and strong enough to hold back rising seas and storms and do it in an earthquake."

Travis displayed a map of the bay highlighting areas of projected inundation. "We hope our maps will bring home the message that global warming isn't just a problem if you're a polar bear in Alaska," he said. "Even if we're effective at reducing greenhouse gases, it's still going to get warmer for at least 50 years and the water will continue to rise. We need a new plan for the bay that anticipates climate changes and helps us get ready to adapt.

"The cost will be huge, but the price of moving aggressively now is a fraction of what it will be if we do nothing."…

San Francisco Bay from the window of the Space Shuttle Columbia