Pennsylvania’s 2005 CO2 emissions by sector

by David DeIuliis

To say that climate model projections indicate that average global surface temperatures will increase by up to 6.4 degrees Celsius during the 21st century means little to residents in Central Pennsylvania. To say that State College summers might feel more like northern Alabama’s by 2070 likely means a lot more. While often debated on a global scale in denominations of hundreds of years and billions of dollars, the issue of climate change has foreseeable local implications that transcend political punditry.

“Although you can’t point to any single weather event as evidence of climate change, every decade for the past 30 years has been hotter than the previous decade,” said Ed Perry, a College Township resident and the Pennsylvania Outreach Coordinator for the National Wildlife Federation. “It’s clear that our weather patterns are changing considerably.”

The impacts of climate change are certainly not all negative—energy requirements will likely decline with shorter and warmer winters—but for Richard Alley, a Penn State professor of geosciences, climate change is being caused by those for whom its impacts are only slightly more negative than positive. For the elderly, endangered species and poor people in hot places, that ratio is likely to significantly shift, especially for our grandchildren.

“Over the next few decades, people who have winter, bulldozers and air conditioners aren’t likely to be hurt too much by global warming—if winter closes airports with blizzards, then having less snow may be good for the economy if you can work through the summer because you have air conditioners and if you can build walls against the rising seas with your bulldozers,” he said. “Warming is already having negative impacts for poor people in hot places, for anyone trying to live a traditional lifestyle, and for rare and endangered species, with changes for us probably more negative than positive but not by a lot.”

According to an October 2008 report published by the Union of Concerned Scientists, Pennsylvania’s average temperatures are projected to increase 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit by 2040, whether or not steps are taken to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. By late century, under a low emissions scenario that shifts toward clean energy technologies, western Pennsylvania summers will resemble those of Kentucky, but if reliance on fossil fuels remains high, an average summer day will feel 15 degrees warmer, as in Alabama today.

According to the same report, which cites a 2005 Energy Information Administration report, Pennsylvania is the twenty-second largest carbon-dioxide emitter in the world, with per capita emissions more than double those of New York and total emissions only slightly less than Canada and the United Kingdom. The two largest sources of emissions in Pennsylvania, electricity generation from coal-fueled power plants and transportation, account for more than two thirds of the state’s total emissions. In 2007, Pennsylvania ranked fifth nationally with 123.6 million tons of carbon dioxide, or the equivalent of the emissions of 21.7 million cars, produced by its power plants according to the Environment Oregon Research & Policy Center. Bruce Mansfield, the state’s “dirtiest” plant, ranked as the nation’s 16th largest emitter with 17,387,361 tons of carbon dioxide produced.

“What strikes me the most is that the character of Pennsylvania is very likely to change in the future because it is so defined by our climate, which itself is very likely to change,” said Ray Najjar, a Penn State professor of geosciences and oceanography who contributed to the report. “Can you imagine Pennsylvania without a substantial winter snow season? How about cities like Philadelphia in which nearly the whole summer has the daily high temperatures exceeding 90 degrees? Our summer climate may become like that of Georgia. This is what we are faced with if emissions of carbon dioxide continue to grow at the current rate.”

The same reports states that, under either a high or low emissions scenario, the number of days over 90 degrees will double in most parts of Pennsylvania over the next 30 years. Although taking steps toward reducing reliance on fossil fuels may limit any substantially negative impacts over the next several decades, if it remains constant, southern Pennsylvania will likely see 70 days or more above 90 degrees by 2070.

Jim Kasting, a professor in the Department of Geosciences at Penn State, echoed Najjar’s outlook, saying that he likes to conceptualize climate change on long-term scales. “Let’s think about what will happen, not by the end of this century, but 200 years from now if we continue to burn our fossil fuels at ever-increasing rates,” he said. “Atmospheric carbon dioxide should approximately triple, producing 8-10 degrees Celsius of warming. Central Pennsylvania will be tropical. We won’t be worried about growing tomatoes—we’ll be more concerned with battling Anopheles mosquitos.”

Under either scenario, low or high emissions, precipitation across the state is projected to grow by over 5 percent, and consequently, Pennsylvania’s snow season will all but disappear under the high emissions scenario.

Climate models have indicated that the state will see significantly less total snowfall, less snow cover and a shorter snow season in the next few decades, according to the Pennsylvania Climate Impact Assessment published by Penn State’s Environment and Natural Resources Institute in June, 2009, for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. The Union of Concerned Scientists provided a similar assessment, projecting that by mid-century, the Pennsylvania climate will support neither ski operations nor the $160 million snowmobiling industry, even if emissions are significantly reduced. As a result, the season for winter recreation activities dependent on natural snow, such as cross-country skiing, snowmobiling, and sledding, will be shortened considerably, and Pennsylvania ski areas will be forced to make more snow themselves, a task that Aaron Weyman, the Director of Marketing and Sales for Tussey Mountain, said will become increasingly difficult as winter temperatures increase.

“Anytime we get a few big snowstorms, such as the case this past year, then we welcome it with great appreciation. But last year seemed to be an outlier, as we have been more used to less snow over the past few years,” he said. “When this is the case, our business can be crippled if we do not manage ourselves correctly. Snowmaking is, at times, a 24-hour operation that exhausts hours on the payroll as well as high energy costs, and to have warm temperatures with any type of rain can be devastating.”

Statewide habitat for a number of wildlife and tree species may meet a similar fate if steps are not taken. While the state’s climate will be able to support more southern tree species, the Pennsylvania Climate Impact Assessment Report goes on to say that even if steps are taken toward reducing emissions, it will no longer support current species such as paper and yellow birch and quaking and bigtooth aspen, and will be increasingly unsuitable for American beech, black cherry, eastern hemlock and red maple, among others. Similarly, warming temperatures may compromise the habitat of cold-water trout species and decrease the number of streams that support breeding populations. While warmer-water species could move in, the streams also may not support warm-water angling.

“People from around the Eastern United States come to Centre County to fish these streams,” said Perry. “Water temperature in these streams is tied to air temperature, and when you have higher air temperature it could be lethal to trout.”

While Pennsylvania’s primary game species will likely not be adversely affected by climate change, their habitat will, the report says. Numbers of some waterfowl species may decrease with the availability of wetland habitat, but warmer winters could also mean higher survival rates for white-tailed deer.

“As we have fewer and fewer days with snow cover overall, the days of snow cover during hunting season will also go down,” said Susan Stout, a researcher with the Northern Research Station of the United States Department of Agriculture in Irvine, Pa. “It’s miserable to hunt on cold, rainy days, and if more of our precipitation comes as rain through the winter, those days will go up. If the net result is that there are more deer in the forest eating more of our wildflowers and tree seedlings, that’s bad news for our forests and our forest industry.”

Not all impacts of climate change on the environment will be negative, but there will be change, said Bruce Lord, a Senior Research Assistant in the School of Forest Resources at Penn State.

“Climate change will lead to a change in the species mix in our forest. Some existent species may become less numerous, if changing climatic conditions make their survival more difficult,” Lord said. “Other species will become more prevalent or gradually move into the region. This will have impacts for the forest products industry, wildlife populations, and tourism.”

It will also impact Pennsylvania’s 59,000 farms, its largest industry and one of the largest rural populations in the United States. Under a higher emissions scenario, milk production would decline 10 percent by mid-century from heat stress, a condition which already costs Pennsylvania farmers nearly $60 million, according to a 2003 report published in the Journal of Dairy Science. Similarly, even if emissions are reduced, by late century winter temperatures would only reach the chilling threshold for concord grapes three out of every five years. And, while Pennsylvania winters will likely be able to support apples until late-century under the lower-emissions scenario, Pennsylvania cornfields, which already see moderate to severe outbreaks of disease-carrying flea beetles, would experience even more consistent outbreaks by mid-century under either scenario.

Brian Snyder, the Executive Director for the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, said that the while the weather has always been an unpredictable variable farmers have to overcome, the climate has remained regionally constant, until recently.

“People often think of the concepts of climate and weather as one in the same, but they’re not,” Snyder said. “If climate starts to shift, and I believe it’s already happening, then agriculture becomes even more challenging than usual. Farmers may begin to see altogether different patterns, not only for the weather, but also for weeds and pests they must manage, seed varieties and livestock genetics that are required, building designs and equipment needed, and so on.”

“What will be the ripple effects of this for local food supply? Human nutrition?” asked Clare Hinrichs, a Penn State professor of rural sociology. “Will we have fewer farms in Pennsylvania or just different types of farms? How will that affect cherished local landscapes?”

These are answerable questions, but only through policies aimed at reducing the one percent of the world’s emissions that Pennsylvania produces, and many Centre County businesses and organizations have already adopted such policies. D.J. Liggett of the Centre Regional Planning Agency said that while a number of factors are at play, local homebuilders are building smaller and more compact homes in response to homebuyer interest in greener and more energy efficient homes. Likewise, Hugh Mose, the Executive Director of the Centre Area Transportation Authority, said that while they may not have been thinking of climate change when implementing many of the initiatives, a growing vanpool and carpool service, a switch to natural gas fuel in 1995 and recent experimentation with a mix of hydrogen and natural gas all play a role in reducing reliance on cars and their emissions.

Ultimately, said Najjar in a talk before the Chamber of Business and Industry of Centre County, while there are winners and losers to climate change, doing something about it is an ethical responsibility, not a political talking point.

“As a concerned citizen and father, there is a huge asymmetry. It becomes an ethical problem,” he said. “People don’t want to admit they’re causing a problem, but we have to start and take small steps. We have to do something. We have to.”

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