Seattle climatologist: Time to get real about climate change issues

In his latest blog post, well-known Seattle climatologist Cliff Mass rips just about everyone equally for not getting serious about the environment and climate change issues.

He’s asking for bipartisan action and for local leadership to help solve some major issues.

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Lucky for us, Mass is a University of Washington Atmospheric Sciences professor, so he knows more than a little bit about what he wants.

Where we’ve failed? Mass has a list of things that have gone wrong. In a nutshell: Governor Inslee’s failure to secure a carbon reduction plan, wildfires, lack of water for crops, traffic, poor planning for floods and landslides, increased coal and oil trains, and political parties that refuse to make progress.

It seems daunting, but Mass writes, “We will only make progress by working together in a logical, bipartisan way backed by the best scientific knowledge.”

Mass lays out five items in a program he would push if he was the state environmental czar.

“Get the best information possible on our current climate and how it will change this century.”

Basically, the state needs to better fund and staff the Office of the Washington State Climatologist (OWSC), so that it can improve its data gathering and dissemination. Mass also wants investment in state-of-the-art science, a stronger effort to help government understand and apply the data, and lastly, for the media and advocacy groups to stop distorting the facts.

“Slow down the use of carbon by supporting the revenue-neutral carbon tax I-732 carbon initiative.”

Rather than a cap and trade model Gov. Inslee has pushed, Mass suggests a revenue-neutral carbon tax. He says the passage of Initiative 732 is a win-win situation.

“Build regional climate/weather resilience.”

Mass says forestland in Eastern Washington is poorly managed and is fueling fires that shouldn’t be happening. While it’ll be expensive to fix, state leaders, like Senator Maria Cantwell, know what must be done. As for water, Mass says we need to use it more wisely when watering crops and to consider reserving more winter rain. He says we also waste a lot of resources by allowing people to live in dangerous areas like near river bends or below steep, unstable slopes.

“Reduce our carbon footprint where it makes sense.”

Mass says our carbon footprint is small &#8212 thanks to hydropower &#8212 but we’re wasting a ton of energy and producing carbon unnecessarily. One of our biggest problems is regional traffic caused by poor planning and lack of leadership. He points to a weak bus system, incomplete bike trails, and slowly built light rail.

“(Seattle) has no coherent, integrated plan for transportation and it shows,” Mass writes. “And innovative approaches (like using boat transportation) are never discussed. We need to build a coherent plan and act on it expeditiously. But it will take real leadership, which has been lacking.”

He calls a new coal terminal in Bellingham a “lose, lose, lose, lose proposition for us” and says it will result in “massive increases of greenhouse gases.”

“Develop the technologies that will eventually solve the greenhouse gas problem.”

Fortunately, Mass says, we live in an area ripe with intelligent people working at innovative companies and schools that are more than capable of contributing to increasing efficiency, building new energy sources, and taking CO2 out of the atmosphere. But there is much work to be done.

“We can move forward on this together,” Mass writes.