Climate expert Running offers dim forecast in UM talk
By MICHAEL MOORE of the Missoulian

The list of good things caused by global warming is pretty short.

In western Montana, we'll have a longer growing season and a little earlier green-up.

For those of you who don't like snow, well, if you hang around another 50 years, Missoula just might not have any.

That's about the end of the list. And the fact is, even the changes that might be spun positively are still negative.

For example, less snow means less snowpack, which means more forest fires and lower river levels, which means less fish and less recreation.

That not-so-cheery news came from University of Montana forest ecologist and climate expert Steve Running, who, along with fellow members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change, recently shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore.

Running delivered a late-afternoon lecture to an overflowing crowd in the University Center Ballroom on Monday.

Running was his usual self - funny, informative and blunt about what must be done to stem to tide of global climate change.

“Right now, we're using the atmosphere as a free garbage can,” Running said.

Running unleashed his usual PowerPoint presentation of alarming climate facts - shrinking Arctic ice, rising sea levels, more intense hurricanes, to name just a few - but he'd also added a few slides to his standard spiel. One of them covered Missoula's weather during the most recent July.

The slide was an exclamation point on what we already knew - it was hotter than hot. Eleven days with a temperature over 100. Driest July ever. At 18, the most days where the overnight remained above 60.

Previously, Running had cautioned the crowd not to be overly worried about any particular period of “weather.” Weather is short-term thinking, more appropriate to deciding what to wear to work.

Climate, that's the issue. That's weather over years and decades and centuries. That's what matters when we talk about climate change, he said.

Only Missoula's July weather is very indicative of climate change. In fact, according to computer models, this past July will be Missoula's average July in 50 years, Running said. Montana weather, he said, will resemble the weather in Utah.

And that is bad news for the Northern Rockies ecosystem that has evolved over centuries.

Like trout fishing? Good luck. Love to ski? In 50 years, you'll have to take your skis off and walk to the bottom of the Grizzly chair at Snowbowl.

Globally, those changes will have far worse consequences. In fact, that's the very reason Gore and the climate scientists got the Nobel prize.

Climate, Running said, will be a “source of war and peace” in the future. Volatile regions of the world will be more erratic and dangerous as climate changes alter available resources, and even more stable regions will suffer conflict.

Running said what's needed is a technology breakthrough like the one that has taken place in communications. Thirty-five years ago, he said, we used phone books, had rotary dial phones and listened to record players. The Internet was a geek's fantasy.

And now we have the iPhone, which pretty much does it all.

What we need, Running said, is the iPhone of energy, a new way to think about how to power the globe.

“We have to do something for energy, it's as simple as that,” Running said.

The good news is that the technology is doable. In fact, Running said, technology that could drastically cut carbon emissions could be up and running in a decade. But there has to be a political will to get that done.

On that front, Running is not terribly hopeful, as one of his last slides highlighted.

“I do not see that we will have the international leadership and governance for the global response needed,” the slide stated.

In fact, without the leadership of the United States, global solutions are unlikely. Lately, America hasn't exactly put its best foot forward where climate change is concerned, he said.

“We have to start leading on this,” Running said.

Although there are still naysayers about global warming - Running said he's been receiving anonymous hate mail, an occurrence he finds humorous - Running said the discussion is really over.

It's no longer a question for climate scientists, although they'll continue to make scary new discoveries about the extent of climate change. Instead, what has to happen next is a matter of politics, he said.

“I don't think the bottom punchline is going to change,” he said in regard to climate science.

Politicians, he said, have to face the truth that a world that keeps working the way it does today won't work for much longer, he said. Right now, however, many politicians seem to be stuck on the lower rungs of what Running described as the five stages of climate grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Even those who haven't spent any time in denial or anger would be better off to move straight to acceptance. That's where we start finding solutions, Running said.

“I hope you've reached Stage Five today,” he said.

Reporter Michael Moore can be reached at 523-5252 or at mmoore@missoulian.com.