Climate change will cause the most “amenity havoc” for cities in California. San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles are all expected to be big climate amenity losers. The one piece of good news is that California’s major cities are not expected to become much more humid. Climate experts do not believe that there are any plausible scenarios in which California becomes much more humid in summertime in general. After all, climate change is not going to change the fundamentally dry subtropical climate of this region in summer.
In contrast, cities in Florida will actually experience an improvement in their climate bundle as winter temperatures increase (an amenity) and summer average temperatures rise relatively little. Only three major U.S. metropolitan areas are expected to experience an improvement in their climate bundle due to climate change. These are Las Vegas, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach. In the case of Las Vegas, its climate bundle will improve because of predicted increases in rainfall. A critic of these climate prediction models would be appalled that they predict an average temperature over an enormous land area such as Los Angeles County, which is more than 4,000 square miles. By definition, such an “average” prediction must mask huge variations. In areas of West Los Angeles such as Santa Monica and Malibu, the cool breeze off the Pacific Ocean will cool the expensive homes of the elite. But inland, in East Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, temperatures already soar into the 100s in summer and are likely to be much hotter in the face of climate change. This suggests that small pockets of West Los Angeles, such as expensive Santa Monica, Brentwood, and Westwood, could actually grow more valuable as the rest of Los Angeles becomes less inhabitable. Millions of people who live in expensive San Fernando Valley homes will suffer from home price declines as their climate amenity premium vanishes.
The poor and immigrants will bear the brunt of exposure to heat waves and midsummer extreme temperatures. As a point of comparison, consider the Chicago heat wave of 1995, which disproportionately killed members of elderly poor black households in the center city. They did not own air conditioners, and their fear of crime led them to not open their windows. The public health consequences of such heat waves depend on whether “victims” know that a heat wave is coming and have access to coping strategies. Not everyone can jump on a plane and head to Idaho for a week during the peak heat.
We count on public service announcements to alert people of an impending event, such as a smog alert (when ambient air pollution is expected to be above a critical threshold level that threatens public health) or a heat wave, or in Asia that a tsunami is brewing. But how do we inform groups that face language and cultural barriers? In inland Los Angeles, the population is mostly Hispanic. Many of the members of these households do not speak fluent English, and some are in the United States illegally. Such individuals are unlikely to be interested in or willing to follow information provided by government sources. These are exactly the people who are most at risk from the shock. Fortunately, community-based NGOs have stepped up to fill this void. In Eastern Los Angeles, one example is the Esperanza’s Community Health Programs, which has been involved in the community by providing access to health information. Such unheralded “little guys” help a diverse city prepare for heat wave challenges.
The Return of Smog?
Given its topography and climate patterns and the scale of economic activity in the metropolitan area, the Los Angeles Basin suffers from some of the highest levels of air pollution in the United States. During the 1970s, before the introduction of stringent new vehicle emissions regulation that began in California in 1972, LA was the smog capital. Millions of people were driving high-emitting vehicles. Polluting oil-refining activity in the Long Beach area contributed to the local smog problem. Old, dirty diesel trucks carrying goods from the Port of Long Beach to consumers around the United States helped to scale up deadly particulate matter concentrations.
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Add CommentI really wanted to like this piece, but it relies too much on intellectual shortcuts. The anecdote about the writer's mother-in-law on page 7 is a prime example. The water agency is trying to cut water use by incentivizing saving, but the writer believes this is silly because his MIL got a check for cutting her water usage, when in reality she was overseas and hence her water use fell. Are you really using a single anecdote that relies on an outlying phenomenon (i.e., not everyone can afford to spend a whole month traveling in Italy) to dispute the generally accepted notion that financial incentives can influence human behavior? The same goes for example of how Candy Spelling's giant estate pays less per gallon of water used than the writer does. Is one rich person's anomalous water bill enough to toss out the entire idea of tiered rates? Finally, your view of L.A. is way too westside-centric. You should hang out in some other neighborhoods a bit. The fact that a handful of UCLA students won't venture downtown proves nothing. Oh, and you misspelled the mayor's name.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.notenoughtowaste.org/notenoughtowaste/Headwaters.html
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome of your facts are not totally correct, we do get 15 inches of rain not 11 and not everybody wastes water, check out more facts about Securing LA water future here. http://www.notenoughtowaste.org/notenoughtowaste
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCurious. So Cal is heading towards the coolest summer on record. July 8 saw the lowest maximum high in 132 years of record keeping in San Diego. Lowest record highs breaking decades old records have occurred continuously this summer on the California coast. Didn't we have record snows this winter back east? And where exactly are the hurricanes the ;ast four years now? Certainly makes on wonder how this stuff is measured.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBTW, everyone talks about how bad LA/OC is but nobody seems to be leaving, apparently even you. That's why the song say's 'We love it!'. After an awesome day today around the pool it should be obvious to the most effete Eastern snob.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIndeed, climate is an important factor for attracting people living in LA, but LA has many different characteristics from other region for its charm. It's really interesting that the author discusses the climate issue on an economic view.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs one lucky enough to take my family and escape the cesspool of SoCal, I can't imagine that anyone still believes the false claims that LA is some sort or nirvana or desirable in any way. The traffic alone is reason enough to hate the place. I live 65 miles from the nearest freeway.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost of the article is about water. Typical LA attitude that the author thinks that water should be taken from farmers for the lawns of the city. What don't you understand about the fact that WE GROW YOUR FOOD!
Now that LA is just Tijuana Norte, I'm very happy that I don't live in Mexifornia anymore.
What is the reasonable/fair method of calculating the appropriate use of energy/resources by nation states on planet earth??? Should it be based on the resources used per person or per square mile???
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow may we support you? Your invention is desperately needed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Climate change cant alter the blue skies or access to the beach and mountains, but it will pose four tangible threats: The summers will grow hotter, the air will be smoggier, there will be more fires, and there will be much less water."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOk, is it just me or how bi-polar is this statement? sure, whatever we do here won't affect the fact that there are stars overhead either.... WTF? worry, but, don't worry? at some point, this "writer" needs to take a stand and quit taking the middle road. its not all about profit. at some point, you have to take a stand - that is, if you believe in something.
the author is talking like a fool, you should pay more attention at how to exist in the earth longer, if you are all gone with the bad climate economy is zero, all things are 000000000
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI take issue with a couple points. One is on the subway where you say it will have 200,000 riders a year. The current subway has 150,000 riders per day not per year, so basically you calculation is off by a factor of 365. That $1,000 taxi ride just went to $3.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, you claim that the skies will become smoggier. As you correctly stated, air pollution has dropped dramatically in the last 30-40 years and continues to drop. With the advent of electric cars and more technological improvements this will likely continue, but you suddenly give a more doomsday scenario because of warmer weather. Also, warm weather is not necessarily a producer of smog. Los Angeles suffers from an inversion layer of cooler air below warmer air. If the cool air does not come in from the coast this inversion does not happen so warmer days are not necessarily the most smoggy. This is often true today as the warmest days are generally not the smoggiest inland necessarily.
Hard to get past the first page of name-dropping and tourist advertising. Kahn and his wife must be up for the next Real Housewives of L.A. Who the hell would read his stupid bool?This guy is just putting lipstick on a pig and calling it beautiful.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe real issue is...where do these giant metro areas like L.A. and Vegas get their water? The reality is that they steal it from others. By doing so they desire to create a serfdom where the lowly rural inhabitants only exist to serve their city-dwelling masters. The most valuable commodity is fresh water.
The only way to stop the madness is to abandon the growth economy model and concentrate on a sustainable future. Mexifornia (nice one, notslic) is the present model for a failed state, with its $20 billion deficit and plan to again start handing out IOU's for the services it purchases. When it goes down the toilet, it will only end up where all the rest of its sewage does...3 miles out to sea.
"The summers will grow hotter, the air will be smoggier, there will be more fires, and there will be much less water", Matthew Kahn is talking Global Warming. The evidence for GW has evaporated. LA has bigger problems than climate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen I arrived in SoCal 1972 from the NorthEast, I watched heat-infused sunsets, drank margueritas, ate chile rellenos, and thought I was in heaven (and picked up a BSEE). Having been to all 50 states and many countries, I still think SoCal is heaven. Please consider Shakespeare by the beach or opera at the Dorothy Chandler, cocktails at the Biltmore or dinner at the old train station. Take in the LA Marathon or volunteer at a soup kitchen. What's a little humidity? It's a very elastic and accepting social environment. And, very adaptable. Being rich is not how much you have but how little you need.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Almost everyone in Los Angeles was not born here."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHint...the vast majority of the Hispanic kids are NOT ousiders. They were born in greater LA. As were Vietnamese. Chinese, etc.
There are also outright twisted facts about precipitation, recent tremperatures, etc.
Are there no editors at Scientific American to weed out fluffy nonsense articles full of errors?
To me, it's clear that LA is not going to "adapt" so much as how the rest of the world is going to need to change. Different technologies and the use of completely clean power generation (say fusion in the future) could in fact make it very viable
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe'll see
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