Climate change whacking Montana hard
By George Ochenski
While Montana’s clueless politicians continue to chant “coal, coal, coal,” the harsh realities of global climate change are coming home to roost in Montana with undeniable impacts. It’s too warm, too soon, with too little snow in the mountains right now and, given that 2016 has continued the record-setting global temperature trend of 2015, it’s clearly past time for the politicians to get off their fossil fuel high horse and start doing what needs to be done to preserve a livable climate for future generations.
In a new report, renowned University of Montana economist Tom Power and his geologist son Donovan took a hard look at what the changing climate means to agriculture, one of Montana’s largest non-governmental economic sectors, estimated to be one-seventh of the state’s economy. The numbers are startling and dwarf the losses in the coal industry on which our leaders seem fixated.
Shorter winters, fewer days with cold temperatures and more summer days with temps above 95 degrees are changing precipitation from slow-melting snowpack to rain — and Montana’s winter wheat crops are feeling it. As Montana Farmers Union member Erik Somerfeld told reporter Tom Lutey, “as far as most of us are concerned, it’s already happening and we’re trying to figure out how to make money with what’s already happening and stay in business.”
Indeed, if Power’s projections are accurate, some 12,167 jobs will be lost as ag production declines. That, combined with drought-induced changes to soil conditions and vegetation, could result in losses of $364 million to the ranching industry and $372 million to farmers for a whopping $736 million loss to the state’s economy annually. To put that in perspective, it would be like draining most of Montana’s Coal Severance Tax Trust Fund in one year. It’s worth keeping in mind that it has taken more than 40 years to build up the Trust to that level and it is considered the backbone of the state’s favorable fiscal rating. To think of that loss year after year dwarfs the much-lamented woes of the fossil fuel industry.
But the pain won’t end there. As we already know, the incidence of river closures due to low flows and high temperatures are becoming the new normal for Montana’s world-famous blue ribbon trout streams. Millions of people come to Montana every year to fish for our wild trout, an exceedingly rare asset since most states in the Lower 48 that contain coldwater fisheries regularly plant hatchery trout in their rivers and manage for “put and take” angling.
Montana’s self-sustaining wild trout rivers are already changing fast. It was unthinkable only a few decades back that warmwater fish like smallmouth bass would be caught in the Yellowstone River near Livingston. Or that northern pike would find their way up the Missouri River almost to Three Forks. Or that the insect biota of the Missouri’s famed Holter Dam to Cascade stretch would see a profound on-going alteration that’s deleterious to highly prized dry fly angling due to species change.
Or how about Glacier National Park’s disappearing glaciers? If the predictions are right, and we see a 4-5 degree average temperature increase in the coming years, the rate of disappearing glaciers will only accelerate and, one might assume, the flow of tourists and their dollars will vanish with the melting icefields that gave the park its name.
Tourism is as important to Montana’s economy as agriculture — and growing. But if the natural attractions that draw 10 million visitors to our state annually fall victim to climate change impacts, the hit to the state’s economy will dwarf the losses from the coal industry.
So why do our leading politicians, Sens. Jon Tester and Steve Daines, Congressman Ryan Zinke and Gov. Steve Bullock, have such a tough time getting a firm grasp on the obvious? Climate change isn’t a threat that will happen sometime in the future, it’s an ongoing degradation of Montana’s economy that’s taking place right now while the losses and impacts are predicted to accelerate.
There’s not much government can do under our “free market” system when major coal companies go bankrupt. But politicians can and should be proactive on promoting policies that serve the vast majority of the people who elected them. Given the economic importance of the ag and tourism sectors now taking a hit from climate change, it seems clear these policymakers must quit whining about coal’s demise and adjust their priorities immediately — or step aside and let more clear-eyed leaders take their place.
George Ochenski writes political commentaries for the Missoulian newspaper in Montana. He resides in Helena, Montana.
There can be no doubt about the reality of global warming and its potential to affect major segments of the economy of Montana.
The glaciers withing Glacier National Park are indeed receding, but what Ochenski and his fellow environmentalist types never mention is that glaciers receding is not a new phenomenon.
The Glaciers in Glacier National Park have receded pretty much every single year since the first-ever white man saw them, which was the better part of a century before the amount of fossil fuels burned amounted to anything worth considering as the cause of ‘global warming’.
http://realclimatescience.com/2016/03/noaa-radiosonde-data-shows-no-warming-for-58-years/
Getting beyond hard to know who to believe and who not to believe.
When I began growing a garden in this area (in the mid 1960’s), the first killing frost of the fall very consistently arrived between Sept 1st and Sept 10th. In recent years, it has arrived most frequently the third wk of Oct., and occasionally well into Nov.
In years past ‘spud harvest’ normally came the last two weeks in Oct. as the frost killed the vines about that time. However, from memory in 1948 it came very early that year and come the next year there was still snow in May/June. I remember sacking potatoes in the fields in snow some years and not others.
The odd things going on in the meteorological world show that not everyone’s database is the same. I remember putting a computer in for what has become NOAA and they told me the computer was making arithmetic errors because it wasn’t coming up with the answers they had predicted. Seems the program was written wrong for a start and they ignored their own database that contradicted them.
Still hard to know who to believe and who to ignore. Poor Richard’s almanac has a better record of being correct it appears.
“Mr. _______, you’ve stated repeatedly that you feel that climate change and global warming are not things we need to worry about in the short or even long term; why do you disagree with the world’s science community and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?”
follow-up: “Mr. _______, would you say that you believe your intuition and experience with weather are more scientifically correct than the research done by the world’s climate scientists, and do you believe that the world’s scientists are part of a conspiracy?”
Thank you in advance for answering the questions.
Potato harvest now starts mid Sept in this area (Bannock and Power counties), but that has nothing to do with climate or weather. The vines are killed chemically these days, no need for frost.
Got a grandson with a degree in meteorology with a minor in climatology. He can’t find a job so he went back to school to get a degree in engineering which is what I advised him once to consider years ago, if I remember correctly.
When you run with a 97% claim that is anything but true you do raise people’s suspicions rather high immediately. Too many scientists, like pollsters find what they’re paid to find. Paid for answers tend to have built-in problems.
c.R. Stucki,
Dare I ask, what chemical and the follow up, how do they keep it out of the tubers? Sounds like a problem.
Disgusted –
I’ve never asked anybody about the chemical but I’ve always assumed it was plain old 2,4-D, the most common and the lowest-cost herbicide. Whatever it is, either it must not find its way into the spuds themselves, or it must not be considered harmful to ingest. If it is in the tubers, I’m full of it, cause I glean buckets full of them during the harvest.
http://civileats.com/2015/06/30/5-things-to-know-about-24-d-the-possibly-cancer-causing-herbicide/
Hope the above is wrong, for everyone’s sake.
I can’t be too harmful. There’s nothing wrong with me wrong with me wrong with me.
My wife wants to know why I’m laughing and smiling all of a sudden. I’ll let her figure it out for herself.