Article by Tim Feran, originally posted on Columbus Underground
It’s not just you — it really is getting hotter in here. According to a report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Ohio’s climate is changing and is getting warmer.
Most of the state has warmed by about 1 degree Fahrenheit in the last century, the EPA reports. Floods are becoming more frequent, and ice cover on the Great Lakes is forming later or melting sooner. In the coming decades, the state will have more extremely hot days, which may harm public health in urban areas and affect agriculture — the state’s largest industry — by diminishing corn harvests.
As Earth Day 2023 approaches, the Columbus Metropolitan Club presented a forum on April 14, 2023 — “Can Ohio Weather Climate Change” — in which a panel discussed the impact, cost and potential mitigation of climate change in the Buckeye State.
Despite some Statehouse politicians attempting to describe climate change as “controversial,” “the science on this is pretty clear,” said host Marshall McPeek, Chief Meteorologist, WSYX ABC6. “It’s real, it’s happening and it’s having an effect on human society.”
“As a scientist my advice is: Trust the experts, trust the science,” said Aaron B. Wilson, Ph.D., Principal Investigator at the Byrd
Polar and Climate Research Center, The Ohio State University, and State Climatologist of Ohio.
The question now is: How to move from belief to action? said Ja’net Graham, Senior Manager-Energy Advocacy, IMPACT Community Action. “People have to realize that climate change is happening… and we have to make changes right now.”
That action includes the Solar Energy Training Lab that IMPACT is launching to provide critical skills for young people in underserved communities — “All these people who look like me,” Graham said — to gain jobs in the solar industry.
And it also includes the Columbus Climate Action Plan, said Alana R. Shockey, Deputy Director, Sustainability and Regulatory Compliance, Department of Public Utilities, City of Columbus. The plan’s ambitious goal is a 45 percent reduction in emissions by 2030, and carbon neutrality by 2050.
The carbon neutral goal means that the city would have no net release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, achieving that goal through such measures as planting trees to offset emissions.
“But planting 500 million trees isn’t going to solve this,” said Luke Messinger, Executive Director, The Dawes Arboretum. “At Dawes we try to be at the table when builders are planning developments. Developers are less concerned about the money now than in the past. It seems they’re more receptive to green space.”
Even so, Dawes has been planning for the increased temperatures in Ohio, which by the end of this century will likely lead the state to have summer weather like Arkansas currently has, and winter weather like North Carolina.
Already, Messinger said, “we’ve seen an unbelievable decline in sugar maple trees. They can tolerate extreme cold and extreme heat, but they can’t tolerate the quick freeze/thaw, freeze/thaw that we had earlier this year,” when there was a 40 to 60 degree difference between a daytime high and a nighttime low.
The severe freeze/thaw cycles such as Ohio endured earlier this year have also been blamed for the increased formation of potholes in roads and damage to shingles, gutters and siding in homes in the state.
“So it’s going to be more costly if we’re not doing anything,” Messinger said.
In urban areas, the impact is very real and very personal, Graham said. “Imagine spending 10 percent of your income in one month on energy and gas.”
Questioned about the cost to the city, Shockey noted that “what you often see is things that already are budgeted, we’re just recalibrating.” So, if the city is planning to erect a new building or purchase a new fleet of cars, “we’re already spending the money. Let’s spend it wisely.”
When visiting rural areas around Ohio, “I can say in the last five, six years attitudes have been transformed,” Wilson said. “When once I’d be laughed at, now I’m coming back and hearing, ‘What do I do?’” to deal with severe changes in weather. “I’ve seen a shift (in) a lot of things farmers are doing already in water management and land management. We’re seeing later fall freezes and earlier last freezes in the spring.
“But modeling is difficult,” Wilson said. “We see a decline in corn production, but an increase in wheat.”
Meanwhile, even as some politicians haggle over what to do, “there is some exciting movement on the state level,” Shockey said, “The Ohio EPA has raised its hand and is developing a statewide climate plan.”
And in Columbus, “we’re going to meet these green goals,” Shockey said. “We see more and more companies want to come here because we’re going to be carbon neutral.”