Extreme weather tough on transportation system

WASHINGTON (AP) — Wild weather is taking a toll on roads, airports, railways and transit systems across the country.

That's leaving states and cities searching for ways to brace for more catastrophes like Superstorm Sandy that are straining the nation's transportation lifelines beyond what their builders imagined.

Despite their concerns about intense rain, historic floods and record heat waves, some transportation planners find it too politically sensitive to say aloud a source of their weather worries:climate change.

Political differences are on the minds of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, whose advice on the design and maintenance of roads and bridges is closely followed by states. The association recently changed the name of its Climate Change Steering Committee to the less controversial Sustainable Transportation, Energy Infrastructure and Climate Solutions Steering Committee.

Still, there is a recognition that the association's guidance will need to be updated to reflect the new realities of global warming.

"There is a whole series of standards that are going to have to be revisited in light of the change in climate that is coming at us," said John Horsley, the association's executive director.

In the latest and most severe example, Superstorm Sandy inflicted the worst damage to the New York subway system in its 108-year history, halted Amtrak and commuter train service to the city for days, and forced cancellation of thousands of airline flights at airports in New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia.

In Washington state, "we joked we were having 100-year storms every year," said Paula Hammond, head of the state's Department of Transportation.

Last year flooding threatened to swallow up the Omaha, Neb., airport, which sits on a bend in the Missouri River. The ground beneath the airfield became saturated, causing about 100 sinkholes and "soil boils" — uplifted areas of earth where water bubbles to the surface. The airport was spared through a massive effort that included installing 70 dewatering wells and stacking sandbags around airport equipment and buildings.

Record-smashing heat from Colorado to Virginia last summer caused train tracks to bend and highway pavement to buckle. A US Airways jet was delayed at Washington's Reagan National Airport after its wheels got stuck in a soft spot in the tarmac.

Dallas had more than five weeks of consecutive 100 degree-plus high temperatures. "That puts stress on pavements that previously we didn't see," Horsley said.

States and cities are trying to come to terms with what the change means to them and how they can prepare for it. Transportation engineers build highways and bridges to last 50 or even 100 years. Now they are reconsidering how to do that, or even whether they can, with so much uncertainty.

No single weather event, even a storm like Sandy, can be ascribed with certainty to climate change, according to scientists. But the increasing severity of extreme events fits with the kind of changing climate conditions that scientists have observed.

For example, several climate scientists say sea level along New York and much of the Northeast is about a foot higher than a century ago, mostly because of man-made global warming, and that added significantly to the damage when Sandy hit.

Making transportation infrastructure more resilient will be expensive, and the bill would come at a particularly difficult time. Aging highways, bridges, trains and buses already are in need of repair or replacement and no longer can handle peak traffic demands. More than 140,000 bridges are structurally deficient or obsolete. The problem only will worsen as the U.S. population grows.

A congressional commission estimated that all levels of government together are spending $138 billion a year less than is needed to maintain the current system and to make modest improvements.

"The infrastructure of the nation is aging and it's at risk because, quite frankly, we're all not investing enough to take care of these facilities," said Hammond, the chairwoman of the climate committee. "And now we're facing extreme weather threats that cause us to need emergency response capabilities beyond what we've had in the past."

In Washington state, "we have seen more erratic weather patterns that we haven't had before, so we really can't imagine what kind of winter or summer we're going to have anymore," Hammond said.

More frequent heavy rainfalls in the western half of the state have increased the volume and velocity of water in rivers and streams, undermining the foundations of bridges. Rising sea levels are eroding coastal roads. In the drier eastern half of the state, more frequent wildfires have forced road maintenance crews to change their methods in an effort to prevent sparks that might cause a blaze.

"Each time you replace a bridge, states have to be thinking about not just what kind of traffic demand there is, but how do I make sure this is a bridge that will withstand the future given the erratic weather patterns and climate change we're seeing," Hammond said. "It's a new layer of analysis."

About half the states have taken some steps toward assessing their most critical vulnerabilities, experts said. But few have gone to the next step of making preparations. New York was an exception. Not only had transit officials made detailed assessments of the potential effects of climate change, but they'd started to put protections in place. Subway entrances and ventilation grates were raised in low-lying areas to reduce flooding, but that effort was overwhelmed by Sandy.

"They got hit with what was even worse than even their worst-case scenario," said Deron Lovaas, a transportation expert with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. "This was an active test of ... climate preparedness, and they failed."

While more than 97 percent of the scientists who publish peer-reviewed research say that global warming is real and man-made, the issue remains highly charged. In conservative states, the term "climate change" is often associated with left-leaning politics.

Planning for weather extremes is hampered by reluctance among many officials to discuss anything labeled "climate change," Horsley said.

"In the Northeast, you can call it climate change. ... That's an acceptable term in that region of the country," he said. "Elsewhere, in the South and the (Mountain) West, it's still not an acceptable term because of ideology or whatever you want to call it."

For example, Horsley said, in North Dakota, where there has been severe flooding in recent years, state officials avoid bringing up global warming, preferring to couch their discussions on how to shore up infrastructure as flood preparation.

The Obama administration has also shied away from talking publicly about adaptation to climate change. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's office refused to allow any department officials to be interviewed by The Associated Press about the agency's efforts to help states adapt. The Transportation Department and other federal agencies are involved in preparing a national assessment of climate change impacts and adaptations that may be needed. Their report is expected to be finished in the next few months.

Steve Winkelman, director of transportation and adaptation programs at the Center for Clean Air Policy, said he uses terms like "hazard mitigation" and "emergency preparedness" rather than climate change when talking to state and local officials.

"This is about my basement flooding, not the polar bear — what I call inconvenient sewer overflow," Winkelman said. "It makes it real."

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Superstorm moves film from theoretical to concrete

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — In the documentary "Shored Up," scientists warn that with a rising sea level, a major storm could put New Jersey's barrier islands underwater and create devastating storm surges. In other words, what happened last month when Superstorm Sandy slammed into New Jersey and New York.

For Ben Kalina, the Philadelphia filmmaker who was nearly finished putting together the documentary when the storm hit, it meant that the ideas in the film that may have sounded far-fetched — or at least, discussions of something that may happen sometime in the future — were suddenly immediate.

"Until Sandy, we were making a film about something much more meditative, really," Kalina said. "And now the stakes are suddenly much more real."

It also meant Kalina and his crew had more shooting to do, revisiting places they'd shot — some of which were wiped away by Sandy.

That again pushed back the completion date for a film he'd been working on for three years. He's now planning to finish the film in January. It's an independent effort that he is hoping will be shown on television. He is also planning to hold screenings, particularly in the places featured in the movie, such as New Jersey's Long Beach Island.

Kalina, 36, is not a scientist, but he's fascinated by telling the stories from science by looking at the cultural and political implications, too. He worked on "A Sea Change," about the state of the world's oceans, and "After the Cap," a look back at the Gulf oil spill of 2010, among other films.

He became interested in the state of barrier islands after reading an article about how surfers opposedbeach replenishment projects on the New Jersey shore.

The story became broader than that, evolving into a look at the way shore areas are developed and protected through means like jetties and beach replenishment projects. As more structures are built on barrier islands, he said, more has to be done to protect them. "Once you decide to settle in a place that's so fraught, all the decisions you make have consequences and more consequences," he said.

The solutions can be expensive, and Kalina says, not sustainable.

"Beach replenishment is not going to save the day," he said. "You get this sense of security from beach replenishment that's a false sense of security in the long run."

The film uses animation, interviews with scientists, footage of storms past and some dramatic policy debates to tell the story.

Kalina started out focusing on New Jersey's Long Beach Island, but also traveled to North Carolina. There, officials decided this year to use historical trends to build their expectations for oceanside building codes and land-use decisions rather than the more rapid sea-level rise that many scientists now expect.

The filmmaker, who grew up going to family homes on Martha's Vineyard, said the ideal time to address these how best to develop vulnerable coastlines would be before a major storm, not after one.

The irony is that nothing can draw attention to the issue like a storm.

"It's a window of time when people have actually just witnessed the destructive force of nature," he said. "There are very few windows like that."

And it could also be a window for his movie.

Before the storm, when he talked about it in his neighborhood in South Philadelphia, Kalina said, he found himself explaining what a barrier island is.

Now, practically everyone knows.

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Timeline - How the world found out about global warming

(Reuters) - A U.N. conference in Qatar next week is the latest attempt to combat global warming after mounting evidence that human activity is disrupting the climate.

Here is a timeline of the road to action on global warming:

300 BC - Theophrastus, a student of the Greek philosopher Aristotle, documents that human activity can affect climate. He observes that drainage of marshes cools an area around Thessaly and that clearing of forests near Philippi warms the climate.

1896 - Sweden's Svante Arrhenius becomes the first to quantify carbon dioxide's role in keeping the planet warm. He later concluded that the burning of coal could cause a "noticeable increase" in carbon levels over centuries.

1957-58 - U.S. scientist Charles Keeling sets up stations to measure carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere at the South Pole and at Mauna Loa, Hawaii. The measurements have shown a steady rise.

1988 - The United Nations sets up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to assess the scientific evidence.

1992 - World leaders agree the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which sets a non-binding goal of stabilising greenhouse gas emissions by 2000 at 1990 levels - a target not met overall.

1997 - The Kyoto Protocol is agreed in Japan; developed nations agree to cut their greenhouse gas emissions on average by at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. The United States stays out of the deal.

2007 - The IPCC says it is at least 90 percent certain that humans are to blame for most of the warming trend of the past 50 years. It also says signs that the planet is warming are "unequivocal".

2009 - A conference of 193 countries agrees to "take note" of a new Copenhagen Accord to fight climate change, after U.N. talks in Denmark. The accord is not legally binding and does not commit countries to agree a binding successor to the Kyoto Protocol when its first stage ends in 2012.

2011 - U.N. climate talks in Durban, South Africa, agree to negotiate a new accord by 2015 that is "applicable to all" and will come into force from 2020.

Sources: Reuters, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Why We Disagree about Climate Change" by Mike Hulme, founding director of the Tyndall Centre.

• by Kristina Chew
• November 23, 2012
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Thai anti-government protesters rally in Bangkok

BANGKOK (AP) — Anti-government protesters calling for Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra to step down launched a rallyin Bangkok on Saturday that authorities feared would grow into the biggest demonstration the country has seen since she took office last year.

The rally, which was expected to draw tens of thousands of protesters, was mostly peaceful in its early stages. Police, however, fired tear gas to disperse between 50 to 100 people who tried to break through a line of concrete barricades erected on a street near the protest site.

Earlier in the week, Yingluck ordered nearly 17,000 police to deploy and invoked a special security law, citing concerns that the rally could turn violent. She also accused demonstrators of seeking to overthrow her elected government.

The demonstration underscores the still-simmering political divisions that have split the country since the army toppled Yingluck's brother Thaksin Shinawatra in a 2006 military coup.

Saturday's protest was organized by a royalist group calling itself "Pitak Siam" — or "ProtectThailand." Led by retired army Gen. Boonlert Kaewprasit, the group accuses Yingluck's administration of corruption, ignoring insults to the revered monarchy and being a puppet of Thaksin.

Addressing several thousand protesters on the rally's central stage on Saturday, Boonlert vowed the demonstration would remain peaceful. But he said: "I promise that Pitak Siam will succeed in driving this government out."

He then led the crowd in a chant: "Yingluck, get out! Yingluck, get out!"

The rally was being held at Bangkok's Royal Plaza, a public space near Parliament that has been used by protesters in the past.

Police allowed protesters into the site, and two roads leading to it were open. But in an effort to control access, security forces erected concrete barriers on another road leading to Royal Plaza. When between 50 to 100 protesters tried to break through one of the barriers, a contingent of around 500 police fired tear gas and beat them back with batons.

While Pitak Siam is a newcomer to Thailand's protest scene, it is linked to the well-known "Yellow Shirt" protesters, whose rallies led to Thaksin's overthrow. The same movement later toppled a Thaksin-allied elected government after occupying and shutting down Bangkok's two airports for a week in 2008.

Thaksin remains a divisive figure in Thai politics. The Yellow Shirts and their allies say he is personally corrupt and accuse him of seeking to undermine the popular constitutional monarch — charges Thaksin denies.

Yingluck was taking Saturday's rally seriously. Her Cabinet invoked the Internal Security Act on Thursday in three Bangkok districts around the protest site, and she later addressed the nation to explain the move, citing concerns of violence.

The security act allows authorities to close roads, impose curfews and ban use of electronic devices in designated areas. Measures began taking effect Thursday night, with police closing roads around Yingluck's office, the Government House, and placing extra security at the homes of senior officials, including the prime minister.

In a nationally televised address Thursday, Yingluck said protest leaders "seek to overthrow an elected government and democratic rule ... and there is evidence that violence may be used to achieve those ends."

National police chief spokesman Maj. Gen. Piya Uthayo said Friday that 16,800 police officers had been called in from around the country to provide security for the rally.

Boonlert, the protest group's leader, is best known for his role as president of the Thailand BoxingAssociation. His name is unfamiliar in the anti-Thaksin protest movement, but his message appears to have resonated with Yellow Shirt supporters who have laid low in recent years after Yingluck's party won the last elections.

Analysts said they did not view the protest as an immediate threat to Yingluck's government, but were watching it closely.

"Anytime you have tens of thousands of people converging, assembling in a central Bangkok location, it becomes a government stability concern," said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.

But he added: "I think it's a serious concern more than a serious threat."

Thailand has been gripped by bouts of political instability since 2006, with Thaksin's supporters and opponents taking turns to spar over who has the right to rule the country.

The most violent episode came in 2010, when Thaksin's "Red Shirt" supporters led a two-month occupation of central Bangkok to demand the resignation of an anti-Thaksin government. The protests sparked a military crackdown that left at least 91 people dead and more than 1,700 injured.

Thaksin has lived in self-imposed exile since 2008, when he jumped bail to evade a corruption conviction and two-year jail term. He retains huge popularity among the rural poor, who want to see him pardoned and returned to power. But he is reviled by the urban elite and educated middle class, who see him as authoritarian and a threat to the monarchy.

Buoyed by Thaksin's political machine, Yingluck was elected by a landslide victory in August 2011. She initially was criticized for her lack of political experience — she was an executive in Shinawatra family businesses — but has won praise for leading the country through one of its longest peaceful periods in recent years.

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