US Cities Who Claim They Are 'Climate Havens': Do They Offer Refuge from Extreme Weather?

[Social Media]

 

As climate change intensifies heatwaves and storms across the United States, the concept of "climate havens" has gained traction. These are cities purported to offer refuge from extreme weather, attracting attention from regions prone to hurricanes, wildfires, and other climate-induced disasters. Among these cities, Buffalo, New York, stands out for its claim of a moderate year-round climate, a notion championed by Mayor Byron Brown in 2019.

 

During a state of the city address, Mayor Brown suggested that Buffalo could be a "climate refuge city," potentially serving as a sanctuary for those fleeing more disaster-prone areas. This idea was eagerly adopted by Invest Buffalo Niagara, a local economic development organization, which marketed the city as a climate haven. Despite expected rises in air and water temperatures, climate scientists do not foresee an increase in weather-related disasters in Buffalo over the coming decades. This optimistic outlook was highlighted on the "Be in Buffalo" campaign website, which touted the city's protection from frequent droughts, unliveable heat, and intense weather-related disasters, as well as its abundant fresh water supply from the Great Lakes.

 

Stephen Vermette, a geography professor at Buffalo State University, supports some of these claims. His research indicates no significant increase in extreme weather events in Buffalo and Western New York. "I really could not find any type of extreme weather [that was increasing] in Buffalo and Western New York," he noted. However, he cautioned against viewing Buffalo as an idyllic sanctuary, stating, "We’re not an oasis, we suck less."

Buffalo's reputation for milder weather is not new; it dates back over a century, as evidenced by a 1900s newspaper headline proclaiming, "Buffalo comfortable while other cities of the country swelter." Vermette's conclusions have since been widely circulated in the media, sometimes without a thorough understanding of his underlying research.

 

Buffalo is not alone in its climate haven aspirations. Cities across the upper Midwest and Northeast, such as Duluth in Minnesota, Ann Arbor in Michigan, Madison in Wisconsin, and Burlington in Vermont, have similarly embraced this concept. However, the notion of a climate haven is met with skepticism by climate scientists and experts, who recognize both its potential benefits and significant limitations.

 

Susan Clark, an assistant professor of environment and sustainability at Buffalo State University, has mixed feelings about the climate haven concept. While acknowledging its role in raising awareness about climate change, she stresses the importance of understanding the broader context. "It gets people thinking about it, which is great," Clark says. "The idea of a climate haven can be really hopeful, but people have to understand the whole context."

 

Indeed, climate change is already impacting places like Buffalo. Increased precipitation is causing more frequent flooding, and winter and ice storms can lead to power outages, particularly in cities with aging infrastructure. Buffalo's famous snowfall also poses risks; a 2022 storm that dumped several feet of snow caused major power outages and resulted in over 30 deaths. 

 

City leaders are acutely aware of these challenges. Brendan Mehaffy, who heads Buffalo's office of strategic planning, notes that the city is conducting a coastal resiliency study related to flooding and has adjusted its budget to address increasingly intense precipitation events. "I think the term 'haven' is very misleading," says Julie Arbit, a researcher at the Center for Social Solutions at the University of Michigan. "A better term might be a 'climate adaptation zone.'"

 

For cities to truly serve as climate refuges, significant investment in infrastructure is essential to accommodate new residents and adapt to the changing climate. Failure to do so could exacerbate inequalities, displacement, and gentrification. For example, Duluth, Minnesota, has seen an influx of newcomers, raising concerns that rising housing prices may displace local residents.

 

Affordable housing is a potential challenge for Buffalo as well. Like its Midwest peers, Buffalo must invest in adapting to warmer weather and increased precipitation. Mehaffy points out that the marketing campaign was driven by an economic development group, not the city itself. While Buffalo has seen a recent population increase, it is difficult to attribute this solely to climate change.

 

Clark sees an opportunity for Buffalo to address these challenges and improve life for all residents. "It's a great opportunity for us to try to tackle and try to face some of these challenges," she says. "There's still a lot of work to be done here to make life better here for everyone."

 

Despite the marketing efforts, it remains unclear if a significant number of Americans are relocating to these so-called climate havens. Migration data shows that most Americans move within their region or state, rather than across state lines or the country. This suggests that the real climate havens might be the "safer" zones within metropolitan areas, rather than entirely new cities.

 

Jeremy Porter, a demographer and head of climate implications research at First Street Foundation, has studied how climate change influences relocation. He notes that residents are more likely to move to drier neighborhoods within their city rather than relocate entirely. Extreme weather events like hurricanes are seen as rare, making permanent relocation less likely. "There will be people that do take this kind of information and do relocate, but I can't see a world in which it’s a macro trend," Porter says.

 

In the coming decades, Porter predicts significant migration within regions or metropolitan areas, but does not foresee a major shift to entirely new cities. "We're going to see a lot of the same as we see now," he concludes.

As the climate crisis continues to unfold, the concept of climate havens may offer a glimmer of hope. However, it is crucial to approach this idea with a clear understanding of its limitations and the necessary steps for adaptation. Only then can these cities potentially provide a viable refuge from the increasing threats posed by climate change.

 

Credit: BBC 2024-07-04

 

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[Donga]

You can be sure there are plenty of suckers who believe Climate Change causes more extreme weather, and even some who think these extreme events can be localised! There is almost no weather event nowadays that does not come with a blizzard of declarations that it is proof of climate change.

But let's look at Tropical Cyclone Jasper, which hit far north Queensland in December. It dumped a massive amount of rain and none of what follows denies the fact it caused great damage and suffering. In its wake the Red Cross released an Instagram video declaring “Disasters like Ex-Tropical Cyclone Jasper in Far North Queensland are happening more often due to climate change”. Greenpeace called it a “frightening portent of what’s to come under climate change”. The Climate Council warned “climate change is making (tropical cyclones) more destructive”.

None of this is true.

If The Science of global warming has a bible then surely it must be the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. It is the latest accumulation of all the best research and it runs to a mind-numbing 2391 pages. On page 1586 it says: “Tropical cyclone landfall frequency over Australia shows a decreasing trend in Eastern Australia since the 1800s, as well as in other parts of Australia since 1982. A paleoclimate proxy reconstruction shows recent levels of (tropical cyclone) interactions along parts of the Australian coastline are the lowest in the past 550-1500 years.”

What of bushfires? “Extreme conditions, like the 2019 Australian bushfires and African flooding, have been associated with strong positive (Indian Ocean Dipole) conditions” (p1104). And, “There is no evidence of a trend in the Indian Ocean Dipole mode and associated anthropogenic forcing” and “The amplitude of the El Nino–Southern Oscillation variability has increased since 1950 but there is no clear evidence of human influence” (p1104).

Further, we are not facing a climate Armageddon, according to British professor Jim Skea, who was appointed chairman of the IPCC last year. “The world won’t end if it warms by more than 1.5 degrees,” Skea told German weekly Der Spiegel last year. “It will however be a more dangerous world. Countries will struggle with many problems, there will be social tensions. “And yet this is not an existential threat to humanity. Even with 1.5 degrees of warming, we will not die out.”

Prof Skea worries the zealots are doing their cause a grave disservice. “If you constantly communicate the message that we are all doomed to extinction, then that paralyses people and prevents them from taking the necessary steps to get a grip on climate change,” he said.

Time to condemn media reporting on extreme events being caused by Climate Change. To coin a New York expression... it's baloney, or enlightened Aussies simply say... it's B S.

Edited Thursday at 05:52 AM by Donga

[BritManToo]

9 hours ago, Social Media said:

suggested that Buffalo could be a "climate refuge city," potentially serving as a sanctuary for those fleeing more disaster-prone areas. 

Thought Buffalo was covered in ice and snow for 2 months a year? Can't see that as a safe refuge, one winter power cut would kill loads.

[impulse]

16 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

Thought Buffalo was covered in ice and snow for 2 months a year? Can't see that as a safe refuge, one winter power cut would kill loads.

 

You're the victim of blatant misinformation.  It's at least 4 months of misery each year.  With 2 weeks of spring, a hot and humid summer, and 2 nice weeks of Indian Summer before it gets bone chilling cold again (if I'm allowed to say Indian...)

Is it any surprise that people flee to Florida and Texas just as soon as they don't have to show up at work?

 

I grew up in Chicago and Philadelphia (among other places) and I love Texas, since 1979.  But I also loved living in Wyoming now that Gore-Tex and Thinsulate mean we can actually move when we're bundled up and warm.  When I was a kid, our woolens made us look like scarecrows because we couldn't move our arms.

 

Buffalo?  No thanks.

 

[RichardColeman]

Meanwhile in India and China.....................................

[Cryingdick]

Study finds  that you see lots of Forida plates up north in the summer and loads of Minnesota plates down south in the winter. Very few places in the USA have good year round climates. Hawaii is one if them and parts of California. Have fun in Buffalo when you get 6 feet of snow off the lake. Being on the lake would be cool in the summer but if you want to be on the Great Lakes there are a million betters places to do it than Buffalo. My summer climate retreat is an island on Lake Huron in northern Michigan in the summer. 

[novacova]

15 hours ago, Social Media said:

Among these cities, Buffalo, New York, stands out for its claim of a moderate year-round climate

Really? Buffalo NY moderate year-round weather? Quite the novelist.

[JonnyF]

Tax on cigarettes only affects smokers.

 

Tax on alcohol only affects drinkers.

 

Let's Tax people who breathe air.

[placeholder]

7 hours ago, Donga said:

You can be sure there are plenty of suckers who believe Climate Change causes more extreme weather, and even some who think these extreme events can be localised! There is almost no weather event nowadays that does not come with a blizzard of declarations that it is proof of climate change.

But let's look at Tropical Cyclone Jasper, which hit far north Queensland in December. It dumped a massive amount of rain and none of what follows denies the fact it caused great damage and suffering. In its wake the Red Cross released an Instagram video declaring “Disasters like Ex-Tropical Cyclone Jasper in Far North Queensland are happening more often due to climate change”. Greenpeace called it a “frightening portent of what’s to come under climate change”. The Climate Council warned “climate change is making (tropical cyclones) more destructive”.

None of this is true.

If The Science of global warming has a bible then surely it must be the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. It is the latest accumulation of all the best research and it runs to a mind-numbing 2391 pages. On page 1586 it says: “Tropical cyclone landfall frequency over Australia shows a decreasing trend in Eastern Australia since the 1800s, as well as in other parts of Australia since 1982. A paleoclimate proxy reconstruction shows recent levels of (tropical cyclone) interactions along parts of the Australian coastline are the lowest in the past 550-1500 years.”

What of bushfires? “Extreme conditions, like the 2019 Australian bushfires and African flooding, have been associated with strong positive (Indian Ocean Dipole) conditions” (p1104). And, “There is no evidence of a trend in the Indian Ocean Dipole mode and associated anthropogenic forcing” and “The amplitude of the El Nino–Southern Oscillation variability has increased since 1950 but there is no clear evidence of human influence” (p1104).

Further, we are not facing a climate Armageddon, according to British professor Jim Skea, who was appointed chairman of the IPCC last year. “The world won’t end if it warms by more than 1.5 degrees,” Skea told German weekly Der Spiegel last year. “It will however be a more dangerous world. Countries will struggle with many problems, there will be social tensions. “And yet this is not an existential threat to humanity. Even with 1.5 degrees of warming, we will not die out.”

Prof Skea worries the zealots are doing their cause a grave disservice. “If you constantly communicate the message that we are all doomed to extinction, then that paralyses people and prevents them from taking the necessary steps to get a grip on climate change,” he said.

Time to condemn media reporting on extreme events being caused by Climate Change. To coin a New York expression... it's baloney, or enlightened Aussies simply say... it's B S.

Selective quoting much. This is also from the 6th IPCC report:

 

Fire activity depends on weather, ignition sources, land management practices and fuel flammability, availability and continuity (Bradstock et al., 2014). Increased fire activity in southeast Australia associated with climate change has been observed since 1950 (Abram et al., 2021), though trends vary regionally (medium confidence) (Bradstock et al., 2014). In New Zealand, there has been an increased frequency of major wildfires in plantations (FENZ, 2018) and at the rural–urban interface (medium confidence) (Pearce, 2018). 

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/chapter/chapter-11/#:~:text=Our regional climate is changing,western New Zealand%2C more extreme

 

 Increased winter rainfall is projected over Tasmania, with decreased rainfall in southwestern Victoria in autumn and in western Tasmania in summer, fewer tropical cyclones with a greater proportion of severe cyclones and decreased soil moisture in the north (medium confidence). 

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/chapter/chapter-11/

So, cyclones may decrease in frequency but increase in strength.

 

Virtually no climatologists are predicting Armageddon. What denialists generally aim to do is conflate the predictions of some climate activists with the predictions of climatologists. Or they cite the double standards of various prominent people, as though this has anything to do with the science. Apparently, they believe that People magazine and similar sources are scientific journals.  That said, as the latest report of the IPCC says, the destructive effects of climate change will be far greater at 2.0 degrees average increase than 1.5. And 2.5 will be even more severe.

 

As for your claim that "Time to condemn media reporting on extreme events being caused by Climate Change...generally the media reports that climate change is making such events more likely, or more severe. But not that each and every event can be absolutely attributed to anthropogenic climate change. Which is the correct way to report the findings of attribution science.

 

[Donga]

1 hour ago, placeholder said:

Selective quoting much. This is also from the 6th IPCC report:

 

Fire activity depends on weather, ignition sources, land management practices and fuel flammability, availability and continuity (Bradstock et al., 2014). Increased fire activity in southeast Australia associated with climate change has been observed since 1950 (Abram et al., 2021), though trends vary regionally (medium confidence) (Bradstock et al., 2014). In New Zealand, there has been an increased frequency of major wildfires in plantations (FENZ, 2018) and at the rural–urban interface (medium confidence) (Pearce, 2018). 

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/chapter/chapter-11/#:~:text=Our regional climate is changing,western New Zealand%2C more extreme

 

 Increased winter rainfall is projected over Tasmania, with decreased rainfall in southwestern Victoria in autumn and in western Tasmania in summer, fewer tropical cyclones with a greater proportion of severe cyclones and decreased soil moisture in the north (medium confidence). 

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/chapter/chapter-11/

So, cyclones may decrease in frequency but increase in strength.

 

Virtually no climatologists are predicting Armageddon. What denialists generally aim to do is conflate the predictions of some climate activists with the predictions of climatologists. Or they cite the double standards of various prominent people, as though this has anything to do with the science. Apparently, they believe that People magazine and similar sources are scientific journals.  That said, as the latest report of the IPCC says, the destructive effects of climate change will be far greater at 2.0 degrees average increase than 1.5. And 2.5 will be even more severe.

 

As for your claim that "Time to condemn media reporting on extreme events being caused by Climate Change...generally the media reports that climate change is making such events more likely, or more severe. But not that each and every event can be absolutely attributed to anthropogenic climate change. Which is the correct way to report the findings of attribution science.

 

Have a number problems with the plethora of Climate Change studies:

1. They usually fail to provide context or historical comparisons
2. They invariably conclude even more studies are required
3. It is a huge industry of usually government (inc university) sponsored studies which does discourages funding for scientists who might contradict the doomsday scenarios.

Mainstream media is very selective in what they publish and do tend to overstate the extreme weather events being caused by climate change, and data that contradicts their narrative e.g. ignoring most recent Great Barrier Reef condition which you might research, i.e. GBR is in good condition, which Prof Peter Ridd summarises in 90 seconds, see below. This summary has been somewhat confirmed begrudgingly by the various Reef monitoring bodies. 

On Aussie fires, there is heaps of historical information over the past couple of hundred years, which is not recognised in these "scientific studies" and there are three factors which undoubtedly have exacerbated damage in more recent events:
1. Much more human habitation in fire prone areas
2. Less backburning
3. A lot more arson.

I could go on, but that's enough to help explain my frustration with extreme weather events coverage and I reiterate what the new Chairman of the IPCC said: “If you constantly communicate the message that we are all doomed to extinction, then that paralyses people and prevents them from taking the necessary steps to get a grip on climate change.”
 

 

Edited Thursday at 03:42 PM by Donga

[placeholder]

On 7/4/2024 at 11:41 AM, Donga said:

Have a number problems with the plethora of Climate Change studies:

1. They usually fail to provide context or historical comparisons
2. They invariably conclude even more studies are required
3. It is a huge industry of usually government (inc university) sponsored studies which does discourages funding for scientists who might contradict the doomsday scenarios.

Mainstream media is very selective in what they publish and do tend to overstate the extreme weather events being caused by climate change, and data that contradicts their narrative e.g. ignoring most recent Great Barrier Reef condition which you might research, i.e. GBR is in good condition, which Prof Peter Ridd summarises in 90 seconds, see below. This summary has been somewhat confirmed begrudgingly by the various Reef monitoring bodies. 

On Aussie fires, there is heaps of historical information over the past couple of hundred years, which is not recognised in these "scientific studies" and there are three factors which undoubtedly have exacerbated damage in more recent events:
1. Much more human habitation in fire prone areas
2. Less backburning
3. A lot more arson.

I could go on, but that's enough to help explain my frustration with extreme weather events coverage and I reiterate what the new Chairman of the IPCC said: “If you constantly communicate the message that we are all doomed to extinction, then that paralyses people and prevents them from taking the necessary steps to get a grip on climate change.”
 

 

 

Your claim that climatologists ignore history is just nuts. Most of the ire directed by denialists is claims that climatologists are lying about the past, not that they ignore it.

 

Citing Peter Ridd as a source tells me all I need to know about where you get your information from:

This is a link to a detailed rebuttal of his claims for 2021 coral health:

"Despite 2021 being a good year for coral health, coral in the Great Barrier Reef has declined over the past decade and is threatened by climate change, contrary to claims by Peter Ridd

Inaccurate: Numerous scientific studies show a decrease, not an increase, in coral growth over the past decade. International scientific organizations are not ignoring the improvement in coral communities, and acknowledge the influence of periods with low disturbance on the ability of damaged reefs to recover.
Misrepresents source: Peter Ridd misuses data from the Australian Institute of Marine Science in a graph showing how coral cover in the Great Barrier Reef has changed over time. Although the data show an improvement in the amount of coral covering the reef in 2021 compared to previous years, coral cover is not at a record high since 1985 for any region of the Great Barrier Reef.

https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/despite-2021-being-a-good-year-for-coral-health-coral-in-the-great-barrier-reef-has-declined-over-the-past-decade-and-is-threatened-by-climate-change-contrary-to-claims-by-peter-ridd/

 

And, of course, the situation is a lot worse now.

 

Devastating coral bleaching in 2024

The fifth mass bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef in the past eight years was declared in April 2024. For the first time, all three sectors of the GBR are affected: south, middle, and north. It is part of the fourth global bleaching event according to the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration – the others were in 1998, 2010 and 2014-17.

https://australian.museum/blog/amri-news/coral-bleaching-2024/

 

Peter Ridd lies a lot. And makes things up. He also gets most of his money from studies commissioned by the dredging industry. It's in their interest to deny that disturbing sediment has an effect on the reefs.

https://www.desmog.com/peter-ridd/