Rising ocean waters. Bigger and more frequent forest fires. More brutally hot summer days.
These aren't the usual predictions about global warming based on computer forecasts. They're changes already happening in California, according to a detailed new report issued Thursday by the California Environmental Protection Agency.
Climate change is "an immediate and growing threat" affecting the state's water supplies, farm industry, forests, wildlife and public health, the report says. The 258-page document was written by 51 scientists from the University of California, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, U.S. Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, among other agencies and institutions.
"Climate change is not just some abstract scientific debate," said California EPA Secretary Matt Rodriquez. "It's real, and it's already here."
Most Californians seem to agree. In a poll last month by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, 63 percent of the state's residents said the effects of global warming are already being felt, while 22 percent said they will happen in the future. Eleven percent said they will never happen.
Although California has done more than nearly every other state to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases, the report found, if it were a country, it would still rank as the 13th largest source of greenhouse gases in the world, ahead of France, Brazil, Australia and Saudi Arabia.
What the public may not realize, experts say, is how extensive the impact of climate change already is.
