Is Duluth, Minn., to become a climate refuge city?
Our climate futures: Meeting the challenges in Duluth
Duluth, Minn.- The University of Minnesota Duluth is hosting a conference aimed at directing Minnesota’s next steps for dealing with climate change. “Our Climate Futures: Meeting the Challenge in Duluth” will be Tuesday, March 19 and Wednesday, March 20, 2019.
The conference is free and open to the public. Central to the conference are conversations about future planning and how Minnesota communities can adapt to climate change.
“Minnesota has already begun climate mitigation techniques such as using alternative energy and reducing its carbon footprint,” says Patrick Schoff, a research associate at the UMD Natural Resources Research Institute and conference organizer. “This conference will be invaluable as the consequences of climate change become increasingly apparent.”
The conference will include 16 sessions and a keynote address. Panelists include representatives from academia, government and business. Environmental scientists, community agency personnel and the public will convene for discussions about developing an economy that minimizes waste and resources, energy mitigation efforts, alternative energy sources, adaptive infrastructure and climate refuge areas.
The media is invited to cover any of the program sessions.
“Native Minnesotans, like myself, realize that climate change is already upon us. We know that lake ice is forming later and going out earlier,” said Julie Etterson, professor of biology in UMD’s Swenson College of Science and Engineering. “We know that spring comes earlier and that we can grow tomatoes and actually hope to get some ripe ones by the end of summer. In contrast, in other regions in the U.S., it is possible that unbearable weather and coastal flooding will set off a wave of human migration seeking more tolerable conditions.”
The conference keynote speaker will be Jesse Keenan, a member of the faculty of the Graduate School of Design at Harvard. His work is focused on climate change adaptation and the built environment, including aspects of design, engineering, financing and planning.
“In an age of climate migration, we tend to focus on displacement and not necessarily the economic mobility associated with changing consumer preferences,” said Keenan. “In one iteration of a climate future, Duluth may be well positioned to accommodate a diverse influx of people, culture and capital associated with a national redistribution of people and places.”
Keenan’s presentation, “Our Climate Futures: Meeting the Challenge in Duluth,” will be at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, March 20 in the Marshall Performing Arts Center, 1215 Ordean Court, Duluth, Minnesota.
“The question for Duluth moving forward is whether strategic economic development and marketing can be mobilized under a set of community-drive values that together paint a vision of a shared climate future,” said Keenan.
Keenan is a member of the United States delegation to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. He has advised on matters concerning the built environment for agencies of the U.S. government, governors, mayors, Fortune 500 companies, technology ventures, community enterprises and international nongovernmental organizations.
The keynote presentation will be followed by a panel discussion featuring Emily Larson (City of Duluth Mayor), Karen Diver (College of St. Scholastica and member of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa), Al Rudeck (Allete Clean Energy), with Andrea Schokker (UMD) as moderator.
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Gag me with a spoon
Without fossil fuels everyone in Duluth will freeze to death.
Yeah, they ought to bring that up at the conference.
How will you keep people from freezing to death if all you have are windmills and solar?
That ought to be the first question they ask at the conference.
The next question to ask is what makes you think Minnesota is not going to be a winter wonderland for the foreseeable future?
The Stupid is strong in Minnesota.
Not around Duluth. That area is actually trending Republican. There are some real morons around the cities these days, and for Minnesota that’s really saying something. You’d be shocked where there are extremely virulent liberals now. Cake-eater is a liberal descriptive term these days.
How come real estate prices NEVER reflect this “climate change” global warming greenhouse effect? I’m not aware of a single place in the United States where real estate prices actually reflect the predicted outcomes of this theory. Weird, huh?
The good news is that Minnesota’s new Rep. Ilhan Omar wants to abolish ICE … and functionally do away with our Immigration system … do away with our borders … making “migration” to godforsaken Duluth a LOT easier!
Race-baiter and hater, and divider, Louis Farakan, was singing Rep. Ilhan Omar’s praises a couple of days ago.
Birds of a feather, flock together.
Right now Orlando is 71F and Duluth is 14F. Orlando is a city of almost 300,000 and Duluth is almost 90,000. By popular vote, Orlando is the refugee city of choice.
I would have thought that Duluth would discourage refugees of climate.
Makes sense to me. 🙂
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
It seems to me that the Inuits have survived for millennia in the Arctic and are not going to need to migrate south to Duluth just because it gets a little colder there, and Duluth becomes even more Arctic-like. But after the Green Leap Forward, certainly all the Anglos in Minnesota will have to migrate south or adopt a lifestyle more like the Inuit.
Just wait till the vegans get at the Inuit.
What exactly would a vegan Inuit eat? Inuit aren’t known for their gardening expertise.
I think the only vegans in that part of the world are caribou or reindeer.
BTW if it weren’t for synthetic fibers (made from coal or petroleum) what would a vegan wear in the winter? Surely not cotton or linen.
The vegans will be the ones on the menu 🙂
Actually, the difference in population is far larger. The Orlando metropolitan statistical area population is about 2.4 million, while the same for Deluth is only about 280,000 .. a nearly 10:1 ratio.
Now ask how many Deluthans wished they lived in Orlando, compared to how many Orlandans wished they lived in Deluth. The ratio would be approximately 100:1, or maybe 1,000: 1.
You’ve got to admit, these folks are creative using climate change scare to coax like-minded folks to move to Duluth as part of their city’s development strategy. After all, they don’t have Disney World, Universal Studios, or a warm climate as a draw.
These people are certifiably nuts.
Yep. Meanwhile, this is the coldest winter I’ve experienced in a decade in Colorado. And that’s with me living for a winter up in Empire, at 8600 ft.
3000 feet lower elevation… It’s noticeably colder this year. Even colder than two Winters ago when I was on site downtown, every morning, hanging glass on a new high rise building.
We’re headed for another cool cycle and at this point, I’m excited to see the gene pool cleansing itself. Maybe this is God’s way of cleaning up generations of spotty genetics? Shame that whites are self destructing but oh well… Less competition for my son
Other than cold weather…what climate change are they worried about in Duluth, MN…???
The common fear is the rainfall pattern is changing to more thunderstorms and fewer long duration light rains. The result being more floods and less infiltration.
In the 1960’s there was a technical paper prepared TP40 that estimated rainfall events for use in flood control design. A similar paper was prepared in about 2010 with 10 times the rainfall data. Some areas of the state had larger floods and some areas had smaller
A colleague did a statistical analysis and found no climate change finger print.
What’s weird is that average precipitation during the winter months has not increased, but average precipitation during the summer months has slightly increased. Why wouldn’t average precipitation during the winter months increase? And are there factors during the summer months that do not exist during the winter months that would explain the slight increase? What about evapotranspiration? Is the ground cover different now than it was many years ago? How about the urban heat island? Is there more buildup upwind than there was many years ago? There’s a lot more field tile now than there was many years ago and a lot of places upland that used to flood don’t anymore. Does better stormwater removal result in seemingly more stream flooding? None of these marginal increases ought to change anything that we do. If there’s marginally more flooding in some areas, but marginally less flooding in others areas, then we adapt to it. As for streams, useful places ought to have levees and floodplains ought to be treated as such.
The first question that popped into my head was: When do they imagine “unbearable weather” will arrive in the southerly parts of the US that would drive people north to Minnesota?
The first answer that popped into my head was: The first summer the GND manages to switch the US to 100% renewable power and people living on the Gulf Coast no longer have air conditioning!
SR
Naw. I grew up in the deep South without air conditioning. Even then we were laughing at people who lived in places with frigid climates.
You can get acclimated to heat, take simple measures to avoid heat-related problems, and stay outside all day long. A little shade, a beverage, and avoid over-exertion and you were fine. We enjoyed being outside in shorts, T-shirt, and barefoot. Kids were out all day. You could relax outside – sleep, swim, fish. Try relaxing outside when the temps are -2 degrees F.
If power becomes iffy, it will be those in the northern climes who will suffer the most – even if temps go up ten degrees.
And that would be a “mean” or “average”. Not really an increase in temp. Any warming could be simply because it didn’t get quite as cold – and that would be welcome.
I just reviewed our list of places that we’re considering relocating to during the coming climate apocalypse. Duluth GA maybe. Duluth MN, I don’t think so.
I’ve stayed overnight at Duluth after visiting the University of Minnesota. That was mid-summer but still rather cool for my tastes. The impression Duluth leaves is that of a real dump that is probably a sort of hell-hole of ice and snow in winter Temperature today -5 to -11 C. You would have to be really desperate to want to live in the place. Possibly escaping from ISIS might just do it, but ‘Climate Change”…..you must be kidding.
My wife and I lived in Superior, WI, from 1972 to 1975. Our son was born there in 1973. Right across the river was Duluth, which bordered Lake Superior on its east side and rose 900 or 1000 feet quite steeply to the west. The Duluth airport, on the hilltop, was used as a training location for landing and taking off in strong and tricky winds. We loved Duluth (and Superior, too); we would gladly have stayed there, but I didn’t get tenure and had to leave. Duluth is an old port city, with what that implies; but it was also a beautiful and colorful place, with terrific parks (especially Enger Park, where people came from several states away to attend the HawkWatch, the migration of hundreds of thousands of hawks, kites, eagles, owls, and other big birds). I taught music at UW-Superior, and we attended music events there and at UM-D and at CSS (College of St. Scholastica). Winters there were harsh; one January it stayed below zero F for the entire month. The year we arrived there, the ice in Lake Superior did not “go out” until June 10, and if a west wind (off the land) changed to an east wind (off the lake), temps could drop by 40 degrees or more in a few minutes. Duluth-Superior was an exhilarating place to live, and we were very sorry to leave.
That, however, was well over forty years ago, and I am now on Coumadin (Warfarin) and have had two invasive heart procedures. I could not live in Duluth now. Much as I dread the Virginia summers (at the same time as I look forward to them, as a daylily grower with 15,000 plants), even winter here–gentle as it usually is–is sometimes uncomfortably cold for me, with thinner blood and greater sensitivity to cold. As for Duluth becoming a Mecca for seniors and a refuge from southern heat–I doubt it. Great as the place is, and full of state parks, national forests, and unlimited opportunities to see bears, moose, deer, and the occasional wolf or mountain lion (to say nothing of the hawks, etc.), most people who come to Duluth from outside do it in the summer, and rightly so.
I grew up outside of Chicago, and visited Duluth many times … in the summer. I can attest that it seems to be a nice city with lovely parks. However, what I do remember quite vividly was wading into Lake Superior during July or August. I never remember any swimmers. Probably that was due to your feet going numb before you could get to knee depth.
Lovely nostalgic account John M.
Hawk watch sounds interesting. What a pity so many of those beauties are being sacrificed on the altar of global warming, and are being killed by the useless windmills.
My lovely ex fiance and I are on an extended holiday in sunny Cyprus from ice age socialist Scotland. We could be termed cc refugees.
That pristine country is also being covered in useless windmills to fight global warming. It is a mystery to me for if any place could do with a bit of warming, it is Scotland.
Btw this lovely place – Cyprus – must be a carbon dioxide hot spot. How else to explain the glorious heat. After all we are told that scorching red orb in the sky has nothing to do with this warming. Right?
When it hit -17 F a week ago, Duluthians might well have been taken refuge.
Maybe an Amy Klobuchar effect? Al Gore is not alone.
You have to give it to them, they really do have active imaginations.
That line their pockets.
Just a lame attempt to set the stage;
show that when the inevitable & prohibitive cost of green crap becomes understood by more and more, there is the change the subject to talk about the economic boost from the refugees
I fully agree that a refuge from intolerable climate change is a necessity.
Here in New England, our annual climate change encourages me to take refuge in a small parish known to the locals as Christ Church, on the island of Barbados.
In the course of a day, I can trade in the cold and snow for palm trees and coral sand beaches.
At the swim-up bar, I told the bar maid that I could bring snow with me and start up a snowball fight at pool-side. I explained that the hotel staff would be helpless because they would not have the experience or even the vocabulary to explain what was going on.
The bar maid explained that one year, she had spent an entire winter in Boston and knew all about snowball fights. And I better behave myself if I ever want to get served again.
Commercial aviation is a truly remarkable technology and industry.
We know that spring comes earlier and that we can grow tomatoes and actually hope to get some ripe ones by the end of summer.
OMG! Ripe tomatoes! The horror!
Not at all. They do not actually need to get ripe tomatoes.
They only actually hope to get some.
And as we know, hope is not a plan.
That’s terrible!
The only way they can get the tomatoes they hope for is to get the global warming they hope not to get.
We are the hopers we have been hoping for. I think that’s what 0bama told us?
I hope not.
I grew up a bit north of Duluth and more inland, so we didn’t get the moderating temperatures of Lake Superior. That is, it was much colder than Duluth. Every January my dad would pore through the seed catalogs, ordering the best new tomato seeds to plant. Every two weeks from March to June he would plant the seeds,, to flourish in the basement under fluorescent grow lights. In mid June, he would plant the best of the seedlings in the garden, and along the south wall of the garage where the warming sun would speed them along. He would protect them from frost with an ample supply of blankets, when necessary.
This, of course would guarantee that every tomato on every plant would turn ripe only on August 15. Actually, though, we would have tomatoes from July through October. The July ones were the small “cherry” tomatoes along the garage wall. The October ones were from garden plants pulled up by the roots just before the first frost in early September, and hung over the rafters in the garage to prevent them from freezing.
I’ve adapted well to Catastrophic Global Warming. I had to create my own, though, and am now watching a warm sun rise in southern Texas.
Ripe tomatoes. As opposed to store-bought.
store-bought tomatoes – Stripped mined in Florida as Keillor used to say.
I live north of Atlanta. As I type this, it is 38 degrees F there. I am currently on the east coast of Florida in Indiatlantic. It is 71 degrees F.
Duluth, MN is 12 degrees F.
If you raised everyone’s temps by twenty degrees, I would still prefer to be here, and I suspect most others would, too. They’re nucking futs.
“I’m moving to Duluth for the weather.”
Said no one, ever.
Coming from the other end of the world my impression of that part of the US comes from the movie Fargo — brrr!
“The question for Duluth moving forward is whether strategic economic development and marketing can be mobilized under a set of community-drive values that together paint a vision of a shared climate future,” said Keenan.
Please help me! Can anybody translate this into something comprehensible for me?
For example: what is a “shared climate future”?
The “shared climate future” will be the snow falling on each and every Duluth resident.
Translation:
“The question for Duluth moving forward is whether big money and the suckers who can provide it can be found using confidence schemes playing to climate virtue signaling ideas.”
– Lessons from PT Barnum in the 21st Century.
In simpler terms, can AOC get a mob behind her propaganda to create global socialism? Our shared climate future is socialism premised on a phony climate crisis.
Well, that’s the best I can do as a trained linguist experienced in gibberish.
The city is also in dire threat of flood from the world wide rising water levels. Duluth experienced almost 2 feet water level rise in 100 years. This is about twice the average global sea level rise.
Lake level Jan 1919: 601.01 ft
Lake level Dec 2019: 602.83 ft
(pay no attention to all the intermediate points)
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/waterlevels.html?id=9099064&units=standard&bdate=19181219&edate=20190220&timezone=LST/LDT&datum=IGLD&interval=m&action=data
The conference represents an Iron Triangle. Government employees, academics, and “green” companies, all working on a justification for a new taxpayer funded project.
1) Government bureaucrats looking to justify their salaries and expand their little bureaucratic empires, and in doing so, expand their pensions.
2) Academics looking for grants and the career opportunities that brings.
3) The private sector angling for subsidies and tax breaks, and hopefully, mandates that their products or services must be obtained.
All of this to be funded at the expense of the taxpayers.
The term “a self-licking ice cream cone” comes to mind.
These people are parasites.
Perhaps that is why the government banned DDT.
TonyL thanks best ever summary of the three main alarmist categories. All made possible by willfully uninformed voters.
Will the snow melt until March 20? Temperature in degrees C.
So Julie Etterson “listed Lake Superior ice cover changes;
Except there hasn’t been any:
And Ms. Etterson lists being able to possibly grow tomatoes before the first fall frost as a good thing. But then says, “it is possible” that other areas will become unbearable and Duluth will get climate refugees. Actually it’s the other way around. AND EVERYONE KNOWS THAT. As in there are lots of Minnesota plates running around Tucson right now.
What dishonesty.
Her “it is possible” is simply dishonest posturing.
The idea is to make Diluth a safe haven for low IQ, unemployable illegal aliens.
The city of Diluth will no doubt hire them to shovel snow and their bullsh-t.
Study: Illegal Aliens Up to 5X More Likely To Be in Prison Than Americans
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/02/05/study-illegal-aliens-up-to-5x-more-likely-to-be-in-prison-than-americans/
They are stupid enough to make this conference a public event?
Just sometimes I wish I live other than where I live now. This is one occasion I wish I lived in Duluth because I’m damn sure I would have my voice heard at that conference.
Duluthed. Sorry, deluded.
Well, look on the bright side. They won’t have to deal with piles of poop, mountains of used needles, and ponds of urine.
Are you saying that San Francisco isn’t likely to migrate to Duluth?
I’m saying that in the highly unlikely event there were climate refugees in Duluth they won’t be living on the streets.
Relieving ones self outside when the temp is -14F and the wind chill is -36F can be a very enlightening experience. Not to mention very educating.
You know it’s really cold when you feel the need to preplan the details of relieving yourself.
Climate refugees exist.
An ever increasing number of northern EU retired families move south on the Mediterranean for a more clement climate year long.
Sometimes I sit and wonder why I’m not in an insane asylum. Then I look around and realize that maybe I am!