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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Is that where those 50 million climate refugees went in 2010?
You laugh mister, but in another 11 years and 11 months, we’re gonna see 50 trillion climate refugees. It’s settled science.
So we can all stop paying taxes ? It’ll take them more than that to figure out and enforce action on all cases. Deal ?
I’m a Minnesota climate expatriate. I got the heck outta there and moved to Florida sixteen years ago to escape the miserable, cold and gloomy winters. I’d be curious as to when they expect this great rush of climate refugees to overwhelm the state. My back of the napkin calculations show a pretty steady migration of US and Canadian citizens coming into Florida, and the trend seems unabated even after a few rough hurricane seasons.
Merle Haggard.
Rainbow Stew.
I just checked the weather for this week for Duluth. It’s mostly 20s to 30s day time, teens at night, snow, then dropping to teens daytime and snow later.
When I see that, and then read that “statement” or “proposal”, or whatever it is, I think it’s valid to wonder if the people who crank out this stuff are living on the same planet as I am. Perhaps they aren’t. Perhaps they’re in another dimension – a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind…. Welcome to the Twilight Zone….
But please keep posting/publishing this kind of thing. We need to know about it, not only so that we can point and giggle, but also so that we can look back at it when their predictions fail and ask them if they’d like fries with their ice cold drinks.
Good grief!!!!!
“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.” ?
I was born in Blind River, Ontario which is exactly West of Duluth..45 years ago nobody there was surprised that we could always get big, ripe tomatoes every year…sheeesh !
(Corrected for you) MOD
Here in Nortern Indiana a number of Liberals have taken the Climate predictions to heart, and have planted vineyards for wineries. Needless to say the last few winters habe not been kind.
~¿~
Here near Anderson, IN we got freezing rain, then snow, then sleet. Sure could use a break. I would like to be able to use the cruise control and do some regular trucking again! The constant hypervigilant state required when driving in such weather really takes it out of you. Over days the effects are cumulative. I did absolutely nothing on Saturday and Sunday last weekend. Just rested.
And it sure looks like there is no end in sight.
The bottom has dropped out of the Southern Oscillation Index, the Modoki El Nino is here, and that means another month of nasty winter weather for us. Somebody kill that damned groundhog! After the snow below expect colder than average temps to hold on in the east. And I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this coming tornado season is the opposite of last years and very active. The set up sure seems headed towards the direction of making this coming spring a stormy one.
Monday morning I was driving up the drive of a company in SW Michigan where I was to deliver and pickup and a dead Ash tree feel right across the drive in front of my truck! This place was out in the sticks and I drove about 20 miles of snow covered back roads to get there. The drive was snow covered and they had a heck of a time jerking that tree out of the wood line using a 4wd pickup and then putting it on top of the berm of plowed snow with a fork truck so I could get to their docks.
From the article: “This conference will be invaluable as the consequences of climate change become increasingly apparent.”
He says with utter confidence. The consequences of CO2 are *not* apparent much less “increasingly” apparent. This is ignorance or wishful thinking on the part of Mr. Patrick Schoff.
Here’s a hint Mr. Schoff: One should have evidence of a phenomenon before extrapolating its consequences. You have no evidence. Which makes your extrapolations worthless.
You are not alone. Just about every alarmist makes this mistake. They all assume things not in evidence. They are not dealing with the real world. Yet, they are so sure of themselves. I guess that’s what we could call a True Believer.
Claiming the effects of human-caused CO2 are already visible as changes in Earth’s weather is the next stage of the alarmists assault on the truth.
It is not even consistent with past alarmist claims where they said we would have to warm up significantly before the “excess” warmth added strength to weather systems, and this was supposed to happen in the coming decades as the temperatures climbed (according to their hypothesis). This added heat is supposedly what would drive bigger, badder weather systems.
Now that’s all changed. Now all these effects are supposedly happening today, within every weather system, according to the alarmists, even though the temperatures are not nearly high enough to cause these effects, and in fact the global temperature has cooled by about 0.6C since Feb. 2016 (UAH). Yet the alarmists would have us believe that even with cooler temperatues, CO2 is at work pumping up the strength of storms.
The alarmists are getting desperate. That’s why they have moved up the CAGW schedule. They are trying to scare as many people as possble into falling in line and supporting their anti-CO2 measures, and their past claims of unprecedented storm systems appearing in the coming decades is not scary enough, so they have to move the timetable up to “here and now” and claim all these severe weather systems are already being influenced by CO2. With absolutely no evidence to back up such claims. They are contradicting themselves.
For every severe weather system we see today, we can find one that is as severe or worse in the past when CO2 was not a significant factor. There is no unprecedented weather being observed on the Earth. If you make this claim you are either ignorant, or you are a liar.
Statistics show that all forms of severe weather are less severe today than they were in the recent past. The recent past (the 20th century) was not significantly influenced by CO2, and had more severe weather than today. The only “apparent” effect of CO2 seems to be a kinder, gentler, milder world.
CO2 causing Superstorms today!? Give me a break!!!
Temperature anomalies in North America on 20/02/2019.
Invite Al Gore. If he shows up Duluth gets the
blizzard of the century.
Too funny.
My wife is from Duluth and I live on the same parallel in NE Wisconsin.
Newsflash, it isn’t getting warmer. Just a few years ago Lake Superior froze completely for one of the few times in history. Duluth, being on the big lake is colder than anywhere inland by 5-10 degrees for spring, summer and fall. The lake, which never warms, is a massive cold sink.
On the other hand Minnesota has become a very blue State in recent years. Wind and solar have been overdone to the point there were curtailments by Excell Energy during the last severe cold blast. But never wanting to pass on some free government cash this is Duluth being opportunistic more than concerned about Climate Change.
When will the children grow up?
Jim M says:
“On the other hand Minnesota has become a very blue State in recent years.”
Recent years? They were the only state that went for Mondale during the presidential election of 1984!
Favorite son and all that. And they were more loyal than Tennessee when algore ran.
The last time Minnesota voted for a Republican president was 1972 when it went to Nixon.
Republican Presidential strategy just cedes the state to the democrats. They never campaign or spend a dime here.
Except Trump. And he came within an inch of winning the state.
I’m sorry but when we talk about Minnesota and politics what comes to this conservatives mind is the Wellstone partisan political rally er I mean “memorial” in 2002. That kind of said it all for me.
Remember that that “memorial” was so obnoxious it resulted in a Republican Senator getting elected.
Speaking of Wellstone Memorials, there is a very creepy memorial at the site of the plane crash that killed him. People leave little offerings like teddy bears and statues, poems. People still make pilgrimages to it.
“They were the only state that went for Mondale during the presidential election of 1984!”
Good point. And Reagan was only about 1,000 votes short of winning Minnesota, too!
Hey, when some of the old times around here say “in recent years” they mean “since the 60’s”
^¿^
Exactly! It seems like just yesterday! 🙂
Mn came within a hairs breadth of going for Trump in 2016. The district Duluth is in elected a Republican representative in the last election.
A refugee center for wolves and moose perhaps, right after they get another ice covered Lake Superior and exit Isle Royale. That event is coming up by the way…..
http://www.climate4you.com/images/AMO%20GlobalAnnualIndexSince1856%20With11yearRunningAverage.gif
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NOAA%20SST-NorthAtlantic%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
Is there something in the water in MN that makes people go crazy? There’s actually a group that wants to make MN run on 100% renewable energy, and a state representative just introduced a bill to make it so. This picture from the group’s website is hilarious. Did they ever think about solar panels needing to be cleaned to maintain rated output, or about snow having to be removed for them to even work? What drug-induced fantasy world are these people living in?
Duluth, MN is right in my back yard (so to speak) and I can certainly tell you, NO ONE is going to migrate here for the weather. I have lived in MN all my life, the weather is now, and always has been… Unpredictable. In Duluth, even more so, as the big lake plays a HUGE part in the weather. Yes, the temps can change 30 degrees in 30 minutes, both ways, I have experienced it. And without reliable energy, there would most certainly be tons of folks freezing to death in the cold around here. Though many of us are smart enough to have wood heat in our homes up here, so “the smart ones” would last a bit longer. I have heated with nothing but wood here in the forest for 8 years now, if the power went down, I wouldn’t even notice, seeing as I am not even hooked to the grid in the first place.
Something else most folks not from around here may not know- Duluth taxes the living $#!+ out of their residents. The sales tax in Duluth for instance, is nearly 12%. The MN state sales tax is only around 7%. I can’t even begin to list all the taxes specific to Duluth, suffice to say, it ain’t cheap to live there.
Personally, I don’t even set foot in Duluth, I take my business over to Superior, WI 5.5% sales tax, and everything I need without the pretentious antique shops around every corner…
Dalute won’t be much of a refugee center when the ice is half a mile thick and heavy boulders are dragged for many kilometers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontonagon_Boulder
Climate change could hit suddenly and violently, and with no warning. In cases like that, we should know how to “duck and cover” from the effects of climate change. Here is a helpful video reminding us how to “Be like Bert, the turtle”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqXu-5jw60
This PSA brought to you by the makers of Ovaltine. Ovaltine – for strong bodies and minds. Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.
A climate refugee of the global warming kind would be someone already in warm climate (say, South Florida) that has noticeably gotten TOO warm, moving north to previously cold climate (say, Northern Minnesota) that is now noticeably warmer, similar to the old southern climate.
That scenario has not happened, and won’t happen in any of our lifetimes.
Does anyone realize how much data one would need to collect to show that that has happened?
I saw it happen in a movie once.
US Census data shows that Americans are still migrating SOUTH and WEST — South to Florida and west to California.
I guess they just didn’t get the word.
Are we sure this isn’t a spoof article from Minnesotans For Global Warming?
People in Winnipeg may think that Duluth is a “sanctuary” from the cold.
As of today’s posting, the Great Lakes Ice Cover is at 66.1%.
Same date last year at 42.2%.
In 2017 it was 8.0%.
This cannot be explained by “Global Warming”.
2017 may have been showing the tail end of the El Nino.
Numbers are not shown for earlier.
Don’t underestimate the power of Global Warming. It can explain anything.
Freeze the (non-existent) climate refugees. Gosh I don’t know where to start on how stupid this is…
Maybe it was just an oversight but I didn’t see any skeptics listed for the program.
Can I get Duluth on it?
Duluth, bucko! You can get Tierra Del Fuego!
Maybe the Duluthians should become Tierra Del Fuegians?
Firesign Theatre How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All? 1969
As a former Duluthian, I can only shake my head in embarrassment. Duluth has far bigger problems than worrying about “climate change”.
Duluth, Minn
Local time: Wednesday 13:01
Weather: -7 °C, Wind NE at 22 mph
Not much else needs saying.
Except that it’s snowing like crazy.
Here’s a live cam view that should motivate those climate refugees.
http://www.duluthharborcam.com/p/canal-park-cams.html?m=1
There’s a book entitled, “They took my Father”. In the spring of 1986 representatives of the city of Duluth went to Petrozavodsk, Russia to see why they weren’t readily accepting Duluth as a sister city. What they found was a lot of American history and what you’ll read in the book is essentially a preview of the Green New Deal.
Why were the Finns so susceptible to Communist B.S?