Water Experts, Texas Regulators Hit Climate Change Impasse

Water experts and top Texas officials disagree on whether climate-change science should play a role in the state's water policies.

They are at odds on the extent to which climate change is playing a role in the state's ongoing drought, and whether human conduct is exacerbating the problem.

During a recent hearing at the State Capitol, a top state water official, Carlos Rubenstein, said that "at this point, there is too much uncertainty about the science of global warming to use it in Texas' water planning," the El Paso Times reported.

Rubinstein is the chairman of the Texas Water Development Board, a key water-policy funder and planner for the state. "No doubt 2011 was the driest year on record in Texas. But note that I said 'on record.' That's because we've only been keeping records for a little bit," he said, per the report. "He referred to data gleaned from tree rings going back to 1000. They indicate there was relatively more variability between wet and dry eras prior to 1500."

"Climate changes all the time," Rubinstein continued. "How are you going to explain the changes of 1500 that are absolutely shown in tree-ring data? There was absolutely no industrial activity back then, and yet it changed."

Rubinstein strived to present his views as moderate. "[He said] the water-development board doesn't deny man-made climate change; he said it appears twice in the agency's 2012 report. He also said he's never received orders from the Governor's mansion to steer clear of the concept," according to the report.

However, he is not convinced that the science of global warming is certain enough that it should inform Texas state water policies. "If you want to step back and say what's climate change going to do, you don't know it with any certainty and neither do I with any certainty," he said, per the report. "Even with the data that are available today, the models still cannot tell us, with a degree of specificity, what's going to happen on a discrete portion of Texas."

In Texas, Rubenstein is not alone in his skepticism. In 2013, a similar hearing was held just "days after the House voted to strip a 22-year-old reference to climate change from Texas law," the Texas Tribune reported.

"Many Texas state leaders doubt [climate change is] happening," the El Paso Times reported. "Water planners and climate scientists are struggling to make sense of the current drought and what it might mean for the future — especially the blistering year of 2011. It was more than two degrees hotter than Texas' hottest year on record and the state's water deficit remains stuck at levels far below the state's 13-year average."

Nevertheless, other witnesses at this year's hearing came forward with warnings about the effects of climate change, disputing claims that climate science is too imprecise to be used in state water planning. Katherine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, was among those who spoke up.

"Hayhoe said her center at Texas Tech does climate forecasts for units as small as cities," the report said. "That's exactly what I do," she said, per the report. She explained that "she's done forecasts for Chicago and Austin, among others."

"Hayhoe said state leaders need to accept some hard truths" about climate change, the report said. "Climate is changing faster than it has in the history of Western civilization," she said, noting that the spike in recent summer temperatures could become the norm. "When you look at the number of days over 100 degrees in 2011, it was very unusual," she said, per the report. "But it will be normal in just a few decades if we continue on our current pathway."

John Nielson-Gammon, the state climatologist and another witness at the hearing, has said that water officials should take climate change into consideration when planning for the future.

“Texans need to adopt a risk-management approach to climate change," he told a previous legislative panel, per the Texas Tribune. He called for infrastructure upgrades and plans to mitigate the effects of change. "We can no longer count on the climate staying the way it was."

Nielson-Gammon has noted his climate-change concerns on his website. "Fossil fuel burning and other activities are the primary cause of the global-scale increase in temperature over the past several decades," he says. "We can take advantage of knowledge about climate change to better plan for future climatic conditions."

Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, also spoke at the hearing. Schmidt has discussed potential responses to climate change in a TED talk.

"There's a great phrase that Sherwood Rowland, who won the Nobel Prize for the chemistry that led to ozone depletion, when he was accepting his Nobel Prize, he asked this question: 'What is the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we're willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?' The models are skillful, but what we do with the information from those models is totally up to you," he said.

Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas, organized the hearing. He said he is alone in his quest to highlight the issue.

"I'm the only one in the House who will hold a hearing on climate change," he said, per the Times report.

Many communities in Texas are struggling through one of the worst droughts the state has ever seen.

Lower Colorado River Authority, which supplies water to power plants and other entities, released an update on its water sources in March. "The Central Texas region is in the eighth year of a severe drought. Preliminary 2014 data shows this drought has surpassed the historic drought from 1947-1957 and has affected LCRA’s water inventory — or how much water LCRA can reliably supply through a repeat of the driest conditions on record."

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