SAMANTHA CART
The Climate
Change Question
How Do We Protect Our Infrastructure?
West Virginia’s ring has housed many opponents—un-
employment, population loss, a struggling economy and an
opioid crisis, just to name a few. However, like many other
states, West Virginia’s laundry list of needs includes another
woe that doesn’t receive nearly as much attention—outdated
and neglected infrastructure.
While this is a vast and costly problem in and of itself, an
outside force is bringing the Mountain State’s—and the coun-
try’s—aging infrastructure to the forefront of political, eco-
nomic, scientific and community conversations: climate change.
Asking the Experts
On June 12, Spilman Thomas & Battle, PLLC hosted Con-
versations on Climate Change, a panel discussion focused on
fostering a thought-provoking dialogue on man’s role in the
warming of Earth’s atmosphere. Nicholas Preservati, member
and co-chair of the energy practice group at Spilman, moder-
ated the panel and presented opening remarks.
“This event is not a discussion or debate on the existence
of climate change,” he explained at the event. “The position
we’ve asked our panelists to acknowledge is that climate change
is real and has been real for millions of years. The question
is, to what extent are man-made CO 2 emissions accelerating
that process.”
The panelists for the event were Dr. Judith Curry, president
and co-founder of Climate Forecast Applications Network and
former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
at Georgia Institute of Technology; Dr. Michael Mann, dis-
tinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State Uni-
versity and co-author of “The Madhouse Effect: How Climate
Change is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics
and Driving Us Crazy;” Dr. Patrick Moore, co-founder and
former president of Greenpeace Canada; and Dr. David Titley,
professor and director of the Center for Solutions to Weather
and Climate Risk at Penn State University.
Each of the panelists presented alternative views to man’s
role in rising CO 2 emissions and whether or not it is a cause
for concern. Each side was also concerned with the effects of
climate change on infrastructure—albeit not in the same way.
While infrastructure might call to mind roads, bridges and
buildings specifically, it actually encompasses a wide array of
areas, including banking, broadband, education, workforce
development, health care and entrepreneurship. Mann and
Titley discussed the negative effects and potential national
security breach caused by the rise in sea levels, heavy rains
and extreme heat, and Curry, Moore and Titley discussed the
human and business costs of divesting in fossil fuels.
Weighing these costs is a huge burden on local, state and
national leaders. According to Curry, the scientific community
does not yet have a unified theory on climate variability and
change that integrates all existing data and models in a pre-
dictive sense, yet the opinion of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) is that the warming trend of the
past century is dangerous and unprecedented.
Protecting Our Structures and Security
According to Mann, a highly cited researcher who has
written for the IPCC, the level of CO 2 in Earth’s atmosphere
reached 410 parts per million in June, a significant and
worrisome occurrence.
“This is the highest concentration ever measured, and based
on evidence from ice cores and other paleoclimate archives, this
level of CO 2 in the atmosphere appears to be unprecedented in
at least 3-5 million years,” he says. “That tells us that we are
engaged in an uncontrolled and dangerous experiment with
the only planet we know that can support us and other life.”
This increase in temperature is thought to be the cause of
many extreme weather events, including West Virginia’s 2016
thousand-years flood, the aftermath of which serves as a recent
example of the state’s fragile infrastructure.
“Warmer air holds more moisture so you can get more in-
tense rainfall and a greater likelihood of flooding events,” says
Mann. “The fact that we’re seeing so many of these events now
in West Virginia and elsewhere around the U.S. and the world
tells us the impacts of climate change are no longer subtle. We
see their damaging impacts playing out in real time.”
In a small, economically challenged state, the question re-
mains: how can West Virginia take on the necessary changes
and costs associated with preparing its infrastructure for the
effects of climate change?
“The state of West Virginia could convene a group of
hydrologists and civil engineers, emergency managers, key
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