2008-06-09_PERMIT FILE - C1980007 (6)

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Response to Comments • • Table 5-1 DEIS Comments and Responses Commenter Comment Comment/Response climate disruptions."9 In order to avoid truly unacceptable consequences of global warming, we must stop the growth of greenhouse gas emissions, and, in relatively short order, begin reducing them. Achieving the reductions necessary to keep post- 2000 global warming within 1° C will be extremely challenging. In June 2005, the National Academies of Science of major nations around the world (including Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russian, the United Kingdom and the United States) signed a joint statement regarding climate change. It said, in part: "The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action... Action taken now to reduce significantly the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will lessen the magnitude and rate of climate change. A lack of full scientific certainty about some aspects of climate change is not a reason for delaying an itninediate response that will, at a reasonable cost, prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system." Global warming represents the most significant and pervasive threat to the future of biodiversity worldwide, affecting both terrestrial and marine species from the tropics to the poles. Peer reviewed studies have concluded that 35 percent of species could be committed to extinction by the year 2050 if current emissions trajectories continue and that these extinctions could be significantly reduced if greenhouse gas emissions fall.10 Entire cultures and ways of life around the globe, including in the Arctic, are at risk from global warming. Many Arctic peoples, such as the Inuit, who rely upon hunting for their primary food supply, are suffering from these changes, as well as from a reduction in weather predictability and travel safety, and face "serious challenges to human health and food security, and possibly even the survival of some cultures." Some communities and industrial facilities in coastal zones are already being forced to relocate due to severe coastal erosion as rising sea level and a reduction in sea ice allow higher waves and storn surges to reach the shore." The impacts to biological diversity go hand-in-hand with the impacts to human society. The World Health Organization estimates that as of the year 2000, 154,000 lives are already lost annually due to global warning.'Z In the Harvard Medical School publication Climate Change Futures: Health, Ecological, a~zd Economic Dimensions, experts predict a number of profound consequences for human health if worldwide greenhouse gas emissions continue on current trajectories. Predictions include an increase in diseases such as malaria, West Nile Virus, and Lyme disease, as well as an increase in pollen production, allergies, and allergic diseases such as asthma.13 Deaths from factors like dehydration and heat stroke associated with more frequent heat waves are projected to triple in many urban centers in the U.S. "With the likelihood of [extreme heat waves] projected to increase 100-fold over the next four decades, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that potentially dangerous antlu~opogenic interference with the climate system is already underway... by the end of this century, 2003 [in which between 22,000 and 35,000 Euro eans died in heat waves] would be classed as an Deer Creek Ventilation Shaft and E Seam Methane Drainage Wells FEIS 189