The report includes a number of estimates for the costs already racked up by climate change. White House pushes climate report

The Obama administration issued its loudest, most coordinated warning to date Tuesday that Americans are already feeling the harm from climate change — then immediately began seeking to amplify the message inside and outside Washington.

From hurricane damage worsened by rising seas to allergies prolonged by extended pollen seasons to corn and soybean yields depressed by hotter-than-average summers, the government’s new climate assessment seeks to frame the impacts of global warming in terms that most Americans can understand. It also breaks down the effects by region, from the Northeast battered by Sandy to the drought-ravaged West.


President Barack Obama got involved personally, holding one-on-one interviews with national and local television weather forecasters in a bid to take the message of the 841-page climate report to viewers beyond the Beltway.

“The assessment is clear: Not only is climate change a problem in the future, it’s already affecting Americans,” Obama told Chicago TV meteorologist Megan Glaros in an interview posted by CBS News, citing increased risk of floods, drought and storms. “And people’s lives are at risk.”

( Also on POLITICO: Obama's weather outreach on climate)

“There are things we can do about it, but it’s only going to happen if the American people and people around the world take the challenge seriously,” he added.

The publicity blitz came just weeks before the Environmental Protection Agency is set to issue an ambitious regulation aimed at throttling carbon pollution from the nation’s thousands of power plants. The rule is the linchpin of the climate strategy that Obama announced at Georgetown University last summer, a prelude to talks in Paris next year meant to create a new global agreement for tackling the problem.

But the report showed no signs of changing minds on Capitol Hill, where major climate legislation anytime soon remains unthinkable.

The usual supporters of climate action, like House Energy and Commerce ranking member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), welcomed the study — with Waxman saying it demonstrates “that climate change is real; it’s happening now; and the impacts will be severe if we don’t act.” Congress’ most outspoken climate skeptic, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), dismissed it as more “fear tactics” from the administration.

But others had little to say so far about the assessment, including Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, whose state is teeming with both oil and gas companies and dwindling coastal wetlands.

“I’m still reviewing the report released today, but it is important to remember the progress that we have already made,” she said in a statement to POLITICO. “CO2 emissions are at their lowest levels in almost two decades. Any additional progress made to reduce emissions cannot come at the expense of this energy revolution that is fueling a manufacturing renaissance, creating high-paying jobs and positioning America as an energy superpower.”

( Also on POLITICO: Full energy and environment policy coverage)

The administration was hoping, though, that the message will resonate with voters.

“Primarily, this is aimed at the American public,” White House counselor John Podesta said Tuesday afternoon.

“With respect to getting back to a big national climate legislation,” he added, “the politics are going to have to change on that, and the public is going to have to demand more from this current Congress.”

Administration officials said that despite the report’s dire warnings, the study offers the prospect that there’s still time to avert the worst of the damage.

“I think it’s very important to say that this report is not a bad news story about all the impacts that are happening,” White House science adviser John Holdren said during a discussion of the report Tuesday afternoon. “It’s a good news story about all the many opportunities to take cost-effective actions to reduce the damages.”

The report, known as the third National Climate Assessment, casts the effects of climate change not only in the familiar terms of floods, droughts, wildfires and hurricanes but also in the way it impacts roads, bridges, insurance rates, vegetation and employment.

“Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present,” says the study.

“Americans are noticing changes all around them,” it adds. “Summers are longer and hotter, and extended periods of unusual heat last longer than any living American has experienced. Winters are generally shorter and warmer. Rain comes in heavier downpours. People are seeing changes in the length and severity of seasonal allergies, the plant varieties that thrive in their gardens and the kinds of birds they see in any particular month in their neighborhoods.”

The assessment caps years of work by hundreds of researchers and is intended to serve as a guiding document for the White House, states and businesses to help design climate change policies. The authors include scientists inside and outside the government, including representatives from oil and gas companies Chevron and ConocoPhillips.

The warming brings some regional benefits, the report acknowledges, such as longer growing seasons in some areas. But on balance, it says, climate change spells bad news.

The report includes estimates for the costs already racked up: A 2011 drought in Texas and Oklahoma contributed to $10 billion in direct losses for the agriculture industry. Hurricane Sandy caused damage in the $60 billion to $80 billion range. Gulf Coast states face annual losses totaling $14 billion from stronger hurricane winds and rising sea levels. A Louisiana highway critical to moving oil and gas is sinking and flooding, and a 90-day shutdown would cost the nation $7.8 billion.

The study stops short of saying climate change caused individual calamities such as Sandy. However, it calls the 2012 hurricane a sign of “what powerful tropical storms and higher sea levels could bring more frequently in the future,” and scientists said Tuesday that its damage was magnified by the sea-level rise thatalready has occurred.

The report swerves around providing a precise cost estimate to combat climate change across the U.S., a figure that would almost certainly be mammoth. Calculating such costs is no easy task, the report notes, in part because of the myriad methods that could be used.

“Adaptation and mitigation are closely linked; adaptation efforts will be more difficult, more costly, and less likely to succeed if significant mitigation actions are not taken,” the report says.

There is also a paucity of estimates detailing potential costs on the national scale.

The report notes that one study of the Gulf region projected annual damage at $2.7 billion to $4.6 billion by 2030, and potentially as high as $13.2 billion per year in 2050, with a fifth of those endangered assets within the oil and gas industry. Putting $50 billion into adaptation in the Gulf region over two decades would avert $135 billion in losses, the report says.

It also cites cumulative costs from sea level rise and flooding at as much as $325 billion by the end of this century if the seas rise 4 feet. Forty percent of that would be incurred in low-lying Florida, and more than a quarter would come in the populous Northeast. Losses for just a 1-foot rise would total about $200 billion.

“This study shows that climate impacts are here now, and have begun to impact our economy and way of life,” said Paul Bledsoe, a Clinton-era White House climate aide. “The real question is when the politics of climate will catch up with the facts on the ground.”

Environmental and activist groups also issued supportive statements, including the Sierra Club, Earthjustice, the League of Women Voters, Environment America and The Climate Reality Project.

If nothing else, lawmakers used the new report to relaunch old battles — for instance, Waxman’s response included a shot at industrialist billionaires Charles and David Koch.

“The special interests led by the Koch brothers and the fossil fuel industry have blocked action in Congress,” Waxman said. “That’s why the president needs to use his administrative authority to cut the dangerous carbon pollution that is endangering the future of our children and grandchildren.”

But Inhofe said the report reveals the

administration’s misguided priorities.

“With this report, the president is attempting to once again distract Americans from his unchecked regulatory agenda that is costing our nation millions of job opportunities and our ability to be energy independent,” he said.

Darren Goode and Darius Dixon contributed to this report.