{"id":13987,"date":"2016-09-05T08:08:45","date_gmt":"2016-09-05T14:08:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=13987"},"modified":"2016-09-05T16:59:11","modified_gmt":"2016-09-05T22:59:11","slug":"montana-ethic-project-what-to-expect-as-climate-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/09\/montana-ethic-project-what-to-expect-as-climate-changes\/","title":{"rendered":"Montana Ethic Project: What to expect as climate changes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Climate\"<\/a>

Joey and Libby Early<\/p>

UM ecology professor Steve Running talks about climate change and its effects on Montana.<\/p><\/div>\n

This is the 27th chapter of the 32-part video series \u201cThe Montana Ethic Project.\u201d This chapter features Steve Running, University Regents Professor of Ecology at the University of Montana, talking about “Montana Climate Change.” You\u00a0can watch the whole video below. Here is an edited transcript of how it begins:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“Hello. I\u2019m Steve Running, Regents Professor at the University of Montana. I\u2019ve been in Montana since\u00a01979. I can\u2019t quite claim I\u2019m a native, I was born in Spokane. I guess that means I won\u2019t ever get to be\u00a0governor. I\u2019m at least half native at this point though.<\/p>\n

“As I contemplate why I\u2019m here, why I\u2019ve stayed here my whole career, I suspect it isn\u2019t that much\u00a0different than an awful lot of the rest of Montanans. Probably every single one of us could make more\u00a0money by moving somewhere else. And yet here we are.<\/p>\n

“We stay here.”<\/p>\n

Here is another, edited excerpt from Running’s\u00a0presentation<\/em>:<\/p>\n

“Probably what I see for our future climate most clearly, though, is that it\u2019s just going to continue to\u00a0become drier. It\u2019s not because of less snow or rain, it\u2019s really because higher temperatures simply\u00a0evaporate more water. It just dries the landscape more. The beginnings of this are already being felt. We\u00a0know now we are a couple of degrees warmer than 50 years ago on average. The weather statistics bear\u00a0this out. And we will progressively see our landscapes bearing this out.<\/p>\n

Probably the most striking example we see periodically are much more dynamic wildfires. In our bad fire years you\u2019ll get fires that will just take off at a rate that we really haven\u2019t seen in the\u00a0past. They\u2019ve become much bigger than what we can stop. And they literally become a point of public\u00a0danger that we have to be cognoscente of. This is a part of our ecosystem transitioning into the balance\u00a0of this new climate. And of course, this climate is continuing to change.”<\/p>\n