Researching emerging issues: climate change through a kaleidoscope #sla2013 #climatechange @SLAERMD

Librarians from different types of institutions spoke about how they see climate change.

• Environment: Shari Clayman, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
• Military: Dr. Gail Nicula, Joint Forces Staff College (emerita)
• Insurance: Sharon Smith, AIG
• Health: Lynn Kysh, University of Southern California
• Moderator: Mary Maguire, World Resources Insitute and ERMD Chair

Slides

Environment

EPA web site, generally:

• Overview
• Science – Includes links to non-EPA reports
• Climate Change Indicators
• Laws and Regulations

Water:

• Climate Change and Water
• National Water Program 2012 Strategy: Response to Climate Change
• Explore your climate region: Tab on Climate Change and Water page
• Climate Change and Water E-newsletter
• Climate Ready Estuaries
• Coastal Toolkit
• Climate-Ready Water Utilities

Other aspects:

• Climate and Transportation
• Climate Change at the Local Level:
• Household Carbon Footprint Calculator
• Power profiler (how clean is your electricity?)
• Facility Level Information on Greenhouse Gas Tool
• Adaptation Tools for Public Officials
• State and Local Climate and Energy Program
• Climate Showcase Communities

EPA Reports:

• EPA Library Catalog
• National Service Center for Environmental Publications (NSCEP)

U.S. Global Change Research Program

[Update: A good place to keep track of climate change news and reports, especially as they relate to water, is the Santa Clara Valley Water District Climate Change Portal. There’s an RSS feed for updates to the reports listings.]

[Note: In the following sections, I will emphasize the environmental points made by the speakers. For more of the content of their remarks, see the slides.]

Military

The branches of the U.S. military are very concerned about climate change, both because they believe it will increase competition for resources in less-stable parts of the world and because it will change the nature of the Arctic.

ABCs of Military Resources by Lily McGovern and Greta Marlatt

Water Scarcity: A Selected Bibliography by Greta Andrusyszyn, librarian, U.S. Army War College

Climate change has been included as a factor in recent national security reviews and other military strategy documents.

DTIC – Unclassified military reports

Homeland Security Digital Library (HSDL) – Government employees can request full access to the collection.

Insurance

Links on climate change and insurance

PG&E Currents articles on climate change

Health

Potential health effects:

• Heat- and weather-related morbidity and mortality
• Waterborne diseases
• Vectorborne and zoonotic diseases
• Foodborne diseases and malnutrition
• Respiratory, cardiovascular diseases, stroke
• Cancer
• Neurological diseases
• Human development
• Mental health

Sources for research:

• Pubmed – Search National Library of Medicine’s Medline database. If you don’t add any quotation marks or boolean operators, it does a sophisticated synonym search using the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
• Gene (NCBI)
• Grey Literature Report (New York Academy of Medicine)
• USA.gov