Current warming and likely future impacts - Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects - page 304

Commercial
1%

Livestock
3%

Industry
3%

Thermal power
3%

Mining
1%

Domestic
7%

Irrigation
82%

Fig. 6.5 AbreakdownofUSfreshwaterconsumptionin1995.

future for water management and that climate change will place additional burdens
on already stressed water systems.
The 2001 USGCRP report concluded that climate change impacts 'will be sig-
nificant for Americans', although 'for the nation as a whole the direct economic
impacts are likely to be modest'. There were many uncertainties regarding the precise
nature and locality of specific impacts, even though themes such as the need for water
management were clear.
We will turn to the human ecology needed to underpin climate policy matters briefly
in Chapter 7 and policy itself in more depth in Chapter 8. For now it is worth noting
that the USGCRP's 2001 report underpinned the 2002 US Climate Action Report
from the US Department of State, which outlines what the USA must do to address
greenhouse (energy-policy and climate change) concerns. But this Department of
State report was light on biological specifics and stated that 'one of weakest links in
our knowledge is the connection between global and regional projections of climate
change'. This is now changing. And with regard to potential impacts the 2001 report
said that we have a 'lack of understanding of the sensitivity of many environmental
systems and resources - both managed and unmanaged - to climate change'. This
too is changing, although we have still much to discern.
Whereas the USGCRP reports effectively represented a stock-take of their respect-
ive years of US climate change science understanding as to the likely future cli-
mate of the USA, research naturally is still continuing. Of note among more recent