Implement it going forward. Okay. Im going to skip mr. Baker because my questions were about rock fish and striped bass. And i think you mentioned that on the one hand, you know rock fish are back. But on the other hand whats happening in terms of Climate Change could severely impact them. Did you want to add to that . One of the being concerns is a wasting disease. There is no real absolute knowledge as to what causes it. But we know that when fish are stressed, theyre more prone to disease. So the general thinking is that a fish under stress has a lot more problems than one that isnt. And certainly, the population is starting to dip again. Okay. Let me then go to lastly to dr. Ekwurzel. Because the noaa recently released the state of the climate in a 2014 report that represents data from scientists around the globe and i know you stressed you gave us a lot of information about annapolis and maryland. But i if i could just go, you know, beyond that you know, according to the state of the climate 2014 report, 2014 was the warmest year in the historical record. In fact 17 of the 18 warmest years on record have occurred in the last 18 years. This is worldwide. Just give us if you could talk more globally. The average global surface temperature for 2014 was roughly half a degree above the 30year average. What effect does that have . Those are disturbing trends. In fact weve even just a couple months ago noaa found that the global sea surface temperature is the warmest after and the land, so combined. That meant at the time for example when there was extreme inland flooding in texas, where and in oklahoma where unfortunately tragically a lot of people lost property and in fact loss of life, the hugely warm waters of the gulf of mexico bringing in this extra precipitation and fueling some of the intense thunderstorm activities are something that are causing inland concerns for people who are living along river valleys. And then with the Tropical Storms you mentioned irene, congressman tonko we see the warmer oceans in fact when hurricanes naturally occur they are carrying more precipitation. So when it comes on shore and going inland and moving up into the United States it is dumping intense levels of precipitation. Youre warrick out bridges in vermont. You are having the bullseye of is causing incredible damage to people who are not used to having their basement flooded, black mold, a lot of costs that are happening. Children you dont want to be exposed to some of these longer term effects of flooding. The other aspect are the wildfires. In some areas we have too much rain and other areas in california and alaska we have intense wildfires. Alaska is burning, we have the pacific northwest. We dont have enough resources to fight all these fires right now. Part of that is because of the polar jet stream pattern that is set up. This extreme High Pressure that some think relating back to sea ice decreasing in the high north. That means alaska all the way down to california immense Drought Conditions and we get a lot of our food from the Central Valley of california. The almonds. We have a lot of economic damages that are related to shifting climate and the extremes that are setting up. Dry places are getting extremely dry and other places are getting too much rain all at once and too intense. We have high flash flood risk. This is the type of situation that is unfortunately Climate Change we have to get used to more extremes and the infrastructure of the past century is not built to handle the type of extremes that Mother Nature is throwing us with a little assist by human activities. Congress sarbanes . Mayor pantelides you mentioned you had a town hall recently and the turnout was very large 150 people. Im curious what are the residents saying to you . I know they talked about who should take responsibility local. But whats the basic input that theyre providing to you . And how are they projecting their own willingness to be help be responsible for the solutions . Id be curious the perspective youve got there. I think its a very interesting town hall. There are so many key players that are involved. You have people from the Insurance Company that obviously have an interest in updated fema maps. You have the residents who are concerned about their property. As the doctor eluded to if its going to rise this much where should they live . I think they want a sense of whats being done and its been rewarding to tackle this challenge and im glad it has gotten attention in the local media. For far too long its an issue that has been worked on but not really talked about. Now that we have some more people are engaging. I want to take a point of personal privilege to mention my colleagues from the city council. I could do it without them. We have Alderman Kirby and joe budge as well. And ross arnett. Half of my council is here. We technically have a quorum if we want to vote on anything. They have been big supporters on this as well. Admiral carter the students that are taking these two courses that you mentioned, tell me a little bit about the perspective they are bringing and the level of enthusiasm, interest, ownership of the issue which i imagine is helping to inform the Naval Academy in terms of the focus on the issues going forward. But i am interested on the perspective that the midshipmen have. I want to make a highlight of my colonel steve lewzewski. He is leading the brigade of midshipmen and on two and a half weeks of leading the class of 2019. You may have seen them Walking Around today. This is key to your answer because these are the talented young men and women that you provide from your districts and that we have here representing every state and voting district in the country. Im very proud of the talent that families of americans send us to come here to the Naval Academy. As a lot of you may know we have 25 academic majors at the Naval Academy. We focus on Science Technology engineering and mathematics. 65 of our graduates leave here in a discipline that is involved in some sort of scientific endeavor. And oceanography is one of our science majors. Im an oceanography major here. Its one of our more popular majors. Its a technical science and its a science that has application to what theyre going to do whether theyre going to be an aviator a submariner, a marine, a fighter pilot. It impacts all their communities when they go out to serve. The talent we get here at the Naval Academy is such that many are finishing the 140 core credit curriculum in less than four years. That is significant. Regardless of what their major is a lot of them are able to go into advanced studies which we do with partner colleges and universities or more importantly to get involved in capstone projects. This is the area where many of our midshipmen can do work in understanding Climate Change and patterns in the study. Many of our oceanographers go on international trips. We have sent some to antarctica to do ice measurements. The midshipmen are out there. They are doing Cutting Edge Research and development as part of their curriculum here. Thats not just so they can be smarter when they graduate. Part of our charter is not just prepare them to be future commissioned officers, but they are be the talent to help solve these problems 15, 30, 100 years from now. Excellent. Thank you. Will baker, thanks for speaking from the heart as you always do in your testimony. I wondered if you could talk about what you hear in terms of the Economic Impact of these challenges to the bay. Because oftentimes we can put an exclusive environmental lens on it. But i imagine that businesses are coming to you all the time and expressing their anxieties related to the fortunes of the bay. And if you could describe that with a little bit more detail i think it will drive home why why Economic Opportunity and empowerment is very aligned with preserving and protecting the health of the bay . Thank you, congressman. About a year ago we began working with dr. Spencer philips a distinguished economist who works in virginia and maryland. We asked him to assess the value of the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed to the economy of the region now, if its improved and if its not addressed. And the numbers are staggering. The economic current economic value of the bay and the region, environmental value to the economy is about 107 billion annually. If the clean water blueprint is successful by 2025 that value can increase to almost 130 billion annually. If we are not successful it will decrease. So in terms of Ecosystem Services to the economy, the numbers are staggering. But when you get right down to individuals who are making their livelihood certainly the commercial watermen charter boat captains, people who are involved in the Tourism Industries the impact is dramatic and immediate as well. I mean, when you talk to folks on smith tangier and across the Eastern Shore and you hear how their livelihoods have been impact it over just the last 35 years its just extraordinary. So you can go beyond that to seafood restaurants, to our member, you know the impact of the Chesapeake Bay on our region, someone once said if you look at a telephone book from a major metropolitan area, the number of columns of companies that use chesapeake in their name is staggering. This is our identity. We cant let it go. Thank you. I have a question for dr. Ekwurzel but maybe we can come back around for a short mini round at the end. Go ahead. You were conveying probably better than anyone in this room could the urgency of the issue. And it appears that what im hearing from climate scientists and the testimony we get on this issue is just how things are accelerating. Its not a linear progression, right . And you know even two three four, five years ago as we were projecting out. People it was still an abstract concept for a lot of folks and we would talk about sort of these scenarios about the future. But theyre really here now. As you say, you are talking about within the life of a mortgage getting to places where you are going to have 300, 400 flooding events in the city of annapolis. You talked about a high that trajectory path and a low trajectory path. Can you comment on the idea of the acceleration of the impact thats happening . Because i think that is creating an urgency that really ought to make this the number one overarching focus of policymakers in many different places. If you could talk to that. Absolutely. These are impacts that were feeling already and were playing catch up. And unfortunately, as a scientist i see all the curves for how fast its taking off and weve only barely tasted whatever in store. Were at the point where how we make the changes over the next ten years really do play out and whether we go that low emissions or the high emissions pathway make a big difference on lives economy, and cost of doing business anywhere along the coast. And as well as interior to many of the land areas. And i would like to say doing Emissions Reductions is one of those adaptation costs is the tide that floats all boats. When we reduce the pace of change it allows the mayor of annapolis, the Naval Academy to put in flood barriers at a most Cost Effective way and do plans that are reasonable and not hurting the economy as much as if we just keep reacting to this were ready to take off. If we can avoid taking off it makes a world of difference. As some people say its a difference between suffering and a somewhat manageable world. Thank you. Congressman tonko. Thank you, congressman. The stewardship, again vice admiral that comes via the navy is so incredibly important and i thank you and the navy in general and our military in general for addressing Climate Change. When i look at operations that are far inland like that in saratoga where you once serve that i represent and some of our coastal situations like norfolk and annapolis theres no denying that as we create these perfect storms if you will, as spoken to you know, congressman van hollen its impacting some of the most unstable you know, the fight for available land and some of the hardships with droughts and flooding will impact people that can least endure around the world. And so its obvious this becomes an issue of National Security. So given that, and recognizing that the navy is speaking to these concerns where is the prioritization within the navy . How would you characterize that . Is it a concept that has risen to the higher levels or of priority . Sir, first of all, im going to make sure everybody recognizes that i represent the Naval Academy but i will not deny i have served 34 years in the navy and sailed many of the oceans of the sea on many Aircraft Carriers and other ships. To answer your question from my personal opinion i do believe our United States navy and the department of defense has raised this up to a very high level. My good friend rear admiral Jonathan White who is the oceanographer for the navy he leads a panel called the Navy Task ForceClimate Change that has multiple partners in the navy in the staff to take an Operational Risk view of some of these challenges. So theyre trying to apply science. Theyre trying to apply all the data that we see so we are leaning forward in making sure we understand what these future challenges are. I will also give you my global view as a sailor. I think everyone here would agree that the earth is covered by 70 water. So as a navy that gives us a pretty big area which to patrol with our ships. We are a global navy. We are from the strait of hormuz to the inland coasts. 90 of all of global trade moves through the water specifically through key choke points like the strait of hormuz and the canals. We have a responsibility to make sure that those sea lanes of communication remain open because our world trade requires that. So as we look at the science and the risk analysis of whats happening here those are potential risk areas. I will tell you just three years ago, i was the admiral in charge of the uss enterprise and all the carriers in that strike group. We were charged with going through the strait of hormuz many times to make sure that waterway remained open as the threat of the iranians was to tenlly do something there to disrupt trade and movement of oil through that strait. We took that Aircraft Carrier through the strait in the summer of 2012 ten times. The sea water inlet temperature in that part of the world is often above 90 degrees in the summer. But in that particular year it approached almost 100 degrees. That is a difficult place for anyone to operate. And of course as weve already talked about on our return journey home one of the greatest environmental disasters ever known to man was Hurricane Sandy. I had the distinct bad timing to have to bring enterprise home right in the middle of sandy. We threaded the needle between three Tropical Storms. Sandy was the lesser of the three as she was forming and our journey home to cross the atlantic was a to deal with Hurricane Sandy in a way that as of course we were worried about our homes on the eastern sea board i had an Aircraft Carrier and the men and women on that ship, a cruiser and three destroyers going through seas that exceeded well over 20 feet. I saw water come over the bow of the enterprise 60 feet above the water as we were coming across the middle of the atlantic. I was a thousand miles away from sandy. So i saw first hand what its like to try to deal with a storm of that magnitude and what that impact is for my role as part of that National Security apparatus. I was very thankful that due to a lot of hard work from my sailors we didnt damage any equipment. She came home on all Nuclear Reactors and all the sailors flew off. And then what that did here to the United States. The other part of that 70 water, 90 trade is maybe one of the most important aspects and that is 80 of not only the United States but the worlds population lives within 500 miles of the shore. As we talk about the impacts of what Sea Level Rise has been, even here in the specifics peekchesapeake, that has an impact. Its not only something we are worried at the academy, the navy is paying close attention to it. As we are setting up our own Advisory Committee here, we want to make sure what the local impacts are. I know that our United States navy is taking a look at this at a much larger scale to help not only protect what we know from data in the past but look forward to how to present solutions from the future. I think just looking through the lens of our military you would think that would be enough to push the moral compass in washington to get this issue resolved. Mayor, you mentioned the order of planning thats required for you and the members of the city council. What sort of relief would be doable do you think if the federal portion were a true player in this regard . Would you think that a major piece of the pie that you need for that planning was that a million plus i think you said . It was a million plus just for the design phase. And that puts it in perspective. But our total budget