WASHINGTON | Fri Jan 18, 2013 3:43pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Reeling from an historic drought, the hottest year on record and more frequent wild weather, mayors from a number of U.S. cities urged the White House this week to take the lead on setting an agenda to address climate change.

City leaders said that only the federal government has the tools and clout to address greenhouse gases often blamed for warming the planet, while mayors focus on issues of "local warming" such as providing a reliable water supply or protecting citizens during dangerous weather events such as the 1995 Chicago heat wave that was blamed for over 700 deaths.

"We are fixing pot holes, dealing with transit issues," Seattle mayor Michael McGinn said while attending the U.S. Conference of Mayors' winter meeting. "But this can be a top tier issue for the president."

On the night of his reelection, Obama said fighting climate change would be a priority in his second term. He has since repeated the point, but without giving policy specifics.

And for now officials are doing their work quietly.

The White House asked that a discussion about climate change at the mayors' meeting on Thursday take place behind closed doors, frustrating some participants, even as hot button topics from immigration to gun control got public airings.

"This should be discussed openly," said Jim Brainard, the Republican mayor of Carmel, Indiana, who co-chaired the climate panel.

White House liaison for climate change Heather Zichal led the discussion, but declined to comment on why the meeting was closed.

"At the end of the day, it was a productive conversation," she said, noting that the White House was eager to hear from cities on reducing emissions of greenhouse gas.

Los Angeles, for example, plans to slash carbon emissions from government sources 35 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, a more ambitious target than even the state has set.

Among other measures, Chicago is spending billions of dollars to boost public transit and help public buildings save energy.

Mayors say they are proud of such steps and understand Obama's reluctance to take on a politically charged issue, but only Washington can achieve the overall greenhouse gas cuts that many say are needed.

"We are looking for leadership from the president in detailing to the American people the magnitude of this issue," McGinn said after the meeting with about two dozen peers.

DASHED CLIMATE HOPES

The Obama administration pinned its hopes on Congress to enact a comprehensive energy and climate bill that would have set a national price on carbon dioxide emissions during the president's first term.

That effort failed in bitter partisan wrangling, forcing the administration to rethink its strategy and reach for existing regulations as a way to mitigate climate warming emissions.

"I absolutely would anticipate that we will continue to use existing authority to make progress in this area," Zichal said after her meeting with mayors.

But efforts by states and cities will also be crucial to "move the needle" on reducing emissions, she said, noting that she heard new ideas about city climate initiatives that create jobs and reduce pollution.

Mayors contend that those efforts often need federal funding. They are counting on help from Washington to upgrade storm water systems, for example, and otherwise brace for the practical fallout from more extreme weather.

Although Greg Fischer, mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, said not all his constituents embrace the idea of man-made climate change, more frequent severe weather is "a far-reaching issue that touches almost every area of the city."

Scientists caution that no single weather event can be blamed on climate change. But the force of Hurricane Sandy, which devastated parts of New York and New Jersey in October, and a withering drought in the Midwest, are seen as harbingers.

"There is a lot of call for the president to use his 'bully pulpit' and explain the consequences here," said Brainard.

(Reporting By Patrick Rucker and Valerie Volcovici, editing by Ros Krasny and Andre Grenon)

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WASHINGTON | Fri Dec 21, 2012 12:41pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - State and local government spending grew at a 0.3 percent annual rate in the third quarter, after 11 straight quarters of contraction, the U.S. Commerce Department said on Thursday.

The last time state and local spending expanded was in the third quarter of 2009, at a much more robust rate of 2.2 percent. Then, for nearly three years, spending contracted sharply, with the biggest drop in the first quarter of 2010 at 5.5 percent.

States are pinching pennies, keeping spending growth slow as the economy recovers from the 2007-09 recession and the federal government sends them fewer funds.

"The recent improvement in the national economy has not translated to strong growth in total state expenditures," said the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO) in a report also released on Thursday.

Total state spending likely grew only 0.1 percent in fiscal 2012, the lowest level since the group began tracking state spending in 1987, NASBO said. Most states' fiscal years end in June, which means that many have already started fiscal 2013.

The 2007-09 recession caused states' revenues to plunge and, because all states except Vermont must end their fiscal years with balanced budgets, many slashed spending, calling special legislative sessions to make emergency mid-year cuts.

The federal government stepped in to help with the 2009 economic stimulus plan known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which included the largest transfer of federal funds to states in U.S. history.

NASBO said state expenditures grew 3.8 percent in fiscal 2010 and 2.8 percent in fiscal 2011, mostly due to the assistance. By fiscal 2010 federal money made up nearly 35 percent of state spending, compared with 26.3 percent in fiscal 2008.

Now that the burst of stimulus money is over, states must once again shoulder the costs of public programs, even though their revenues are only beginning to return to pre-recession levels. Federal funds likely only represented 31.2 percent of state spending in fiscal 2012 and will continue to shrink, NASBO said.

"State revenues have not increased as fast as ARRA funds have declined, leading to a unique situation in which total state expenditure growth has slowed during the same time that the national economy has been improving," it reported.

Meanwhile, spending demands continue to grow, particularly for the Medicaid healthcare program for the poor that states operate with partial reimbursement from the federal government.

Over the last three years, the portion of state spending going to Medicaid has risen to 23.9 percent from 22.2 percent. Many states worry that Medicaid will eat up their budgets, and leave fewer dollars for other areas.

Spending on education dipped to 19.8 percent in fiscal 2012, the first time on record that the portion has been less than 20 percent, NASBO said.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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n">(Reuters) - Rising foreclosures and delinquent real estate mortgages are threatening the credit quality of New Jersey's local governments, Moody's Investors Service said.

Cities, towns and other local governments in New Jersey and many other states rely on property tax collections as their main source of revenue. Abundant foreclosures keep the taxable value of property low, hurting that funding source, Moody's said in a commentary late Thursday.

New Jersey has the second highest percentage of foreclosures in the United States behind Florida, Moody's said, citing an August report by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

And the percentage of seriously delinquent mortgages increased by 2.4 percent in New Jersey in the second quarter of 2012, while they declined nationally, Moody's said.

"Foreclosure rates in the state are likely to stay higher than the national average over the medium term because New Jersey's practice of administering foreclosures through the courts tends to be a slow and cumbersome process that tends to be prone to backlogs," Moody's said.

The scenario is likely to keep housing prices in the state low for years, because distressed properties usually sell at steep discounts, Moody's said.

The credit rating agency expects New Jersey's economy to recover more slowly than the rest of the nation from the recession.

The state's credit quality is also under pressure. On September 18, Standard & Poor's Ratings Services revised its outlook to negative from stable on New Jersey's "AA-minus" general obligation rating, citing a structural budget imbalance and optimistic revenue assumptions.

In August, the state's jobless rate was 9.9 percent, the fourth-highest rate in the country and the highest rate for New Jersey since 1977.

(Reporting By Hilary Russ; Editing by M.D. Golan)

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A pedestrian walks across a bridge above a main road on a day with high air pollution in Beijing June 6, 2012.

OSLO | Fri Jul 27, 2012 10:23am EDT

OSLO (Reuters) - Scientists are finding evidence that man-made climate change has raised the risks of individual weather events, such as floods or heatwaves, marking a big step towards pinpointing local costs and ways to adapt to freak conditions.

"We're seeing a great deal of progress in attributing a human fingerprint to the probability of particular events or series of events," said Christopher Field, co-chairman of a U.N. report due in 2014 about the impacts of climate change.

Experts have long blamed a build-up of greenhouse gas emissions for raising worldwide temperatures and causing desertification, floods, droughts, heatwaves, more powerful storms and rising sea levels.

But until recently they have said that naturally very hot, wet, cold, dry or windy weather might explain any single extreme event, like the current drought in the United States or a rare melt of ice in Greenland in July.

But for some extremes, that is now changing.

A study this month, for instance, showed that greenhouse gas emissions had raised the chances of the severe heatwave in Texas in 2011 and unusual heat in Britain in late 2011. Other studies of extremes are under way.

Growing evidence that the dice are loaded towards ever more severe local weather may make it easier for experts to explain global warming to the public, pin down costs and guide investments in everything from roads to flood defenses.

"One of the ironies of climate change is that we have more papers published on the costs of climate change in 2100 than we have published on the costs today. I think that is ridiculous," said Myles Allen, head of climate research at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute.

"We can't (work out current costs) without being able to make the link to extreme weather," he said. "And once you've worked out how much it costs that raises the question of who is going to pay."

Industrialized nations agree they should take the lead in cutting emissions since they have burnt fossil fuels, which release greenhouse gases, since the Industrial Revolution. But they oppose the idea of liability for damage.

Almost 200 nations have agreed to work out a new deal by the end of 2015 to combat climate change, after repeated setbacks. China, the United States and India are now the top national emitters of greenhouse gases.

Field, Professor of Biology and Environmental Earth System Science at the University of Stanford, said that the goal was to carry out studies of extreme weather events almost immediately after they happen, helping expose the risks.

"Everybody who needs to make decisions about the future - things like building codes, infrastructure planning, insurance - can take advantage of the fact that the risks are changing but we have a lot of influence over what those risks are."

FLOODS

Another report last year indicated that floods 12 years ago in Britain - among the countries most easily studied because of it has long records - were made more likely by warming. And climate shifts also reduced the risks of flooding in 2001.

Previously, the European heatwave of 2003 that killed perhaps 70,000 people was the only extreme where scientists had discerned a human fingerprint. In 2004, they said that global warming had at least doubled the risks of such unusual heat.

The new statistical reviews are difficult because they have to tease out the impact of greenhouse gases from natural variations, such as periodic El Nino warmings of the Pacific, sun-dimming volcanic dust or shifts in the sun's output.

So far, extreme heat is the easiest to link to global warming after a research initiative led by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the British Meteorological Office.

"Heatwaves are easier to attribute than heavy rainfall, and drought is very difficult given evidence for large droughts in the past," said Gabriele Hegerl of the University of Edinburgh.

Scientists often liken climate change to loading dice to get more sixes, or a baseball player on steroids who hits more home runs. That is now going to the local from the global scale.

Field said climate science would always include doubt since weather is chaotic. It is not as certain as physics, where scientists could this month express 99.999 percent certainty they had detected the Higgs boson elementary particle.

"This new attribution science is showing the power of our understanding, but it also illustrates where the limits are," he said.

A report by Field's U.N. group last year showed that more weather extremes that can be linked to greenhouse warming, such as the number of high temperature extremes and the fact that the rising fraction of rainfall falls in downpours.

But scientists warn against going too far in blaming climate change for extreme events.

Unprecedented floods in Thailand last year, for instance, that caused $45 billion in damage according to a World Bank estimate, were caused by people hemming in rivers and raising water levels rather than by climate change, a study showed.

"We have to be a bit cautious about blaming it all on climate change," Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the Met Office's Hadley Centre, said of extremes in 2012.

Taken together, many extremes are a sign of overall change.

"If you look all over the world, we have a great disastrous drought in North America ... you have the same situation in the Mediterranean... If you look at all the extremes together you can say that these are indicators of global warming," said Friedrich-Wilhelm Gerstengabe, a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

(Additional reporting by Sara Ledwith in London; Editing by Louise Ireland)

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