By JIM BARON

NARRAGANSETT — Global warming isn't just about polar bears.

Witnesses testifying Thursday at a field hearing of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee said effects of the controversial environmental phenomenon are being felt right now in Rhode Island and particularly in Narragansett Bay.
According to those witnesses, the effects could have dire implications.
“We know for certain that Narragansett Bay is warmer on average and at the extremes than at any other time in recorded history,” said John Torgan, Narragansett Baykeeper for the environmental group Save the Bay. “Over the past 30 years, the average mean temperature of the bay has gone up two degrees Fahrenheit; the average winter temperature has increased four degrees.”
That may seem like a small hike, Torgan said, but “warmer temperatures have caused dramatic changes at many levels and most have a distinctly negative environmental and economic impact.
“The bay's animal and plant communities are fundamentally shifting; critical habitats are threatened; environmental quality and even public health and human life and property are jeopardized.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who chaired the hearing, warned that information questioning the existence of global warming or its connection to human activity “is part of an effort to fool people.” That effort entails labeling those who buy into global warming as “eccentric scientists or wacky environmentalists,” Whitehouse said.
Under the committee's rules, only invited individuals are allowed to speak, with no input from the public. When Whitehouse was asked after the session why no skeptics were invited to testify, the senator said he is not aware of any “climate change deniers” in Rhode Island.
He joked during the hearing that “Washington seems to be the high-water mark” for industry-based groups that he accused of trying to “sow doubt” about the phenomenon. “They are nervous about the changes necessary as we move to a green economy,” Whitehouse said.
“In this case, the science seems to be unequivocal,” the senator said. “We are not responding as a   society to this threat as rapidly as we should.”
Rhode Island“has a lot to contribute to climate change solutions because of how far ahead we are in many respects because of the scientific expertise the state holds,” Whitehouse said. “That is coming on us with very, very serious and broad implications. It looks like it's worse than people thought, and the timeline for action is more urgent than many believe.”
On a beautiful summer day with the sun shining off the water at URI's Narragansett Bay campus, the panel of experts described a gloomy climatic outlook over the horizon.
Grover Fugate is executive director of the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council. He said all the data now being collected is lining up according to what was previously thought to be “worst case scenarios.
“Climate change is no longer debatable,” Fugate maintains, “and the rate at which it is occurring is unprecedented. The natural response is outpacing our ability to predict the change, which place all of us at a disadvantage that will have dire consequences unless we act quickly.”
Kate Moran, associate dean of URI's Graduate School of Oceanography, agreed.
“It is unequivocal that climate change is happening and human conduct is the cause,” Moran testified.
“Narragansett Bay is already seeing the effects of climate change. Sea level rise will occur, but we must monitor this closely because both the timing and magnitude are still uncertain. Water temperatures will continue to increase and impact the coastal and bay ecosystems. Hurricane and tropical storm trends have the potential to inflict great damage and, coupled with increased sea level, we should be taking a precautionary approach so that coastal communities become resilient to the possible impacts.”
“Climate change doesn't just affect coastal communities,” warned Caroly Shumway, director of conservation science for the Rhode Island chapter of The Nature Conservancy.
Shumway said people would “react more strongly to climate change if it had a face, was considered immoral and was understood as a present danger with local impact.”
She noted that by testifying at Thursday's hearing, she was carrying on a family tradition. Her grandfather, Roger Revelle, was a pioneer in climate change: Revelle was recruited by then-Congressman Al Gore to be the lead-off witness at the first congressional hearing on global warming.
Already convinced, Shumway said, Gore wrote in his book “An Inconvenient Truth” that “I really believed that my congressional colleagues on the committee would experience the same epiphany I had when they heard this great scientist's clear analysis. I couldn't have been more wrong. The urgency simply didn't come across ... I'd seriously underestimated the resistance – and disinterest – this alarming prognosis of global warming would meet.”
Afterward, Shumway said Thursday's hearing was important in “making a global problem a local one. People can see the specifics of how climate change affects their local economy and their local ecosystems.”
Climate change, she said, “is a great teaching moment, that can help us reach a turning point or a tipping point because climate change connects land, fresh water, the seas and us, and shows how all these things are connected. We tend to think that we are outside the box – that there is nature and there is us. But we are part of nature.”