Michael E. Mann: "I think we can say that the storm is stronger, wetter and more impactful from a coastal flooding standpoint than it would have been BECAUSE of human-caused warming,” Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann wrote in an email. “And we don’t need an attribution study to tell us that in my view. We just need the laws of thermodynamics."
What can you do?
VOTE like your lives depend on the outcome, because they do.
Trump Republicans suppress evidence that real, unsafe borders are between alien chemicals and you.
A Republican White House and a Republican Congress don't care that toxic algae is overwhelming the nation's waterways, like in Florida and with Lake Okeechobee, because if they did, they would be doing something about the alien chemicals. They are not.
Sure, Central American M-13 gang members don't belong here, but chances are you will never meet any of them. On the other hand, you are surrounded by alien chemicals and your government is doing next to nothing about those threats to your safety, including cancer.
Some of the alien chemicals have long names like carbon dioxide or methylmercury.
Republicans don't want to talk about alien chemicals they refuse to regulate or enforce against. Your Republicans in state legislatures, the governor's office, or Congress don't acknowledge that the biggest defender of alien chemicals is Trump's EPA chief, Scott Pruitt, the most corrupt Trump White House official.
So much easier to target brown-skinned poor people than wealthy polluters who inhibit Trump from firing Pruitt.
Ever stop to think: the walls between the wealthy who can afford the best cancer care, triggered by alien chemicals, are even higher than the wall with Mexico? In the US you still can't get good, affordable cancer-care outcomes like other parts of the developed world.
Have a look at this chart and think about how hot it has been the past few years. The weather feels different. The seasons, different too. A too-hot-to-live in climate is all about alien chemicals we put in the atmosphere.
What the chart posted on Twitter says: based on scientific evidence, the current average global surface temperature is higher than any time since the dawn of humans. Temperatures are not going to lower because of those alien chemicals that Republicans defend..
Scientific fact: the last time carbon dioxide levels -- man-made through combustion of fossil fuels -- were so high, dinosaurs roamed the earth.
When you vote in November, keep in mind that one political party and its candidates not only refuse to acknowledge alien chemicals, they are actively engaged in accelerating unsafe borders between them and you and your family's health.
Things are getting real, and real fast, in terms of the impacts of pollution on citizens. It's your life. It's your family. It's your world.
Carbon dioxide is a pollutant and largely responsible for global warming. The sunny day flooding that is occurring in low-lying coastal areas will not stop, and it won't stop catastrophic losses to home and business values, until elected leaders start coming to terms with that pollution. If your votes are not for candidates who can honestly say they give a damn about climate change, you are damned.
There are other slow-motion fuses on pollution and toxics that have a direct impact on your life. Your family. Your world.
An oncologist in Brevard County, Dr. Julie Greenwalt, is trying to piece together a toxic puzzle that the government won't. She got cancer, with no history of the disease in her family. She began noticing that lots of her grade and high school classmates, who had all gone to schools near Patrick Air Force Base, also had contracted cancer at a youthful age.
Down here in Miami, there is a lot of money and attention and care placed by the community on cancer in our lives. There are corporate races and drives to raise money for hospitals. There are t-shirts and bracelets. But how many voters understand that cancer is a political event too and not just a matter of bad luck, or genetics?
Cancer is a political event because money needs to be spent, science needs to be gathered, and information needs to be disclosed to help people make informed decisions about toxics in their lives. Even toxics used by government in service of public health and safety.
How could this clearer?
"I just feel grateful to be alive, and I know that God has a plan for my life," Dr. Greenwalt said to a Brevard news outlet. "(Perhaps) this is part of it -- to try and help figure this out."
Voters shouldn't need cancer to raise awareness about government officials, cover-ups on toxics or climate change denialism. Voters shouldn't need algae in a favorite swimming place that is linked to Alzheimer's.
Voters should elect representatives who do more than platitudes or demagogue about how creating "jobs" is more important than protecting your health, your families, and the world we share. First things, first.
Pope Francis may have read about the recent Republican gubernatorial debate in Florida, a slugfest in which the two top contenders -- Adam Putnam and Ron DeSantis -- focused on how they are respectively more like Trump than their adversary. Trump defines the environment and threats to it as unauthorized access to a golf course he owns. Putnam, as Florida Secretary of Agriculture, has been thoroughly compromised by Big Sugar -- represented by two billionaire families, the Fanjuls and the descendants of Charles Stuart Mott. DeSantis, a Congressman whose campaign Trump endorsed, is a fierce defender of the anti-environmental regulatory jihad.
Then, there is Republican Rick Scott. Florida's term limited governor is challenging Democrat Bill Nelson for US Senate; a race considered critical to Democrats' hope to regain majority control of the Senate. As governor, Scott twiddled his fingers while serial outbreaks of toxic algae spewed from the state's largest fresh water body; outbreaks attributable to a warming climate and the sugar industry -- his big campaign supporters -- and its dominance of water management infrastructure in the state. Some of that algae is being linked through air-borne convection to serious brain disease, like Alzheimer's.
The thread tying together the Republican agenda in Florida and elsewhere is a willingness to dismantle environmental regulations that "drag" on business profits. Scott, for example, drove the final nail of the coffin in the state's growth planning agency. His willingness to abandon environmental enforcement, like wetlands destruction, has unleashed another wave of growth, sprawl, and highways into the Everglades. On another front, Gov. Scott has withheld information on cancer clusters including rare pediatric ones. This dismal course is mirrored by President Trump (eliminating protections for whales and sea turtles) and the empowerment of a radical anti-environmental agenda that masks severe risks to the public. Just one example:
Fearing a “public relations nightmare,” the White House and top officials at the Environmental Protection Agency worked together earlier this year to suppress a federal health study that revealed new evidence about hazardous levels of toxic chemicals in U.S. drinking water.
The study, set to be released by the Department of Health and Human Service (HHS)’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), found that a certain class of chemicals can pose a serious risk to human health at much lower levels than previously thought.
These chemicals, which have been linked to cancer, thyroid diseases, pregnancy complications, and other serious health problems, are present at dangerously high levels in water supplies near chemical plants, military bases, and other sites in multiple states, the study revealed.
Jeb Bush, who did his part as Florida governor to wreck decades of bipartisan consensus on the environment, dismissed Pope Francis' Laudato Si; saying that, in effect, the pope should stick to psalms while good business people took care of the economy. An observer of the Church wrote: "What strikes the Pope as self-evident is that the nature we have attempted to dominate, for the past several centuries, has now turned on us, like Frankenstein’s monster. As he put it in a recent press conference, "God always forgives; human beings sometimes forgive; but when nature is mistreated, she never forgives."
Although these thoughts have yet to register with Florida voters -- who seem to perversely detach their vote for Republicans from the terrible outcomes that Republican officials happily support -- the ones most severely impacted, like in Martin County where Lake Okeechobee is spewing toxic algae onto personal property and treasured waterways, are mobilized. A little further up the Florida Atlantic coast, another group is mobilized too. These are a group of young women who have contracted cancer. They shared neighborhoods, homes and schools near Patrick Air Force Base.
Dr. Julie Greenwalt is a cancer survivor and an oncologist with MD Anderson. She is organizing her community of friends and trying to piece together a toxic puzzle that the government, won't. ""I just feel grateful to be alive, and I know that God has a plan for my life," Greenwalt said. "(Perhaps) this is part of it -- to try and help figure this out."
Maybe God's plan also includes waking up voters, by putting in front of us such insensitive, manipulative and power-hungry politicians who wrap themselves in the velvet robes of religiosity. They should be banished from our legislatures, but only voters have that choice and, so far -- at least as Florida is concerned -- , they have exercised it very poorly.
NOTE: For 7 years, Gov. Scott used his executive authority to trash state environmental rules and regulations, using agencies like the South Florida Water Management District as political cudgels against conservationists. Now that he's running for Senate, Scott claims no one has done more than him, for the environment. Voters: be informed.
Florida Kids Sue Gov. Scott Over Climate Change: You Have 'Moral Obligation' to Protect Us
The case, connected to the federal Our Children’s Trust climate lawsuit, is one of nine pressuring states to take action on global warming and fossil fuels.
Apr 16, 2018
Eight young Floridians, ages 10 to 19, sued their state and its climate-policy-averse governor on Monday for failing to protect residents from the impacts of a warming climate.
They say they already see signs of climate change around them—from powerful hurricanes to extreme heat waves to tidal flooding that now regularly washes into coastal roads and parks as sea level rises—and they want the state to do something about it.
The lawsuit filed Monday is the latest in a wave of legal cases filed by children against states and the federal government that accuse government of depriving them of the fundamental right to a stable climate.
The Florida plaintiffs accuse the state of violating their constitutional rights by "perpetuating an energy system that is based on fossil fuels."
"The plaintiffs are asking the state of Florida to adhere to its legal and moral obligation to protect current and future generations from the intensifying impacts of climate change," the group said in a statement.
Their lawsuit asks that state officials "prepare and implement an enforceable comprehensive" plan to phase out fossil fuel use and "draw down excess atmospheric CO2 through forest and soil protection so as to stabilize the climate system."
Gov. Rick Scott and Climate Change
The lawsuit names the state, Republican Gov. Rick Scott, state agencies and the heads of those agencies as defendants.
In 2015, journalists in Florida reported that Scott had placed a gag order on the terms "climate change" and "global warming" within state's Department of Environmental Protection—an especially notable move, given the state is among the most vulnerable to climate change, with 1,000 miles of coastline and millions of people living in low-lying areas.
Scott has also ducked questions about climate change, using the response: "I'm not a scientist."
The governor's office responded to questions about the lawsuit in an emailed statement: "The Governor signed one of the largest environmental protection budgets in Florida's history last month—investing $4 billion into Florida's environment," said McKinley Lewis, a spokesperson for Scott. "The Governor is focused on real solutions to protect our environment—not political theater or a lawsuit orchestrated by a group based in Eugene, Oregon."
Florida Teens Fight for Their Future
Delaney Reynolds, 18, a fourth-generation Floridian who has become a prominent advocate and is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, wrote to the state's environmental regulators in 2014, asking what the department was doing to address climate change.
She said the agency response was: not much.
In a blog post Monday, Reynolds wrote that the response was "unacceptable" and a reason she decided to sue the state.
"Our climate change crisis is the biggest issue that my generation will ever face, and it's up to us, today's children, to fix this problem," Reynolds wrote. "It is my hope that the court will rule to require that Florida enact and enforce laws to reduce and eliminate carbon emissions so that our state and citizens can have a future here."
Kids' Federal Climate Case Gets a Court Date
Our Children's Trust, a group that advocates for science-based climate policy, is supporting the federal case and other youth-led legal efforts across the country.
In 2015, Our Children's Trust and 21 young people from across the country sued the federal government on the same legal grounds, saying the government was violating the public trust by failing to protect a common resource. The fossil fuel industry has repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, attempted to keep the case from advancing. (Levi Draheim, a 10-year-old Floridian, is a co-plaintiff in that case, as well as in the lawsuit filed Monday.)
Last week, a federal magistrate judge set a trial date for the federal case: Oct. 29, 2018, in federal district court in Oregon.
Delaney Reynolds and Alan Farago at first March for Science 2017, Miami
(UPDATE April 17) Juliana v. US is a federal lawsuit brought by children represented by Our Children's Trust: the most important legal challenge against the U.S. government for its affirmative acts causing the crisis through perpetuating the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels, despite acute knowledge of the dangers in doing so.
Lawsuits have been filed in state courts too, and the latest is Florida; the state with the most to lose from sea level rise. Delaney Reynolds offers the following:
My name is Delaney Reynolds and I am a college student at the University of Miami's Rosensteil School of Marine and Atmospheric Science in Miami, Florida and founder of The Sink or Swim Project (miamisearise.com). I split my time between this vibrant, cosmopolitan area of nearly three million people and my second home on No Name Key, a 1,000 acre island filled with nature and 43 solar powered homes in the Florida Keys.
First thing tomorrow, Monday April 16th, 2018, I will be filing a lawsuit against the State of Florida, Governor Rick Scott, and members of his cabinet to demand that they and our State take action to protect us, future generations, and our natural environment from carbon dioxide emissions that have created our climate change crisis.
I am proudly joined in this effort by a diverse group of youth from all over the State of Florida who share my concerns related to our climate change crisis including whether South Florida will even exist in a future confronted by sea level rise.
On Tuesday April 17th at 3:00 PM in Downtown Miami at the Miami-Dade County courthouse steps, I will be conducting a press conference along with my attorneys from Our Children's Trust and the other Florida children who are joining me as Plaintiffs in this case.
I am writing today to not only advise you of what is about to happen but to ask you to consider promoting it to your networks and to help me get as many people as possible to attend the event on Tuesday afternoon here in Miami. The press conference will include comments from some of the children, myself included, as well as some of our attorneys.
... As you might know, Our Children's Trust is active in suing a few other states, as well as our federal government and in that case, the federal case, it is set to go to trial in late October of this year. As you likely also know, the Colombian Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of a group of children who had sued that country seeking that it protect the Amazon and climate in what is a historic case similar to the one that we are undertaking. As you have heard me say before, it is my belief that our planet's climate change crisis is the biggest challenge that my generation will ever face and thus, I feel that today's youth must take action to demand solutions despite the fact that the adults before us have overlooked or caused this problem.
Once again, thank you!
--
Delaney Reynolds
Founder & Activist
The Sink or Swim Project
www.miamisearise.com
www.delaneyreynolds.com
Donald Trump, the president of the United States, fundamentally disrespects the executive authority of the White House except for the narrow range of interests that consume his ego.
Holes in staffing and appointments of incompetents delineate vast areas of federal policy and programs where Trump literally has no patience or curiosity. This suits Republican donors from regulated industries to a T. They never had a better opportunity to lock down their prerogatives, and the place this is happening most radically, most efficiently, and most harmfully to the public is in the agency that consumes less than half of one percent of the federal budget: the US EPA. The EPA is the single federal agency where a Trump appointment is expertly matched to the tasks of destruction from within.
EPA Pruitt is angling to be next US Attorney General when Trump fires Jeff Sessions
The minuscule size of the EPA is sharply contrasts with its importance to protecting the air, water, and economy from the impacts of global warming. But the same value to people makes the EPA an anathema to polluting corporations who, as a consequence of regulation, are the largest contributors to political campaigns -- primarily through unregulated dark money channels. (cf. Jane Mayer, "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right".)
For polluting corporations, it is far, far easier to increase quarterly or yearly profits by knocking down regulations on existing profit centers than it is to innovate new markets. When a regulation is killed, or regulators harnessed behind their desks, corporate profits instantly inflate -- as do compensation packages based on improved profit performance.
That is exactly what motivates EPA chief Scott Pruitt.
The delivery of the talking points comes a week after Pruitt announced plans to restrict the agency’s use of science in writing environmental rules, barring the use of research unless the raw data can be made public for other scientists and industry to scrutinize. That directive would disqualify huge amounts of public health research conducted on the condition that subjects’ personal information will remain private. Two former top EPA officials called the move an “attack on science” in a New York Times op-ed published Monday. Last year, the EPA reassigned the four staffers in the policy office who worked on climate adaptation, shuttered its program on climate adaptation and proposed eliminating funding for programs that deal with rising seas and warming temperatures.
Pruitt personally oversaw efforts to scrub climate change from EPA websites, and staunchly defended President Donald Trump’s decision last June to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord. In October, Pruitt proposed repealing the Clean Power Plan, one of the only major federal policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
"For the past three decades", Huffington Post notes, "a Big Tobacco-style misinformation campaign funded primarily by oil, gas and coal interests has fueled political debate over the integrity of the scientific consensus."
Unsurprisingly, also, environmental and civic groups have launched a campaign to #bootPruitt.
Embedded in Trump's favor for Pruitt is more than an affinity for brushing off critics like lint from a lapel: Pruitt is exactly the destroyer favored by the Federalist Society and conservative think tank funders like the billionaire Kochs and Mercer families. They use lofty language like "federal overreach" to obscure their real motivation: money. These are Trump's true base, not the narrow sliver of aggrieved white, poorly educated white males.
American voters are passengers on a runaway train whose conductor has jammed the throttle, full speed, so he can retreat to the lounge car reserved for him, family and mistresses, where he eats, tweets and calls the National Enquirer while he watches Fox News and Fox and Friends. Meanwhile, EPA Scott Pruitt has declared an open season on environmental rules and laws, taking a sledge hammer to the agency mission to protect all Americans.
“Climate Change in the Americas” is the theme of the 35th edition of the annual Journalists & Editors Workshop on Latin America and the Caribbean to be held on March 27-28, 2018, at Florida International University’s Miami Beach Urban Studios.
As always: follow the money.
The Trump election in 2016 is traceable to the influence of hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer's Cambridge Analytica: the data mining and exploitation firm that took tens of millions of Facebook data users to create a psyops campaign that turned just enough voters to propel Trump to the White House. (Whether or not Mercer's CA collaborated with Moscow Center is among key questions being explored by Special Investigator Robert Mueller and his staff.)
Among Mercer's eccentricities is a fierce determination to avoid the science of climate change and global warming. Mercer is key funder of the Heartland Institute, giving at least $800,000 in 2016. The Union of Concerned Scientists website underscores the role of other major donors like the Kochs: "Heartland () once marked Earth Day by mailing out 100,000 free copies of a book claiming that “climate science has been corrupted” [40] – despite acknowledging that “…all major scientific organizations of the world have taken the official position that humankind is causing global warming.” Heartland received more than $675,000 from ExxonMobil from 1997-2006 [41]. Heartland also raked in millions from the Koch-funded organization Donors Trust through 2011."
By 2011, the Mercers had joined forces with Charles and David Koch, who own Koch Industries, and who have run a powerful political machine for decades. The Mercers attended the Kochs’ semiannual seminars, which provide a structure for right-wing millionaires looking for effective ways to channel their cash. The Mercers admired the savviness of the Kochs’ plan, which called for attendees to pool their contributions in a fund run by Koch operatives. The fund would strategically deploy the money in races across the country, although, at the time, the Kochs’ chief aim was to defeat Barack Obama in 2012. The Kochs will not reveal the identities of their donors, or the size of contributions, but the Mercers reportedly began giving at least a million dollars a year to the Kochs’ fund. Eventually, they contributed more than twenty-five million.
Of the $19 million total the Mercers gave to 44 nonprofits in 2016, about 23% went to groups working at least partly on climate misinformation. (The foundation also gave $625,000 to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where Rebekah Mercer is a board member.) This means the same year the powerful conservative donors were spending more than $20 million on the Trump campaign and other Republican candidates, they were also supporting organizations seeding doubt about mainstream climate science.
Trump has repeatedly questioned whether man-made climate change is real. This skepticism is shared by many of his top cabinet members, including Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt and Department of Energy Secretary Rick Perry. The administration has threatened to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement, excised climate information on government websites, and rolled back the Clean Power Plan and other Obama-era regulations aimed at curbing emissions.
This rapid deregulatory effort was cheered at the Heartland Institute’s climate denial conference last spring, which was attended by Robert and Rebekah Mercer. It was also the theme of the group’s first-ever “America First Energy Conference” in Houston months later. Both meetings drew Trump officials, another sign of their growing relevance and reach.
“They are responsible for Trump’s denial and they take credit for it,” Davies said. “They are very proud he’s saying what they are saying.”
Between 2008 and 2016, the Mercer Family Foundation gave nearly $6 million to Heartland. Its annual funding ranged from $100,000 in 2015 to $1 million in 2008, with $800,000 in 2016. Heartland declined to comment on its donors.
Tonight's FIU workshop is aimed to journalists and editors from Latin and South America, regions where local economies dependent on small scale agriculture are already being hit hard by global warming. Climate change induced migration is impacting the United States' southern border today, even if that disclosure hasn't made the Fox News crawl.
Perhaps, tonight, audience members of the FIU workshop will let their hosts know what they think about having a climate change denier in the midst of a municipality that has already invested $500 million in street and sewer and pump upgrades just to ward off the latest high tides. More to come.
Here’s How Much Money The Mercer Family Donated To Climate Misinformation Groups In 2016
The Mercer family, among President Trump’s most powerful donors, in 2016 gave nearly $4 million to groups that challenge the scientific consensus on man-made climate change, tax filings reveal.
Posted on January 25, 2018, at 6:14 p.m.
Zahra Hirji BuzzFeed News Reporter
The Mercer family, the secretive GOP megadonors with ties to the alt-right, in 2016 funded several groups that deny climate change is a problem, tax filings obtained by BuzzFeed News reveal.
"Lamps are going out all over the natural world, and no one will ever see them lit again", is how Guardian OPED writer Jeff Sparrow laments the relentless march of climate change (reprinted below).
The acceleration of climate change is extraordinary, as this data map of declining winter sea ice in the Arctic demonstrates:
In Miami, as elsewhere, we are going about business -- talking about climate "resiliency" in the kind of optimistic frame to avoid the perception of running with hair on fire. In fact, "resiliency" is the acceptable solvent to the political gridlock by the GOP on climate change. (cf. Gov. Rick Scott and Senator Marco Rubio).
Meanwhile, powerful corporations like Florida Power and Light are pushing back hard; determined that corporate obligation to shareholders (and key executives' compensation packages) guides everything that exceeds the time horizon of annual reports.
It's not enough, and it is not enough for many reasons even if you don't care whether snakes, crocodiles, rats, cockroaches and a vastly reduced human population will be what's left when climate change disrupts civilization. When we speak of losing biodiversity -- the web of God's creation -- THAT is what is at stake: human suffering through intense competition for depleted food resources. (If you think AR-15's will protect you from that, think again.)
"A new study, published on Tuesday in the journal Agronomy, contains a dire warning for anyone in the United States who eats: By the end of the century, climate change could wreak havoc on California’s major crops, prompting a sharp downturn in the state’s ability to produce things like almonds, wheat, and corn." (From "Climate Change Could Decimate California's Major Crops, And That Should Worry Everyone")
The report says "could", but one doesn't need to travel further than Homestead -- a key food supplier of winter crops a few miles from Miami -- to see food supply disruption in progress. Last winter, I wrote about one farmer reporting multiple blooms, because of extraordinarily warm temperatures, on his Florida fruit crops. This is not an isolated moment in time. Based on scientific data, these phenomena are the leading edge of world-wide food supply shortages. That's already happening in marginal, drought-stricken nations where millions of climate change refugees are on the march.
We aren't we demanding that our elected's, respond? Not deny or wring hands. Take concrete steps to reverse carbon emissions causing global warming.
The Miami Herald, over the weekend, noted that a new billboard campaign by the Miami Climate Alliance, "When will Miami's polluters pay their fair share?" The billboard campaign aims at FPL, the region's monopolistic supplier of electricity.
FPL spokesman Mark Bubriski said activists (had) picked the wrong target.
Although FPL is the third largest utility in the country with almost five million customers, it’s not as reliant on oil and gas as its national peers, he said.
The majority of FPL’s power is generated with natural gas, which emits about half as much carbon as coal, and nuclear power, which has zero emissions. About 1 percent — on par with the national average — comes from the utility company’s 14 solar plants, eight of which were added this year. FPL plans to build 20 more solar plants in coming years. Bubriski said that would put the company on track to generate more power from solar than coal and oil combined by 2020 or sooner.
What the Herald reporter could ask; why didn't FPL and its parent, NextEra Energy, respond proactively to a shareholder proposal two years ago, asking that the corporation report to shareholders on the risk to climate change to its markets and infrastructure. The shareholder proposal pointed out that FPL's plan for new $20 billion nuclear reactors at Turkey Point blew off the chance of sea level rise becoming problematic. Its plans, submitted to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Agency, only forecast one foot of sea level rise; a ridiculous estimation even by the assessment of the world's largest insurance companies.
The point, ably described by Guardian writer Sparrow, is that our response to climate change is not only inadequate, it resembles in key respects how nations stumble into catastrophic wars despite all the evidence and imperative to avoid catastrophe.
Climate change is, in fact, just as Sir Nicholas Stern described, "the biggest story in the history of civilization". The GOP ridiculed Democratic candidate Al Gore for saying so, during his 2000 presidential campaign. Every year that passes, without the United States taking firm action to reverse fossil fuel combustion is a nail in humanity's coffin.
Hopefully US voters are not too distracted to pay attention.
The warnings about an unfolding climate catastrophe are getting more desperate, yet the march to destruction continues
‘The extraordinary – almost absurd – contrast between what we should be doing and what’s actually taking place fosters low-level climate denialism’ Photograph: Guido Dingemans/Alamy Stock Photo
“The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.”
The mournful remark supposedly made by foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey at dusk on 3 August 1914 referred to Britain’s imminent entry into the first world war. But the sentiment captures something of our own moment, in the midst of an intensifying campaign against nature.
“The avg temperature over the past 4 weeks in #Miami is 76.5°. That obliterates the previous record high avg temp for February (74.9°), and is *66 DAYS* ahead of climatology. In other words, Feb 1-28 of this year was the same as Apr8-May5 in an average year! #Climate #SummerIsHere. “
Separately: a recent satellite image from the western side of Florida Bay choked with algae. A bloom covers pretty much the entire bay extending well out in the the Gulf of Mexico. This is NOT NORMAL and yet the GOP Congress, Senator Marco Rubio and Gov. Rick Scott continue to DENY the need for change.
NBC 6 in Miami appears to have made a momentous decision, allowing its weather reporter to link our bizarre, hot winter to climate change and global warming.
The controversy has been on boil for years, framed as a question: why aren't weather reporters -- who have more than a passing knowledge -- out in front on linking for the public the connections between extreme weather events (which news stations avidly follow) and climate change?
The answer is easy: major advertisers like car manufacturers, gasoline and electricity producers don't like the implications of global warming to their business models. So the news, rather than report science and fact, follows business-friendly scripts to encourage the passivity of consumers.
It took the Miami Herald many, many years to shift its position on global warming. It is good to see the weather segment on local television news shift.
Climate change is real. It is happening. Not only have we experienced the warmest winters in record, in recent years, there is NOTHING in the forecast to suggest that weather will revert to normal.
Now if only the Frost Museum of Science in Miami, whose benefactor is a climate change denier, would focus on the science of the greatest threat to civilization.
So, kids, if you want to understand the politics of the Middle East today, study Arabic and Farsi, Hebrew and Turkish -- but most of all, study environmental science. - Thomas Friedman
It is the environment stupid. Droughts in Syria, India and now Iran...you can trace the destruction and depletion of natural resources and climate change to every issue facing us today (i.e. immigration).
We are devouring our planet. People are on the move as climate change takes hold. Where is everyone going to go?
In his article Friedman proposed what would have been an effective tweet about Iran for Donald Trump, our Tweeter In Chief:
@realDonaldTrump “America stands with Iranian demonstrators!!! Why are so many from the countryside??? Because Iranian Revolutionary Guards mismanaged Iran’s water supply for decades. Stole all the water for their companies, cronies, pistachio farms and stupid dams!!! And now climate change and droughts are making it all worse, forcing Iranians off their land. Unfair!! Sad!!”
So is this why I am depressed today? No, this is why I am depressed every day. People are having "Gender Reveal Parties" while chaos reigns and our future is bleak. What will wake up people putting newborns on the planet?
Many have lauded China’s incredible tree-planting spree, which began in 1978 and has reforested roughly 100,000 square miles, mostly in western China. Yes, those trees are storing carbon, helping to stabilize soils and reduce sediment runoff into streams, and producing wood for China’s domestic sawmills. But nearly all of the planted trees are monocultures of exotic species such as eucalyptus and aspen, which have little value as habitat for native wildlife. Further, in southern China, large expanses of biologically rich rainforests have been cleared for exotic rubber plantations.
China is paying increasing attention to its air, water, and soil pollution, which is among the worst in the world, especially in scores of cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Xingtai. But progress has been limited and large expanses of eastern and central China have become unhealthy places for people and biodiversity alike. China’s leaders and scientists acknowledge that its impressive biodiversity has suffered greatly.
As China’s environmental impact continues to grow domestically and internationally, the Trump administration — with its anti-environmental agenda and nationalist, inward-looking nature — has already pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. China and its overseas investment banks are leaping into the Pacific vacuum.
The Trump Administration seems barely cognizant of these pressing realities. And that leaves conservationists in a very tough bind. We never expected Trump to get elected, much less to support our views. But the weaknesses of the Trump administration could be leading to a broader U.S. decline that will hasten environmental degradation worldwide.
Jeff Goodell's closing lines: "As our world floods, it is likely to cause immense suffering and devastation. It is also likely to bring people together and inspire creativity and camaraderie in ways that no one can foresee. Either way, the water is coming."
Goodell's optimism that climate change is "likely to bring people together" and to "inspire creativity and camaraderie in ways that no one can foresee" is deeply wrong, and citizens, taxpayers and voters need to pay attention.
The rise of the radical right in American politics -- fueled by the fossil fuel supply chain and including large corporate power arrayed around the US Chamber of Commerce and industry trade associations -- is already a response to global warming.
I've written this before: there are few deniers of climate change in corporate America, although the only ones speaking out about it now are those with profits directly in the path of climate change impacts: the insurance and re-insurance industries.
The latest evidence of Trump administration officials editing and censoring the use of particular words, like "science-based" or "climate change", is just a reflection of how deeply determined corporate America is to lock down prerogatives and benefits and wealth before global warming breaches public welfare, health and safety.
It is a mass stampede of the wealthiest corners of commerce and industry, and a Republican Party leadership willing to cover for it with disinformation and a message machine created by Rupert Murdoch and executed through the Fox News network all the way through to the fringe crazies like Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones.
This is the world we live in. Today, Trump is giving an "important" national security speech and is dropping climate change as a national security threat. So why would things somehow improve -- as Goodell seems to suggest -- when climate change impacts really hit in decades to come?
Is it within the capacity of voters to change course? Is it possible for voters to acknowledge the dimwits they elected to public office will not protect them or their families and that we need to empower a new generation of leaders who will decisively deal with the emerging threats to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Goodell is right in his assessment that there is enough sea level rise cooked into atmospheric changes we caused to linger for thousands of years. That is not an excuse for voters to applaud and approve elected officials making the world a much more dangerous place.
Our generations will be judged very harshly for holding the keys to reversal of climate change but did too little or nothing. I hope I'm still alive when that tide begins to change.
After the hurricane hit Miami in 2037, a foot of sand covered the famous bow-tie floor in the lobby of the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. A dead manatee floated in the pool where Elvis had once swum. Most of the damage came not from the hurricane’s 175-mile-an-hour winds, but from the twenty-foot storm surge that overwhelmed the low-lying city.
Of rapid glacial ice-melt, Holthaus writes: "The only place in the world where you can see ice-cliff instability in action today is at Jakobshavn glacier in Greenland, one of the fastest-collapsing glaciers in the world. DeConto says that to construct their model, they took the collapse rate of Jakobshavn, cut it in half to be extra conservative, then applied it to Thwaites and Pine Island. But there’s reason to think Thwaites and Pine Island could go even faster than Jakobshavn."
I've visited Jakobshavn twice and wrote this in 2016:
The ice cap of Greenland is melting fast. Computer models of sea level rise are not keeping up with feedback loops for which there is no historical record: extreme heat, drought, flood, fires and the additions to the atmosphere not just of carbon dioxide from the burning of oil and coal and gas, but the release of methane from safe-keeping in the permafrost and warming oceans.
A visit to Iceland forces one to match these discordant facts -- a storyline on which civilization hangs in the balance -- with the awe-inspiring beauty of the place. It is unsettling. I didn't expect surprises. This was, after all, my second visit to Greenland since 2013. But I was surprised when I stepped off the helicopter onto the melting ice cap and sunk to my calves in slush. I felt a sense of fear I hadn't experienced by a landscape: dread.
In preparation for my visit, I corresponded with one of the world's leading scientists on glaciers and climate change, Jason Box. Box, featured in Rolling Stone last year, recently tweeted: "CO2 in air: Last time CO2 was at 400ppm, oceans were 15m-20m higher, temps 2–3°C warmer."
We are on a climate change path that is irreversible within our lifetimes and perhaps for many generations ahead.
The only question is whether we have the political willpower -- not just in the United States -- to embrace mitigation strategies and costs well in advance of when we may be too poor, as industrialized nations, to do anything about a rapidly changing climate. What do I mean, by "too poor"?
Our national tax base depends on a vast, multi-trillion dollar infrastructure that supports the stable asset value of personal property and of businesses, both large and small. Climate change is already sending shock waves, although we are now resilient enough to absorb them.
For years, the local authorities turned a blind eye to runaway development.
The story of Harvey, Houston and the city’s difficult path forward is a quintessentially American tale. Time and again, America has bent the land to its will, imposing the doctrine of Manifest Destiny on nature’s most daunting obstacles.
Unfortunately, nature always gets the last word. Houston’s growth contributed to the misery Harvey unleashed. The very forces that pushed the city forward are threatening its way of life.
How many times do we have to say it? Probably until the King tides come up, then don't go back down. Then, the politicians who encouraged development in flood plains, in the historic Everglades, and at the mangrove shoreline will all disappear. They will be forgotten as other emergencies rise to the surface and other leaders are summoned to the stage.
Read the Miami Herald's excellent "Why Puerto Rico Is Suffering A Month After Hurricane Maria". Whether or not you believe the hurricane had anything to do with climate change -- a phenomenon still denied by a majority of Republicans, Donald Trump, and his administration chiefs -- the catastrophic failure of public institutions to deal with its aftermath should give every American pause to wonder if the same could ever happen to the continental United States.
Think about the difference with respect to the Florida Keys, our southern neighbors who are pulling together through a rebuilding process.
The middle section of the Keys was devastated by Maria. The full faith and credit of the United States backed the quick response. Puerto Rico -- which Trump reminded us is in the middle of an ocean -- had been deeply weakened over decades by a tax base inadequate to the purpose of organizing public infrastructure.
It is the latter phenomenon that deserves attention, because climate change impacts will gradually erode the tax base in US coastal cities and then the heartland; at some point in the indeterminate future, we will not be islands but we will be Puerto Ricos.
The analogy with the Keys may seem imperfect on first glance. Compared to Puerto Rico and the population and the terrain, the Keys are tiny but functional. The electric grid is secure. The food supply system is secure. Law and order are secure. All these aspects of modern life, we take for granted, were under deep stress in Puerto Rico before the hurricane. Gradually, climate change will do the same to us.
Think about it: the city of Miami Beach is wealthy enough to afford a $500 million sewerage and roadway upgrade as a result of damage from rising seas. But all that money is not stopping the rising seas. The taxpayer investment is a band-aid. Under flood conditions, the half billion dollar investment is a recirculating pump system; taking water off streets and pushing it back into the bay, where higher tides force the waters back and underground into the streets.
What happens when ANOTHER $500 million is needed to protect Miami Beach in clear weather? And $500 million after that?
We could be the best managers in the world, living within our means, and we still would not be able to afford climate change impacts. That is the real lesson of Puerto Rico.
We are a wealthy society now, but like Puerto Rico we are living on debt; debt that is sustainable so long as our economies are secure.
Climate change throws that certainty into doubt. Why do we Americans have so much hubris as to believe that fiddling while the planet is burning will not come back, soon, to bite us hard
just like Hurricane Maria did to Puerto Rico? And to the Roman empire.
This October, a massive heat wave is gripping most of the continental United States. From Puerto Rico, images pour in of a culture under attack by climate change impacts. And it is broiling in San Juan, too.
Whatever you think about two Category 4 hurricanes hitting PR in the span of a couple of weeks, think how difficult it is for an island -- and its US citizens dependent on modern industrial systems for food, water, and the essential components of an economy -- to recover from this climate change catastrophe.
The impact of sea level rise around the coastal United States is going to put tens of million of Americans on the move. Many if not most will be unable to pay for the move.
All the more infuriating that one political party -- the GOP -- controlling Congress and the White House has pushed US agencies and policies in FULL THROTTLE REVERSE, away from rational governance in the face of the biggest test of our nation's national security. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is so paranoid walking point for Trump's climate change/regulatory destruction program, he's walking around with an 18 person security detail.
It is long past time for voters to muck out the GOP stable. We can't waste another minute in denial.
In the Tampa Bay Times, Susan Glickman compares climate change deniers to football die-hards who will not abandon their team under any circumstances (see below). There is truth to the point. Here is an appeal to the other team.
I'm a consumer, just like you. My carbon footprint is much larger than it should be. I don't like to be made feel guilty, and this perception holds back some climate change deniers from switching sides. Whether you are guilty or not, my carbon footprint could be smaller and so could yours.
The difference between "should" and "could" is vast. "Should" implies moral approbation: if we were only better people we would all be driving a Prius, Volt, or Tesla.
No one likes being lectured or hectored unless it is a place of worship where our souls are at stake. Another way of saying: people don't like their values to be questioned unless it is from within the tent. They don't like "outsiders" telling them how they should behave. The funders of climate change denialism prey on this the same way pro-tobacco forces waved away scientific evidence and promoted cigarette consumption as the "cool" choice.
The "could" part is different.
You "could", theoretically, get from point A to point B by train, efficient bus or bicycle. The "could" part of it is practical and political. Because we do have agency over our polluting choices, polluters tip the scales in their direction.
In the United States, our choice is to be "free" to pollute to whatever extent government incentivizes consumption. I do drive a gas combustion car. I do take airline flights to see my children. I have used many plastic bags in a lifetime of grocery shopping. But as a taxpayer in the first world, I also recognize that my use of gasoline, electricity and other consumer products is shaped by government.
For example, mileage standards in autos. Another example, Florida Power and Light; a monopolistic energy supplier to my home; the regulated public corporation that controls governmental regulatory processes in Florida. I love being able to turn the lights and air conditioning on, at a flick of the switch. It's not only reliable, it's also "affordable" as FPL drumbeats into consumers' heads at every opportunity.
This critical point is embraced by the marketers of climate change denial: even if climate change is real -- even if we are responsible "to some extent", the murmur now being heard in denial circles -- adapting energy consumption away from polluting fossil fuels is "too expensive". It would cost jobs and wreck the economy.
You hear this all the time from the right-wing message machine, but hear it for what it is.
Government shapes consumer preferences to pollute in many ways. At Eye On Miami, we have been arguing local county government should halt an effort by developers to move the Urban Development Boundary because, among other problems, it reinforces the sprawling development pattern that forces more people into cars onto congested highways and streets. It is no longer possible to be willfully ignorant, when you are stuck on mind-bending traffic on US 95 or SR 826.
We could have a carbon tax or a gasoline tax: we don't.
Another example how government turns value judgments by polluters into a limited set of choices for consumers is the dismantling of campaign finance rules (Citizens United); a legal and political battle initiated by the nation's fossil fuel supply chain in the name of freedom of speech. This "conservative" bedrock principle -- that government must harnessed to protect Constitutional rights -- has no influence on climate change.
Some conservatives shrug and wave climate change away for precisely this reason: they say, there is nothing we can do about it. This hopelessness leads in only one direction: fortified bunkers where no one is safe. That is what the US military says. Just last week, the commander of the US National Guard was asked how climate change has affected his preparations for natural disasters. Air Force Gen. Joseph L. Lengyel broke with Trump on climate change, like Secretary of Defense James L. Mattis. Lengyel said climate change highlights the need to have a robust Guard presence in each state.
Strict constitutionalists often link arm-in-arm with those who are convinced that if climate change isn't fully accounted for in scripture, adaptation has no place in our lives.
President Trump's likely, imminent withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord and surrendering regulatory agencies like the U.S. EPA to lobbyists and lawyers who represented polluting industries a few hours ago are further examples of hurling consumers toward forced choices and an un-American form of hopelessness.
American voters could do better and would have in 2016, if elections were secure and districts drawn fairly. In a recent letter to the editor of the New York Times, US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse observed succinctly:
The answer to why Congress doesn’t act on climate change is simple political hydraulics.
The Supreme Court let unlimited money into politics. The fossil fuel industry has unlimited money and, according to the International Monetary Fund, a multi-hundred-billion-dollar subsidy to protect. The fossil fuel industry used its unlimited money (and related threats) to capture the Republican Party. Climate change then became “partisan” and untouchable.
It’s actually not that complicated.
The Supreme Court’s Republican appointees got in the habit of doing what they were told by the forces that appointed them (which include the fossil fuel industry, which asked for the Citizens United decision), and in a fateful combination of obedience and political ignorance, they wrecked our politics.
Before Citizens United there were multiple bipartisan climate bills every year; afterward, none.
Recent studies of public attitudes show that anxiety about climate change is burning through populations who understand that unpredictable shifts in food production, massive wildfires in the American West and climate-change fueled Category 5 hurricanes are a preview of what's to come. In an August 2017 Pew Research Center review of public attitudes in 38 countries, in public perceptions of the threat to security, climate change was second just behind ISIS. (In Latin America and Africa, climate change was viewed as the number one threat.)
How has temperature changed in each country over the last century? Here is a data visualisation showing temperature anomaly –the departure from the long-term average – by country from 1900-2016. Visualisation by Antti Lipponen (@anttilip) of the Finnish Meteorological Institute based on GISTEMP data (CC BY 2.0).
“These facts (on climate change impacts) have been presented to the world time-and-time again for decades. Quite simply, we are knowingly doing this to ourselves, to our planet and to our future, and the cost of our inaction is becoming clearer... Yet with all of this evidence – the independent scientific warnings, and the mounting economic price tag – there is still an astounding level of willful ignorance and inaction from the people who should be doing the most to protect us, and every other living thing on this planet.”
Obstructionist attitudes, even on the part of believers, can range from denial of the problem to indifference, nonchalant resignation or blind confidence in technical solutions. We require a new and universal solidarity. As the bishops of Southern Africa have stated: “Everyone’s talents and involvement are needed to redress the damage caused by human abuse of God’s creation”. All of us can cooperate as instruments of God for the care of creation, each according to his or her own culture, experience, involvements and talents.
At the time, some American conservatives clucked that Pope Francis should stick to religion, but climate change is not a matter to be cherry-picked like sermon topics. It is real. It is happening now. And most troubling of all, there is nothing in the trend lines showing climate change impacts have plateau'ed. In fact, we are cooking our children's future right quick.
The best way forward is to vote in 2018 for incumbents and candidates who will act in taxpayers' and voters' best interests on climate change and against politicians rooted in denialism and falsehoods spread by polluting industries.
As a native Floridian, I chose to ride out Hurricane Irma in my hometown of Tampa — just a few miles north of where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers play football. Like millions of other Floridians who evacuated low-lying beach communities for higher ground, I had the obvious safety concerns and worries about whether I would even have a home to return to. But as a public interest advocate who has worked on climate and energy issues every day for almost two decades, I also have intense concerns about the growing climate change/hurricane nexus.
So when EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt says it's insensitive to Floridians and Texans to talk about climate change during hurricane emergencies, I say he missed the boat as to what's truly insensitive.
