Farmers and climate change: they see the future with their own eyes ... by gimleteye

My father's intelligence was tempered by a vivid sense of humor. He carried both right to his last days on earth. He’s been gone six years and last week would have been 94. Last Sunday I thought of him after an early visit to a farmer’s market in South Miami, not far from home. I like getting there before opening; it is still cool and quiet.

Also, it is Spring in Florida, a time when sea grape leaves fall in heaps from limbs, frangipani buds and trumpet trees flower. Many of the vegetables we've enjoyed all winter are at the end. Soon it will be hot. Closing time is at hand. That is far from consumers' minds. In a few hours hundreds of shoppers will fill the market, stopping at stalls to compare, to select and buy. When the seasonal produce runs out in Homestead, the markets will fill from North Carolina and points north as the summer proceeds.

Now is a moment when vendors are setting up displays, carefully and artfully arranging fruit and vegetables to be alluring. I’ve seen and loved the same in Paris, in Madurai, and Yangon. I stopped to ask about mangoes with one vendor I know.

He farms a few acres in Homestead. The town is one of the southernmost in Florida, perched at the top of the Florida Keys, and well-known for growing winter fruit and vegetables.

In his mid fifties, of Mexican descent, the farmer's face is lined, craggy, and retains an optimism of watching things grow. “I have three mangoes,” he ticked off each variety. The Keitt, the Kip, and the Francis, a mango that matures in Haiti before the most of the Florida varietals.

He only had a dozen or so Keitt mangoes, and they were expensive. Local? I asked. It's early for mangoes in Homestead.

Mangoes like this Keitt, he said, belong in late May or early June. The farmer has worked Homestead fields since he was ten years old. Necessity. He has never seen a Homestead mango in early April. Ever.

The climate is crazy. I leave it like a punctuation mark to see how he picks it up.

Everything is crazy, he replies, then points to baskets of small fruit on his table. In one year I have had three blooms for this fruit. They are longons. Shelled, the fruit resembles the eyeball for which they are named in Chinese. He moves to a basket of guava. I have two blooms of guava in one year.

I wanted to be sure I understood what the farmer was saying. With the climate change now, this season, everything is different? He replied, looking straight at me, everything. Three blooms in one year? Two blooms? The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, better known as NOAA, just made the following assessment: "During March, the average contiguous U.S. temperature was 6.0F love the 20th century average. In January, rainfall in South Florida was four to five times higher than normal.

A Clipper cold-front dumped ice and snow after trees budded in an abnormal, warm late-winter in the northeastern United States

My mind ticked off how climate change deniers and skeptics jump at possibility that a warmer climate means increased productivity with fruit blooming multiple times. This is, however, pure speculation with mounting scientific evidence that is not the case at all. The farmer likely hadn't read the report in the Independent, "Soil crisis brought about by climate change may hit global food production, claims alarming new research."

“If the microbial community is not as resilient as we had assumed, then it calls into question the resilience of the overall environment to climate change,” said the report’s author Vanessa Bailey, of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in the US.

It is often said “microbes run the world” because they are so numerous and lie behind countless ecosystem services in the soil. These include producing humus – the dark organic material in soils – and providing a critical water filter system for trees, in return for feeding on their sugars. \

We think we have time to debate carbon emission caps, cap and trade, new nuclear versus natural gas, centralized solar versus distributed power generation, Paris versus Fox. This is another piece of speculation: that we have time.

Everything on our plate, everything in the supermarket, everything depends on predictable seasonal weather. Fallow season is as important as spring. This point seems completely lost on individual consumers, taxpayers and voters. According to a recent report on Climate Wire, "SEA-LEVEL RISE: Miami businesses say it's a moneymaker to adapt for warming" (April 4, 2016):

There are plenty of business opportunities, said Quinn Eddins. As director of research and analysis for CBRE, he said a number of national and global real estate investors and developers have told him they want to invest in Miami and South Florida. But they have concerns about the resilience of potential commercial real estate projects. It might take a collective decision to build resilience into future development. It helps that they are having public discussions about the opportunities and risks, Eddins said.

"I think this represents a great opportunity for the commercial real estate industry in South Florida, because we're in a competition for investment with other major real estate markets across the country -- New York, Boston, Norfolk, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco -- that also have very large exposure to future losses due to climate change and coastal flooding," he said. "Here in South Florida, we're already ahead of the curve with all we've done already."

The most lucrative opportunity, though, might be in government contracts. A massive project launched in 2000 to restore the historic flow of the Everglades, now estimated to cost $16 billion, is closely tied to sea-level rise, since it will help protect the region from saltwater intrusion. Miami Beach is already well into a $400 million project to install seawater pumps and to elevate roads.

Similar efforts to elevate roads and bridges and upgrade pumps are also underway in other coastal cities in Florida, such as Fort Lauderdale, where Superstorm Sandy washed out a portion of the state highway that runs along the Atlantic Coast. There, the city is installing one-way valves in the stormwater system designed to send floodwater back to the sea, so that salt water can't bubble up from the drains. It doesn't help disperse water already on the ground from rising tides or inundation.

This cognitive dissonance is everywhere. One thinks about climate change and what's on the horizon, compared to the business-as-usual on a fine spring Sunday in contrast to thoughts recently published on a conservative website, Newsmax, by Florida Gov. Rick Scott who is planning a U.S. Senate bid to fill the soon-to-be-vacated seat of another Florida climate change denier, Marco Rubio. Scott has prohibited state agency officials from using the words, "climate change" in public forums. "I believe that if we join together in a peaceful revolution," Scott wrote, "American exceptionalism can triumph again. Let’s make the hard choices to have government live within its means. Let’s be honest with the American people about what programs government can afford and what it cannot. Let’s protect freedom — through economic strength at home and a strong national defense abroad. I have always believed our country is special, and with a major change in direction I know we cannot only regain the confidence of the American people, but give them something to be proud of again." ("Rick Scott wants a revolution", Newsmax, April 1, 2016)

So I ask the farmer, point-blank, what happens when it gets warmer in the winter, here. Without blinking, he says, everything dies. 

We can go a year of disastrous crops in California, or two or three or more, so long as the pressure is lightened by rainfall years intermittently average or slightly below. What happens when the trees and plants bloom, then, freeze hard in successive years, or when it is far too hot, then, far too flooded as climate-change extremes are proving out? We can't quite see -- at least most of us -- what is visible on the horizon. Science is starting to show us exactly what common sense observations are already indicating.

I doubt the Homestead farmer had the chance to read the recent report, "Extreme Weather Affects US Cereal Production".

An analysis of national production of 16 different cereal crops in 177 countries, and a comparison with the effects of about 2,800 weather disasters between 1964 and 2007, has for the first time provided a detailed snapshot of how extreme weather has affected overall cereal production globally, scientists said.

The study found that drought and heatwaves reduced cereal harvests by between 9 per cent and 10 per cent on average in the affected countries. However, the technically advanced arable farms of North America, Europe and Australia were even more strongly affected than the developing world, with average production cuts of about 20 per cent.

Researcher reveal in their study that the countries that are more advanced from the technical agriculture point of view including North America, Europe and Australasia faced a much severe decline in production at an average of 19.9 per cent because of droughts, which is roughly double the global average.

The study’s authors say their work throws a spotlight on the growing vulnerability of the world’s food supply to climate change. Their results could help guide agricultural policies as the atmosphere shifts to a more volatile state because of climate change, even as population growth puts more demands on the planet’s capacity to generate food.

The bright fact is that U.S. agricultural policy is far from adjusting to new realities of climate change. A significant segment of the American electorate -- represented by elected officials like the Florida governor Rick Scott -- still believe that if only government would shrivel to nothing, then our collective sense of security would rematerialized as a manifestation of exceptionalism.

Climate change has already thrown contemporary civilization off-kilter. Recent polling shows that two out of everything three Americans believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction. There is a sense of foreboding that resembles what some German and East European Jews felt in the early 1930s as the storm gathered strength. Many didn't want to see. And many who could have escaped didn't have the means to do so. A few fortunates escaped compared to the millions who later died in Nazi gas chambers.

I bought a few mangoes and said goodbye. Driving home was when I began thinking of my father. His life spanned traveling by horse and cart in his native Hungary to the internet, from a world traumatized by Spanish flu in 1918 to disease made explicable by 21st century electron microscopes. He was a Holocaust survivor who smoked his way through the war. In his late 80's, he died of lung cancer.

My father's sense of humor never failed to alleviate the pressure of bad news. On his deathbed, he quoted from Marie Antoinette, who faced her executioners: “Apres moi, le deluge.” We live on this planet as confidently as if we had another one to go to.

An Earth Day Expletive ... by gimleteye

(Update: April 21, 2017) There are approximately 7.5 billion people alive today. Only a small percent live in first world conditions and above the poverty line. Evidence is accumulating that climate change will be the defining event of the 21st. century and yet, in the 2016 election that delivered Donald Trump to the White House, network television news devoted less than one hour, cumulatively, to the subject.

In Western democracies, climate change is already an accelerant for mass, uncontrolled immigration. From a Hobbesian perspective, the concentration on national security is — through the lens of climate change — a willingness to anticipate future threats as matters of locking in privileges of the first world. Still to imagine that upper income earners are immune to climate change, or can spend their way out, is pure, unmitigated folly.

In 2007, eastern Syria — along with Turkey, northern Iraq and western Iran — entered a three-year drought, the region’s worst since scientists began measuring them. In Syria, water scarcity, crop failures and livestock deaths drove an estimated 1.5 million people to the cities from rural areas. Food prices soared, contributing to economic and social tensions and leaving Syrians dangerously vulnerable to the subsequent war. (”How a Warming Planet Drives Human Migration”, April 21, New York Times)

In some respects, the third world is better adapted to climate change. But for billions living so close to the economic edge, shed there is no work-around, no skill set matched to crop interruption and depletion of fisheries.

Today, the world is in the midst of the largest migration of distressed populations since the end of World War II. Many conservatives attribute the uprooting to war, famine or disease. The military knows differently: climate change is a threat multiplier.

When climate changes reach a subsequent plateau, it is easy to visualize the contraction of the world’s population by a third or half. There will be no safe harbor from that chaos.

In 2014, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hegel wrote, "“Rising global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, climbing sea levels and more extreme weather events will intensify the challenges of global instability, hunger, poverty, and conflict ... They will likely lead to food and water shortages, pandemic disease, disputes over refugees and resources, and destruction by natural disasters in regions across the globe.”

Recently the UK Guardian reported, “Climate change will fuel acts of terrorism and strengthen recruiting efforts by terrorist groups such as Islamic State and Boko Haram, a report commissioned by the German foreign office has found. Terrorist groups will exploit the natural disasters and water and food shortages expected to result from climate change and allow them to recruit more easily, operate more freely and control civilian populations, argues the report by Berlin thinktank Adelphi.”

Lukas Rüttinger, an author of "Insurgency, Terrorism and Organised Crime in a Warming World", writes: “The scarcer resources become, the more power is given to those who control them, especially in regions where people are particularly reliant on natural resources for their livelihoods. As climate change affects food security and the availability of water and land, affected people will become more vulnerable not only to negative climate impacts but also to recruitment by terrorist groups offering alternative livelihoods and economic incentives.”

The Horn of Africa is one of the global hot spots where drought is creating chaos now.

"LONDON, March 22 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Prolonged drought in Somaliland has killed between 65 and 80 percent of the semi-autonomous region's livestock, creating conditions that are "the worst time in our lives" and could threaten regional security, says the region's environment minister. With 70 percent of Somaliland's economy built around livestock, "you can imagine the desperation of the people, the desperation of the government," said Shukri Ismail Bandare, the minister of rural development and environment. "Pastoralists say this is the worst we have seen, a kind of nightmare," she said. "They have 400 or 500 goats and then just 20 left. They have lost practically everything. I don't know how they are still sane." Previous droughts have hit one area of Somaliland, but "now it's five regions of the country. We've never seen it before", she said in a telephone interview from Hargeisa, the capital, with the Thomson Reuters Foundation. ... villages and cities in turn are now overwhelmed by "thousands and thousands" of migrants, the minister said. "What they have is practically exhausted because of the pressure," she said.

Unprecedented levels of C02 in the atmosphere and hotter, more acidic seawater are having disastrous impacts to world-wide fisheries; not in the future, now. 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia is in the midst of a massive bleaching event due to extremely hot water temperatures. Overfishing at coastal zones around the globe has fundamentally changed market availability and cost. According to recent research, coral reefs could entirely disappear by 2050, stripping an essential building block of the protein chain that leads to food on the table. It is heart-breaking to watch hundreds of road-side vendors in Kerala, India competing to market fish that are only a few inches long — because larger species vanished.

"Continuing to burn fossil fuels at the current rate could bring atmospheric carbon dioxide to its highest concentration in 50 million years, jumping from about 400 parts per million now to more than 900 parts per million by the end of this century, a new study warns," according to another recent Washington Post report.

The implications for mid-latitude forests and for agriculture, like the American farm belt, are profoundly troubling. Over millions of years — but particularly since humans migrated from nomadic to settled societies some 12,000 years ago — plant species evolved to reproduce in cycles depending on time of year, predictable rainfall and temperature.

From rapidly melting polar ice to wild extremes in weather events, we are already experiencing instability in crop production; from wheat, to corn, and other staples. To see the future, one only has to glance at data-based visualizations of how rapidly the oscillations are deviating from normative values that our food supply depends on.

Of threat assessments, the one that is least predictable is disease. Scientists are focused on the way climate change is forcing the expansion of microbial and virus threats from insects to human populations, but the greater threat are crop diseases. Fungal rot at the microbial scale have massive agricultural chemical companies chasing increasingly expensive and dangerous solutions that pit hubris and genetic engineering against evolution.

Those who believe science and technology can steer the influence of climate change in a benign, even a productive way, are whistling past the graveyard.



None of the foregoing is hypothetical. Hard to digest, but not hyperbole. According to a recent report in the Washington Post, “The latest one-, two-, three-, four- and five year periods — ending in March — rank as the warmest in 122 years of record-keeping for the Lower 48 states, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration… Freakish bouts of warm weather have accompanied this long period of historic warmth, unlike anything previously experienced.”

Somaliland, March 2017. Photo, Thomson Reuters

Every tranche of climate science, no matter the discipline or segment of expertise, has under-estimated climate change impacts in the past decade. Yet, the Republican Congress is advancing budget cuts that would severely handicap the ability of federal agencies like NOAA from information the public what is happening with climate change.

This year, Spring arrived so early in South Florida that the growing season was abruptly curtailed by too much heat. (One Homestead farmer told me that this winter, his fruit trees bloomed three times!) But the state’s top political official, Gov. Rick Scott – who is one of President Trump’s strongest supporters – won’t even allow state bureaucrats to use the term “climate change”, or, makes one excuse after another why “jobs” take priority.

It is increasingly clear how feed-back loops reinforcing and accelerating the rate of change point in the direction of a collapse of biodiversity coincident with the loss of the planet’s cooling system at the polar extremes. In a perverse way, climate change is reinforcing nationalistic tendencies to erect walls and barriers to threats; to block out, in effect, such bad news.

Who wants to hear that maximal climate change event is the elimination of civilized society? In his 2011 “Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed”, Jared Diamond warned how civilizations collapse repeatedly throughout human history. It is already occurring in the outerlying suburbs of humanity — in failed nation states like South Sudan and parts of sub Saharan Africa — much hotter temperatures are significantly contributing to starvation and war. That can't happen to us, right? Wrong.

Wise civilizations would have reacted as scientific evidence appeared. It is not just a paradox, that with all our tools and technology, we ignore science or wage fake arguments to counter facts. Voters who obsess about putting healthcare in the best hands willingly allow charlatans to safeguard the climate. You don’t shit in the bed you sleep in, but we are.

American voters amply demonstrated in November 2016 that there is limited publicsupport to use government regulation to calibrate econimic activities in ways that redirect fragile industrial scale infrastructure from collapse. Instead, Americans are reaching for guns and conspiracy theories, turning their backs on provable science in favor of unprovable myths.

This will go on, until it can no longer go on. What will come in its place, in the midst of great suffering, will be control of populations by authoritarian governments to deliver maximal benefits to the few at the expense of the remainder.

Unless Western democracies take the lead now, what lies ahead could look a lot more like the Middle Ages than the 22nd century. Donald Trump, the GOP and its supporters have set the United States backwards at the most inopportune time, and in the end it will be voters who correct course. Or not. Reason enough for everyone to issue their own Earth Day expletive.

Lamps are going out all over the natural world, and no one will ever see them lit again ... by gimleteye

"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.

NEE Shareholder Memorandum by Alan Farago on Scribd

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.


Climate change is a disaster foretold, just like the first world war | Jeff Sparrow
UK Guardian 12 Mar 2018 01.02 GMT

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.

Notes from the vomitorium ... by gimleteye

Economists use "digestion" as a metaphor describing years of slack growth and difficulty of absorbing excess housing stock from the housing boom and bust. Digestion is the word of the day in the ongoing discussions between Miami-Dade county bureaucrats and the US EPA, that determined gross violations of sewage treatment requirements for millions of residents and visitors. In 1994 it took federal litigation by environmental groups, and litigation again today nearly twenty years later, to get government officials to recognize that billions of taxpayer dollars need to be raised in order to digest the volume of sewage flowing from our toilets, sinks, dishwashers, top and front end washing machines, from our golf courses, street drains and collectors.

At the same time, Miami tops the list as the highest foreclosure area of any large metropolitan area of the nation. According to a recent report by RealtyTrac, "The greater Miami area posted the highest foreclosure activity of any large city in the nation in the first quarter, with one in every 79 residences receiving some type of foreclosure filing."

To recycle the metaphor, Miami's status as number one in foreclosures is a symptom of being unable to "digest" the volume of low-cost, shoddy housing developments. The empty, half-filled and filthy swimming pool in an abandoned house in West Kendall is another metaphor: for the stagnant thinking of Miami-Dade government and the practice of elected officials to always shift the costs of growth to the next generation of taxpayers.

More roads, more construction, more development, more subsidies for private corporations (ie. ballparks), more museums, more monuments to vanity in the name of civic pride. Subtract from overall economic activity the influx of cash transactions for water-view condos on Brickell and Key Biscayne, and Miami Beach, Miami would be the Detroit of the South. You won't find a whiff of criticism anywhere, not even on public radio.

It made the bile rise in my throat a quarter century ago, the first time I heard the most powerful man in the Florida Keys, Earvin Higgs -- the tax assessor, explain to a chamber of commerce audience: "We need more construction and development to fund infrastructure and all the services government provides." Those of us who planted our flag on the principle that the first priority is to protect the environment on which the economy depends were called "Chicken Littles" and worse. Never doubt the ingenuity of those who depend on public subsidies for private profit to innovate ways to distort messages; like transfats or GMO foods are good for you, or, "they do no harm" and you can't prove otherwise.

As Dr. Hal Wanless detailed in his recent presentation on climate change and sea level rise, at the annual meeting of Friends of the Everglades, impacts of climate change will up-end all assumptions of economic growth within the next two or three mortgage cycles (20 year mortgages).

The science on climate change impacts is consistently on the low end of the predictive path. Within fifty years it will be clear that the planet itself is not just having a hard time "digesting" our cumulative impacts: nature is in the early stage to vomit us out.

Governmental policies regarding climate change in South Florida exhibit a kind of stutter. Blue ribbon panels are meeting. They have fancy names and issue reports. Planners and engineers know that legal thresholds require more than words to be effective. The time for action is now. But appropriations and subsidies are still pointed in the other direction: the race to permit more roads into farmland (836 Highway extension to Homestead), more sprawl to the edges of the Everglades (rescuing wealthy landowners who have been land-banking farmland and open space, some of whom may not be paying interest on their loans), more rock mines and "sacrifice zones" for the greater economic good (suing environmentalists who stand in their way), more beach renourishment projects or the tourists will not come.

We can't just keep pumping sand on beaches, to watch it all wash away in the next storm, yet still imagining a few years from now, all will be back to normal. There is no miracle to come. Dr. Wanless, 72, believes it is now time to plan our retreat from coastal areas: seed banks, museums, cultural treasures, governmental offices and libraries. The list goes on and, yes, it is hard to digest. It is hard to imagine a president being elected on the platform of relocating the Smithsonian.

But temperature rise is already a "runaway train". As EOM has documented with photos, South Beach floods now on ordinary high tides. No longer, just the spring tides.

Elsewhere, perhaps droughts -- in the American mid-west and in India -- will abate, but climate change is already eating away at economic stability like moths on a wool blanket. Here is how that works.

Within the environmental movement, the thought has been expressed that this severe constipation of public policies and unmovable elected officials (like US Senator Marco Rubio, who still denies fossil fuel consumption caused climate change) is a transient phenomenon that will pass once Gov. Rick Scott is ousted from the executive office. The thinking goes, if we just wait long enough, that new and right-thinking people will address what ails us.

That is not how it works. Financial and business interests related to construction and growth in Florida may act stupid when it comes to denying global warming, but they are not dumb. Far from it. Most are very bright within their fiduciary responsibility to shareholders and owners.

If climate change is coming, they reason: now is the time to rezone and to build as much, as fast as possible. That is exactly what is happening. The last two sessions of the Florida legislature have been a remarkable and efficient retreat from of half a century of environmental regulation and growth management. The carnage is unbelievable.

This phenomenon -- of business interests reacting to the imminent threats of climate change -- explains the extreme, right-ward tilt of legislatures, like Florida's, throwing off the "yoke of regulations", empowering banks, mortgage lenders, and those components of the Growth Machine that feed through the supply chain; the small cogs of local decisions on wetlands permitting and destruction, to the bigger cogs of land use lawyers and lobbyists, to the bankers feeding trillions in derivatives into the illusion of a stable, profitable system that trickled down benefits to the gullible consumer and voters. The Great Destroyers weren't set back by the economic crisis: they exploited it in anticipation of even greater threats to come on the rising tides.

Once I believed the housing crash would lead to exactly the kind of diuretic that would wash and cleanse our backed up economic and political ills. I was wrong. Miami, the Magic City, is like a bulimic who furtively maintains appearances by throwing up in secret after every meal, crowing back at the table how our chefs are the best in the world.

Hispanics and the Environment … by gimleteye

The New York Times article, "Climate is Big Issue for Hispanics and Personal", hits home in Miami. A poll conducted last month by The New York Times, Stanford University and the nonpartisan environmental research group Resources for the Future found that"Hispanics are more likely than non-Hispanic whites to view global warming as a problem that affects them personally. It also found that they are more likely to support policies, such as taxes and regulations on greenhouse gas pollution, aimed at curbing it."

Ten years ago, in 2005, I worked with the Urban Environment League and Mi Familia Vota to conduct a poll in two Hispanic county commission districts in Miami-Dade. One county commission seat is still occupied by Javier Souto. The other was occupied by former county commissioner Joe Martinez. We commissioned a Republican pollster, Mason Dixon, to survey public attitudes on issues surrounding the movement of the Urban Development Boundary in West Dade.

At the time, the housing boom was consuming farmland at a ferocious rate and the county planning department had been attacked with determined effort by the developer lobby and land speculators to approve applications to move the UDB in several places.

The poll, conducted in Spanish and English, determined that more than 70 percent of respondents favored protecting the UDB. Moreover, they also identified with the premise that most pollution had its roots in the political influence and that pollution disproportionately affects the disadvantaged.

At the time, we generated thousands of phone calls and responses to Souto and Martinez' county commission offices. Martinez in particular was hostile. Souto was mostly absent. It was behavior I was familiar with. Nearly ten years before THAT, I had lead the effort to prevent the Homestead Air Force Base from being converted to a major, privatized commercial airport through a no-bid, 99 year lease to political insiders.

We conducted similar polls with similar results: Hispanics deeply care about the environment even if their iconic, elected leaders do not. Then, it was Alex Penelas. Today, it is Marco Rubio, climate change denier.

Climate Is Big Issue for Hispanics, and Personal
By CORAL DAVENPORT FEB. 9, 2015
NY Times

WASHINGTON — Alfredo Padilla grew up in Texas as a migrant farmworker who followed the harvest with his parents to pick sugar beets in Minnesota each summer. He has not forgotten the aches of labor or how much the weather — too little rain, or too much — affected the family livelihood.

Now an insurance lawyer in Carrizo Springs, Tex., he said he was concerned about global warming.

“It’s obviously happening, the flooding, the record droughts,” said Mr. Padilla, who agrees with the science that human activities are the leading cause of climate change. “And all this affects poor people harder. The jobs are more based on weather. And when there are hurricanes, when there is flooding, who gets hit the worst? The people on the poor side of town.”

National Black Chamber of Commerce: a repository of disinformation on climate change ... by gimleteye

Climate Investigations Center published a fascinating piece on a Miami meeting of the National Black Chamber of Commerce that turns out to be a long-time front for anti-environmental, climate change deniers.

There is more than a tangential connection to Florida.

In Miami-Dade county, there is a long legacy of African American leaders paying lip service to environmental concerns; from Carrie Meek, onward. As a matter of public perspective, both within and outside the African American community, environmental concerns have always been a lower order of necessity compared to, say, jobs. As a matter of insider power politics, African American leadership in Miami-Dade has always followed the logic of the dominant political class: Cuban American developers and lobbyists who considered environmental regulations to be superfluous, irrelevant and harmful to wealth creation.

Unfortunately for the environment in Florida, the manipulation of public sentiment within the African American community has had predictable impacts. When in 1996, in the same election cycle as Bill Clinton's re-election, environmentalists proposed a penny-a-pound tax on sugarcane produced in Florida, to ensure that the industry and not taxpayers would pay the primary cost of cleaning up sugar's pollution of the Everglades, Big Sugar fought back by enlisting (paying) African American leaders like Jesse Jackson to claim the costs would be transferred to the poor. That is only one glaring example.

Another example: how African American county commissioners have traditionally viewed Miami-Dade's urban development boundary -- far from their home districts -- as positive proof of connecting with big campaign contributors from the development industry.

The news, then, that the National Black Chamber of Commerce is tied to anti-climate change funders like the Koch Brothers and fossil fuel industries is not exactly a surprise. Depressing, yes. But not a surprise. "Robert D. Bullard · Dean, Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University: The National Black Chamber of Commerce for more than a decade has been spreading propaganda and talking points of the white U.S. Chamber of Commerce. " Read on.

Miami, climate change, and Jeff Goodell in the UK Guardian ... by gimleteye

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.


The year is 2037. This is what happens when the hurricane hits Miami
The climate is warming and the water is rising. In his new book, Jeff Goodell argues that sea-level rise will reshape our world in ways we can only begin to imagine
Sunday 17 December 2017
UK Guardian

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.

Cancel past mistakes and errors: here is how the battle lines for the future are starting to appear ... by gimleteye

This may be the most important opinion piece you read all year. There is a lot of news worth comment this morning. A Florida state court ruled 6-1 to overturn the approval of the Florida Public Service Commission to permit Florida Power and Light, the monopolistic provider of electricity on the east coast of the state, to charge ratepayers for an investment in an Oklahoma fracking company. Two days ago FPL announced its intention to "delay" for four years the permitting process for two new nuclear reactors while it continues to receive "early cost recovery" for the $20 billion reactors and petitions for a 24% rate hike request at the Public Service Commission, made up of rubber stampers loyal to regulated companies and to Gov. Rick Scott. But none of this is the reason this may be the most important opinion piece you read all year.

Instead, focus on another observation that seemed so innocuous on first glance. It happened a few weeks ago, in that small, corrupt town at the southern tip of the Florida peninsula; Homestead. There, Florida Power and Light was summoned to a rare field hearing conducted by the Florida state senate to explain a vast pollution plume spreading underground its two aging nuclear reactors. At the dais, a handful of state senators and state representatives from Miami-Dade County, the most politically influential in a very politically influential state.

At risk, on the surface as it were; a devastating history of malfeasance by the corporation and by state and county regulators who allowed a multi-decade charade to proceed while ignoring wreckage below: a ruined aquifer and the waters of a national park protected by federal laws. Below the surface, something else was at stake: Republican control of the Florida state legislature.

Two very conservative Republican state senators from Miami-Dade County were flanked on the dais by the president of the Florids senate, Joe Negron. Both are facing opposition in the November election cycle. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla was a lobbyist for Florida Power and Light while a state senator and may have lobbied Florida municipalities on FPL's behalf without registering. Anitere Flores, the other, has reliably followed Florida's most conservative wing; anti-choice and anti-environment.

All the Republican legislators on the dais had been handed talking points by FPL before the meeting. It is one of these talking points that deserve close attention: "don't focus on what happened in the past, leave the past behind, let's focus on the future." The remark was tossed off by enough of the legislators on the senate panel that one understood it had been planted to distract.

Distraction, this election cycle, is the whole and entire point.

To clarify, Florida Power and Light is singled out, here, because the company itself has delineated the boundaries of a monolithic special interest. More powerful than regulators, more powerful than government. But FPL is not alone. In its urgent priority to channel public attention to the future and away from the past, it has plenty of cohorts, allies, and hangers-on.

To re-write history is to take command of the narrative. That's what "don't look at the past" means. Here a few examples.

When Gov. Rick Scott took office in 2010, one of his very first acts was to axe the science capacity of the South Florida Water Management District. Dozens of senior scientists, representing the sum total of historical understanding of the Everglades, were fired. They were fired -- not for budgetary reasons as the governor said -- they were fired because they understood that the historical record of fact does not protect the monolithic special interests supporting Gov. Scott and the GOP majority: Big Sugar.

Big Sugar and FPL are allied as they are with limestone and phosphate miners in Florida because shareholder return is everything to them, and the best shareholder return is shifting as many costs to taxpayers and ratepayers as possible. Laws that reduce profits are to be carefully followed but if they are broken, inadvertently or not, violations are written off as a cost of business. No matter the cost to taxpayers or ratepayers.

What monolithic enterprises fear most is accountability. That is why "looking backwards" is intolerable. Accountability means taking the blame. Taking the blame means paying the price. No one accustomed to dictating terms and profit wants to pay the price of failure.

In February, Scientific American published a chilling story along this same line: "Australia Cuts 110 Climate Scientist Jobs because the science is settled there is no need for more basic research, government says." On May 3rd, the news cycle lit up with reports the Australian government summarily dismissed one of the world's leading scientists on sea level rise, John Church.

For John Church, a leading authority on sea-level rise caused by global warming, there was much that was fitting – and yet callous – about being sacked at sea. The veteran scientist was well into one of dozens of research voyages he had taken since joining CSIRO as a post doctoral student in 1979. His vessel, the RV Investigator, was midway between Antarctica and New Zealand and steaming north on the 170 degree longitude when he received Thursday's call to tell him he was "potentially redundant". ... As Dr Church notes, including in a Nature paper published last month, sea-level increases are accelerating as a warming planet melts glaciers and swells oceans.

Not only is Australia in the midst of tremendous impacts of climate change -- wildfires, extreme drought, and die-off of the Great Barrier Reef at hyper-speed -- it is also in the teeth of a right-wing backlash; including the hounding of environmental non-profits that focus on climate change.

The intent to steer the public away from accountability has reared its ugly head in the United States at the same time. Also, on May 3rd, the Union of Concerned Scientists issued an urgent appeal:

Climate scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are being bullied by the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. A peer-reviewed paper NOAA scientists published in Science refutes claims of a global warming slowdown, which is a popular climate denial narrative, so Representative Lamar Smith (TX-21), chairman of the committee, is using subpoenas and depositions to go after the scientists who wrote it.

Make no mistake—this isn’t about accessing more data or better understanding the research. NOAA’s data and methodology have been publicly available for months, and NOAA scientists met multiple times with committee staff to answer questions about the research. This subpoena for emails and other confidential information is about Chairman Smith abusing his congressional power to cast doubt on the science and smear the scientists for publishing results that don’t align with his climate denial.

The harassment by the House Science Committee isn’t just a problem for NOAA scientists—it’s a problem for all scientists and the public. Scientists and researchers need to be able to spend their time doing the scientific work we heavily rely on, whether that's making sure our air is safe to breathe, predicting the path of hurricanes, or researching new drugs to fight disease. But when scientists are afraid of political interference or being unfairly targeted for their work, they can't do their jobs—and we all lose out.

Stand up for science and call on Chairman Smith to stop bullying climate scientists.

In other words, denying the past with "let's focus on the future" is a way of dodging accountability where accountability is defined as a clear and present danger to political control and corporate profit.

Yesterday, the UCS issued another broadside calling for an end to the abuse of power by government and large corporations, citing Exxon's record of investment in climate change denial: "Abuse of Power: ExxonMobil, Chairman Lamar Smith, and the First Amendment
Gretchen Goldman, lead analyst, Center for Science and Democracy | May 19, 2016, 5:10 pm EDT: "Yesterday the New York Times printed a full-page advertisement sponsored by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a free-market think tank that has been funded by ExxonMobil and has regularly misrepresented climate science. The ad reads in large font “Abuse of Power” followed by discussion of free speech rights of companies, nonprofits, and individuals to disagree on climate change. The ad claims that attorneys general in several states and the US Virgin Islands are overstepping their roles in investigating ExxonMobil for possible fraud."

On May 18th, the New York Times reported the mass dismissal of climate change scientists in Australia. Larry Marshall, the newly appointed head of the agency, said: "... climate change has already been proven so the agency should focus instead on “how do we find solutions for the climate we will be living with.”

There you have it: the solution is the future will not hold any accountability whatsoever, and accountability is important for the following reason: you are being asked to trust with full faith and the weight of your taxpayer investment in government that the very same monolithic special interests that created global and local crises by shifting costs to maximize their profit will fix their mistakes and omissions without the need for any intervention.

Across democracies that nominally protect taxpayers, the future is constantly imagining and reinventing itself. That is all well and good, but it is happening in ways that concentrate wealth and power even when science and facts prove this way of steering the world forward is a recipe for disaster. Past performance is no guarantee for future returns. Indeed.

Property rights and sea level rise ... by gimleteye

Florida is a unique lens through which to view the dilemma of delay and inadequate response by government to the challenges of global warming. On the one hand, there has been plenty of talk about reforming energy conservation in order to limited carbon dioxide emissions. The inconsistencies are plentiful: a kind of massive foot-dragging.

The low hanging fruit is easy stuff: simple steps like government purchase of fleets of higher mileage efficiency cars. But there has been successful resistance by Miami taxi cab companies to do the same. It is no different from the big energy companies like Florida Power and Light who accept common sense measurement of energy efficiencies as a test for whether or not to build new power generating facilities in other states, but not in Florida. Why? Because they can. Because they have the system wired. There is an entire other class of power brokers who also have the system wired, from the adoption of computerized voting machines to votes on the county commission: property rights attorneys and lobbyists representing land speculators. As it happens, they are avid readers of this blog too. (click, 'read more')

In recent months, the mainstream media has started to pick up on the topic: when will local governments stop development of houses and office space and malls in the areas that will be flooded, first, as a result of sea level rise? Another way of putting it: who in government has the guts to say, stop? So far, no one.

The question of government halting zoning and permitting housing in flood plains runs straight up against the preference of property owners to build on the ocean, the bay front, river banks, lake shorelines, and in wetlands. For some, it is the magnificent views. For others, the fact that low lying property is cheap and if you, Mr. Developer, can persuade local government to install flood control infrastructure and water pipes, then you can cheaply convert low lying areas to profits.

That is the growth model of Florida. It is supported by builders associations and Chambers of Commerce across the state. Stopping growth in flood plains is as popular as banning tail gate parties at a college football game. But on the other hand, it is very, very profitable for the land use attorneys and lobbyists who gin fees from conflict.

Indeed the profit motive continues to hold back the United States from engaging in climate change strategies while other nations, from Germany to China to Brazil, are embracing government incentives and building the new energy technology products that we will end up having to import instead of make, here at home.

A reader commented on a recent post, "Politics, ethics, and sea level rise": "An excellent statement but you leave out so much critical information. Sea level rise is not a concern for the future it's been measureable for years and the signs are everywhere. It's just that it's not happening at a rate that puts immediate fear in people."

This is true, despite the thousands of volunteer hours devoted by the Miami Dade Climate Change Advisory Committee and the massive effort of non-profit groups and industry, both, to highlight climate change here and across the nation. Of course, the US Chamber of Commerce is on the other side, espousing the "make money till you drown" point of view. The oil and goal industries continue to spend huge sums to sow doubt and antagonism to government intervention on climate change. And property rights lawyers are getting ready for battle under the banner: "Don't tell me what I can do with my property, until it is under water then I want the government to pay for it."

Our reader writes: "You leave out information from the Keys that provide evidence of continual rise for decades now and you leave out the recent information from The Nature Conservancy (surprising coming from that organization) that details graphically the various predictions of SLR (sea level rise) in the Keys. Studies of the changes wrought by SLR from Upper Sugarloaf Key and Cape Sable could be used to drive home the point that SLR is real, and happening. Other published reports from back in the 1950s detail what was known at the time and the future risks."

You are right: studies from the 1950's predicted impacts from sea level rise on coastal zones. As to "future risks", the entire growth model of Florida-- in which property rights has played an enormous role and influence-- is based on miscalculating risks.

"From both legal and economic standpoints(not to mention private property rights) the impact of SLR (sea level rise) has the potential to overwhelm all else in the coastal US. Discretionary funding now for many things including basic research and science now supporting so many "scientists" and academic types will be very limited and we'll be forced to rely on existing available information to make critical decisions."

This is an interesting point of view: that at some point our budgets for science will become so severely impacted by climate change that we won't be able to afford anything but basic necessities provided by industry and government.

"The legal ramifications are huge and that's why the work at the Vermont Law School is so important, if not way behind the curve. The federal government will be forced to play an active role and force local and state governments to recognize what may be coming, if for no other reason than to minimize the cost to the US taxpayers of inaction."

I'm not sure about this point. When has government been about long-term planning and minimizing the cost to US taxpayers? We have sacrificed public health and the environment on the altar of private profit.

"A very likely scenario and the first serious test in todays new reality is a hurricane rearranging part of Florida's coast and testing government's ability to for once say no to the bad idea of rebuilding in the vulnerable portion of the coastal zone. That is the test we should be preparing for."

This happened, already, in small form in Florida City and Homestead compared to Katrina. After Hurricane Andrew devastated South Dade in 1992, a group of planners offered a vision for rebuilding South Dade to maximize the watershed features and attributes of communities on the edge of two national parks. The local mortgage bankers and pro-business leaders-- like Bob Epling, Bill Losner, and Steve Shiver-- thumbed their noses. The builders' lobbyists and lawyers said, "You can't tell us what to do. It is our property." They rebuilt the Florida City business district on US 1 exactly as it was, except bigger signage and this time they succeeded in getting the US Army Corps to back off and allowed development on small wetlands.

I am all for the Obama administration getting global warming/ property rights litigation into the US Supreme Court ASAP. Why, given the conservative, pro-business, pro-states rights slant of the Court? Because without Court decisions, it is still not clear why the public must support change. The biggest mistake the Clinton White House made in Florida was cutting a deal with the State of Florida on pollution of the Everglades: this big, massive test of environmental sustainability belonged in the US Supreme Court, absent leadership by legislators under the influence of special interests. Instead we have exactly the kind of half-steps and "consensus" based measures, and intimidation of scientists, that we cannot afford in the case of climate change. Ironically, these clashes over environmental law and policies are fruitful sources of compensation for the army of consultants and lobbyists and attorneys involved in the pushing and pulling. That, too, is the American Way.

Dear Mr. President: a note for President Obama when he visits Ocean Reef … by gimleteye

Dear Mr. President,

I know you are coming to the mostly Republican island enclave within an enclave (Key Largo in the Florida Keys) to rest this weekend. This is not a time for politics.

The last president to visit the Florida Keys was George HW Bush who loved to fish. It was that interaction with the environment that brought his attention close to the issues of fixing the damaged River of Grass. It is the upfront view of a fragile, damaged place that persuaded Republicans and Democrats to support Everglades restoration.

President Bush's successor, Bill Clinton, was more into campaign dollars from Everglades polluters like Alfie Fanjul and Big Sugar. But President Clinton did delegate the chore of roping environmentalists into line through Al Gore, who had a watch-maker's eye for the complexities of restoration, Carol Browner and then Senator Bob Graham who believed he could forge a plan to keep Big Sugar honest.

Florida and the Everglades played an important role in wrecking Gore's 2000 campaign, and the members of Ocean Reef who sided with environmentalists opposing the privatization of the Homestead Air Force Base had a role, too.

You see, Mr. President, you thought you could get away from politics for a few days … but we are familiar how character of place can be a killer of justice, just like Los Angeles was in the 1930's in the famous movie, "Chinatown".

There is a catalogue of woes you probably don't have time to read on a blog post, but I'd like to highlight the top ones for you nevertheless.

First of all, the most visible controversy on your dance card is what to do about protecting one of America's most threatened national parks. Ocean Reef is wrapped by Biscayne National Park. Park managers have floated a new management plan that has raised the ire of conservationists and Ocean Reef residents. But that is just the first inch of the roiling waters in South Florida.

Below that top layer, you will find your EPA in federal court against environmentalists who are pleading that a billion and a half dollar settlement agreement forced by said interests between the federal agency and the violator of massive waste water infrastructure standards, Miami-Dade County. The environmentalists are pleading that the federal court must include provisions and funding to raise the bulwarks against sea level rise. EPA has been a weak-kneed participant in Florida, Mr. President, in more ways than one. But this one you can see from Ocean Reef.

While you believe that climate change is an imminent threat to national security and the jobs economy, EPA is displaying quotidian policy schizophrenia with respect to climate change. Here. Right now.

As you enjoy your weekend at Ocean Reef, notice that sea level rise is literally inches, not feet, away. Contemplate that just one municipality, Miami Beach, is investing nearly half a billion dollars right now to provide pumps and pipes to remove sea water that floods city streets on ordinary high tides these days. But that infrastructure is only sized for a foot and a a half of rise. What happens after a foot and a half?

A third feature of contradictory politics that will be in plain view of Ocean Reef: the cooling towers of two nuclear reactors at the edge of Biscayne National Park owned and operated by Florida Power and Light.

The plans for FPL to build two new nuclear reactors at sea level have been plowing through permitting processes, thanks to "early cost recovery" rules at the state level allowing FPL to charge ratepayers for a massive lobbying, lawyering, engineering, and approval process that has been grinding up the public interest at an alarming rate.

Yes, we need nuclear power to combat climate change. No, "old" technology at sea level in an area of the nation that is clearly most threatened by climate change is not the answer.

A President of the United States might find a way to wrap the glorious experience of a vacation on Biscayne Bay to highlight complexities in South Florida as concrete examples why federal authority must provide clear leadership on the existential threats of environmental destruction and climate change.

Finally, in the words of a former executive director of Friends of the Everglades -- Joe Podgor -- (the small charitable organization for which I serve as volunteer president), "Fixing the Everglades is a test. If we pass, we may get to keep the planet." From my point of view, knowing Ocean Reef as I do, the words ring true.

Enjoy your stay in South Florida, Mr. President.

Sea level rise in Miami, here now... by gimleteye

Global warming is a major focus of scientific inquiry, with real consequences to Florida.

On sea level rise, we're waiting. For the most part the local conversation is not whether sea level rise will occur but when. And in this context, "when" is usually framed as an abstract matter of decades hence. The low end of estimates is a foot rise by the end of the century. The high end, five to twenty feet. The science committee of the Miami Dade Climate Change Advisory Task Force-- manned by an array of volunteer and professionals with the support of a few county planners-- is "at least three to five feet" by century's end. "This does not take into account the possibility of a catastrophically rapid melt of land-bound ice from Greenland, and it makes no assumptions about Antarctica."

With the economy in such shambles, no one needs more bad news. But... what if projections of sea level rise decades from now when many of us will be gone are wrong? I have something to show you.

A long-time resident of downtown and keen observer of the local marine environment (used to be a lot more of them, relative to our overall population) sent me this photo with the following note:

"This is high tide in the 1700 block of North Bayshore Dr. Miami FL. Unfortunately, this flooding is not associated with storm surge or any other exceptional tidal or weather event. It has become the regular twice a day occurrence of the tide. ... low lying streets all over Miami and Miami Beach are experiencing increasingly regular, non weather event, flooding."

(Photo taken 9/27/2008 9:19 am, high tide at Dodge Island was at 8:20 am) To me, the photo is extraordinary because it shows one of the brand new additions to the downtown skyline. In other words, this flooding is a very recent phenomenon otherwise the condo's foundation and surrounding infrastructure could never have been completed.

I asked the photographer: is this a photo after a rainfall, or, on a moon tide? He replied, no: you can observe salt water flooding this and other areas downtown regularly.

I showed the photo to a scientist who is involved with climate change on a daily basis and asked for comment. This is the response I received, "Well just a quick look at the NOAA tidal data shows that tides are running about 6-8 inches above that predicted (see graph below). I was out at Cape Sable last Friday and there were extremely high tides. The flood tide at Middle Cape Canal was more turbulent than at any time I can remember."

The graph represents a data set from the last few days, but let's put these eight inches in perspective: according to the Miami-Dade climate change science subcommittee, beginning in 1930 the rate of relative sea level rise increased about eight fold over that of the past 2,000 years. Its report states, sea level is "presently rising at 30 cm (1') / 100 years!"

Does this photo show that something else is happening, much faster and in support of a basic theory: that sea level rise will not happen gradually and imperceptibly but rapidly.

Theories for the future aside, the long record is clear as a bell: Cape Sable, at the very southern tip of the Florida peninsula, is disappearing. It's only 30 miles from here and it takes some work to get there, but Cape Sable is disappearing like frontage of the Louisiana and Mississippi bayou. These changes in the southern Everglades are off-the-chart.

Just last week, after a considerable period of observation, the National Park Service decided to press the issue with the public, although it has not yet arisen to a level of broad public attention. The NPS on September 25th issued an advisory that should make everyone wake up: the federal agency is preparing an environmental assessment of "options for mitigating the impacts from failed dams on the East Cape and Homestead Canals at Cape Sable in Everglades National Park." (read full text, below).

This is not subjective and is not a matter of land subsidence; dams placed decades ago have failed-- salt water over-topping the dam, twice a day. According to the USGS, "During the early decades of (the 20th) century, when the drainage of the Everglades accelerated, the southern glades frequently dried out, reversing the hydraulic gradient and allowing the Homestead Canal to become a conduit for the inland flow of salt water. In addition to the free exchange of salt water through the outlet near Flamingo, saline water also entered the canal at Whiskey Creek." Today, the entire area is saline. The dams have failed. The sea is pouring in.

If every one of Miami-Dade's 2 million residents could see the power of an incoming tide breaching a canal dam that once held the sea back, our politics would not be so complacent.

Local government is continuing to permit and allow zoning in flood plains despite the fact that elevations show the invasion of the sea will be from the south and the west, not incoming through downtown streets. When the Miami Dade Climate Change Advisory Task Force made its powerpoint presentation (a version of this one, available on the web), most the county commissioners could be observed on the dais nodding and dozing off to sleep.

I understand that most people shrug; sea level rise that affects distant habitat for crocodile and various wading birds is more or less off the radar. Many of those sleeping county commissioners were just re-elected without a breath of comment on global warming.

The point is this: real sea level rise at the Homestead Canal means it must be observable elsewhere in Miami-Dade. That is why I believe these photos show that global warming is hitting Miami now.

The rate of change is an open question. Here, the prospect of twice-daily high tides inhibiting people from their property will require immensely expensive adaptation: who will pay for elevated roadways, for instance, so people can get in and out of their condos? Or, for maintenance of water or fire and safety service? What will the impact be to insurance rates, for personal property and for municipal debt, too?

On the following two photos; notice the location of the storm drain and the fact the drain is not working. This is the new Opera Condo, on NE 17th Street two blocks east of Biscayne Blvd.




In conclusion-- if you have made it this far-- you will wonder how Republican VP candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin (Drill, baby, drill!) could be from the state that has suffered the most damage and loss from a warming climate and still doubt the science of global warming.

But never mind Anchorage, we have plenty to be concerned about with global warming, right here and now. Don't shoot the messenger: in Miami, where a porous underlying geology is a sponge not a barrier, sand bags and walls will not deter the implacable sea.

"September 25, 2008
Everglades National Park

Dear Friends:

The National Park Service (NPS), in compliance with the National
Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), plans to prepare an environmental
assessment (EA) of options for mitigating the impacts from failed dams on
the East Cape and Homestead Canals at Cape Sable in Everglades National
Park. The purpose of the project is to prevent saltwater intrusion into
freshwater marshes that are habitat for the threatened American crocodile
and various wading birds by restoring the failed dams on the two canals. A
detailed description of the site and some potential alternatives that could
be selected for the project are provided in the attached newsletter.

The NPS is requesting public input on the proposed action and any issues,
concerns or alternatives that should be considered in the environmental
assessment. There are several ways to participate in this process and make
your voice heard.

You may submit your comments electronically at the NPS Planning,
Environment, and Public Comment website http://parkplanning.nps.gov. Once
on the website, select "Everglades NP" from the drop down box, then "Cape
Sable Canals Dam Rehabilitation EA," and finally "Open For Public Comment."

If you are unable to access this website, please submit written comments by
October 23, 2008 to:

National Park Service
Attention: Patrick Malone
Denver Service Center, Planning Division
P.O. Box 25287
Denver, CO 80225-0287

Finally, we invite you to attend a public meeting on October 8, 2008, from
5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. The meeting will be held at:

South Dade Regional Library
10750 SW 211th St.
Miami, Florida 33189

The first hour of the meeting will be an open house and NPS staff will be
available to discuss the project, answer questions and record your
comments. At 6:00 p.m. there will be a brief presentation on the project,
followed by a public comment session.

Once the environmental assessment is completed, it will be made available
for public review for a 30-day period.

Your opinions matter a great deal to us, and we want to hear from you.
Please share your ideas, suggestions and concerns about this project with
us by providing written comments and attending the open house.

Please provide your input on or before October 23, 2008.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Brien F. Culhane"

March For Science Miami ... by gimleteye #marchforscience

Follow me on Twitter: @gimleteyemiami

Today's March For Science joins Miami to cities around the world and people planting their feet, signs, and spirit "for" science. The Miami event starts at Museum Park downtown at 11AM and will end at the Stephen Clark Government Center a short distance away.

Yesterday, a Twitter post reflected my feelings:

I can't believe we have to march for FREAKING SCIENCE, either, but such is the effect of a state government under Rick Scott and a federal government under his buddy, Donald Trump. Both are driving science into the shadows and deep into the weeds.

This isn't an academic issue. It is a matter of life and death. For example, there is evidence -- we have documented on our blog -- that the state of Florida is withholding data on rare pediatric cancer clusters in Florida. It is infuriating. Outrageous. Despite the corporate runs for cancer, the people wearing pink or yellow wrist bands, politics continues to conspire against science.

Moreover, it is appropriate for the March Against Science in Miami to end at County Hall. County commissioners and the executive mayors of Miami-Dade, Florida's most populous county, routinely use science as cannon fodder in service of big campaign donors and powerful special interests.

Exhibit #1: Florida Power and Light's failed cooling canal system at Turkey Point in Homestead. For DECADES, FPL dodged the manifest evidence that its cooling canals were leaking hyper saline water underground in all directions: toward population centers, drinking water wells, and into Biscayne National Park. Politics allowed FPL to avoid its legal obligations.

Exhibit #2: The Miami-Dade West Wellfield. This wellfield supplies 2.2 million Floridians with most of their drinking water. Not only did Miami-Dade County Commissioners -- many current commissioners included -- shovel science to the side, allowing development and rock miners to encroach on the wellfield protection zone, they subverted science showing the danger for many years.

Exhibit #3: The South Dade Watershed Plan. A decade ago the nation's most expensive and intensive science-based effort mapped a plan for future development in the remaining open areas of farmland in West and South Dad. When the plan -- costing about $15 million -- was finished, county commission took the science and put it on a shelf due to opposition from large political donors in farming, rock mining and development. This is particularly relevant today, because the study considered low lying, flood prone areas in South Florida that will be impacted by sea level rise and climate change.

The county commissioners who have been invited to join the march today can and will no doubt make the case that they support science.

County Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava, for instance, promoted and supported a science-based resolution calling for land acquisition in the Everglades Agricultural Area in 2015, that her fellow commissioners supported. Once the sugar industry got wind, however, in 2016 a more specific science-based appeal to the state legislature did not pass the county commission and withered instead.

In the current session of the Florida legislature, science has been further shoved into the background as Big Sugar wages a battle with more than 100 lobbyists to thwart the will of the people. Based on science.

I've been an observer how politics wrecks science-based decision making for close to three decades. It is and time for younger generations to become involved because the ultimate collision of science and politics is the one over climate change. Gov. Rick Scott and US Senator Marco Rubio, and most of the GOP in Florida, are climate change deniers. So is President Trump.

I marched in the Vietnam War. I've marched for women's rights. I marched for the 2000 recount of the presidential election. I marched for the Homestead Air Force Base and for the national parks and for the environment. I can't believe in 2017 we have to march for FREAKING SCIENCE. But more than march, people who believe that democracy depends on fact and science have to vote.

PS. If you miss today's march, there is another next Saturday 1PM, April 29 on Earth Day at Jose Marti Park.