The Climate Crisis: Yes, It’s Getting Worse

A photo from a reader in Australia taken from his front door.

The nightmare fires burning in Australia may finally be  forcing willfully ignorant, fact denying conservatives in that nation to accept the reality of climate change.  With luck, the current conservative prime minister will be voted out of office come the next election.  The question is, what will it take for "conservatives" in America to wake up and get their heads out of their ass.   What level of catastrophe will be required?  A repeat of 2019's floods in the Mid-West? A super hurricane that wipes out Houston or Miami? Fires that burn up huge parts of Wyoming or Montana? A sort piece in New York Magazine with dozens of copyrighted photos (which I cannot repost) from Australia is a must read - especially for soccer moms, and the church lady set that often to me seem utterly blind to more pressing issues in the world. Here are excerpts from the piece:

Tens of thousands of people are fleeing to safety in Australia after massive brushfires caused the largest peacetime evacuation in the country’s history. The fires have been burning since September, with emergency services struggling to contain apocalyptic blazes. Authorities will not force residents to leave, but are pleading for them to do so.

Many people have fled their homes, some of them running to beaches and huddling on boats when escape routes out of their rural seaside towns were engulfed in flames. Smoke has choked the air and light over cities including Sydney and even as far away as Melbourne. Over 11 million acres have burned, along with an estimated 480 million animals. Ten people have died since December 30, and 28 more remain unaccounted for.

Many Australians are furious with their government’s resistance to acknowledge the role of climate change in the brushfires, which experts say are now burning hotter, longer, and more ferociously due to rising global temperatures. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, elected on an anti-climate action platform, . . . said that he was committed to “sensible” climate policies, ones that “don’t move toward either extreme.” But the “extreme” is already here, as captured in photos taken in New South Wales and elsewhere over the last few days. Red skies and bright orange flames blur the features of humans and animals forced into survival mode, fighting for their lives in homes that, once idyllic, have been horrifically transformed. Their suffering is a portent of what’s to come for millions around the world, and what is already happening in the most vulnerable places. . . . Don’t start the new year by looking away.

Our politicians can pretend climate change isn't real and it is up to us to vote them out of office in every election at every level of government. 

Global Apathy to Climate Change as Australia Burns

UPDATE:  Consider making a donation to help those impacted through the Australian Red Cross here.

In the realm of politics, I have often lamented the apathy and disinterest of so many when it comes to voting and making sure one is well informed.  A classic was the so-called soccer moms who obsessed over PTA gossip and children's sports while being totally oblivious to political issue that would impact their lives and the lives of their families far more.   Frighteningly, a similar phenomenon appears to be happening with the threat of global warming and climate change even as the East Coast of the USA faces dire sea level rise and large parts of Australia burns as that continent is experiencing record heat.  In Australia, huge areas have already burned, thousands of homes have been destroyed and perhaps a half billion animals have perished. The photos in this post are from a reader who took this photos from his home last month. He recounted that the experience was terrifying as the town's shopping district burned.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at the frightening apathy of so many - including media outlets - to life threatening climate change.  Here are article highlights:

Right now, on the outskirts of a hyper modern first world megapolis, at the end of a year in which the public seemed finally to wake up to the dramatic threat from global warming, a climate disaster of unimaginable horror has been unfolding for almost two full months, and the rest of the world is hardly paying attention.

The New South Wales fires have been burning since September, destroying fifteen million acres (or more than two thousand square miles) and remain almost entirely uncontrolled by the volunteer firefighting forces deployed to stop them; on November 12, greater Sydney declared an unprecedented “catastrophic” fire warning.

[T]he response to what’s transpired in Australia — again, over a period that has stretched into months — is unfamiliar, to me at least, and not in a good way. Those California fires transfixed the world’s attention, but while the ones still burning uncontrolled in Australia have gotten some media attention outside the country, in general they have been treated as a scary, but not apocalyptic, local news story.

What accounts for the difference? There are all the usual factors—the desire to look away, to avoid contemplating the scariest aspects of contemporary life or what they portend for our future, the shortsightedness of the media, reluctant to cover climate disasters, at least as climate disasters, and the forces of denial now seemingly embodied as much by Australian prime minister Scott Morrison (who was elected on a campaign pitched against climate action and who blithely took a long holiday in Hawaii while his country burned) as they are by Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro.

But two additional explanations suggest themselves to me, neither at all encouraging.

The first is that the duration of this climate horror has allowed us to normalize it even while it continues to unfold — continues to torture, and brutalize, and terrify. The Camp Fire in Paradise, California did almost all of its damage in just four hours, and the short duration may have been as important to our collective horror as the speed. Perhaps if it had lasted longer, even burning with equal ferocity, we would nevertheless simply have gotten used to it as the white noise of catastrophe all around us, as impossible as that may seem to imagine, given the scale of suffering involved.

This hypothesis is especially concerning, of course, given the way that climate change will inevitably extend these sorts of horrors in the decades ahead. Today, there are categories of natural disasters, like droughts, we understand can last for months, or even years, and though they should demand our attention, rarely do. . . . But regarding the fires themselves — which can travel 60 miles per hour or more, creating their own weather systems that project lightning strikes miles away from the blaze, causing more fire — not as a sudden catastrophe but a semi-permanent condition strikes me as another level of normalization entirely. And yet here we are.

The second explanation is perhaps even more distressing. If you had told me, even six months ago, that a climate disaster like this one would strike a place like Australia, I probably would not have expected global wall to wall media coverage — seeing these Sydney opera house against an eerie backdrop of orange smoke makes for spectacular footage, but it’s perhaps less ripe fodder for social media than watching the Kardashians evacuate the valley by Instagram story — but I would have expected a lot more than this.

That’s not because of high-minded faith in the media, or public interest in harrowing stories like these. It’s for a more sinister reason: for decades now, in the U.S. and Western Europe, we have paid much, much more attention to even small-scale suffering by the force of natural disaster when it strikes parts of the wealthy west than we ever muster for those suffering already so dramatically from climate change in Asia and especially in the global south.

That set of prejudices is a moral outrage, and an especially concerning feature of the global response to climate change, which is already punishing the developing world in ways almost no one in the wealthy west would consider conscionable — if they let themselves see it. But it has also proven maddeningly stubborn, and I would not have expected the same prejudices to blind the sympathy and empathy of millions across the U.S. and Europe to the plight of a mostly white, English-speaking “First World” former colony like Australia, however far away, in the face of disaster.

The global response to the bushfires has suggested, unfortunately, something more like the opposite: that no bind of tribal alliance or allegiance is strong enough that we won’t discard it, if discarding it allows us to see the suffering of those living elsewhere on the planet as insignificant to our own lives. These fires are just one disaster, of course, and the planet has many test cases like it ahead. But it would be among the most perverse grotesqueries of climate change if it brought about the end of these kinds of global prejudices — not to be replaced with a sense of common humanity but a system of disinterest defined instead by ever smaller circles of empathy.

We Need a New Version of Capitalism

Republicans - especially Donald Trump - are eager to depict whoever the Democrat presidential nominee turns out to be as a socialist and a threat to capitalism and somehow an enemy of average Americans even though the Democrat agenda is to improve the lot of a majority of Americans, not just the wealthy and big corporations as the GOP made clear was its goal in the form of the Trump/GOP tax cuts and the Trump/Pence regime efforts to roll back safety regulations and clean air and clean water regulations while destroying labor unions.  The irony is that many in Trump's base long for the 1950's when life was better for many because of labor unions that upheld wages and the far higher taxes paid by the wealthy funded infrastructure projects such as the Interstate highway system. In short, today's version of capitalism has turned toxic for the majority - much as was the case in the Gild Age, a time the GOP seeks to seemingly restore.  Not all of the wealthy are content to see income disparities continue to rise as the wallow in greed.  David Walentas, a visionary New York real estate developer definitely not cut from the same cloth as Trump, just made a $100 million gift to the University of Virginia to benefit students from families where no one has ever attended college.  Then there is Marc Benioff who argues that a new capitalism is needed in a column in the New York Times.  Here are column highlights:

Capitalism, I acknowledge, has been good to me.  Over the past 20 years, the company that I co-founded, Salesforce, has generated billions in profits and made me a very wealthy person. I have been fortunate to live a life beyond the wildest imaginations of my great-grandfather, who immigrated to San Francisco from Kiev in the late 1800s.

Yet, as a capitalist, I believe it’s time to say out loud what we all know to be true: Capitalism, as we know it, is dead.

Yes, free markets — and societies that cherish scientific research and innovation — have pioneered new industries, discovered cures that have saved millions from disease and unleashed prosperity that has lifted billions of people out of poverty.

But capitalism as it has been practiced in recent decades — with its obsession on maximizing profits for shareholders — has also led to horrifying inequality. Globally, the 26 richest people in the world now have as much wealth as the poorest 3.8 billion people, and the relentless spewing of carbon emissions is pushing the planet toward catastrophic climate change. In the United States, income inequality has reached its highest level in at least 50 years, with the top 0.1 percent — people like me — owning roughly 20 percent of the wealth while many Americans cannot afford to pay for a $400 emergency. It’s no wonder that support for capitalism has dropped, especially among young people. To my fellow business leaders and billionaires, I say that we can no longer wash our hands of our responsibility or what people do with our products. Yes, profits are important, but so is society. And if our quest for greater profits leaves our world worse off than before, all we will have taught our children is the power of greed.

It’s time for a new capitalism — a more fair, equal and sustainable capitalism that actually works for everyone and where businesses, including tech companies, don’t just take from society but truly give back and have a positive impact.

What might a new capitalism look like?

First, business leaders need to embrace a broader vision of their responsibilities by looking beyond shareholder return and also measuring their stakeholder return. This requires that they focus not only on their shareholders, but also on all of their stakeholders — their employees, customers, communities and the planet. Fortunately, nearly 200 executives with the Business Roundtable recently committed their companies, including Salesforce, to this approach, saying that the “purpose of a corporation” includes “a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders.” Unfortunately, not everyone agrees. . . . . When asked whether companies should serve all stakeholders and whether capitalism should be updated, Vice President Mike Pence warned against “leftist policies.”

But suggesting that companies must choose between doing well and doing good is a false choice. Successful businesses can and must do both. In fact, with political dysfunction in Washington, D.C., Americans overwhelmingly say C.E.O.s should take the lead on economic and social challenges, and employees, investors and customers increasingly seek out companies that share their values.

Legislation to close loopholes in the Equal Pay Act have stalled in Congress for years, and today women still only make about 80 cents, on average, for every dollar earned by men. But congressional inaction does not absolve companies from their responsibility. Since learning that we were paying women less than men for equal work at Salesforce, we have spent $10.3 million to ensure equal pay; today we conduct annual audits to ensure that pay remains equal. Just about every company, I suspect, has a pay gap — and every company can close it now.

For many businesses, giving back to their communities is an afterthought — something they only do after they’ve turned a profit. But by integrating philanthropy into our company culture from the beginning — giving 1 percent of our equity, time and technology — Salesforce has donated nearly $300 million to worthy causes, including local public schools and addressing homelessness.

Globally, few nations are meeting their targets to fight climate change, the current United States presidential administration remains determined to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and global emissions continue to rise. As governments fiddle, there are steps that business can take now, while there’s still time . . . .

Skeptical business leaders who say that having a purpose beyond profit hurts the bottom line should look at the facts. Research shows that companies that embrace a broader mission — and, importantly, integrate that purpose into their corporate culture — outperform their peers, grow faster, and deliver higher profits.

Of course, C.E.O. activism and corporate philanthropy alone will never be enough to meet the immense scale of today’s challenges. It could take $23 billion a year to address racial inequalities in our public schools. College graduates are drowning in $1.6 trillion of student debt. It will cost billions to retrain American workers for the digital jobs of the future. Trillions of dollars of investments will be needed to avert the worst effects of climate change. All this, when our budget deficit has already surpassed $1 trillion.

That is why a new capitalism must also include a tax system that generates the resources we need and includes higher taxes on the wealthiest among us. . . . . Nationally, increasing taxes on high-income individuals like myself would help generate the trillions of dollars that we desperately need to improve education and health care and fight climate change.

The culture of corporate America needs to change, and it shouldn’t take an act of Congress to do it. Every C.E.O. and every company must recognize that their responsibilities do not stop at the edge of the corporate campus. When we finally start focusing on stakeholder value as well as shareholder value, our companies will be more successful, our communities will be more equal, our societies will be more just and our planet will be healthier.

Trump and his vulture capitalist cronies embody the direct opposite of this responsible proposal.

The East Coast May Become the Gulf Coast in Terms of Future Weather

While Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer,  and many in the GOP continue to admit the reality of global warming and climate change, many living on the nation's coastlines beg to differ.  Now, a new study suggests that in addition to higher sea levels, coastal cities need to be planning for sharp changes in the seasonal  temperatures and rainfall.  Meanwhile, Mid-West farmers will see significant decreases in rainfall as the east coast becomes much wetter. A piece in The Atlantic looks at what our children and grandchildren may witness in their lifetimes. One has to wonder what it will take to make climate change deniers open their eyes. Here are highlights:

Sixty years from now, climate change could transform the East Coast into the Gulf Coast. It will move Minnesota to Kansas, turn Tulsa into Texas, and hoist Houston into Mexico. Even Oregonians might ooze out of their damp, chilly corner and find themselves carried to the central valley of California.

These changes won’t happen literally, of course—but that doesn’t make them any less real. A new paper tries to find the climate-change twin city for hundreds of places across the United States: the city whose modern-day weather gives the best clue to what conditions will feel like in 2080. It finds that the effects of global warming will be like relocating American cities more than 500 miles away from their current location, on average, mostly to the south and toward the country’s interior.

For instance, the Philadelphia of the 2080s will resemble the historical climate of Memphis. By the time kids today near retirement age, Philadelphia’s average summer will be about 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it is now. Winters in Philly will be nearly 10 degrees more temperate. Memphis’s scorching, sticky weather provides the best guide to how those climatic changes will feel day after day.

Meanwhile, Memphis’s climate will come to resemble that of modern-day College Station, Texas, by 2080.

“Everything gets warmer,” says Matthew Fitzpatrick, an author of the paper and a professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. “I don’t think I’ve seen a place that doesn’t.” In the West and Midwest, cities also tend to get drier as the Great Plains shift east. So Chicago comes to Kansas, Denver drifts to Texas, and San Francisco starts to feel like Los Angeles.

[N]o city will perfectly match its climate twin, especially when it comes to rainfall. Many cities in the South simply do not have a good twin: “The climate of many urban areas could become unlike anything present” in North America, the paper says.

In the Northeast, you can envision the future as one big Arkansas-ification. The paper finds that if the world meets its goals under the Paris Agreement, then Washington, D.C., will enter the 2080s feeling a lot like Paragould, Arkansas. But if the world follows a worst-case scenario, then D.C. will more closely resemble northern Mississippi—and New York City will feel like Jonesboro, Arkansas.

[T]he eastern U.S. will become hotter and wetter, while the [Midwest] will become drier and hotter,” she told me. Her own research focuses on eastern bluebirds, which have historically spent the summer in New York before migrating south for the winter. But “they’ve started staying in New York” for the winter, she said, “so I know it’s getting warmer there.”

She also warned future New Yorkers about what Jonesboro has in store: “Summer-wise, it’s like Florida here. And I cannot imagine New York like Florida … it’s hard to think about how humid it will be.”

“If I have grandkids and they lived in the same place I do,” he said, “they might not recognize this climate that we’re living in now.”

Trump Moves to Increase Pollution and Disease and HIV/AIDS Deaths

Sitting on the shores of Hampton Roads harbor facing rising sea levels and worries of flooding during tropical storms/hurricanes, global warming and a polluted Chesapeake Bay hit very close to home.  Similarly, as a member of the LGBT community who also worries about the growing epidemic of HIV/AIDS in the black community, medical research to find a cure for HIV/AIDS - and other diseases - is a real concern.  Sadly, such is not the case for Der Trumpenführer who today reversed Obama administration regulations to protect water and air quality and address the very real issue of global warming.  While posturing with oil and gas and coal company executives and miners (the latter refuse to accept the reality that the coal industry is moribund no matter what Trump does) Der Trumpenführer basically gave every other American the middle finger and said "go f*ck yourselves."  Reuters looks at this travesty.  Here are highlights:

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an order to undo Obama-era climate change regulations, keeping a campaign promise to support the coal industry and calling into question U.S. support for an international deal to fight global warming.

Flanked by coal miners and coal company executives, Trump proclaimed his "Energy Independence" executive order at the headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The move drew swift backlash from a coalition of 23 states and local governments, as well as environmental groups, which called the decree a threat to public health and vowed to fight it in court.

The order's main target is former President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, which required states to slash carbon emissions from power plants - a key factor in the United States' ability to meet its commitments under a climate change accord reached by nearly 200 countries in Paris in 2015.

Trump's decree also reverses a ban on coal leasing on federal lands, undoes rules to curb methane emissions from oil and gas production and reduces the weight of climate change and carbon emissions in policy and infrastructure permitting decisions. Carbon dioxide and methane are two of the main greenhouse gases blamed by scientists for heating the earth.

Environmental groups heaped scorn on Trump's order, arguing it was dangerous and went against the broader global trend toward cleaner energy technologies. A coalition of mostly Democrat-led states and local governments issued a statement saying they would oppose the order in court.

"We won’t hesitate to protect those we serve — including by aggressively opposing in court President Trump’s actions that ignore both the law and the critical importance of confronting the very real threat of climate change," the coalition, led by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, said in a statement.

The coalition includes states such as California, Massachusetts and Virginia, as well as cities including Chicago, Philadelphia and Boulder, Colorado.

 Not content with trashing the environment and endangering the health of Americans, Der Trumpenführer has also proposed drastic cuts to HIV/AIDS and other medical research.  No doubt, his white evangelical Christian supporters (who are responsible for putting him in office) will cheer if these cuts are realized since I suspect a majority of them would love to see gays - and the HIV ravaged black community - simply die off.  Suffice it to say, I am beginning to understand that Trump is an evil person.  Bloomberg looks at Trump's proposals to slash medical research spending.  Here are excerpts:

    President Donald Trump’s administration has proposed cutting $1.23 billion this fiscal year from research funded by the National Institutes of Health, according to a White House document sent to congressional appropriators.

    The reduction is part of $18 billion in cuts that the administration wants in fiscal 2017, which ends in October. Most of the proposed reductions at NIH would come from research grants, with $50 million specifically taken from a program meant to support biomedical research in states that typically get less agency money. 

     A worldwide initiative to help people with HIV and AIDS, known as PEPFARand heavily focused on patient treatment in Africa, would be slashed by almost $300 million under the plan. The savings would be found by slowing the rate of new patients put on treatment and reducing support to “low-performing countries.” States also would face a $50 million cut that would target “less effective HIV research and prevention activities.”

     The Trump administration is requesting $65.1 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services in fiscal 2018, down from $84.6 billion in 2016.

     Other proposed health cuts for the current year include:·        $40 million from staffing funds at the Food and Drug Administration, achieved in part with “slower than anticipated hiring.”
·        $50 million from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which may delay missions and reduce grants.
·        $350 million from research grants at the National Science Foundation for biology, information science and engineering.
·        $372 million from the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program that helps people heat their homes.

If there is a god, many of Trump's working class white supporters will find themselves hard hit from the proposed cut backs.  Frankly, they deserve to suffer since they were stupid enough to vote for this foul, pathologically lying, amoral man. 

Global Warming is Already Flooding America's Coasts

Click image to enlarge

click image to enlarge

UPDATED 9-6-2016:  For more images of just how much of a reality global warming and rising sea levels are for the Hampton Roads area, check out the photos at AltDaily here.  As I said before, if you care about global warming and climate change, the ONLY option on election day is to vote a straight Democrat ticket. 

Having just dodged a bullet with Tropical Storm Hermine - the photo above shows Robinson Creek close to flooding into our back yard shown in the background - many of us in Hampton Roads know and understand that global warming's impact on sea levels is real and that it is happening now.  The second photo was taken by a friend in the Ocean View section of Norfolk from her home more than an hour before high tide.  Many other areas of Norfolk and even our neighborhood flooded and as of this morning, my sister in Virginia Beach is still without power.  What's really frightening is that Hermine was not even a major storm.  Sea levels ARE rising - at the Norfolk Naval Base, the level is a foot and a half higher than less than 100 years ago.  Yet despite this, we see Republicans ranging from Donald Trump on down saying that global warming and its impacts is a "hoax."  Here in Virginia, GOP legislators will not even allow the use of the term even as the economic powerhouse of the Virginia Port Authority and numerous military bases are threatened.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the reality that is already happening while the GOP remains in denial.  Here are highlights:

NORFOLK, Va. — Huge vertical rulers are sprouting beside low spots in the streets here, so people can judge if the tidal floods that increasingly inundate their roads are too deep to drive through.

Five hundred miles down the Atlantic Coast, the only road to Tybee Island, Ga., is disappearing beneath the sea several times a year, cutting the town off from the mainland.

And another 500 miles on, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., increased tidal flooding is forcing the city to spend millions fixing battered roads and drains — and, at times, to send out giant vacuum trucks to suck saltwater off the streets.

For decades, as the global warming created by human emissions caused land ice to melt and ocean water to expand, scientists warned that the accelerating rise of the sea would eventually imperil the United States’ coastline.

Federal scientists have documented a sharp jump in this nuisance flooding — often called “sunny-day flooding” — along both the East Coast and the Gulf Coast in recent years. The sea is now so near the brim in many places that they believe the problem is likely to worsen quickly. Shifts in the Pacific Ocean mean that the West Coast, partly spared over the past two decades, may be hit hard, too.

These tidal floods are often just a foot or two deep, but they can stop traffic, swamp basements, damage cars, kill lawns and forests, and poison wells with salt. Moreover, the high seas interfere with the drainage of storm water.

In coastal regions, that compounds the damage from the increasingly heavy rains plaguing the country, like those that recently caused extensive flooding in Louisiana. Scientists say these rains are also a consequence of human greenhouse emissions.

“Once impacts become noticeable, they’re going to be upon you quickly,” said William V. Sweet, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Silver Spring, Md., who is among the leaders in research on coastal inundation. “It’s not a hundred years off — it’s now.”

[L]ocal leaders say they cannot tackle this problem alone. They are pleading with state and federal governments for guidance and help, including billions to pay for flood walls, pumps and road improvements that would buy them time.

Yet Congress has largely ignored these pleas, and has even tried to block plans by the military to head off future problems at the numerous bases imperiled by a rising sea. A Republican congressman from Colorado, Ken Buck, recently called one military proposal part of a “radical climate change agenda.”

As the problem worsens, experts are warning that national security is on the line. Naval bases, in particular, are threatened; they can hardly be moved away from the ocean, yet much of their land is at risk of disappearing within this century.

Because the land is sinking as the ocean rises, Norfolk and the metropolitan region surrounding it, known as Hampton Roads, are among the worst-hit parts of the United States. That local factor means, in essence, that the region is a few decades ahead in feeling the effects of sea-level rise, and illustrates what people along the rest of the American coast can expect.

The biggest problems involve frequent flooding of homes and roads. As the sea rises, hundreds of tidal creeks and marshes that thread through the region are bringing saltwater to people’s doorsteps.

As the national response lags, experts warn that the flooding is putting the country’s defense at risk.

Several studies have concluded that Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval base, is profoundly threatened by rising seas, as are other coastal bases. The Pentagon has managed to build floodgates and other protective measures at some facilities. But attempts by the military to develop broader climate change plans have met fierce resistance in Congress.

That was the case this summer, when an effort by the Pentagon to appoint officers to take charge of climate resilience led to a House vote prohibiting taxpayer money from being spent on the plan.

Many people in Congress, almost all of them Republicans, express doubt about climate science, with some of them promulgating conspiracy theories claiming that researchers have invented the issue to justify greater governmental control over people’s lives. So far, this ideological position has been immune to the rising evidence of harm from human-induced climate change.

Scientists had long hoped that any disintegration of the ice sheets would take thousands of years, but recent research suggests the breakup of West Antarctica could occur much faster. In the worst-case scenario, this research suggests, the rate of sea-level rise could reach a foot per decade by the 22nd century, about 10 times faster than today.

In 2013, scientists reached a consensus that three feet was the highest plausible rise by the year 2100. But now some of them are starting to say that six or seven feet may be possible. A rise that large over a span of decades would be an unparalleled national catastrophe, driving millions of people from their homes and most likely requiring the abandonment of entire cities.

Along those parts of the United States coast that are sinking at a brisk clip, including southern Louisiana and the entire Chesapeake Bay region, including Norfolk, the situation will be worse than average. On the Pacific Coast, a climate pattern that had pushed billions of gallons of water toward Asia is now ending, so that in coming decades the sea is likely to rise quickly off states like Oregon and California.

Read the entire article.  What can one do?  For starters, vote ignorance embracing Republicans out of office. For local homeowners, start water proofing your homes and make them flood resistant.  Personally, our next step will probably be to build a high berm around the perimeter of the backyard and then landscape it so that it's real purpose is camouflaged.  That, of course, will take time and money that many people simply do not have.

Water coming up the storm drain in front of the house (last October, water came half way up the driveway) 

July, 2016 - 10th Temperature Record-Breaking Month in a Row

Out on the campaign trail Republicans are continuing to describe climate change as a myth or unsubstantiated claims.  Meanwhile, July, 2016, was the tenth (10th) record breaking temperature month in a row.  This is based on records going back 136 years.  As a piece in Slate notes, apparently the only way to secure a meaningful response to the threat posed by climate change is to vote climate change denying Republicans out of office at all levels. Defeating Donald Trump is a good first step, but here in Virginia, gerrymandering protected Republicans also need to go down to defeat next year. Here are article highlights:

October. November. December. January. February. March. April. May. June. And now July.

For the sixth seventh eighth ninth 10^thmonth in a row, we’ve had a month that has broken the global high temperature record.

According to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, March April MayJune July 2016 was the hottest MarchApril May June July on record, going back 136 years. It was a staggering 1.28°C 1.11°C 0.93°C 0.79°C 0.84° C above average across the planet.^* The previous March April May June July record, from 2010 20142015 2011, was 0.92° 0.87° 0.86° 0.78° 0.74° above average; the new record beats it by a full tenth of a degree.

As you can see from the map above, much of this incredible heat spike is located in the extreme northern latitudes. That is not good; it’s this region that’s most fragile to heating. Temperatures soaring to 7° or more above normal means more ice melting, a longer melting season, loss of thinner ice, loss of longer-term ice, and most alarmingly the dumping of billions of tons of fresh water into the saltier ocean which can and will disrupt the Earth’s ability to move that heat around.

What’s going on? El Niño might be the obvious culprit, but in fact it’s only contributing a small amount of overall warming to the globe, probably around 0.1° C or so. That’s not nearly enough to account for this. It’s almost certain that even without El Niño we’d be experiencing record heat.

Most likely there is a confluence of events going on to produce this huge spike in temperature—latent heat in the Pacific waters, wind patterns distributing it, and more.

And underlying it all, stoking the fire, is us. Humans. Climate scientists—experts who have devoted their lives to studying and understanding how this all works—agree to an extraordinary degree that humans are responsible for the heating of our planet.

That’s why we’re seeing so many records lately; El Niño might produce a spike, but that spike is sitting on top of an upward trend, the physical manifestation of human induced global warming, driven mostly by our dumping 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air every year.

Until our politicians recognize that this is a threat, and a very serious one, things are unlikely to change much. And the way I see it, the only way to get our politicians to recognize that is to change the politicians we have in office.

Republicans Block Military's Effort to Plan For Rising Sea Levels

USS Harry S. Truman docking in Norfolk

Donald Trump may be the most hideous and frightening aspect of the Republican Party at the moment, but the sickness that has taken over the party is so widespread that it is at times almost unfathomable.  Take the issue of rising sea levels, something that is objectively occurring.  Here in Hampton Roads, the region is full of critical military bases ranging from the Norfolk Naval Base - the world's largest naval base, to Langley Air Base in Hampton, to Ft. Eustis in York County.  All, along with lesser bases, are threatened by rising sea levels.  Military leaders, being responsible and recognizing the need to be prepared for the future seek to make plans on how the bases will be protected as sea levels rise.  There's one problem: Congressional Republicans are blocking funding for the plans?  Why?  Because denying the reality of climate change and rising sea levels is a litmus test among the ignorance embracing Christofascists who no wield so much power within the GOP.   Rather than offend the knuckle draggers of the party base, these Republicans - who claim to support a strong military - would rather cripple critical bases in the future.  A piece in the Virginian Pilot looks at the idiocy (the Daily Press carried a similar piece that looked at the threats to Langley and ft. Eustis).  Here are highlights: 

The latest scientific conclusion echoes others: It’s likely that sea level rise will eventually swallow huge swaths of Hampton Roads’ military installations, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists in a report scheduled for release today.

But if congressional Republicans have their way, the military will be blocked from doing anything about it.

Tacked on to defense spending bills passed by the House of Representatives: amendments forbidding the Pentagon from using federal dollars to study climate change or plan for its impacts.

Supporters say they want the military focused on enemies such as the Islamic State group, not rising seas.  Critics say flooding is a formidable foe as well.

“It’s kind of hard to attack the enemy when your base is underwater,” said Rep. Bobby Scott, a Southeast Virginia Democrat who voted against the ban.

[T]he Union of Concerned Scientists looked at 18 East and Gulf coast bases, concluding that the high tide line will creep inland in the decades ahead, stealing training and testing grounds, infrastructure and housing. Storms will intensify the troubles.

“By 2050, most of these sites will see more than 10 times the number of floods they experience today,” said Kristy Dahl, a co-author of the report. “In 2070, all but a few are projected to see flooding once or twice every day.”

Subsidence – a sinking-land phenomenon occurring in Hampton Roads – will speed things up around at least two local bases: The Dam Neck Annex to Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach and Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Hampton could lose up to 95 percent of their land this century.

Norfolk Naval Station will flood roughly 280 times a year by 2050 instead of the current 10, if sea level rise reaches the midrange of predictions.

[T]he Defense Department created its own climate change adaption plan. Dam Neck built a one-mile rock-core dune to protect the main part of the installation from storm surge. Langley Air Force Base built a shoreline seawall and door dams, and installed a pump system.

Colorado Republican Rep. Ken Buck sponsored one of the amendments that would put a halt to such preparations.  Scott hopes the amendments will die in the Senate.

Christofascists and their political whores in the GOP are a clear and present danger to America.

Obama Executive Order: Federally Funded Projects Must Consider Sea Level Rise

Parking lot at Norfolk Naval Base

Here in Hampton Roads, there are plenty of federally funded construction projects, many involving the region's military installations, the largest of which is the Norfolk Naval Base.  With sea levels rising due to global warming - a term the Virginia GOP doesn't want even uttered - it would be insane to continue to build new projects that do not consider future sea levels and merely look at current data.  Yesterday, Barack Obama recognized the idiocy of the past and current practices and signed an executive order that will make it mandatory to factor in projected future sea levels for any federally funded projects.  If followed, many projects will need to be revised and many projects could be scuttled.  Here are highlights from the Virginian Pilot:

President Barack Obama on Friday signed an executive order requiring that all federally funded construction projects take into account flood risks linked to global warming. The order directs federal agencies to adopt stricter building and siting standards.  

The new standard gives agencies three options forestablishing the flood elevation and hazard area they use in siting, design and construction of federally funded projects. They can use data and methods "informed by best-available, actionable climate science"; build 2 feet above the 100-year flood elevation for standard projects and 3 feet above for critical buildings such as hospitals and evacuation centers; or build to the 500-year flood elevation.

The new policy does not make changes to the National Flood Insurance Program, which covers Americans in flood-prone areas with federally backed insurance provided they meet federal standards aimed at minimizing risks. But it will apply to grants the program provides, thereby affecting construction in flood-prone areas.

The standard also would make significant swaths of low-lying land ineligible for construction with federal money.

The White House move comes just days after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released a massive post-Hurricane Sandy report examining flood risks for 31,200 miles of the North Atlantic coast.

The research explicitly took sea level rise induced by climate change into account and finds: "Flood risk is increasing for coastal populations and supporting infrastructure."

Last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted coastal areas will face 30 or more days of flooding by mid-century because of sea level rise. According to the National Climate Assessment, more than $1 trillion of property and structures in the United States are at risk of inundation from sea level rise of 2 feet above current sea level - an elevation that could be reached by that same point.

While global warming is a contested political issue, more than 350 state and local governments have adopted flood standards along the lines of what the Obama administration is now requiring.

The Far Right Targets Pope Francis as a "Leftist" and "Marxist"

As noted before, Pope Francis has hit a raw nerve with the American far right as a result of his statements condemning vulture capitalism and now his upcoming encyclical on climate change.  The result?  Among others, a hatchet piece in The Federalist that describes Francis as a "leftist" and a "Marxist."  Tellingly, among the slurs are claims that Francis is not a scientist even as the author ignores the reality that 95% of scientists believe that climate change is occurring and that mankind is a contributing cause.  The following are highlights from the slurs being thrown at Francis:

She [Rachel Lu] cites criticism of Francis as evidence of a “war.” A Republican war at that. Doing so, she strays into the same reductive trap set by the mainstream media that she wants conservatives to avoid.

Under the tutelage of a pope who ascribes to himself an omnicompetency in geopolitical and scientific matters, the Catholic Church is at risk of a death walk of its own. Its descent into a left-leaning political entity is underway while we circle the wagons and measure our tones. It is a serious matter when a pope confuses political and ideological symbols for religious ones.

Civil society has an immense stake in that confusion. And the stakes are raised when papal preferences, masked in a Christian idiom, align themselves with ideological agendas (e.g. radical environmentalism) that impinge on democratic freedoms and the sanctity of the individual.
Francis, raised in Argentina during the apogee of Peronism, gives every evidence of tilting toward the state.

[L]et us go back to that for a moment. “Francis and Political Illusion” included a photo of the pope standing between two environmental activists and holding an anti-fracking T-shirt. . . . . And these were not just any activists. The older of the two men in the photo is Fernando Solanas, an Argentine film director, avowed propagandist, and politician. A key player in Buenos Aires, he ran for president of Argentina on the Socialist ticket in 2007 and stood for the senate last year. In the 1960s, he co-founded the influential, radical film collective Grupo Cine Liberación (The Liberation Film Group) with Octavio Gettino, Both were Marxists and supporters of Juan Perón at the time.

Francis is no naïf. He signals his priorities to anyone paying attention. You do not have to be a Republican or a conservative to get the message. In support of his green theology, he plans a speech at the United Nations and a congress of world religious leaders at the Vatican. He is preparing to lend this agenda the magisterial weight of an encyclical. Yet, when innocents are slaughtered in Paris by the same forces that are shedding Christian blood in the Middle East, the most he can muster is a hashtag, #PrayersforParis.

Let us be honest. Conservatives are damned if they do, damned if they don’t. While deferential observers are measuring their tones, Francis drives ahead with a demagogic program which makes the state the guardian and enforcer all values.

This past October, Francis took aim at “ideological Catholics,” calling them “a serious illness” within the Church. What is Francis, if not an ideologue?

The real fear of the far right and Republican Party?  That Francis might just open the eyes of Catholics to the true ugliness of the GOP's reverse Robin Hood policies and the rape and pollution of the Earth that are pillars to the GOP agenda.  The fact that this agenda is the antithesis of the Gospel message matters not at all to today's "conservatives."  

The China-America Climate Summit: Expect Right Wing Hysteria

The Koch brothers - perhaps the foulest excuses for human beings out side of the leadership of ISIS and perhaps Vladimir Putin - have spent huge amounts of money to fight (i) any recognition that climate change is happening and (ii) any regulatory changes that would limit the rapacious greed and polluting inflicted on the nation by the fossil fuel industries.  Sadly, there are many in the Christofascist/Tea Party base of the Republican Party only too happy to believe these lies even as the Kochs and their allies work against the long term best interests of these cretins of the GOP base.  A column in the New York Times looks at the Kochs agenda in the light of the initial agreement between China and America to face the reality of climate change and to do something about it.  Here are highlights:

The agreement between China and the United States on carbon emissions is, in fact, a big deal.

To understand why, you first have to understand the defense in depth that fossil-fuel interests and their loyal servants — nowadays including the entire Republican Party — have erected against any action to save the planet.

The first line of defense is denial: there is no climate change; it’s a hoax concocted by a cabal including thousands of scientists around the world. Bizarre as it is, this view has powerful adherents, including Senator James Inhofe, who will soon lead the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Indeed, some elected officials have done all they can to pursue witch hunts against climate scientists.

Still, as a political matter, attacking scientists has limited effectiveness. It plays well with the Tea Party, but to the broader public — even to non-Tea Party Republicans — it sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory, because it is.

The second line of defense involves economic scare tactics: any attempt to limit emissions will destroy jobs and end growth. This argument sits oddly with the right’s usual faith in markets; we’re supposed to believe that business can transcend any problem, adapt and innovate around any limits, but would shrivel up and die if policy put a price on carbon. Still, what’s bad for the Koch brothers must be bad for America, right?

Like claims of a vast conspiracy of scientists, however, the economic disaster argument has limited traction beyond the right-wing base. . . . The real war on coal, or at least on coal miners, was waged by strip-mining and natural gas, and ended a long time ago. 

Which brings us to the last line of defense, claims that America can’t do anything about global warming, because other countries, China in particular, will just keep on spewing out greenhouse gases. This is a standard argument at think tanks like the Cato Institute and among conservative pundits.

But now we have it straight from the source: China has declared its intention to limit carbon emissions.   I know, I know. The language is a little vague, and the target levels of emissions are much higher than environmental experts want. 

But consider the situation. America is not exactly the most reliable negotiating partner on these issues, with climate denialists controlling Congress and the only prospect of action in the near future, and maybe for many years, coming from executive orders. 

But the principle that has just been established is a very important one. Until now, those of us who argued that China could be induced to join an international climate agreement were speculating. Now we have the Chinese saying that they are, indeed, willing to deal — and the opponents of action have to claim that they don’t mean what they say.

Needless to say, I don’t expect the usual suspects to concede that a major part of the anti-environmentalist argument has just collapsed. But it has.