The sad fact about the working class people who have supported right wing politics historically in the US, is that they are themselves so often the victims of the policies their political heroes advocate. This is certainly true in areas of environment and climate, and yet another of those increasingly common “one in a thousand year” events in West Virginia illustrates vividly.
UPDATE:
Good Lord, more flash flood warnings for 22 W Va counties as new hard rain will fall tomorrow. https://t.co/JR6hTi4SPW
— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) June 26, 2016
Huge floods ravaging West Virginia have killed at least 23 people, stranded hundreds and left tens of thousands without power overnight, officials said late Friday.
The threat of pop-up showers and overflowing rivers was still a concern late, and Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin said that search and rescue efforts remained a priority to help people trapped in swamped homes and cars. He said 200 National Guard members have been deployed in eight counties with about 300 more authorized to help with ongoing relief.
The storm system dumped 9 inches of rain on parts of West Virginia and trapped 500 people in a shopping center for more than 24 hours after a bridge washed out. Crews completed a temporary roadway Friday night and evacuated all those who wanted to leave although some decided to stay.
Dozens of other people had to be plucked off rooftops or rescued as waters quickly rose during the deluge.
The heavy rainfall over six to eight hours prompted the National Weather Service to call it a “one-in-a-thousand-year event.”
A burning house being carried away by flood waters is as vivid a metaphor for global climate catastrophe as I’ve ever seen.
A relentless torrent of rain swept over West Virginia Thursday, flooding many areas in the state. Greenbrier County, home of the famed Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, was among the hardest hit.
Floodwaters inundated the Greenbrier’s signature golf course, where the Professional Golfers’ Association Tour’s Greenbrier Classic is scheduled in two weeks. It’s unclear whether the course will recover in time.
The owner of the golf course is West Virginia’s own home-grown ersatz Donald Trump, a climate denying billionaire who is running for Governor on a platform of resuscitating the region’s moribund coal industry.
The Register-Herald-Beckley, West Virginia:
The only real political outsider in the governor’s race this year, Jim Justice might also have the most statewide name recognition. Outside the political arena, Justice has built empires in coal, agriculture and tourism, and with that, a reputation for getting things done.
Worth more than $1.5 billion, Justice has become a household name in the region after his 2009 purchase of The Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs. Justice’s investment there, $20.1 million, seemed to be at once a bargain and an instantaneous boondoggle when he began losing more than $1 million a week at the historic property.
–Justice’s plan is to play to the state’s strengths, and he says that means coal. The idea he laid out for The Register-Herald editorial board is detailed, fairly simple in its concept, extremely complicated in execution.
The first phase of his idea is to convince the Environmental Protection Agency to give the state a cumulative, weighted limit for carbon emissions, instead of an individual limit for each power plant. Next, he’ll demand that state power plants burn West Virginia coal, and he’ll build four new, smaller coal-fired power plants, along with wood chip plants, in areas where coal and timber will be available into perpetuity and the plants would have no transportation costs. After that, he says he’ll convince utility companies to lower West Virginia rates by 10 percent across the board, while allowing companies to charge what the market will bear for electricity they sell to other states.
And when he, as governor, markets West Virginia as having lower utility costs by 10 percent, he says that businesses will flock to the Mountain State.
“They’d run over top of us to get here,” he said.
It has been called a 1,000 year #flood. West Virginia flooding claims 20 lives. #WVwx pic.twitter.com/GIEOqgQYk4
— WeatherNation (@WeatherNation) June 25, 2016
UPDATE:
PGA Tour cancels Greenbrier Classic next month because of devastating flooding in West Virginia. https://t.co/fHpX5WIwjB
— The Associated Press (@AP) June 25, 2016
Reblogged this on A Green Road Daily News.
Is this a spoof site? difficult to tell.
yeah, totally spoof
It’s “difficult to tell” whether Crock is a “spoof site”, says Richard?
Lord love a duck, but it’s difficult to understand why he would ask such an inane question? Did the title throw him off? Did he not read the content of the piece?
Well fuck right off you fucking moron. I asked a perfectly civil question you cunting red nosed parrot faced wazzock.
W*(etc) answers the “perfectly civil” questions that I asked with a stream of puerile and inane insults. Is he channeling his ugly inner Trump? (And stealing lines from Tony Capstick?)
Word for word, this is perhaps the most ignorant, most offensive, and least “perfectly civil” comment posted on Crock in many months. Congrats W*(whatever), you’re good at something—-insults.
Too bad your reading comprehension skills are so deficient (although you should have been able to figure out the thrust of the piece from looking at just the pictures—-are you perhaps just stupid?)
Have this one. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/06/25/naomi-klein-trying-to-link-climate-and-racism/
https://climatecrocks.com/2016/06/08/trump-again-proves-link-between-racism-climate-denial/
Why did you offer this piece? It’s just more of Anthony Watts speaking trash from the depths of his anal orifice (where his head has resided for years). And it’s followed by inane and mindless comments from his lemming followers.
What are we supposed to learn from it? (other than to be again reminded of the fact that Naomi Klein “gets it” and Watts doesn’t—-Naomi is not “trying” to link climate change and racism—-she’s DOING it).
Of course he and his followers have good explanations for what is happening not just in the US but elsewhere around the world, of course with their superior intellects and knowledge they can advise what will be happening over the next few years and what mitigation will need to be done and who will pay for it.
Good stuff, but this doesn’t seem right: “The owner of the golf course is West Virginia’s own Donald Trump, a climate denying billionaire who is running for Governor…”
It isn’t right. The “owner of the golf course” is not Trump but Jim Justice, who is the richest man in WV and is running for Governor thjs year as a Democrat. He was a Republican until he switched parties in 2015. IMO, he’s a bit of an enigma—-except for owning coal mines, he seems to be a pretty good guy.
Andrew Fez? You out there? Since you are our resident WV expert, give us the dope on Justice.
Hi Old Guy,
Well I don’t know much about him other than what the newspaper reports. He owns around 70 mines and lots of farmland which he inherited; and the miner’s union ‘likes’ him (endorses him), compared to the other WV coal baron Don Blankenship. He donates credibly to charity, however the state donates millions to his Greenbrier Resort, in the form of sponsoring golf events.
However I did a small take down of his political platform on my social media back in April, regarding the following: he wants to spend 4B dollars on new coal and wood plants (the wood plants I don’t have much of a problem with as I think they count as ‘biomass’ or ‘renewable’ though I don’t like the particulates being thrown off from burning stuff which cause lung and heart disease). He further wants to disrupt the energy market by somehow forcing them to sell energy for cheaper than the market price. My arguments against this were 1) even with building a coal fired plant right next to a mine (which won’t be grandfathered in via the EPA regarding pollution regulations; he doesn’t have that magnitude of leverage); the mine still can’t compete with WY unless it’s a strip mine; 2) WV already exports half of it’s generated electricity and what little demand growth there is is being satisfied by renewables and natural gas fired plants; we already have 10 or so coal plants if i recall correctly; we don’t need any more and the market isn’t asking for any more; 3) the 4 billion dollars he plans to spend could go directly to efficiency upgrades and retrofits and could in theory (on paper, using Lazzard’s LCOE numbers) offset more energy use than the state uses per year. It could offset 80M MWh of power use; whilst the state only consumes like 36M MWh per year. So applying that 4 billion dollars to efficiency, we could drop the defacto electricity ‘rate’ (i.e. cost to end user) well below the 10% cut he wants to force the grid to incur via USSR style command-control; all in the name of attracting businesses to the area. Basically I think his plan is a pie in the sky type plan that is a fancy way of telling constituents that he’ll bring jobs to WV. He doesn’t mention how much money he’ have to raise in taxes to afford 4B dollars worth of plants though, which I suppose businesses wouldn’t be too keen with.
It is rather odd that the democratic nominee for WV’s governor’s race is a climate denier though!
inartfully worded. West Virginia’s own “version” of Donald Trump perhaps.
Enjoyed the read… but don’t you have better things to do with your time than to come up with such a silly title?
Thanks for the laugh, although the subject matter is not funny….
Silly? What would you think if he had also included “….as Conservatives Clamor in Confusion over the Corporate Conundrum of Capitalism versus Catastrophic Climate Change”?
not getting rich, might as well have fun
“but don’t you have better things to do with your time than to come up with such a silly title?”
Sorry…. What are you alliterating to?
Someone gave me a downvote for my comment?!?
Have You No Sense of Decency, sir?
At least a sense of humor?
Karma’s a szuka.
Thanks Peter – it was awesome!
thanks for your input. perfect example of synergy that helps me do this. keep me in your loop!
Will do!
I don’t know if Facebook privacy issues will let everyone see these personal pictures I’m seeing from different WV residents, but I’ll try to post a link nonetheless:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2047085395517117&set=pcb.2047093512182972&type=3&theater
This looks like destruction in and around The Greenbrier.
Its a sad time in West Virginia righ now.
I think the description given by andrewfez of situation is pretty accurate. He did leave out one component of the Jim Justice story that seems a bit Trump-like. Justice and his dozens of coal companies have been sued many times for failure to comply with environmental permits and with failure to pay contractors.
While I completely agree that the storms were made worse by the man-made climate weirding we are now experiencing, I think right now maybe folks should drop the rhetoric and just help the victims.
One more thing. I listened to the evening weather report the night before the storm, and there was no warning of catastrophic weather ahead. I definitely got the impression that West Virginia was in for some heavy weather, with some small stream flash flooding. In othe words the creek might rise. That sort of thing happens every summer. What actually happened was much more than some stormy weather, and was nothing like described the night before.
Marty
https://robertscribbler.com/2016/06/24/bad-rains-fall-across-globe-700000-evacuated-in-kyushu-deluge-as-worst-flood-in-100-years-inundates-west-virginia/
Bad Rains Fall Across Globe — 700,000 Evacuated in Kyushu Deluge as Worst Flood in 100 Years Inundates West Virginia
The Article and especially the comments may provide some further enlightenment for you.
Get used to it, however the future cycles will be more extreme.
Make intelligent informed judgements
A little thought, no one in that part of the world or in the Republican sphere seems to be concerned about helping climate change victims elsewhere in the world, yet now it is suddenly starting to hit home, we are supposed to feel sorry for them.
No one wants to see anyone one suffer, but quid quo pro, what goes around comes around, we all live in the one world
Right… It’s OUR cost of THEIR doing business… Even when we don’t buy their products!
And, when we complain of their environmental damage, the replies often are 1. “government regulations required us to comply” and, 2. “we have to pass the extra costs on to the consumer, so your prices will increase.”
————–
Well, the regulations were established to protect residents and citizens FROM the environmental degradation because business will NEVER do it on their own (generally speaking: there are a few good examples, however.). So we pay with taxes to enforce regulations and bring to trial the polluters, etc. (paying once and again), suffer the health effects and property damage of contamination, flooding, pollution, etc., (that is, pay twice and more), then again (a third time) if we ever buy their products! Oh, hell, did I include insurance costs (or, that laughable term, “premiums”)? – – – -> (If you have anything to add, reply by copy/paste and adding your own notes!! Help yourself…)
It was one of those rare “train effects” in which a series of heavy downpours (common) tracked along the exact same line over a long period of time (uncommon). The tragic consequences were caused by an unusual (but not rare) weather pattern and had nothing to do with “climate change.”
weird how those events that have “nothing to do with climate change” keep getting more and more common as the planet warms.
“had nothing to do with “climate change.””
Oh, of course not!
The fact that the geosphere is hotter, more energetic, more erratic – with an atmosphere that carries more water vapor than before AGW started HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO with cataclysmically severe weather events.
“…nothing to do with “climate change.”” is a meme that won’t cut it anymore. There is not any weather anymore that is independent of climate change.
News reports say the rains were caused by a “derecho”, which is sort of a self-perpetuating storm that moves in a straight line, with a derecho being defined as a front that is 250 miles wide or more. IIUC, derechos form when a storm front gets pushed along rapidly enough in a straight line by backing winds. Downdrafts from the front can lift up warm moist air in front of the storm. (And, yes, this can produce tornados.) The warm moist air gets sucked into the rising air of storm system, dropping more rain that cools air and produces more downdrafts that fan out in front of the storm and lift up more warm moist air that gets drawn in, and so on. Straight-line winds, sometimes of hurricane force, and intense rain are characteristic. The Wikipedia entry for derecho has a graphic showing West Virginia as typically getting a derecho every two years. I haven’t yet found statistics on it, but they seem much more frequent than that…