Month: September 2017

Has America hit bottom yet?

Miami Herald:

Miami’s Republican mayor called on President Donald Trump and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency Friday to acknowledge that climate change is playing a role in the extreme weather that has slammed his city and the continental U.S. this summer.

Speaking from Miami’s Emergency Operations Center in downtown, where the city’s senior public safety and political authorities will ride out Category 4 Hurricane Irma this weekend, Mayor Tomás Regalado told the Miami Herald that he believes warming and rising seas are threatening South Florida’s immediate and long-term future.

“This is the time to talk about climate change. This is the time that the president and the EPA and whoever makes decisions needs to talk about climate change,” said Regalado, who flew back to Miami from Argentina Friday morning to be in the city during the storm. “If this isn’t climate change, I don’t know what is. This is a truly, truly poster child for what is to come.”

Palm Beach Post:

Applause to Gov. Rick Scott for responding so quickly and decisively to Irma, this monster bearing down upon us.

On Monday, Labor Day, while the then-Category 4 was hundreds of miles away, nearly a week before projected landfall at Florida’s tip, Scott declared a state of emergency for all 67 counties. For days, he has appeared in his “Navy” ball cap in the role of commander of Florida’s emergency response, issuing orders and advice and demanding that citizens take the storm seriously. Scott’s quick action undoubtedly will have saved lives.

Once the wind dies down and the water recedes, we hope he can be just as decisive in abandoning his tunnel vision when it comes to the threat of climate change. His shortsightedness, and that of other climate “skeptics” have kept this nation from doing all it could to slow the escalation of such weather-driven catastrophes as this.
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We know that hurricanes feed on warm waters and that the oceans are warmer. We know that storm surges intensify with rising sea levels.

But that hasn’t been good enough for politicians like Scott, who famously fended off questions about sea-level rise with the wimp words, “I’m not a scientist.” Even more famously, he reportedly pressured workers at his environmental protection agency from uttering the words “climate change,” “sea-level rise” and “global warming” (Scott denies it).

This attitude is plumb fatal for Florida, surrounded on three sides by water and resting on a thin layer of porous limestone, under which water flows easily. Over the next 80 years, more than 6 million Floridians will be threatened by rising sea levels, according to a 2016 study. By 2030, $69 billion in property will be at risk from climate change, $15 billion of that from sea-level rise alone, according to the Risky Business project.

Associated Press:

Cara Mund is not worried that she may begin her year-long reign as Miss America by starting a Twitter war with the nation’s Tweeter-In-Chief.

The 23-year-old Miss North Dakota won the crown Sunday night in Atlantic City after saying in an onstage interview that President Donald Trump was wrong to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord. Continue reading “Hurricane Hang-Over: Waking Up to Climate Denial and Paranoia”

Jeff Goodell explains the mindset that has made Florida uniquely vulnerable to climate change and sea level rise.

Jeff’s new book is “The Water Will Come”.

Continue reading “Jeff Goodell on Florida: “There’s No One Looking at the Long Term””

Video is on the money, in light of newest announcement.

For the record, GM sells more cars in China than the US. (see below)

Bloomberg:

China will set a deadline for automakers to end sales of fossil-fuel powered vehicles, a move aimed at pushing companies to speed efforts in developing electric vehicles for the world’s biggest auto market.

Xin Guobin, the vice minister of industry and information technology, said the government is working with other regulators on a timetable to end production and sales. The move will have a profound impact on the environment and growth of China’s auto industry, Xin said at an auto forum in Tianjin on Saturday.

A ban on combustion-engine vehicles will help push both local and global automakers to shift toward electric vehicles, a carrot-and-stick approach that could boost sales of energy-efficient cars and trucks and reduce air pollution while serving the strategic goal of cutting oil imports. The government offers generous subsidies to makers of new-energy vehicles. It also plans to require automakers to earn enough credits or buy them from competitors with a surplus under a new cap-and-trade program for fuel economy and emissions.

Continue reading “BOOM. China to Ban Internal Combustion Engines”

They won’t come around. They can’t. Fragile psyches would not take the strain of acknowledging fact.

Avidly:

The Jade Helm 15 conspiracy theorists may have been able to convince Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to shoot his political career in the foot by indulging their paranoia, but their influence pales in comparison to climate deniers. Climate change deniers not only dominate both chambers of Congress, but numerous statehouses, the Republican Party, Fox News and much of AM radio.  Following their party’s dominance of the 2014 election, 49 Republican Senators voted against an amendment stating that “climate change is real and human activity significantly contributes to climate change.”

Fossil fuel dollars have helped make climate deniers the best-funded conspiracy theorists in America. The Koch brothers’ network alone is going to spend $900 million in the 2016 election cycle, which is about as much as either party will spend on their own. Much of this money will go to climate deniers. If the petroleum-profiting Koch brothers and their $900 million wanted a carbon tax, we would likely have a carbon tax. If they wanted a congressional investigation into Area 51, New Mexico would likely play host to a new batch of very high-powered UFO enthusiasts.

Money is only part of the story. There is also the growing conviction that more government equals less freedom. This is problematic for anyone who wants to do anything significant about climate change as the math requires more than bringing your own bag to the grocery store.  Cap and trade policies, carbon taxes or other government policies that demand systematic changes will need to happen if we want to maintain anything close to the climate we have now.

If government is the problem, how do you accept an issue like climate change where not only is government regulation necessary, but multinational agreements and regulations are required? The answer is you probably don’t. This is especially true when the same people pushing for environment regulations are not on your political team.

Inside Climate News:

Texas politicians have been particularly silent on climate change’s tie to the storm that ravaged their state. InsideClimate News received no response from Texas’ two senators, Republicans Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, or from Congressmen representing districts on the southeast coast that were affected by Harvey. The Washington Post also obtained no direct answerto a similar query to all 38 members of the Texas delegation.

Only Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Science Committee, responded to the Post, by pointing to a CNN interview in which Bill Read, former director of the National Hurricane Center, said there was nothing uncommon about storms intensifying in the Gulf of Mexico. (Climate scientists would agree with Read, but they say that warmer air and oceans will, indeed, fuel more dangerous storms.) Another frequent argument is that the U.S. had been in a “hurricane drought” without “major hurricanes” for 12 years. (Researchers point out that that period included both Hurricane Ike and Superstorm Sandy.)

Continue reading “In Face of Climate Fueled Disasters, Denialist Nutbags Double Down”

“..not gloating, just inconvenient truth.”

First up, the monologue. Below, Kids lawsuit on climate.

Daily Beast:

Rush Limbaugh will evacuate his South Florida residence in advance of Hurricane Irma, despite his previous claims that the news media had intentionally overhyped the storm to boost ratings and gin up fear about climate change. “I’m not going to get into details because of the security nature of things, but it turns out that we will not be able to do the program here tomorrow,” Limbaugh admitted on his radio show. “We’ll be on the air next week, folks, from parts unknown.” On Tuesday’s broadcast, Limbaugh claimed “There is a desire to advance this climate-change agenda and hurricanes are one of the fastest [ways] to do it.” He added that, via its storm coverage, the “liberal media” is “hell-bent on persuading people of [anthropogenic climate change].” Limbaugh also boasted Tuesday that he had been “exactly right since last Friday” in his predictions about Irma’s trajectory. Turns out he might have been wrong.

Below, bonus with Climate activist and author Xiuhtezcatl Martinez.

 

Continue reading “Bill Maher, Trump, Kids, Climate and Condoms”

I have one word.
Insects.

 

The next big franchise opportunity.

As of Saturday morning 11 am, most recent tracking for Irma has moved westward, possibly bringing it up along Florida’s Gulf Coast, potentially one of the most vulnerable locations for storm surge and flooding.

Washington Post:

TAMPA BAY, Fla. — Mark Luther’s dream home has a window that looks out to a world of water. He can slip out the back door and watch dolphins swim by his private dock. Shore birds squawk from nearby nests in giant mangroves.

He said it’s hard to imagine ever leaving this slice of paradise on St. Petersburg’s Bayou Grande, even though the water he adores is starting to get a little creepy.

Over the 24 years since he moved into the house, the bayou has inched up a protective sea wall and crept toward his front door. As sea level rises, a result of global warming, it contributes to flooding in his Venetian Isles neighborhood and Shore Acres, a neighboring community of homes worth as much as $2.5 million, about 70 times per year.

“Why stay?” asked Luther, an oceanographer who knows perfectly well a hurricane could one day shove 15 feet of water into his living room. “It’s just so nice.” Continue reading “Irma’s Latest Track could Be Tampa’s Worst Nightmare”

Waiting for the Friday-before-Labor-day news dump might have seemed like a good idea till Harvey showed up.

FYI, Climate Hawks has a petition drive against this appointment.

USA Today:

WASHINGTON — Jim Bridenstine, the Oklahoma Republican congressman President Trump tapped late Friday as NASA’s next administrator, is someone who champions commercial access to space, thinks a return to the moon is vital to U.S. strategic interests, and has dismissed the science behind climate change.

If the Senate confirms the 42-year-old former Navy flier, he would be the first elected politician to hold a job that’s been the purview of scientists, engineers and astronauts.

Bridenstine, who sits on the House Science, Space and Technology and the Armed Services committees, doesn’t have a formal science background. His last job before being elected to represent Oklahoma’s 1st District in 2012 was as executive director of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum & Planetarium.

Tulsa Today:

It is Bridenstine’s 21-month stint as the executive director of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum that is at issue and an official statement from Board Chairman Barbara Smallwood was distributed that begins, “The Tulsa Air and Space Museum is neither for nor against any candidate in any election.”

“While at the Tulsa Air and Space Museum, Jim Bridenstine developed the QuikTrip Air and Rocket Racing Show and the Land the Shuttle Campaign, both of which garnered tremendous visibility for the Tulsa Air and Space Museum. While Mr. Bridenstine was executive director attendance increased at the museum. In August 2010 Mr. Bridenstine voluntarily resigned from his position as Executive Director at the Tulsa Air and Space Museum in order to follow his orders in the Navy Reserves. “

In direct response TASM board member James E. Bertelsmeyer, released the following:

“As a longtime supporter of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum (TASM), it is my opinion that the best day for the museum was the day that Jim Bridenstine left.”

 

Not a joke: NASA nominee wants to strip “expansion of human knowledge” about space & Earth from NASA objectives https://t.co/k8Ld0U76Wr

— Carl Zimmer (@carlzimmer) September 9, 2017

“While these issues have since been corrected by his successor, during Jim’s tenure at TASM, as I recall, the membership numbers were down, employee and volunteer morale was very low and the finances and certainly the financial reporting were arguably the worst they had been in recent years.

“While I respect Jim’s service to our Country as an aviator, I can’t imagine how he is qualified to run a Congressional District if, in my judgment, he can’t effectively manage our Air and Space Museum,” Bertelsmeyer wrote.

The planetarium at TASM is named after Bertelsmeyer.

 

On the Issues:

Q: Do you believe that human activity is contributing to climate change?

A: No. The Earth’s climate has always varied substantially as demonstrated by pre-industrial human records and natural evidence. There is no doubt that human activity can change local conditions, but on a global scale natural processes including variations in solar output and ocean currents control climatic conditions. There is no credible scientific evidence that greenhouse gas atmospheric concentrations, including carbon dioxide, affect global climate. I oppose regulating greenhouse gases. Doing so will significantly increase energy prices and keep more people in poverty.

 

Harvard Business Review:

There was a time a decade or two ago when society could have made a choice to write off our massive investment in a fossil fuel-based economy and begin a policy driven shift towards a cleaner renewable infrastructure that could have forestalled the worst effects of climate change. But the challenges of collective action, a lack of political courage, and the power of incumbent pecuniary interests to capture the levers of power meant we did not. The bill is now coming due.

That means that many of our great, low-lying coastal cities are what we call “stranded assets.” GreenBiz founder Joel Makower defines a stranded asset as “a financial term that describes something that has become obsolete or nonperforming well ahead of its useful life, and must be recorded on a company’s balance sheet as a loss of profit.” Makower was talking about Exxon and other companies that built their businesses on the combustion of climate changing fossil fuels, not cities. But the concept easily transfers from businesses built on carbon to cities threatened by carbon’s impact.

Consider Miami. An invaluable, irreplaceable cultural jewel that will be stranded, both figuratively and literally, by climate change.

How can an entire metropolis that encompasses the lives, culture, and wellbeing of millions be considered “nonperforming?” The physical installations, infrastructures, and architecture upon which Miami are founded were built on what we now can see as a flawed assumption. An assumption of permanence. That the sea’s surface would stay as it had for the entirety of human experience. That Atlantic hurricane season would send infrequent storms of knowable magnitude that we could prepare for and ride out. It was that perception of permanence and predictability that underlay urban planning and shaped of tens of thousands of investment decisions that fostered billions of dollars of wealth in Miami. As long as nothing disturbs that perception, value will continue to accrue on paper. But if the perception of permanence that underlies those expectations is undercut, market value will disappear. Value is in the eyes of the buyer… until its not.

Climate change in general, and sea level rise in particular, are hard for us to see. The tides that surround Miami are elevating at a rate of centimeters per year. It is a slow motion train wreck that will be measured in decades, not seconds. For now, Miami property buyers don’t see it. A 2017 survey found that the majority of property buyers (over two-thirds) don’t ask even their brokers about the implications of climate change and sea level rise on the properties they are buying. Continue reading “Will Miami Become a Stranded Asset?”

Continue reading “Irma Update: September 8, Friday”