environment Politics: denialists idiots Republican obstructionism rising ocean levels rising sea levels
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Year 3, Month 7, Day 6: Keep Your Eyes Wide
The Boston Globe:
As temperatures are projected to climb, polar ice to melt, and oceans to swell over the coming decades, Boston is likely to bear a disproportionate impact of rising sea levels, government scientists report in a new study.
The seas along the East Coast from North Carolina to New England are rising three to four times faster than the global average, and coastal cities, utilities, beaches, and wetlands are increasingly vulnerable to flooding, especially from storm surges, according to the US Geological Survey study published Sunday.
“Cities in the hot spot, like Norfolk, New York, and Boston, already experience damaging floods during relatively low-intensity storms,” said Asbury Sallenger, a Geological Survey oceanographer and lead author of the study in the journal Nature Climate Change. “Accelerated sea-level rise,” he said, will add to “the height that storm surges and breaking waves reach on the coast.”
Figured the times were ripe for a little bit of old Prophet Bob. Sent June 25:
The times they are indeed a’changin’. Climate-change denialists must be finding it difficult to cling to their bizarre conspiracy theories in the face of the latest reports from the U.S. Geological Survey, predicting that rising ocean levels will radically alter the East coast of the United States over the next few decades, a forecast entirely congruent with other scientific analyses of the effects from a melting Arctic ice cap.
The insurance industry’s changing its coverage model to account for damages caused by climate change; the American military’s developing new strategic protocols for a post-greenhouse-effect world; US intelligence agencies are trying to anticipate the geopolitical impact of global warming. These bastions of liberalism are all following Bob Dylan’s advice to “…admit that the waters around you have grown, and accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone.”
When will our Senators and Congressmen “please heed the call”?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility fossil fuels sustainability
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Year 3, Month 7, Day 5: Right Time, Wrong Place?
We need more like this (from the Washington Post):
LONDON — Four climate change activists scaled gates at Queen Elizabeth II’s Buckingham Palace home on Saturday and locked themselves to railings in a protest demanding more urgent action to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The group, from the Climate Siren environmentalist movement, wore T-shirts with the slogan “Climate emergency. 10 percent annual emission cuts” and chanted through a loud hailer.
London’s Metropolitan Police said the four had climbed up a gate at the front of the palace and secured themselves to it, sitting with their legs through the railings.
The protesters unfurled a banner quoting a 2008 speech by Prince Charles, the queen’s son and heir, warning over a lack of progress on tacking climate change. It read: “’The doomsday clock of climate change is ticking ever faster towards midnight.”
This letter was an easy one to write. Sent June 24:
It’s easy to share the anger and urgency of the British environmentalists who recently locked themselves to the gates of Buckingham Palace. After all, the grim scientific news on climate change is depressingly complemented by the systemic paralysis of our political system when it comes to tackling the most crucial issue of our time.
But those four activists are directing their intensity at the wrong palace. While British royalty offers a telegenic backdrop, they’re not the real villains of the climate crisis. That role is reserved for the giant multinational corporations currently fighting tooth and nail to guard their exorbitant profits against meaningful climate and environment policies. They are the drug dealers to the world, misrepresenting their product as “cheap” and “harmless” when it is neither. The corporate headquarters and boardrooms of these oligarchs are more appropriate targets for the outrage of those justifiably concerned about our threatened planet.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture National Research Council rising sea levels sustainability Water
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Year 3, Month 7, Day 4: Stop Me Before I Strike Again!
California’s gonna get a soaker sometime soon (SF Chronicle):
Global sea-level rise, induced by the warming climate, will hit California’s coastline harder than the other West Coast states over the coming decades and on through the end of the century, according to a new report from the National Research Council.
Oceans around the world are rising, but seas around California will rise even higher – by more than 3 feet before 2100, the report says. Tide gauges and satellites show that the rate of sea-level rise has increased steadily since 1900, and with each passing decade, storm surges and high waves will put low-lying regions like the Bay Area at heightened risk of dangerous flooding.
The forecasts come from the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences, which appointed the 12-member committee to investigate earlier estimates of sea-level rise and factor in all new available evidence. The result was a 260-page report issued Friday.
The report was commissioned primarily by California’s Department of Water Resources, along with state agencies from Oregon and Washington in order to aid their planning efforts.
Another job-killing bureaucracy to kill! Sent June 23:
The next few decades are going to be ones of drastic transition for many Americans. Insulated by our wealth and elaborate consumer lifestyle, we have lost sight of the fact that ultimately our lives entirely depend on our increasingly tenuous control of water.
Now, as rising oceans transform our coastlines, inland states anticipate water shortages. Even as our vulnerable aquifers are overused by an expanding population, climate change makes weather more unpredictable and droughts more extreme. It doesn’t take Nostradamus to see that this future isn’t going to be kind to us, despite the glib pronouncements of denialists in politics and the media.
In a sensible world, the National Research Council’s report on global sea-level rise would be a wake-up call for all of us, everywhere. Since our world is anything but sensible, what are the odds that the next Republican “jobs” bill will also eliminate funding for the NRC?
Warren Senders
environment music Politics: humor idiots Republicans
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Colbert takes on North Carolina…
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environment India Indian music music: benefit concert genius
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Flutes Against Climate Change: Steve Gorn’s Set
At long last, we can begin to upload the music from May 19th’s Playing For The Planet concert.
Here is Steve Gorn’s set, with Akshay Navaladi on tabla and me playing tamboura. He began with a lovely Kaunsi Kanada:
Followed by this Bhatiyali dhun:
Finally concluding the concert with a ravishing Bhairavi:
environment: denialists idiots rising sea levels
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Year 3, Month 7, Day 3: Today Is The Tomorrow You Worried About Yesterday
The Appleton Post-Crescent (WI) has a shrill editorial from a chap named Howard Brown, titled, “Commentary: Climate change isn’t fictional.” Indeed:
Is it just me, or has it been a little warm around here lately? Or warmer earlier? The early and unusually mild spring here in Wisconsin may be nature’s way of reminding us that the clock is ticking on climate change and we need to take action before it’s too late.
While stationed in Kangerlussuac, Greenland, 50 years ago, I noted my airbase was 4 miles west of the Russell Glacier grinding down from the ice cap. Looking at today’s satellite images, this glacier has retreated to the east toward the ice cap, easily noted from the satellite. The retreat averages 1,000 feet per year, producing a torrent of melt water that flows down the fjord and to the sea.
Glacial retreat is one indicator that global warming is taking its toll. Today, in more populated areas of the earth, disappearing glaciers are responsible for drought, loss of irrigation water and less drinking water. As much as 54 cubic miles of ice disappear each year in Antarctica, 24 cubic miles per year in Greenland. As this ice melts, ocean levels rise and coastal regions flood.
Read the comments for the full flavor. SOS. Sent June 22:
When we listen to climate-change denialists, we hear it over and over again: while the planet’s climate is changing, there’s no reason to worry; it’s all happened before, and anyway, there’s no way humans’ greenhouse emissions could be involved.
Well, Earth’s climate has indeed been changing for billions of years. But in general, those changes have happened over many thousands of years, giving ecosystems a chance to adapt. Fossil evidence and the geological record strongly suggest that when an external event accelerated those slow transformations, the resulting climate change was catastrophic for many of the world’s inhabitants (65 million years ago, an asteroid hit the Earth — and the dinosaurs lost the world they’d lived in for eons). The overwhelming climatological consensus is that we stand on the brink of a similarly abrupt and equally devastating shift.
With our civilization now having transformed almost fifty percent of the planet’s surface, it’s increasingly apparent that humanity has inadvertently crafted its very own asteroid. If we wish to sustain our species over the tumultuous environmental disruptions promised for the next ten thousand years, we can no longer afford the luxury of denial. The dinosaurs probably thought they’d live forever, too.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility hunger sustainability
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Year 3, Month 7, Day 2: The Hunger Games?
USA Today’s Wendy Koch:
As leaders from more than 130 nations convene a United Nations conference on sustainable development Wednesday, new research shows how climate change will likely exacerbate a key issue: hunger.
The number of undernourished women and young children could increase 20% and affect one of every five within a decade because of climate change’s impact on food production, according to an analysis by the World Health Organization and other groups. Today, one in seven or 495 million women and children under age 5 lack sufficient food, the report says, adding population growth will worsen the problem.
Eventually they’re going to eat the rich. Sent on June 21:
The connections are obvious: more unpredictable weather means fewer predictable crops, which means more hunger, privation and misery. A mother facing a catastrophic crop failure can ill afford the luxury of pretending that the planetary greenhouse effect is a conspiracy ginned up by a liberal cabal. An undernourished child cannot silence hunger pangs with out-of-context statistics.
Furthermore, the humanitarian consequences of climate change are only part of the picture. Starvation has its own devastating geopolitical impacts, and any robust environmental policy must address them before they threaten global security. Our political paralysis in the face of this threat demonstrates once again that climate-change denial is the exclusive prerogative of the economically protected. If the wealthy power-brokers in corporate boardrooms and the halls of Congress could abandon their gourmet lunches and finally face a hungry, thirsty, malnourished world, perhaps they’d stop blocking progress towards a meaningful global agreement on climate.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: cities sustainability urban planning
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Year 3, Month 7, Day 1: The Old Gray Mayor Just Ain’t What He Used To Be
Michael Bloomberg wants you to know that he’s on the case:
Again and again, Bloomberg stressed the contrast between the paralysis of national governments and the agility of municipal authorities, which he said were up to meeting the social and environmental challenges of the 21st century.
“We don’t have the luxury of just sitting back and talking about the problems because on a whole range of critical action, the buck stops at city hall,’’ said Bloomberg, adding that cities are key players in the fight against global warming because about 75 percent of global emissions take place within city limits.
“We aren’t arguing with each other over reduction targets, we’re making progress individually and collectively to improve our cities and the planet,’’ he told journalists on a conference call ahead of Tuesday’s event. He added that two-thirds of the C40 initiatives to combat climate change were financed solely out of municipal budgets, with no funds from national governments.
Some of the projects already under way include Paris’ rental bike and electric car programs, Bogota’s electric taxis, Los Angeles’ use of more efficient bulbs LED in its street lights, and the improved solid waste collection initiatives by New Delhi, Lagos and Mexico City.
Good for them. How about some large-scale support? Sent June 20:
Given that well over three-quarters of Americans (and over half the world’s population) live in cities, sustainable urban design is an idea whose time has clearly come. The fight against climate change requires us to feed and shelter the world’s steadily-increasing population while simultaneously significantly reducing greenhouse emissions — an impossible task without the economies of scale and increased efficiency cities provide.
But a climate-changed world poses enormous challenges to urban planners. Extreme weather will stress infrastructure to the breaking point, our already-vulnerable agricultural systems will be hard-pressed to feed millions of people, and unlimited fresh water is no longer something any of us can take for granted.
Cities around the world will play a crucial role in our struggle against the burgeoning greenhouse effect — but they must be supported with robust environmental and energy policy initiatives at all levels of governance from local to international.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: cities corporate irresponsibility corporations Rio climate conference
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Year 3, Month 6, Day 30: Burning Disappointment
Four dozen of the world’s largest cities have taken steps to cut 248 million tons of greenhouse-gas emissions by 2020, according to a report issued Tuesday, an announcement aimed at demonstrating that environmental progress can continue in the absence of a broad international climate agreement.
The news, which New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg will deliver along with Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes at this week’s Rio+20 Earth Summit, highlights the fractured policymaking landscape that defines environmental issues today. While more than 130 world leaders will try to hammer out a negotiated statement in Rio by week’s end about their sustainable development goals, many of the concrete steps are being taking by community leaders.
“We’re not arguing with each other about emissions targets,” Bloomberg told reporters in a teleconference Monday. “What we’re doing is going out and making progress.”
The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group — a network of 59 cities, including Los Angeles; Tokyo; Bogota, Colombia; and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — was launched in 2005 to provide support for mayors hoping to cut greenhouse-gas emissions in urban centers across the globe. The group analyzed data from 48 cities to determine a suite of policies that are now in place to cut 248 million tons of greenhouse gases, the equivalent of taking 44 million passenger vehicles off the road for a year.
As usual, the conference has fucked the duck. Sent June 19:
The world’s cities have an enormous role to play in the fight against climate change, and the work of the C40 Cities group in setting up realistic frameworks for greenhouse emissions reductions demonstrates what people can do once they focus their attention on the urgency of the problem.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the Rio climate conference as a whole. The Rio+20 Earth Summit’s negotiating text is an embarrassment to its authors and to the participating nations, demonstrating conclusively (as if further proof were needed) the extent to which the economic power of multinational corporations has hindered the development of climate solutions.
Meaningful strategies for coping with the climate crisis will range in scale from individual/local to collective/planetary. There’s much that cities and towns can do to prepare — but without committed leadership at the international level, we’ll never be able to mobilize our resources fully and completely.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes economics idiots sustainability
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Year 3, Month 6, Day 29: There’s A Reason I Don’t Buy Those Shitty Chisels At The Borg
Sigh. The Marysville, CA Appeal-Democrat offers us a confirmation of the old saw: another day, another dullard.
Enjoy:
Real life is foiling climate alarmists’ schemes to transform the world into a green Utopia. About 130 world leaders will gather in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, this week to establish more rules, regulations and transfers of wealth, ostensibly to eradicate poverty and protect the environment.
This is yet another U.N. attempt to advance its war against what first was demonized as “global warming,” then “climate change” — when temperatures flattened out. The movement now frames its mission as “sustainable development.”
Make no mistake, what they hope to sustain is the same tired attempt to move mountains of wealth from nations that create it to nations that don’t, along the way enriching government budgets and lining pockets of facilitators, opportunists and cronies. Think Solyndra.
Changing the real world into an imaginary green holy land has run up against reality. Europe is in economic crisis. Emerging economies in China, Brazil, India and Russia grow more resistant to underwriting costs that would retard their economies.
The conference is a misguided movement directed at an inappropriate demon. If climate zealots got their way, they would retard living conditions, not improve them.
With a 250-word limit, I let myself go a bit. Sent June 18:
Leave aside the question of whether it’s really a pejorative to describe people concerned about the survival of our civilization as “climate alarmists” (everyone agrees that fire alarms are a good thing). Leave aside the fact that the change in terminology from “global warming” to “climate change” was suggested and promulgated by Republican strategist Frank Luntz as a way to make the problem seem less threatening (and only accidentally coinciding more closely with reality).
Let’s look for a moment at your editorial’s outrage at the idea of “sustainability.” Everyone knows: you can’t live beyond your means. Spending more than you make can also be described as “wasting your resources.” Citizens of wealthy nations currently waste more resources than those of poor nations; recognition of this fact is not reflexive anti-capitalism, but a willingness to describe reality clearly.
The common sense underlying our willingness to buy better tools, sturdier clothes, and healthier food even if they’re a bit more expensive (since we save money in the long run) has a name: “sustainability.” With seven billion people on the planet, it’s sensible to figure out ways to stop wasting resources while reducing the sum total of human misery. That’s called “sustainable development.”
While there are undoubtedly “profiteering opportunists” running “sustainability” scams, it’s hard to compare them with the real profiteers: giant oil companies which garner astronomical returns from encouraging all of us to burn their products without regard for the consequences.
Warren Senders
If it’s your birthday today, happy birthday.