[TheClimate.Vote] May 28, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/May 28, 2018/

[Devastating deluge again]
*Man missing after "1,000-year flood" ravages Ellicott City for 2nd time 
in two years 
<https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ellicott-city-maryland-floods-officials-assess-destruction-missing-man/>*
ELLICOTT CITY, Md. -- After flash floods sent cars floating down Main 
Street in historic Ellicott City, Maryland, local officials said they 
were heartbroken to see the community so severely damaged again less 
than two years after a devastating flood killed two people and caused 
millions in damages. CBS News correspondent Jeff Pegues reports that 
Howard County officials confirm that there is one person missing.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ellicott-city-maryland-floods-officials-assess-destruction-missing-man/
- - -
*Dramatic video as flash flood strikes Ellicott City in Maryland 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrro39JMsJo>*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrro39JMsJo

[Grace Satellite data trends]
*Severe Global Water Cycle Shifts from Abrupt Climate Change 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldrpsq_L-wY>*
Paul Beckwith - Published May 27, 2018
Freshwater availability for drinking is being disrupted around Earth. 
Same for irrigation water relied upon to grow many crops. Soils are 
drying out and groundwater is being depleted much faster than it can be 
recharged. Alpine glacier water storage in snow and ice is collapsing, 
and extreme droughts in some places and torrential rains with floods in 
other places is accelerating. I discuss Terrestrial Water Storage (TWS) 
measurements from GRACE satellites, and changes around Earth from 2002 
to 2016, while the satellites ran.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldrpsq_L-wY


[Snopes confirms fact]
*Emails Show Cooperation Between EPA and Climate-Change Deniers 
<https://www.snopes.com/ap/2018/05/27/epa-emails-climate-change-denial/>*
The newly-released emails reveal Environmental Protection Agency 
officials have worked to organize events and hearings with conservative 
groups such as the Heartland Institute.
- - - -
Follow-up emails show Konkus and the Heartland Institute mustering 
scores of potential invitees known for rejecting scientific warnings of 
man-made climate-change, including from groups like Plants Need CO2, The 
Right Climate Stuff, and Junk Science.
The emails underscore how Pruitt and senior agency officials have sought 
to surround themselves with people who share their vision of curbing 
environmental regulation and enforcement, leading to complaints from 
environmentalists that he is ignoring the conclusions of the majority of 
scientists in and out of his agency especially when it comes to 
climate-changing carbon emissions...
https://www.snopes.com/ap/2018/05/27/epa-emails-climate-change-denial/https://www.snopes.com/ap/2018/05/27/epa-emails-climate-change-denial/


[video via Peter Sinclair]
*Congress’ Leading Climate Denier, Russian Tool, Bigot – Dana 
Rohrabacher is Target of Hilarious Ad 
<https://climatecrocks.com/2018/05/26/congress-leading-climate-denier-russian-tool-bigot-dana-rohrabacher-is-target-of-hilarious-ad/>* 

Rouda vs. Rohrabacher Debate: Moderated by Jason Alexander
https://youtu.be/9OHm1s7-2vg
https://climatecrocks.com/2018/05/26/congress-leading-climate-denier-russian-tool-bigot-dana-rohrabacher-is-target-of-hilarious-ad/


[Harsh news with positive bias]
*Dear media: We need more stories about resilience to climate change 
<http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-arnold-climate-change-resilience-20180527-story.html>*
By Elizabeth Arnold - May 27, 2018
Overwhelmed by climate change? It's not your fault.
Actually, you are to blame for climate change. But it's the media's 
fault for making you feel completely hopeless about it.
- - - -
I'm not alone, apparently. A surprising number of scholars are studying 
how the public responds to climate news. There's even a Media and 
Climate Change Observatory that keeps daily track of climate-related 
stories. In 2004, its founder, Max Boykoff, was among the first to 
identify a trend of "false balance" in the early reporting. That's the 
practice of pairing a contrarian view from an organization skeptical of 
climate change to "balance" the view of a reputable climate scientist. 
Several years later, Boykoff took another look and found that most news 
organizations had self-corrected. More recently, he called attention to 
a "trend of daily fear, misery and doom" that leaves audiences feeling 
powerless.
This doesn't mean we should stop reporting the terrifying realities. But 
it does mean we need to start telling stories about effective responses: 
practical, replicable examples of how individuals, businesses and 
governments are tackling climate change. It may smack of advocacy, but 
what self-respecting public health reporter would do a story about an 
epidemic without including information about an available vaccine or how 
to avoid infection?
Take Newtok, for example. That community is not waiting and watching 
helplessly as homes are erased by the sea. Quite the opposite is true: 
It's a place where indigenous people are adapting in order to stay in a 
region where they've managed to weather wrenching environmental and 
cultural change for thousands of years.
- - - -
If we journalists were able to self-correct for false balance, surely we 
can self-correct for an overly narrow narrative that amounts to a steady 
drip of catastrophic predictions. Newtok, a community "doomed" by 
climate change, has figured out how to adapt — one innovative idea, one 
grant, one barge load at a time. It will not cease to exist. In fact, 
life might even be a little bit better on higher, more solid ground and 
with fresh water. It's a story worth telling.
Elizabeth Arnold is a Shorenstein fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School and 
a journalism professor at University of Alaska Anchorage. She was 
previously a correspondent for National Public Radio.
more at: 
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-arnold-climate-change-resilience-20180527-story.html


[Holy guacamole!]
*Are avocados toast? 
<https://grist.org/article/whatll-we-eat-in-2050-california-farmers-are-placing-bets/>*
What will we eat in 2050? California farmers are placing bets.
https://grist.org/article/whatll-we-eat-in-2050-california-farmers-are-placing-bets/


[Opinion - Chris Hedges economic doomieness]
*The Coming Collapse 
<https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/05/21/coming-collapse>*
It is impossible for any doomed population to grasp how fragile the 
decayed financial, social and political system is on the eve of implosion.
by Chris Hedges
The Trump administration did not rise, prima facie, like Venus on a half 
shell from the sea. Donald Trump is the result of a long process of 
political, cultural and social decay. He is a product of our failed 
democracy. The longer we perpetuate the fiction that we live in a 
functioning democracy, that Trump and the political mutations around him 
are somehow an aberrant deviation that can be vanquished in the next 
election, the more we will hurtle toward tyranny. The problem is not 
Trump. It is a political system, dominated by corporate power and the 
mandarins of the two major political parties, in which we don’t count. 
We will wrest back political control by dismantling the corporate state, 
and this means massive and sustained civil disobedience, like that 
demonstrated by teachers around the country this year. If we do not 
stand up we will enter a new dark age.
The Democratic Party, which helped build our system of inverted 
totalitarianism, is once again held up by many on the left as the 
savior. Yet the party steadfastly refuses to address the social 
inequality that led to the election of Trump and the insurgency by 
Bernie Sanders. It is deaf, dumb and blind to the very real economic 
suffering that plagues over half the country. It will not fight to pay 
workers a living wage. It will not defy the pharmaceutical and insurance 
industries to provide Medicare for all. It will not curb the voracious 
appetite of the military that is disemboweling the country and promoting 
the prosecution of futile and costly foreign wars. It will not restore 
our lost civil liberties, including the right to privacy, freedom from 
government surveillance, and due process. It will not get corporate and 
dark money out of politics. It will not demilitarize our police and 
reform a prison system that has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners 
although the United States has only 5 percent of the world’s population. 
It plays to the margins, especially in election seasons, refusing to 
address substantive political and social problems and instead focusing 
on narrow cultural issues like gay rights, abortion and gun control in 
our peculiar species of anti-politics.
In an open and democratic political process, one not dominated by party 
elites and corporate money, these people would not hold political power. 
They know this. They would rather implode the entire system than give up 
their positions of privilege.
This is a doomed tactic, but one that is understandable. The leadership 
of the party, the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Tom Perez, are 
creations of corporate America. In an open and democratic political 
process, one not dominated by party elites and corporate money, these 
people would not hold political power. They know this. They would rather 
implode the entire system than give up their positions of privilege. And 
that, I fear, is what will happen. The idea that the Democratic Party is 
in any way a bulwark against despotism defies the last three decades of 
its political activity. It is the guarantor of despotism.
Trump has tapped into the hatred that huge segments of the American 
public have for a political and economic system that has betrayed them. 
He may be inept, degenerate, dishonest and a narcissist, but he adeptly 
ridicules the system they despise. His cruel and demeaning taunts 
directed at government agencies, laws and the established elites 
resonate with people for whom these agencies, laws and elites have 
become hostile forces. And for many who see no shift in the political 
landscape to alleviate their suffering, Trump’s cruelty and invective 
are at least cathartic.
Trump, like all despots, has no ethical core. He chooses his allies and 
appointees based on their personal loyalty and fawning obsequiousness to 
him. He will sell anyone out. He is corrupt, amassing money for 
himself—he made $40 million from his Washington, D.C., hotel alone last 
year—and his corporate allies. He is dismantling government institutions 
that once provided some regulation and oversight. He is an enemy of the 
open society. This makes him dangerous. His turbocharged assault on the 
last vestiges of democratic institutions and norms means there will soon 
be nothing, even in name, to protect us from corporate totalitarianism.
But the warnings from the architects of our failed democracy against 
creeping fascism, Madeleine Albright among them, are risible. They show 
how disconnected the elites have become from the zeitgeist. None of 
these elites have credibility. They built the edifice of lies, deceit 
and corporate pillage that made Trump possible. And the more Trump 
demeans these elites, and the more they cry out like Cassandras, the 
more he salvages his disastrous presidency and enables the kleptocrats 
pillaging the country as it swiftly disintegrates.
It refuses to critique or investigate the abuses by corporate power, 
which has destroyed our democracy and economy and orchestrated the 
largest transfer of wealth upward in American history.
The press is one of the principal pillars of Trump’s despotism. It 
chatters endlessly like 17th-century courtiers at the court of 
Versailles about the foibles of the monarch while the peasants lack 
bread. It drones on and on and on about empty topics such as Russian 
meddling and a payoff to a porn actress that have nothing to do with the 
daily hell that, for many, defines life in America. It refuses to 
critique or investigate the abuses by corporate power, which has 
destroyed our democracy and economy and orchestrated the largest 
transfer of wealth upward in American history. The corporate press is a 
decayed relic that, in exchange for money and access, committed cultural 
suicide. And when Trump attacks it over “fake news,” he expresses, once 
again, the deep hatred of all those the press ignores. The press 
worships the idol of Mammon as slavishly as Trump does. It loves the 
reality-show presidency. The press, especially the cable news shows, 
keeps the lights on and the cameras rolling so viewers will be glued to 
a 21st-century version of “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.” It is good for 
ratings. It is good for profits. But it accelerates the decline.
All this will soon be compounded by financial collapse. Wall Street 
banks have been handed $16 trillion in bailouts and other subsidies by 
the Federal Reserve and Congress at nearly zero percent interest since 
the 2008 financial collapse. They have used this money, as well as the 
money saved through the huge tax cuts imposed last year, to buy back 
their own stock, raising the compensation and bonuses of their managers 
and thrusting the society deeper into untenable debt peonage. Sheldon 
Adelson’s casino operations alone got a $670 million tax break under the 
2017 legislation. The ratio of CEO to worker pay now averages 339 to 1, 
with the highest gap approaching 5,000 to 1. This circular use of money 
to make and hoard money is what Karl Marx called “fictitious capital.” 
The steady increase in public debt, corporate debt, credit card debt and 
student loan debt will ultimately lead, as Nomi Prins writes, to “a 
tipping point—when money coming in to furnish that debt, or available to 
borrow, simply won’t cover the interest payments. Then debt bubbles will 
pop, beginning with higher yielding bonds.”
An economy reliant on debt for its growth causes our interest rate to 
jump to 28 percent when we are late on a credit card payment. It is why 
our wages are stagnant or have declined in real terms—if we earned a 
sustainable income we would not have to borrow money to survive. It is 
why a university education, houses, medical bills and utilities cost so 
much. The system is designed so we can never free ourselves from debt.
However, the next financial crash, as Prins points out in her book 
“Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World,” won’t be like the 
last one. This is because, as she says, “there is no Plan B.” Interest 
rates can’t go any lower. There has been no growth in the real economy. 
The next time, there will be no way out. Once the economy crashes and 
the rage across the country explodes into a firestorm, the political 
freaks will appear, ones that will make Trump look sagacious and benign.
And so, to quote Vladimir Lenin, what must be done?
We must invest our energy in building parallel, popular institutions to 
protect ourselves and to pit power against power. These parallel 
institutions, including unions, community development organizations, 
local currencies, alternative political parties and food cooperatives, 
will have to be constructed town by town. The elites in a time of 
distress will retreat to their gated compounds and leave us to fend for 
ourselves. Basic services, from garbage collection to public 
transportation, food distribution and health care, will collapse. 
Massive unemployment and underemployment, triggering social unrest, will 
be dealt with not through government job creation but the brutality of 
militarized police and a complete suspension of civil liberties. Critics 
of the system, already pushed to the margins, will be silenced and 
attacked as enemies of the state. The last vestiges of labor unions will 
be targeted for abolition, a process that will soon be accelerated given 
the expected ruling in a case before the Supreme Court that will cripple 
the ability of public-sector unions to represent workers. The dollar 
will stop being the world’s reserve currency, causing a steep 
devaluation. Banks will close. Global warming will extract heavier and 
heavier costs, especially on the coastal populations, farming and the 
infrastructure, costs that the depleted state will be unable to address. 
The corporate press, like the ruling elites, will go from burlesque to 
absurdism, its rhetoric so patently fictitious it will, as in all 
totalitarian states, be unmoored from reality. The media outlets will 
all sound as fatuous as Trump. And, to quote W.H. Auden, “the little 
children will die in the streets.”
As a foreign correspondent I covered collapsed societies, including the 
former Yugoslavia. It is impossible for any doomed population to grasp 
how fragile the decayed financial, social and political system is on the 
eve of implosion. All the harbingers of collapse are visible: crumbling 
infrastructure; chronic underemployment and unemployment; the 
indiscriminate use of lethal force by police; political paralysis and 
stagnation; an economy built on the scaffolding of debt; nihilistic mass 
shootings in schools, universities, workplaces, malls, concert venues 
and movie theaters; opioid overdoses that kill some 64,000 people a 
year; an epidemic of suicides; unsustainable military expansion; 
gambling as a desperate tool of economic development and government 
revenue; the capture of power by a tiny, corrupt clique; censorship; the 
physical diminishing of public institutions ranging from schools and 
libraries to courts and medical facilities; the incessant bombardment by 
electronic hallucinations to divert us from the depressing sight that 
has become America and keep us trapped in illusions. We suffer the usual 
pathologies of impending death. I would be happy to be wrong. But I have 
seen this before. I know the warning signs. All I can say is get ready.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/05/21/coming-collapse


[Call your librarian]
*7 Novels That Will Fire You Up About Climate Change 
<https://www.ozy.com/good-sht/7-novels-that-will-fire-you-up-about-climate-change/86076>*
It’s called cli-fi and it might be another way to help save the planet.
By Amy Brady - The Daily Dose - MAY 27 2018
Scientists have been trying to warn us about climate change’s most 
devastating effects for decades. Now fiction writers are helping their 
cause, crafting stories that help readers imagine glacier melt, sea 
level rise and other climate-related scenarios.
Often called climate fiction, or cli-fi, the genre “helps writers 
overcome some of the most profound communication challenges” that the 
phenomenon presents, says Elizabeth Rush, visiting lecturer at Brown 
University. Why? Because climate change is “slow-moving and intensely 
place-based,” it can be difficult to notice in our day-to-day lives, she 
explains — and with climate fiction, “you can do just that. You can 
imagine being a person whom flood or drought displaces, and with that 
imaginative stance can come radical empathy.”
*Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta*
Set in the near future in Scandinavia, this novel, Itäranta’s first, is 
speculative fiction at its best. Climate change has ravaged the planet, 
and in its wake, China has come to rule Europe, and wars are waged over 
precious resources like water. Amid all this, 17-year-old Noria Kaitio 
strives to be a “tea master” like her father and, in doing so, has 
learned of a secret water source. When her father dies, the national 
army begins watching her closely, and she must decide whether to keep 
her secret and risk her safety or tell it and risk betraying those 
closest to her.
*The Lamentations of Zeno by Ilija Trojanow; translated by Philip Boehm*
This literary work of climate fiction is written in a modernist style 
that captures the fragmented thoughts of the protagonist, Zeno 
Hintermeier, in streams of consciousness. Greatly disturbed by the 
world’s rapidly declining glaciers, Hintermeier, a German scientist, 
embarks on a plan to convince the world to pay more attention to how 
humanity is destroying the planet. This plan comes at a time of personal 
trouble for Zeno: Just as his marriage is falling apart, he’s 
questioning how to keep his work relevant in a world that seems 
completely oblivious to global warming. The book is often despairing, 
but even its saddest parts are rendered in lovely, lyrical prose.
*The Carbon Diaries 2015 by Saci Lloyd*
Written in 2012, this young adult novel imagines an England in 2015 so 
deeply damaged by climate change that carbon rationing has begun. It 
stars 16-year-old Laura, who spends her days going to school and playing 
in a punk band. But her anxiety is growing over her parents’ pending 
divorce and an approaching hurricane that scientists predict will be the 
strongest ever to hit England. The novel is structured as the diary she 
keeps to make sense of her world as it grows more chaotic. Such a 
structure might turn some adults off, but Lloyd’s keen attention paid to 
real human emotion — in teenagers and adults — makes the book relatable 
for almost anyone.
*The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh*
Written by the author of The Great Derangement, a work of nonfiction 
that addresses the world’s need for more climate fiction, this ambitious 
literary novel combines lyricism with fast-paced action. Set on an 
archipelago of tiny islands located just off the coast of India, the 
novel follows Piya Roy, an American marine biologist of Indian descent, 
who’s thrown from a boat into water teeming with crocodiles. She’s saved 
by a local fisherman, with whom she learns to engage with the help of a 
translator. As the trio ventures deeper into the islands’ wilderness, 
they learn not only of the dangers of the encroaching tide — but also of 
the political turmoil that wreaks havoc on the islands’ people and land.
More Cli-Fi Reading:
*The World Without Us by Mireille Juchau**
**The End We Start From by Megan Hunter**
**Arctic Rising by Tobias S. Buckell*
https://www.ozy.com/good-sht/7-novels-that-will-fire-you-up-about-climate-change/86076


*This Day in Climate History - May 28, 2003 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/28/business/exxon-backs-groups-that-question-global-warming.html> 
- from D.R. Tucker*
May 28, 2003: The New York Times reports on ExxonMobil's crucial role in 
the climate-denial industry.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/28/business/exxon-backs-groups-that-question-global-warming.html 


/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
//Archive of Daily Global Warming News 
<https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html> 
//
/https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote//
///
///To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe 
<mailto:subscribe at theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request> 
/to news digest. /

        *** Privacy and Security: * This is a text-only mailing that
        carries no images which may originate from remote servers.
        Text-only messages provide greater privacy to the receiver and
        sender.
        By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain must be used for
        democratic and election purposes and cannot be used for
        commercial purposes.
        To subscribe, email: contact at theclimate.vote with subject: 
        subscribe,  To Unsubscribe, subject: unsubscribe
        Also youmay subscribe/unsubscribe at
        https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote
        Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Paulifor
        http://TheClimate.Vote delivering succinct information for
        citizens and responsible governments of all levels.   List
        membership is confidential and records are scrupulously
        restricted to this mailing list.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/attachments/20180528/e58daa83/attachment.html>