[✔️] April 14, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest.

[Richard Pauli]

/*April 14, 2021*/

[Well known warning]
*Western states on verge of worst drought in modern history*
Over the last 20 years, the two worst droughts occurred in 2003 and 2013.
By Jenna Romaine | April 12, 2021

*Story at a glance*
The Western U.S. entered a megadrought in 2000.
The megadrought was caused by a combination of dry elements and climate 
change.
The 2020 fire season was the West’s worst in recent history.
Some scientists believe the Western United States is on the verge of a 
permanent drought.

A permanent drought is characterized by an unchanging dry climate, 
sparse vegetation and increased risk of wildfires.

Recent years have seen expansive droughts and longer fire seasons, 
following the year 2000 when scientists say the Western U.S. entered a 
megadrought. Found to be the second worst in 1,200 years, the 
megadrought was spurred by a combination of dry elements and climate 
change brought on by human activity.

Over the last 20 years, the two worst droughts occurred in 2003 and 2013.

America is changing faster than ever! Add Changing America to your 
Facebook or Twitter feed to stay on top of the news.

The concern is heightened as the Western states enter the summer dry 
season, with the U.S. Drought Monitor anticipating the driest conditions 
leading to water restrictions and an aggressive fire season.

The U.S. Drought Monitor currently reads that Western states are 
experiencing temperatures ranging from 4 to 15 degrees above normal, and 
last year’s wet season saw 25 percent to 50 percent of its average 
rainfall.

Complicating matters, the West’s southern areas only received 50 percent 
to 75 percent of their normal snowpack. In the West, lakes, rivers, and 
reservoirs depend on melting snow to replenish them. These then provide 
water to residents. For example, the Colorado River provides water for 
40 million people and 5 million acres of farmland, according to an 
article by ABC.

This is a recurring issue, with snowpack decreasing by 25 percent in 
Western states over the last 40 years. Now, the combination of lack of 
water, dry conditions and increased temperatures has caused concern as 
the area reenters fire season.

The 2020 fire season was the West’s worst in recent history. Both 
California and Colorado experienced their largest fires ever reported, 
and fire season itself is two to three months longer now than it was a 
few decades ago.

Published on Apr 12, 2021
https://thehill.com/changing-america/sustainability/climate-change/547738-western-states-on-verge-of-worst-drought-in



[Greenpeace press release]
Today, Greenpeace USA, the Movement for Black Lives, and Gulf Coast 
Center for Law and Policy are out with a new report, Fossil Fuel Racism: 
How Phasing Out Oil, Gas, and Coal Can Protect Communities, that argues 
fossil fuels are embedded in this nation’s legacy of systemic racism. By 
phasing out fossil fuels, we can tackle the climate crisis, improve 
public health, and confront racial injustice at the same time.

We’re angered and saddened by the latest police murder of Duante Wright 
and by the traumas brought back with the trial of Derek Chauvin. These 
events are bringing the deadly toll of systemic racism to the fore yet 
again. We recognize this report is both well-timed and ill-timed, and 
although it doesn’t delve into the brutal role that police play in 
upholding white supremacy, we hope the report shines some light on 
another, deeply intertwined aspect of systemic racism.
- -
*Fossil Fuel Racism*
How Phasing Out Oil, Gas, and Coal Can Protect Communities
Published: 04-13-2021
Download: PDF: 
https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Fossil-Fuel-Racism.pdf
*Executive Summary*
Fossil fuels — coal, oil, and gas — lie at the heart of the crises we 
face, including public health, racial injustice, and climate change. 
This report synthesizes existing research and provides new analysis that 
finds that the fossil fuel industry contributes to public health harms 
that kill hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. each year and 
disproportionately endanger Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor 
communities. President Joe Biden and the 117th Congress have a historic 
opportunity to improve public health, tackle the climate crisis, and 
confront systemic racism at the same time by phasing out fossil fuel 
production and use.

Each stage of the life cycles of oil, gas, and coal — extraction, 
processing, transport, and combustion — generates toxic air and water 
pollution, as well as greenhouse gas emissions that drive the global 
climate crisis. Exposure to fossil fuel pollution is linked to negative 
health impacts for people living near these pollution sources. The 
impacts of climate change are also strongly linked with rising health 
risks and threaten the ability of humans to live in various regions of 
the planet. The public health hazards from air and water pollution, and 
risks associated with climate change, fall disproportionately on Black, 
Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, and poor communities.
more at-- https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/fossil-fuel-racism/



[“Men are basically useless,” ... Mothers start to organize]
*The Moms Who Are Battling Climate Change*
A new initiative seeks to tap into mothers’ concern for the world their 
children are inheriting.

By Lizzie Widdicombe - April 12, 2021
Three years ago, I had a baby. I won’t go into the details, but suffice 
it to say that she is extremely cute, and I enjoy being her mother. A 
few months after her birth, I was scrolling on my phone, and I came 
across news of a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 
Change. It described a future world that will have experienced 1.5 
degrees Celsius of global warming. In this world, the oceans are 
acidifying, and most coral reefs have been bleached to death; hundreds 
of millions of people face severe drought, and even more face deadly 
heat waves. The kicker? This planet—the 1.5-degree-warmer one—was the 
best-case scenario. Scientists were using the report to argue that we 
should try to shoot for that. The Paris climate accord aims to limit the 
global-temperature increase to “below 2 degrees Celsius.” At present, 
both goals seem like a stretch. According to the U.N., all of the 
world’s current pledges would only cut carbon emissions by one per 
cent—a far cry from the nearly fifty per cent needed this decade in 
order to meet our goals. So, 1.5 degrees is coming. According to some 
researchers, we could get there around 2030, when my daughter will be 
entering middle school.

I did some further Googling: What will the world look like when she’s 
middle-aged? When her children are middle-aged? I found a Web site that 
lets you plot major events in your child’s life against the projected 
global-temperature increase. Even the “optimistic” scenarios show the 
world warming two degrees during her lifetime. The more realistic 
scenarios—the ones based on what countries are actually doing to reduce 
emissions, not what they’ve pledged—show it heating up to three degrees. 
There is a universe of difference between those numbers, but they are 
both awful, bringing rising seas, heat waves, food and water shortages, 
wildfires, droughts, and hurricanes, not to mention the loss of 
biodiversity. Naturally, this line of research prompted a nervous 
breakdown. I had always understood, intellectually, that climate change 
was an existential threat, but it was only after my daughter’s birth 
that it became real to me.

I’m not alone. According to the Yale Program on Climate Change 
Communications, twenty-six per cent of Americans report feeling 
“alarmed” about climate change, up from less than half that number six 
years ago. About the same number of people describe themselves as 
“concerned”—which seems like the way you should feel about your child’s 
“Animal Crossing” addiction, not the fact that the Thwaites Glacier 
could slide into the ocean during his lifetime, flooding coastal cities.

“It’s pretty bad,” a marketing executive named John Marshall told me, in 
reference to the public-opinion data. “If you were an alien looking at 
the planet, you’d ask, ‘Why are they not more worried about this?’ ” 
Marshall runs a nonprofit called the Potential Energy Coalition, which 
aims to boost awareness about climate change. The group recently 
conducted a series of randomized control tests to figure out who is most 
receptive to its messaging. They found that, for the most part, it’s 
women. Mothers and Hispanic women are especially persuadable. “Men are 
basically useless,” he said. This past January, the group launched a 
ten-million-dollar initiative called Science Moms. It consists of a Web 
site with bullet-point-length climate facts, and also an ad campaign 
that’s running in swing states. In the ads, which appear both on 
television and online, climate scientists—who are also moms—talk about 
their worries for their children. So far, the results have been 
promising. “What we’re most excited about is the engagement rate,” 
Marshall said, referring to the number of people who have been clicking 
and sharing...
- -
These days, climate change isn’t just a concept in their research. It’s 
a harrowing presence in their daily lives. Russell lives in Tucson, the 
third-fastest-warming city in the U.S. Last year, she said, “We had one 
hundred and eight days above a hundred degrees—you can’t quite get your 
head around just how long that is.” (The average number of 
hundred-degree days that Tucson typically experiences is sixty-two.) 
covid lockdowns were in full effect, too. Her kids are ten and fourteen. 
As the temperature climbed, cabin fever set in. They couldn’t visit 
their friends, and it was too hot to go to the playground—or even to 
play in the back yard. Russell started waking them up at 5 a.m. to walk 
the dog. “I had to plan ahead for harsh conditions, like a general. I 
tried to make it fun. Like, we’re on an adventure!” But she was worried 
about their mental health. “They need to see the sky!”
One day, she sent them out for a bike ride, wearing long sleeves and 
hats to protect them from the sun. Her ten-year-old daughter came home 
an hour later complaining of a headache. Russell recognized signs of 
heat exhaustion. She didn’t want to take her child to an emergency room, 
because of the potential covid risk, so she treated her at home, making 
her lie down in a dark room and putting cold washcloths on her head. “It 
scared me to death,” Russell said. During this period, she was also 
trying to finish a research proposal for nasa. She wants to launch a 
satellite to track ocean winds around Antarctica—part of an effort to 
measure the carbon in the ocean. Carbon accounting is crucial to 
fighting climate change. But the heat wave was forcing her to put 
everything on pause, in order to deal with her kids. Russell sighed. “It 
was a collision of epic proportions.”

Meanwhile, Colorado, where Burt and Fischer live, was being ravaged by 
wildfires. Fischer and her family were on a hike when they saw smoke 
from a nearby fire and had to flee. Her five- and eight-year-old 
daughters were terrified. Fischer is an atmospheric chemist, and she 
studies wildfire smoke. She has flown into wildfire-smoke plumes to 
conduct her research. As the fire raged this past summer, her children 
began asking: “Mom, this will stop, right?” (Wildfires in the region 
usually last days or weeks.) This time, Fischer said, “I had a pit in my 
stomach from Day One. I know that terrain. I know what the weather is. I 
know what the moisture levels are.” Eventually, she told them, “Nope. 
This one isn’t going away. This will go on for months, until fuel is 
limiting. And we need to buy air-filtration systems and an 
air-conditioner for the house.”

As in Phoenix, there were covid restrictions in place, so Fischer’s 
family was trapped inside, unable to enjoy the nearby national parks. 
The smoke made her children’s eyes itch and gave them headaches. Fischer 
was worried: “I know exactly what my kids are breathing. I know 
intimately what’s in that smoke.” She went on, “The scientist in me 
always says, ‘This one event is not climate change.’ That’s the official 
story. But I look around and say: ‘A fire season that extends into 
October. A burn area that is bigger than my home state of Rhode Island. 
There is smoke everywhere. It’s hot, and everything is closed. Yes. This 
is what climate change looks like. This is the feeling of climate 
change.’ ” She continued, “Every decision is so weighted. It’s, like, 
why is this so hard? When I was a kid, we used to just go outside and 
play. My parents used to put me outside for the entire day.”
“You can’t do that anymore,” Russell said. “I did that, and my baby came 
home with heatstroke.”...
- -
  “I cannot stand it if my grandbabies look at me when I’m old and 
wrinkly and say, ‘Grandma, why didn’t you do something when you could 
still stop it?’ Because they’ll notice. They’ll notice that things are 
gone that should have been theirs.”

“Oh, man,” Burt said, exhaling. “I’m feeling so . . . not good right 
now. This is really depressing me.”..
- -
Russell said she knows that, when it comes to climate change, moms have 
a bandwidth issue. “A friend of mine asked me, ‘Why are you doing this 
in the middle of covid? When so many moms are out of work, or they’re 
having to watch little kids while they’re trying to get work done?’ ” 
she said. “It’s been an epically difficult time for mothers. I feel 
like, on one hand, yes, this is hard. It’s extra. And on the other hand, 
Come on! We’ve got to do this now.”

“Busy people get more done,” Fischer said. “As moms, we’re always 
saying, ‘O.K., you have a cavity, so we’re going to the dentist before 
we deal with the wart on your foot.’ I think that as soon as moms know 
this is urgent, and it has to be dealt with now—not next year—they’ll do 
it.”

And if they don’t? “Moms will get blamed,” Fischer said. “Let’s face it. 
We get blamed for everything, right? Your children are furious when you 
put the wrong bread on their sandwich.”

Russell imitated a whiny voice: “Why didn’t you cut off the crust, Mama?”

If we don’t put a stop to this problem, Fischer said, “We’re never going 
to hear the end of it.”
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-moms-who-are-battling-climate-change

- -

[Science Moms website]
*SCIENCE MOMS 101: THE FACTS ON CLIMATE CHANGE
There are a lot of misconceptions about climate change. Which makes 
sense. It’s a complex issue. Here, we break down some common 
misconceptions and give you the straight facts.*
To learn more about how our changing climate will affect us and our 
children, watch “Global Weirding” by one of our very own Science Moms, 
Katharine Hayhoe.
https://sciencemoms.com/the-facts/

- -

[Katharine Hayhoe YouTube channel - Watch them all]
*Global Weirding with Katharine Hayhoe*

Global Weirding is produced by KTTZ Texas Tech Public Media and 
distributed by PBS Digital Studios. New episodes every other Wednesday 
at 10 am central. Brought to you in part by: Bob and Linda Herscher, 
Freese and Nichols, Inc, and the Texas Tech Climate Science Center.

http://globalweirdingseries.com​
https://www.facebook.com/KTTZChannel5​
http://kttz.org​
http://katharinehayhoe.com
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi6RkdaEqgRVKi3AzidF4ow



[a noble question - clips from a long essay]
*The Search for Environmental Hope*
Climate news is relentlessly, objectively grim. Should we ever allow 
ourselves to feel optimism?
[David Montgomery is a staff writer for the magazine.  His article 
concludes:]
- -
These are all strategies for keeping hope real. It’s hard-earned: hope 
with scars. But what if the opposite of hope is not a dark truth to be 
defeated? What if its opposite is the secret source of the possibility 
for hope in the first place?

Over the course of my conversations, I discovered the podcast “Facing 
It” by Jennifer Atkinson, an associate professor of environmental 
humanities at the University of Washington at Bothell...
- -
Our culture doesn’t normally recognize grief and mourning as appropriate 
reactions to the loss of nature — the disappearance of snow and ice from 
childhood sled hills and skate ponds, the incineration of 3 billion 
animals’ habitats. Acceptance is the preferred response. Or a coolly 
rational appraisal of what policies should be implemented to do better 
next time...
...“Grief is one of the great unacknowledged paths to hope and 
compassion,” she says in her podcast. “Some argue that it may be our 
greatest ally in the age of climate crisis.”

Grief is the form love takes when we lose someone dear: My grief for my 
brother reminds me how much he meant to me. If we grieve for the human 
and natural victims of climate change, it is because we love them. And 
if we understand our feelings as love — not something more abstract, 
intellectual or detached — we will do anything we can to prevent future 
losses. “Grief ultimately leads us to action,” Atkinson told me. “And 
hope in action is the only kind of hope that will save us now.”

Atkinson crystallized something for me that I realized the other 
thinkers had been saying, too: When I set out in search of hope to 
conquer my despair at our seeming inability to head off a climate 
catastrophe, I’d had it backward. True hope is not an opiate whose 
purpose is to make us feel better. And despair is not something to be 
explained away by science, or dulled by communing with nature, or 
vanquished by action. Hope takes root in suffering and sadness. To move 
beyond despair, we need to fully feel it, admit it to a place deep 
inside, and then it becomes our superpower.
So if you feel defeated or disheartened about the climate, I say: Good. 
Embrace your despair. And then step into the hope of your next move.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/04/12/climate-news-is-relentlessly-objectively-grim-should-we-ever-allow-ourselves-feel-optimism/ 


- -

[Series of 6 worthy podcasts - if you hear only one, make it the last - #6]
*Facing It - **a podcast  about love, loss, and the natural world*
https://www.drjenniferatkinson.com/facing-it



[Digging back into the internet news archive - obit]
*On this day in the history of global warming - April 14, 1964 *

Writer and biologist Rachel Carson, whose 1962 book "Silent Spring" 
galvanized a generation to take environmental concerns seriously, passes 
away at 56.

*Rachel Carson Dies of Cancer; 'Silent Spring' Author Was 56*

    By JONATHAN NORTON LEONARD
    Rachel Carson, the biologist and writer on nature and science, whose
    book “Silent Spring” touched off a major controversy on the effects
    of pesticides, died yesterday in her home in Silver Spring, Md. She
    was 56 years old.
    Her death was reported in New York by Marie Rodell, her literary
    agent. Miss Rodell said that Miss Carson had had cancer “for some
    years,” and that she had been aware of her illness.

    With the publication of “Silent Spring” in 1962, Rachel Louise
    Carson, the essence of gentle scholarship, set off a nationally
    publicized struggle between the proponents and opponents of the
    widespread use of poisonous chemicals to kill insects. Miss Carson
    was an opponent.

    Some of miss Carson’s critics, admiringly and some not so
    admiringly, compared her to Carrie Nation, the hatchet-wielding
    temperance advocate.

    This comparison was rejected quietly by Miss Carson, who in her very
    mild but firm manner refused to accept the identification of an
    emotional crusader.

    Miss Carson’s position, as a biologist, was simply that she was a
    natural scientist in search of truth and that the indiscriminate use
    of poisonous chemical sprays called for public awareness of what was
    going on.

    She emphasized that she was not opposed to the use of poisonous
    chemical sprays--only their “indiscriminate use,” and, at a time
    when their potential was not truly known.

    Quoting Jean Rostand, the French writer and biologist, she said:
    “The obligation to endure gives us the right to know.”

    On April 3, 1963, the Columbia Broadcasting System’s television
    series “C.B.S. Reports” presented the program “The Silent Spring of
    Rachel Carson.” In it, Miss Carson said:

    “It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that the
    insect controllers calculate. The public must decide whether it
    wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when
    in full possession of the facts.

    “We still talk in terms of conquest. We still haven’t become mature
    enough to think of ourselves as only a tiny part of a vast and
    incredible universe. Man’s attitude toward nature is today
    critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful
    power to alter and destroy nature.

    But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is
    inevitably a war against himself. The rains have become an
    instrument to bring down from the atmosphere the deadly products of
    atomic explosions. Water, which is probably our most important
    natural resource, is now used and re-used with incredible recklessness.

    “Now, I truly believe, that we in this generation, must come to
    terms with nature, and I think we’re challenged as mankind has never
    been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of
    nature, but of ourselves.”

    3 Earlier Works

    Miss Carson, thanks to her remarkable knack for taking dull
    scientific facts and translating them into poetical and lyrical
    prose that enchanted the lay public, had a substantial public image
    before she rocked the American public and much of the world with
    “Silent Spring.”

    This was established by three books, “Under the Sea Wind,” “The Sea
    Around Us,” and “The Edge of the Sea.” “The Sea Around Us” moved
    quickly into the national best-seller lists, where it remained for
    86 weeks, 39 of them in first place. By 1962, it had been published
    in 30 languages.

    “Silent Spring,” four-and-a-half years in preparation and published
    in September of 1962, hit the affluent chemical industry and the
    general public with the devastating effect of a Biblical plague of
    locusts. The title came from an apocalyptic opening chapter, which
    pictured how an entire area could be destroyed by indiscriminate
    spraying.

    Legislative bodies ranging from New England town meetings to the
    Congress joined in the discussion. President Kennedy, asked about
    the pesticide problem during a press conference, announced that
    Federal agencies were taking a closer look at the problem because of
    the public’s concern.

    The essence of the debate was : Are pesticides publicly dangerous or
    aren’t they?

    They Should Be Called Biocide

    Miss Carson’s position had been summarized this way:

    “Chemicals are the sinister and little-recognized partners of
    radiation in changing the very nature of the world--the very nature
    of life.

    “Since the mid-nineteen forties, over 200 basic chemicals have been
    created for use in killing insects, weeds, rodents and other
    organisms described in the modern vernacular as pests, and they are
    sold under several thousand different brand names.

    “The sprays, dusts and aerosols are now applied almost universally
    to farms, gardens, forests and homes--non-selective chemicals that
    have the power to kill every insect, the good and the bad, to still
    the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams--to coat
    the leaves with a deadly film and to linger on in soil--all this,
    though the intended target may be only a few weeds or insects.

    “Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of
    poison on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all
    life? They should not be called ‘insecticides’ but ‘biocides.’”

    The chemical industry was quick to dispute this.

    Dr. Robert White-Stevens, a spokesman for the industry, said:

    “The major claims of Miss Rachel Carson’s book, ‘Silent Spring,’ are
    gross distortions of the actual facts, completely unsupported by
    scientific, experimental evidence, and general practical experience
    in the field. Her suggestion that pesticides are in fact biocides
    destroying all life is obviously absurd in the light of the fact
    that without selective biologicals these compounds would be
    completely useless.

    “The real threat, then, to the survival of man is not chemical but
    biological, in the shape of hordes of insects that can denude our
    forests, sweep over our crop lands, ravage our food supply and leave
    in their wake a train of destitution and hunger, conveying to an
    undernourished population the major diseases scourges of mankind.”

    The Monsanto company, one of the nation’s largest chemical concerns,
    used parody as a weapon in the counterattack against Miss Carson.
    Without mentioning her book, the company adopted her poetic style in
    an article labeled “The Desolate Year,” which began: “Quietly, then,
    the desolate year began. . .” and wove its own apocalyptic word
    picture--but one that showed insects stripping the countryside and
    winning.

    As the chemical industry continued to make her a target for
    criticism, Miss Carson remained calm.

    “We must have insect control,” she reiterated. “I do not favor
    turning nature over to insects. I favor the sparing, selective and
    intelligent use of chemicals. It is the indiscriminate, blanket
    spraying that I oppose.”

    Actually, chemical pest control has been practiced to some extent
    for centuries. However it was not until 1942 that DDT, a synthetic
    compound, was introduced in the wake of experiments that included
    those with poison gas. Its long-term poisonous potency was augmented
    by its ability to kill some insects upon contact and without being
    ingested. This opened a new era in pest control and led to the
    development of additional new synthetic poisons far more effective
    even than DDT.

    As the pesticide controversy grew into a national quarrel, support
    was quick in going to the side of Miss Carson.

    Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, an ardent naturalist,
    declared, “We need a Bill of Rights against the 20th century
    poisoners of the human race.”

    Earlier, an editorial in The New York Times had said:

    “If her series [then running in part in The New Yorker publication
    of the book] helps arouse public concern to immunize Government
    agencies against the blandishments of the hucksters and enforces
    adequate controls, the author will be as deserving of the Noble
    Prize as was the inventor of DDT.”

    Presidential Report

    In May 1963, after a long study, President Kennedy’s Science
    Advisory committee, issued its pesticide report.

    It stressed that pesticides must be used to maintain the quality of
    the nation’s food and health, but it warned against their
    indiscriminate use. It called for more research into potential
    health hazards in the interim, urged more judicious care in the use
    of pesticides in homes and in the field.

    The committee chairman, Dr. Jerome B. Wiesner, said the uncontrolled
    use of poisonous chemicals, including pesticides, was “potentially a
    much greater hazard” than radioactive fallout.

    Miss Carson appeared before the Senate Committee on Commerce, which
    was hearing testimony on the Chemical Pesticides Coordination Act,
    and a bill that would require labels to tell how to avert damage to
    fish and wildlife.

    “I suggest,” she said, “that the report by the President’s Science
    Advisors has created a climate in which creation of a Pesticide
    Commission within the Executive Department might be considered.”

    One of the sparks that caused Miss Carson to undertake the task of
    writing the book (whose documentation alone fills a list of 55 pages
    of sources), was a letter she had received from old friends, Stuart
    and Olga Huckins. It told of the destruction that aerial spraying
    had caused to their two-acre private sanctuary at Powder Point in
    Duxbury, Mass.

    Miss Carson, convinced that she must write about the situation and
    particularly about the effects of spraying on ecological factors,
    found an interested listener in Paul Brooks, editor in chief of the
    Houghton-Mifflin Company, the Boston publishing house that had
    brought out “The Edge of the Sea.”

    As to her own writing habits, Miss Carson once wrote for 20th
    Century Authors:

    “I write slowly, often in longhand, had with frequent revision.
    Being sensitive to interruption, I writer most freely at night.

    “As a writer, my interest is divided between the presentation of
    facts and the interpretation of their significance, with emphasis, I
    think toward the latter.”

    “Silent Spring” became a best seller even before its publication
    date because its release date was broken. It also became a best
    seller in England after its publication there in March, 1963.

    One of Miss Carson’s greatest fans, according to her agent, Marie
    Rodell, was her mother. Miss Rodell recalled that the mother, who
    died of pneumonia and a heart ailment in 1960, had sat in the family
    car in 1952 writing letters while Miss Carson and Miss Rodell
    explored the sea’s edge near Boothbay Harbor. To passers-by the
    mother would say, pointing, “That’s my daughter, Rachel Carson. She
    wrote “The Sea Around Us.”

    People remembered Miss Carson for her shyness and reserve as well as
    for her writing and scholarship. And so when she received a
    telephone call after the publication of “The Sea Around Us,” asking
    her to speak in the Astor Hotel at a luncheon, she asked Miss Rodell
    what she should do.

    The agent counseled her to concentrate on writing. Miss Carson
    nodded in agreement, went to the phone, and shortly came back and
    said somewhat helplessly: “I said I’d do it.”

    There were 1,500 persons at the luncheon, Miss Carson was “scared to
    death,” but she plunged into the talk and acquitted herself. As part
    of her program she played a recording of the sounds of underseas,
    including the clicking of shrimp and the squeeks of dolphins and
    whales. With the ice broken as a public speaker, Miss Carson
    continued with others sporadically.

    Did Research by Herself

    Miss Carson had some preliminary help in researching “Silent Spring”
    but soon found that she could go faster by doing the work herself
    because she could skim past so much that she already knew.

    Miss Carson had few materialistic leanings. When she found “The Sea
    Around Us” was a great financial success, her first extravagance was
    the purchase of a very fine binocular- microscope, which she had
    always wanted. Her second luxury was the summer cottage on the Maine
    coast.

    Her agent said that Miss Carson’s work was her hobby but that she
    was very fond of her flower garden at Silver Spring, Md., where she
    also loved to watch the birds that came to visit.

    Miss Carson had two favorite birds, a member of the thrush family
    called the veery, and the tern, a small, black-capped gull-like bird
    with swallow like forked tails.

    She once told an interviewer that she was enchanted by the “hunting,
    mystical call” of the veery, which is found in moist woods and
    bottomlands from Newfoundland to southern Manitoba, and in mountains
    to northern Georgia.

    In manner, Miss Carson was a small, solemn-looking woman with the
    steady forthright gaze of a type that is sometimes common to
    thoughtful children who prefer to listen rather than to talk She was
    politely friendly but reserved and was not given to quick smiles or
    to encouraging conversation even with her fans.

    The most recent flare-up in the continuing pesticide controversy
    occurred early this month when the Public Health Service announced
    that the periodic huge-scale deaths of fish on the lower Mississippi
    River had been traced over the last four years to toxic ingredients
    in three kinds of pesticides. Some persons believed that the
    pesticides drained into the river form neighboring farm lands.

    A hearing by the Agriculture Department of the Public Health
    service’s charges ended a week ago with a spokesman for one of the
    pesticide manufacturers saying that any judgment should be delayed
    until more information was obtained.

    Miss Carson was born May 27, 1907, in Springdale, Pa., the daughter
    of Robert Warden Carson and the former Maria McLean. She was brought
    up in Springdale and in nearby Parnassus.

    She owed her love of nature in large measure to her mother, who once
    wrote in The Saturday Review of Literature, that she had taught her
    daughter “as a tiny child joy in the out-of-doors and the lore of
    birds, insects, and residents of streams and ponds.” She was a
    rather solitary child. She never married.

    After being graduated from Parnassus High School, she enrolled in
    the Pennsylvania College for Women at Pittsburgh with the intention
    of making a career of writing. First she specialized in English
    composition. Later biology fascinated her and she switched to that
    field, going on to graduate work at Johns Hopkins University.

    She then taught for seven consecutive sessions at the Johns Hopkins
    Summer School. In 1931 she became a member of the zoology staff of
    the University of Maryland. She remained five years. Her Master of
    Arts degree was conferred by Johns Hopkins in 1932.

    Meanwhile, a childhood curiosity about the sea stayed with her. She
    absorbed all that she could read about the biology of the sea and
    she undertook post-graduate work at the Marine Biological Laboratory
    in Woods Hole, Mass, at Cape Cod.

    In 1936 she was offered a position as aquatic biologist with the
    Bureau of Fisheries in Washington. She continued with the bureau and
    its successor, the Fish and Wildlife Service. In 1937, an article,
    “Undersea,” in Atlantic led to her first book, “Under the Sea Wind,”
    in 1941, and this was followed by her appointment as editor in chief
    of the Fish and Wildlife Service--blending her two worlds: biology
    and writing.

    “The Sea Around Us,” published in 1951, made her world famous, and
    she received numerous honors. They included the Gold Medal of the
    New York Zoological Society, the John Burroughs Medal, the Gold
    Medal of the Geographical Society of Philadelphia and the National
    Book Award.

    Meanwhile, in 1952, she resigned from her government post to
    continue her writing. She was no armchair naturalist To gain
    experience the hard way, she once sailed in a fishing trawler to the
    rugged Georges Banks off the Massachusetts coast. “The Edge of the
    Sea” was published in 1955, and before long she was at work
    researching material for “Silent Spring.”

    Miss Carson leaves a brother, Robert M. Carson, and an adopted son,
    Roger Christie, who was her grandnephew.


http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/10/05/reviews/carson-obit.html


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