[✔️] September 6, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Mon Sep 6 11:40:45 EDT 2021

/*September 6, 2021*/

[nor is mass media ready]
*Overlapping Disasters Expose Harsh Climate Reality: The U.S. Is Not Ready*
The deadly flooding in the Northeast, on the heels of destruction from 
Louisiana to California, shows the limits of adapting to climate change. 
Experts say it will only get worse...
- -
The country faces two separate but interlaced problems, according to 
climate and resilience experts.

First, governments have not spent enough time and money to brace for 
climate shocks that have long been predicted: everything from 
maintaining and fortifying electrical lines and storm water systems to 
clearing forests of undergrowth in order to reduce the ferocity of 
wildfires.

“We’re feeling all the effects of that deferred maintenance,” said 
Kristina Dahl, a senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned 
Scientists.

But there’s a second, more sobering lesson: There are limits to how much 
the country, and the world, can adapt. And if nations don’t do more to 
cut greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change, they may 
soon run up against the outer edges of resilience.
“If we already can’t cope with where we are, then there’s little hope 
that it’s going to improve in a warming climate,” Dr. Dahl said.

The country’s vulnerability in the face of extreme weather was 
punctuated by the downpour that flooded the country’s largest city. New 
York City has invested billions of dollars in storm protection since 
Hurricane Sandy in 2012, investments that seemed to do little to blunt 
the impact of the deluge.

Rain poured down in furious torrents, turning the subway system into a 
kind of flume ride. Central Park recorded 7.19 inches of rain, nearly 
double the previous record set in 1927 for the same date, according to 
the National Weather Service, which issued the city’s first-ever flash 
flood emergency alert.
- -
Damage from extreme weather, and threats to human life, will only 
increase as the planet warms. For every 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit of global 
warming, the atmosphere holds about 7 percent more moisture, scientists 
have found. That means much heavier rainfall when storms do occur.
- -
But in the case of Hurricane Ida, the main threat was rainwater flowing 
downhill, not storm surge pushing in from the coast. So much water fell 
that it overwhelmed storm drains, overflowed riverbanks and poured into 
basements, from the hilly parts of Manhattan’s Washington Heights to the 
inland flats of Jamaica in Queens.

The investments that protect against storm surge differ from those that 
guard against extreme rain, Ms. Chester said.

Coping with severe rainfall means more places to absorb and hold water, 
whether that’s so-called green solutions like parks, or traditional 
structures like underground retention tanks. And it means increasing the 
capacity of the sewer system to handle a greater volume of water.

Because New York has mostly been spared the type of severe rainfall that 
occurred Wednesday, officials have made it less of a priority.

Other countries have heeded the warnings of climate scientists and acted.

In the Netherlands, where much of the country lies below sea level, the 
government strengthened flood design standards and in 2007 created a 
program called Room for the River, which in essence authorized the 
wholesale redesign and rebuilding of dozens of vulnerable watersheds 
around cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam. The goal was to prepare for 
the sort of one-in-10,000-year floods that Dutch scientists were warning 
might become more frequent.

In that country, government water boards have the ultimate authority 
over land use. If they determine an area is needed for flood protection, 
its residents must move.

It’s a different story in the United States, where efforts to adapt and 
mitigate American cities for severe storms and rising seas have been 
plodding. There are many reasons: Government’s reluctance to impose on 
private property, a legacy of racial and economic injustice, and a 
system of governance and regulation that often moves far slower than the 
hastening pace of climate change...
- -
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/02/climate/new-york-rain-floods-climate-change.html

[Try to be color -free]*
**Blue Hydrogen. The greatest fossil fuel scam in history?*
Sep 5, 2021
Just Have a Think
Blue hydrogen is being enthusiastically promoted by natural gas 
producers as the simplest and cheapest answer to decarbonising our 
economies. But recent studies have shown that it's overall greenhouse 
gas emissions footprint is worse than natural gas. So, is this just the 
latest in a long series of diversions and deceptions from the fossil 
fuel industry?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EA4tDYwNYo

[Author reads from his book]
*Kim Stanley Robinson: Remembering climate change ... a message from the 
year 2071 | TED*
Aug 30, 2021
TED
Visit http://TED.com to get our entire library of TED Talks, 
transcripts, translations, personalized talk recommendations and more.
Coming to us from 60 years in the future, legendary sci-fi writer Kim 
Stanley Robinson tells the "history" of how humanity ended the climate 
crisis and restored the damage done to Earth's biosphere. A rousing 
vision of how we might unite to overcome the greatest challenge of our time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzWRHi-Bmuk

[Books - the New York Review ]
*Conceiving the Future*
Anna Louie Sussman
*The argument that reducing human populations will help curb climate 
change has obvious appeal, but it overlooks several inconvenient facts.*
September 23, 2021 issue
Reviewed:

    _Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World_
    by Daniel Sherrell
    Penguin, 260 pp., $17.00 (paper)

    _On Infertile Ground: Population Control and Women’s Rights in the
    Era of Climate Change_
    by Jade S. Sasser
    New York University Press, 189 pp., $89.00; $27.00 (paper)

    _Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts,
    Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling
    the Future of the Human Race_
    by Shanna H. Swan with Stacey Colino
    Scribner, 292 pp., $28.00

- -
In 1969, a year after Paul and Anne Ehrlich published a book predicting 
that a “population bomb” would set humankind on a path to widespread 
famine and political instability, twenty-year-old Stephanie Mills 
addressed her graduating class at Mills College in a bracing valedictory 
entitled “The Future is a Cruel Hoax.” Mills, a feminist and 
environmentalist who wore IUDs as earrings, thought, like many other 
women of her generation, that their roles could and should expand far 
beyond motherhood. Yet she presented her decision to forgo reproduction 
as a sacrifice made for the sake of planetary stability rather than an 
expression of personal freedom. “I am terribly saddened,” she declared, 
“by the fact that the most humane thing for me to do is to have no 
children at all.”..
- -
Like Mills, many environmentalists today connect individual reproductive 
choices and our ability to live sustainably on this planet. At house 
parties organized across the country by the activist network Conceivable 
Future, people hash out difficult questions among like-minded peers: 
What kind of world would my child be born into? Matthew 
Schneider-Mayerson, an assistant professor of environmental sciences at 
Yale-NUS College, estimates that at least 12.5 million Americans, some 
calling themselves BirthStrikers or GINKs (Green Inclination, No Kids), 
have forgone parenthood at least in part because of concerns about a 
future child’s existence on a burning planet and “the carbon footprint 
of procreation.” New York congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has 
asked, in light of climate change, “Is it OK still to have children?”..
- -
_Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World_ by Daniel Sherrell, an 
organizer who helped lead the campaign to pass a critical 2018 climate 
justice bill in New York state, is an epistolary memoir to an 
as-yet-unborn child, written in part to justify Sherrell’s desire to 
bring a child into a world beset by climate change. “Should I have you, 
and risk putting you in harm’s way?” he writes. “Or should I not, and 
prevent there ever being a ‘you’ to be harmed?”
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/09/23/climate-change-birth-conceiving-future/

[Alarming worst-case explained with various data sources. ]
*Climate change tracking worst-case scenario*
Sep 4, 2021
Peter Carter
This comprehensive examination of climate change indicators shows they 
are at record highs, increasing faster than ever and tracking the 
worst-case scenario. This is the insane global suicide scenario.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fliCxyAwBWU

[Today show video argument]
*Experts Warn Of Financial Cost Of Inaction On Climate Change*
Sep 5, 2021
TODAY
As the Caldor Fire continues to burn in California and after Hurricane 
Ida cut a path of destruction in the South and Northeast, scientists 
continue to sound the alarm on climate change. In addition to the urgent 
human and environmental impacts, experts are laying out the financial 
cost of inaction. NBC’s Anne Thompson has this week’s Sunday Focus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPTKX6nUqT0

[weathering weather disasters]
*Nearly 1 in 3 Americans experienced a weather disaster this summer*
Climate change has turbocharged severe storms, fires, hurricanes, 
coastal storms and floods — threatening millions
Nearly 1 in 3 Americans live in a county hit by a weather disaster in 
the past three months, according to a new Washington Post analysis of 
federal disaster declarations. On top of that, 64 percent live in places 
that experienced a multiday heat wave — phenomena that are not 
officially deemed disasters but are considered the most dangerous form 
of extreme weather...
- -
Americans’ growing sense of vulnerability is palpable. Craig Fugate, 
former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Florida’s 
Emergency Management Division, has never known a summer as packed with 
crises as this one.

The question, he wonders, is whether this calamitous season will mark a 
turning point in public opinion that finally forces political leaders to 
act. “If not,” Fugate asked, “what will it take?”...
- -
The firefighter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of 
losing his job, said hundreds of requests for help from incident 
commanders have gone unfilled.

“We’re so on our heels, we’re so burnt out, we’re so understaffed,” he said.

Trevor Riggen, the head of the American Red Cross’s domestic disaster 
program, said the agency is “testing the limits” of its network. This 
week alone, more than 2,000 staff and volunteers have deployed across 10 
states. Many of them are on their second or third crisis of the summer.

“It’s no longer, ‘We have a big event and then there’s time to 
recover,’” Riggen said. “Disaster has become a chronic condition.”

But the extent of damage wrought by climate change will be determined by 
how the nation plans for it, and how the communities rebuild.

Almost half of public roadways are currently in poor or mediocre 
condition, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers — making 
events like the deadly collapse of a Mississippi highway during 
Hurricane Ida more likely. The location and condition of some 10,000 
miles of levees in the United States are unknown. Chronically 
underfunded storm water systems are unable to cope with record rainfall. 
Many electric utilities have not taken steps to ensure the grid keeps 
functioning amid worsening hurricanes and wildfires.

Communities need to start preparing for the unprecedented, Fugate said. 
Coastal cities should develop alternative evacuation plans to avoid 
getting caught off-guard by rapidly intensifying storms — for example, 
building comfortable, well-equipped shelters for people who don’t have 
time to flee. Levees and storm-water systems must be built to withstand 
floods that would have been impossible in a cooler world. Amid 
unstoppable wildfires, homes at the edge of forests can be made safer 
with flameproof building materials.

Social systems are also in need of repair, said Arcaya. During heat 
waves, early warning systems and check-ins from neighbors have been 
proved to save hundreds of lives. After hurricanes, research shows, 
people with strong connections to their neighbors experience less trauma 
and are better able to get back on their feet.

The country will need a robust support system to help thousands of 
displaced people navigate the bureaucracy required to obtain federal 
assistance, Arcaya said. And since disasters often destroy affordable 
housing, the nation will need to invest in building more places for 
people to live.

These changes will be expensive, Fugate acknowledged. But the cost of 
responding to disasters already totals more than $81 billion per year. 
“It’s a choice between spending now or spending more in the future.”...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/09/04/climate-disaster-hurricane-ida/

[The news archive - looking back]
*On this day in the history of global warming September 6, 2012*

On MotherJones.com, investigative journalist Brad Friedman posts audio 
from a secretive June 2011 conference in Colorado hosted by 
climate-change-denying libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch. 
In one clip, Charles Koch compares President Obama to Saddam Hussein. 
That evening, Friedman discusses the conference on MSNBC's "The Ed Show."

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/09/exclusive-audio-koch-brothers-seminar-tapes/ 

http://youtu.be/7qLiEB4Ed_E

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