[✔️] August 13, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | Why Hawaii catastrophe, Neo-Nazis climate disaster recruiters. Opinion "Too hot for stupid", 2015 El Niño

[Richard Pauli]

/*August  13*//*, 2023*/

/[ DW documentary   ] /
*Why this fire turned into a major catastrophe | DW News*
DW News
Aug 11, 2023  #Hawaii #wildfire #climatechange
At least 55 people have died in wildfires on two Hawaiian islands. Many 
more are still missing. The governor says the blazes are the worst 
natural disaster in the history of the US state. Residents were shocked 
by the speed with which the fires spread and had harrowing escapes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00MsjSe_2ec



/[ politics meets calamity ]/
*Neo-Nazis Are Using Climate Disasters to Recruit New Members*
Experts have been sounding the alarm that the far-right are exploiting 
climate change and natural disasters.
By Tess Owen
August 11, 2023,
When a historic storm rolled through central Vermont last month, 
drowning its capital Montpelier and its surrounding communities in 
waist-high flood waters, one group of men saw a moment of opportunity.

The men, who called themselves PINE — The People’s Initiative of New 
England— responded to the aftermath to assist clean-up efforts, clear 
debris from the streets and homes, and pass out bottled water.
PINE describes itself as a “grassroots effort founded to advocate for 
and advance the interests of New Englanders,” which sounds innocuous 
enough—and that’s by design. But PINE is a new front for the neo-Nazi 
street gang NSC-131, which formed in 2019 and has chapters across New 
England. While NSC-131 brazenly touts Nazi symbols and throws up Hitler 
salutes during public appearances, PINE is intended as a softer, more 
socially acceptable mask. The goal of this is for NSC-131 to broaden 
their appeal, especially to those who agree with their messaging but may 
not want to publicly affiliate with an explicitly neo-Nazi organization.

In a recently released manifesto, first reported by Rolling Stone, PINE 
calls for New England to secede from the U.S. and establish a white 
ethnostate. And they think they can do that by drumming up local 
support, through “activism and community outreach.”

Hence: their flood relief efforts.

Extremists around the world typically seek to exploit moments of 
instability or chaos for their own gain, and that’s particularly true in 
the aftermath of natural disasters.
Weak or muddled government responses to hurricanes, flooding or 
wildfires have previously created windows of opportunity for extremists 
to position themselves as reliable, trusted sources of aid—and show 
government agencies to be useless in a moment of crisis.

And, by ingratiating themselves in impacted communities, extremists are 
able to reach into a larger pool of prospective recruits.

This is a trend that experts say they expect to see more of in the 
coming years. As the effects of climate change grow more severe, 
communities that have been destabilized by natural disasters may 
increasingly find themselves leaning on wolves in sheeps clothing— 
extremists dressed up as good samaritans.

A paper published last year by the National Consortium for the Study of 
Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism explored the various ways that 
extremists and terrorists exploit climate change and disasters for their 
own gain. One example they offer is how, in the aftermath of a disaster, 
those actors take advantage of perceptions that the government has been 
ineffective in their response and use them to foster “radicalization 
narratives of alienation and abandonment.” They also then try to “fill 
in this gap by responding to the challenges posed by climate change to 
enhance their local authority.”
Militias like the Oath Keepers have historically pounced on any 
opportunity they can to expose weaknesses in federal agencies like FEMA 
(which is a go-to source of anti-government conspiracy theories). 
Members of the group, including their founder Stewart Rhodes, who was 
recently convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in the Jan. 6 
riot, responded to calls for volunteers in the aftermath of Category 4 
Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

A recent joint report by Grist and HuffPost looked at Oath Keepers and 
other militias’ exploitation of climate disasters over the years. Oath 
Keepers also traveled to Florida and Puerto Rico in 2017 following 
hurricanes, and returned to Florida the following year after Hurricane 
Michael. Oath Keeper leadership also urged their members to travel to 
Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee in 2021, after a string of 
catastrophic tornadoes moved through the region, according to 
Grist/Huffpost.

Armed extremists, galvanized by conspiracy theories about “antifa,” set 
up roadblocks in 2020 and interrogated people fleeing wildfires in 
Oregon. And last year, an anti-government group called Echo Company of 
the California State Militia’s 2nd Regiment showed up with  
military-style trucks and fatigues to provide hot breakfasts to people 
who’d been evacuated from their homes due to the Oak Fire near Mariposa 
County. Along with breakfast, members of the militia passed out business 
cards with QR codes and directions of how to join their organization, 
NBC reported.

As for PINE—they shared images of their “activism” on their Gab and 
Telegram channels, making sure to note that they also distributed their 
propaganda in the process. “Montpelier is a short distance from me,” 
responded one person. “VT is so far left I too often assume there are no 
like minded people. Good to see this.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/88xmap/neo-nazis-are-using-climate-disasters-to-recruit-new-members 




/[ radical notion "Too hot for stupid" ]/
*Climate Crisis: The GOP Death Cult is holding the Earth Hostage to 
White Privilege*
Who are you going to believe, Republicans or a bunch of lying 
climatologists?
FLORIDA PHOENIX
08/10/2023
Diane Roberts

People, it’s too hot to be this stupid.

A new NPR/PBS/Marist poll shows that nearly three-fourths of Republicans 
don’t think the climate crisis is a big deal and we don’t need to do 
anything about it.

I guess the good news is that 56 percent of all political persuasions 
say the climate crisis requires urgent action. That includes nearly nine 
out of 10 Democrats and over half of Independents.

The Earth is being held hostage by the party of ignorance, 
“conservatives” who no longer want to conserve anything other than white 
privilege. They’ve become a death cult, denying what’s obvious to 
rational, literate people. Who cares if the seas are boiling? As long as 
they “own the libs.”

It’s not as if the science is unsettled. The data are solid; we’ve been 
shown over and over again what’s happening and told what to do about it.

But Republicans see reducing fossil fuel use and developing sustainable 
energy as just another front in the culture war, right up there with 
reproductive rights, education, race, gender issues, gay rights, and 
those satanic vaccines.

This is the hottest summer in 120,000 years. Accelerated climate change 
is causing sea water temperatures to reach 100 degrees off the coast of 
Florida; parts of Canada are bursting into flame; the Southwest is 
scorched; places in Europe where a summer high temperature used to be 
maybe 80F, are now watching their thermometers break 98.

But who are you going to believe, Republicans or a bunch of lying 
climatologists who have the receipts?
It’s common to characterize our inability to address the skin-searing, 
ocean-boiling, crop-killing climate crisis as “planetary suicide.” 
That’s partly true. Those of us in the greenhouse gas emitting world are 
indeed colluding in our own destruction.

*Murder for hire*
But this is also a long murder for hire, contracted by Big Oil, Big Ag, 
Big Bank, the Republican Party, and even a few Democrats. The 
corporations have understood the dangers of climate change for more than 
40 years.

They don’t care. To them, high carbon emissions smell like money.

Not only are right-wingers ignoring our frying earth, they’re determined 
to push it to the brink. The Heartland Institute, a cabal of 
ultra-libertarians initially famous for questioning the link between 
tobacco and cancer, now peddles climate denial to schools, shipping out 
propaganda masquerading as “common sense” to educators, hoping to 
influence schools

Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas and Baptist preacher, now 
publishes a “Kids’ Guide to the Truth About Climate Change,” a 
brightly-colored booklet of misinformation and senseless graphs assuring 
children the climate has always changed, greenhouse gases have 
fluctuated for thousands of years, and if “teachers and the media” say 
different, it’s because they “have an agenda.”

Dismissing the climate crisis is now a full-time job for rightwing think 
tanks and politicians, determined to protect the likes of Exxon, Shell, 
and BP. The Heritage Foundation has concocted a policy document for the 
next president (assuming that’s a Republican) demanding Washington nix 
Joe Biden’s climate initiatives, gut the EPA, ramp up oil and gas 
production, and maybe sell off public lands for drilling and mining.

A Wall Street Journal editorial board member (who traffics in unhinged 
opinions) complains that Wall Street Journal reporters (who deal in 
facts) shouldn’t keep writing about the climate. Such scary stuff causes 
“mental disorders,” she says.

It’s just a little heat wave. Calm down. Jump in the pool!

*Woke fabrication*

In Washington, Republicans work themselves into fits, insisting that 
climate change is some kind of woke fabrication. During a hearing in 
July, some of the House’s dimmer bulbs tried to bully U.S. climate envoy 
John Kerry. They pulled out spurious charts to “prove” the Earth isn’t 
warming and attacked Kerry on the ground that his political science 
degree from Yale isn’t real “science,” so how dare he lecture the 
intellectual giants of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on 
greenhouse gasses?

Not surprisingly, two congressmen from Florida particularly 
distinguished themselves, behaving like third graders denied another hit 
of Skittles, lobbing juvenile insults. Rep. Cory Mills, who famously 
handed out “commemorative hand-grenades” when he first took office, 
snarked about Kerry flying in on his “private jet.”

Another member of the Brain Trust, the Treasure Coast’s Brian Mast, 
accused Kerry of pushing a “far-left radical agenda.”

Kerry doesn’t own a private jet, and you can bet they knew that. 
Moreover, his “agenda” might better be characterized as helping save us 
from the deadly consequences of our own idiocy.

But since when has reality mattered to the likes of Mills, Mast, and the 
rest of the Idiot Caucus?
Meanwhile, Florida burns and floods and our supposed leaders don’t give 
a damn. On April 12 this year, Fort Lauderdale got hit with 26 inches of 
rain in one day. Streets were under two feet of water; airport runways 
were awash; houses destroyed.

Ron DeSantis didn’t show up. He was on book tour.

After former Gov. Rick Scott, a man so spooked by the politics of 
climate change that he forbade state employees to even say “climate 
change,” decamped for the U.S. Senate, Floridians felt a tiny shiver of 
hope. Newly-inaugurated Gov. Ron DeSantis named a chief science officer.

*Hell, no*
Could it be that the state would finally get serious about mitigating 
greenhouse gases?

That would be a super-sized hell, no.

DeSantis talks a big game about “resilience” and “saving the 
Everglades,” and he put together a “task force” to tackle toxic 
blue-green algae — a huge health risk — but he hasn’t done a damned 
thing to slow down production of the greenhouse gases that are killing 
us or force polluters to stop dumping filth in our waters.

He refused to accept federal money to foster energy efficiency and 
renewables such as wind and solar because, I suppose, it might give him 
Joe Biden cooties.

He ignores the increasingly vicious hurricanes, the sunny-day floods, 
the coastal erosion, the ecological collapse of our waterways, and that 
thick, stinking blanket of poisonous algal bloom choking the life out of 
Lake Okeechobee.

To slow down our carbon production, we need to stop encouraging fossil 
fuel extraction and embrace solar and wind. But DeSantis and his party 
refuse.

To clean up our impaired waters, the governor and Legislature must stop 
the sugar, dairy, and phosphate interests from using them as a sewer system.

*Shrug*
To save the planet, we have to push the nations of the earth — 
especially the U.S., India and China — to stop gagging our skies with 
noisome emissions. We know this. The Republican Party knows this. Ron 
DeSantis knows this.

Yet he shrugs and signs laws to help developers drain, dredge, and pave 
what’s left of Florida.

After all, these are the people funding his campaign.

DeSantis says he disapproves of “politicizing the weather” and refuses 
to, as he puts it, “do any left-wing stuff.”

Left-wing stuff like caring for Floridians suffering killer storms, 
undrinkable water, and roaring floods?

As my colleague Craig Pittman often reminds us, during hurricane season 
Florida is trying to kill us.

Republican Party nihilism is trying to kill us — all of us, every day.
https://floridaphoenix.com/2023/08/07/gop-death-cult-is-holding-the-earth-hostage-to-white-privilege/ 




/[The news archive - looking back at other El Niños ]/
/*August 13, 2015*/
August 13, 2015:
The Los Angeles Times reports:

    "In another sign that El Niño is gaining strength and could soak
    California this winter, sea surface temperatures in the Pacific
    Ocean have increased to their highest level so far this year.

    "That temperature increase — 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit above the
    average — was recorded Aug. 5 by the National Weather Service's
    Climate Prediction Center at a benchmark location in the Pacific.
    That is slightly higher than it was Aug. 6, 1997, when it was 3.2
    degrees Fahrenheit above normal.

    "The summer of 1997 was the prelude to the largest El Niño event on
    record. Storms that winter brought widespread flooding and
    mudslides, causing 17 deaths and more than half a billion dollars of
    damage. Downtown L.A. got nearly a year's worth of rain in February
    1998."

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-el-nino-20150813-story.html



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