[✔️] November 17, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | Clip from National Climate Assessment, report, Summary report, Oil and Conflict, My area of concern, , 2006 Inhofe blasphemy

[Richard Pauli]

/*November *//*17, 2023*/

/[ small clip from important government report available at 
https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/   ]*
*/*The Fifth National Climate Assessment*
The Fifth National Climate Assessment is the US Government’s preeminent 
report on climate change impacts, risks, and responses. It is a 
congressionally mandated interagency effort that provides the scientific 
foundation to support informed decision-making across the United States.
               Table 1.1. Climate Actions Are Taking Place Across All US 
Regions
*Region *                        Action

*Northeast *  The 2022 stormwater code in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 
requires new developments to plan for projected increases in heavy 
rainfall under climate change rather than building to historical 
rainfall amounts. In 2021, the city also committed to achieve carbon 
neutrality by 2050. {Box 21.1}

*Southeast *  Following repeated flooding from multiple hurricanes, 
measures to reduce flood risk in Princeville, North Carolina, include 
buyouts, elevating homes, and building housing that meets local flood 
standards. In Orlando, Florida, the city and businesses are adopting 
commercial building energy-efficiency requirements and electric vehicle 
readiness policies and have used wastewater and food scraps from parks 
and resorts to generate renewable biogas. {Boxes 22.1, 32.3}

*US Caribbean *   Many community-based organizations in Puerto Rico have 
undertaken actions to advance adaptation, social transformation, and 
sustainable development. These organizations work to expand renewable 
energy and equitable access to energy resources, prepare for disasters, 
restore ecosystems, strengthen agriculture and food security, and 
protect public health. {23.5}

*Midwest *   A wetland creation project in Ashtabula, Ohio, restored 
habitat displaced by shoreline development, improving coastal protection 
for the port on Lake Erie. In Michigan, some state forestlands are being 
managed to bolster carbon storage and to support recreation and wildlife 
habitat. {24.2, 24.4; Figure 24.9}

*Northern Great Plains *  The Nebraska Natural Resources Conservation 
Service supported farmers in testing soil health and evaluating soil 
management practices that promote climate adaptation. Across the region, 
wind electricity generation tripled between 2011 and 2021, with a 
growing number of Tribes leading the Nation’s renewable energy 
transition by installing wind, solar, and hydropower. {25.3, 25.5; Box 25.3}

*Southern Great Plains *   Texas- and Kansas-based groups are supporting 
soil and land management practices that increase carbon storage while 
protecting important ecosystems. Wind and solar energy generation and 
battery storage capacities have also grown, with the region accounting 
for 42% of national wind-generated electricity in 2022. {26.2}

*Northwest *   The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation are 
prioritizing carbon capture in their forest and timber management 
efforts, leading to improved air and water quality and wildlife habitat 
as well as preservation of cultural areas and practices. {27.3}

*Southwest *  In response to severe drought, seven Colorado River basin 
states, the US and Mexican governments, and Indigenous Peoples are 
collaborating to improve water conservation and develop adaptation 
solutions. Dozens of cities are committed to emissions reductions; for 
instance, Phoenix is on track to meet a 2030 goal of 50% reduction in 
greenhouse gas emissions from 2018 levels. {Ch. 28, Introduction; Box 28.1}

*Alaska * To address climate threats to traditional foods, the Chugach 
Regional Resources Commission is integrating Indigenous Knowledge and 
Western scientific methods in its adaptation efforts, including weekly 
water sampling for harmful algal blooms and restoring clam populations. 
Kelp farming is also being developed to reduce the effects of ocean 
acidification, serve as a carbon sink, and generate income. {29.7; Box 29.7}

*Hawai‘i and US-Affiliated Pacific Islands *  The Kauaʻi Island Utility 
Cooperative achieved a 69.5% renewable portfolio standard in 2021, and 
the island is occasionally 100% renewably powered during midday hours; 
it is projected to achieve a 90% renewable portfolio by 2026. Guam, the 
Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, 
and Palau plan to use blue carbon ecosystems to offset emissions while 
also protecting coastal infrastructure. {30.3; Box 30.3}

https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/

- -

/[ Inside Climate News gives a longer summary of the new National 
Climate Assessment ]/
*US Regions Will Suffer a Stunning Variety of Climate-Caused Disasters, 
Report Finds*
Extreme temperatures; worsening wildfires, hurricanes and floods; 
infrastructure problems; agricultural impacts: The way you experience 
climate change will depend on where you live.
By Nicholas Kusnetz, Lee Hedgepeth, Amy Green, Phil McKenna, Dylan 
Baddour, Aydali Campa, Wyatt Myskow, Marianne Lavelle and Kristoffer Tigue
November 16, 2023
If there is one overarching message from the nation’s latest climate 
assessment, it is that nowhere will be spared.

Hotter temperatures are coming to every corner of the country, as are 
weather extremes. Many regions are experiencing more frequent, heavier 
rains, while others are seeing worsening drought. Some are getting both. 
Everywhere, these changes are translating into greater stresses on 
Americans’ health through worsening heatwaves, wildfires, hurricanes, 
floods and the psychological toll of mounting disasters.

“There is not a part of the U.S. that gets a pass on climate impacts,” 
one Biden administration official said during a briefing for reporters 
on the Fifth National Climate Assessment, or NCA. The sprawling, 
peer-reviewed federal report, released Tuesday, is mandated by Congress 
and provides the most comprehensive look at the state of climate change 
across the country.

How those impacts show themselves will vary greatly, with each region 
suffering its own particular plagues. For extreme precipitation and the 
floods it unleashes, the official said, the Northeast has some of the 
worst. In the Southeast, where hotter temperatures marry with stifling 
humidity, residents and those working outside are struggling with some 
of the nation’s worst extreme heat. Out West, wildfires and drought are 
poisoning the air and parching fields and taps. Across the Midwest, 
floods, droughts and extreme heat are disrupting farmers’ livelihoods 
and traditions. Along the coasts, high-tide flooding is worsening almost 
universally as rising seas inundate neighborhoods.
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The assessment highlights that these impacts are falling 
disproportionately on less wealthy communities and Black and Indigenous 
Americans and people of color. In the Southeast, for example, the report 
says that “the institutions of slavery and intergenerational ownership 
of individuals as property” have meant that Black people and other 
people of color “are disproportionately exposed to environmental risks 
and with fewer resources to address them when compared to majority White 
communities.” Other regions, the report says, have their own inequities.

States in all regions have begun efforts to cut their climate pollution 
and adapt to the impacts of climate change, according to the assessment, 
with the greatest number of actions coming in the Northeast and 
Southwest, a region that includes California.

On Tuesday, the Biden administration accompanied the report with an 
announcement of $6 billion in funding to help those efforts. The 
nation’s electric grid will get $3.9 billion to help protect it from 
climate impacts, while $2 billion will go toward community-driven 
projects on clean energy and climate resilience.

Already, billion-dollar disasters are striking most every region of the 
country, on average, one every three weeks, with particular 
concentrations along the coasts and in many Midwestern states. If 
warming continues unabated, the report makes clear, those disasters will 
worsen everywhere.
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*People Moving “Into Harm’s Way” in the Southeast*
Every state in the Southeast except Mississippi experienced population 
growth during the past decade, even as the region historically has 
suffered more billion-dollar disasters than the rest of the country. 
Since 2018, the region has also weathered multiple hurricanes, 
researchers wrote.

The population growth in the Southeast exposes more communities to 
climate impacts like hotter temperatures, rising seas and more damaging 
hurricanes. Meanwhile, decision-makers have tended to develop adaptation 
plans based on outdated or limited information that fails to account for 
future risks.

​​”We’re moving more people into harm’s way, and we’re not doing it in a 
very coordinated way,” said Kathie Dello, state climatologist in North 
Carolina and director of the North Carolina State Climate Office. One of 
the co-authors of the study, she spoke Wednesday on a call with 
journalists. “Our cities just aren’t moving fast enough to keep up with 
climate change.”

Most vulnerable are low-income communities and communities of color. The 
region is home to more Black residents than any other in the country, 
and these residents face disproportionate risks for health-related 
impacts. Residents of color tend to have less access to health care, 
nutritious food and safe places to exercise and also are vulnerable to 
other disparities involving education and employment.
In Prichard, Alabama, for example, the city’s majority Black residents 
continue to suffer from decades-long mismanagement of its public water 
utility, which leaks around 60 percent of its purchased freshwater 
supply due to deteriorating distribution infrastructure. Meanwhile, the 
city’s stormwater infrastructure has often been overwhelmed by excess 
water, leaving residents with flooding that will only worsen as extreme 
weather events become more frequent due to climate change.

In some places, like Birmingham, Alabama, some local officials, 
nonprofits and residents have worked together toward climate adaptation, 
but the scope and scale of these actions have so far not amounted to an 
adequate response. Efforts to plant trees to lessen flooding and reduce 
the impact of urban heat islands are growing more popular, for example, 
but large-scale projects to address the causes of climate change-related 
problems are rare and often “less comprehensive” than plans in other 
areas of the country, according to the report.

A lax regulatory environment, fueled by regional politics, has also 
compounded climate-change risks in the Southeast, a subject not fully 
addressed by the National Climate Assessment. In Alabama, for example, 
state officials have fought to allow energy utilities to continue 
storing toxic coal ash in unlined pits near critical waterways in the 
state. Breaches at these sites could worsen the impacts of climate 
change-related natural disasters.

Across the Southeast, too, tide gauges indicate that sea levels relative 
to land elevations rose by some 6 inches between 1970 and 2020, and 
future projections call for another 16 inches to 23 inches by 2050 and 2 
feet to 7 feet by 2100. Already, saltwater intrusion has degraded 
coastal forests and estuaries and reduced their ability to store carbon.

The Southeast has and will continue to be on the frontlines of climate 
risk in the United States, the report concludes.

*Dated Infrastructure in the Northeast Meets Extreme Conditions*
After days of heavy rains caused the Winooski River to swell in July, 
Vermont’s Wrightsville Dam nearly failed.  The narrowly averted disaster 
could have unleashed a catastrophic wall of water on the state’s already 
inundated capital, Montpelier.

Boston’s newest neighborhood, once branded the “Innovation District,” is 
now called the   “Inundation District” as sea level rise threatens 
recently completed streets where city planners failed to account for 
climate change.

Heat islands in historically redlined areas of the Bronx in New York 
City, neighborhoods that were once deprived of federal loans and 
insurance, are now hotter than nearby areas.  Communities with lower 
socioeconomic status and higher percentages of racial and ethnic 
minorities pay the price in the form of increased heat exposure.

These three examples underscore the three “key messages” of the National 
Climate Assessment’s Northeast chapter: Extreme weather events are 
occurring more frequently and having greater impacts, ocean and coastal 
regions are experiencing unprecedented changes and climate-related 
hazards, including extreme heat, and are disproportionately impacting 
low-income communities and communities of color.

*Part of the risk is due to aging infrastructure*.

“In the Northeast, we have some of the oldest infrastructure in the 
country and a lot of it obviously faces pretty extreme conditions given 
the kind of strong seasonality we experience here,” Dave Reidmiller, 
director of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute’s Climate Center and a 
co-author of the assessment’s Northeast chapter, said. “So whether that 
is dams or our electrical grid, or roadways, culverts, wastewater 
treatment plants, you name it, they all face risks from climate change 
and the fact that they are aging means that there’s likely to be 
increased risk to them.”
*
Other risks come from failing to plan for climate change.*

“The development continues, nonstop,” Jack Clarke, the former assistant 
director of the Massachusetts office of Coastal Zone Management, said of 
Boston’s Innovation District. “At some point there is going to be a 
price to pay.”

Many in the Northeast are already paying for the impacts of climate 
change, but Jessica Whitehead, executive director of Old Dominion 
University’s Institute for Coastal Adaptation and Resilience and the 
lead author of the Northeast chapter, said the cost isn’t distributed 
equally.

“Local level efforts to address climate change, both in reducing 
greenhouse gas pollution and in adapting and building resilience, are 
working to improve equity,”  Whitehead said. “But the attention to 
equity in particular throughout the Northeast is still very uneven.”

Texas Leads the Nation in Methane Emissions, but Also Excels in Wind and 
Solar
Opposing forces intermingle in the Southern Great Plains, seat of the 
nation’s fossil fuel sector as well as its rapidly emerging leader in 
renewable power generation.

Texas, the U.S. energy capital and the largest Southern Plains state, 
let off more carbon dioxide than any other state (again) in 2020 (667 
million metric tons)—twice as much as the next-highest emitter. Texas 
also led the nation in emissions of methane (94 million metric tons of 
CO2 equivalent), much of it leaked from the state’s booming shale oil 
and gas fields.

The largest of those, the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico, is 
the nation’s top-producing oilfield. Last year Climate TRACE’s global 
emissions inventory named it the largest source of greenhouse gas 
pollution in the world. It leaks enough gas each year to supply seven 
million Texas households, the National Climate Assessment said.
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Meanwhile, robust sectors of wind and solar power generation have 
exploded in Texas and other Southern Plains states. Since the last 
National Climate Assessment in 2018, Texas nearly doubled its wind power 
generation capacity to produce more than any other state. Its solar 
power generation capacity grew more than five-fold and Texas could soon 
overtake California as the top solar power producer, too.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s grid operator, 
expects substantial growth in solar power generation, wind power 
generation and in battery storage through 2025. Electricity generated 
from gas and coal, however, is not planned to increase substantially, 
the National Climate Assessment said.

Agriculture in the Southern Plains will come under increasing pressure 
from hotter, drier conditions and more frequent or intense drought 
expected by midcentury in western and southern parts of the region. By 
2070, the assessment projects, the Southern Plains will lose cropland as 
lands transition to pasture or grassland.

In the Northern Great Plains, Unprecedented Extremes and Mental Health 
Impacts
While the Northern Great Plains do not leap to mind among the states 
hardest hit by climate change, the National Climate Assessment paints a 
bleak, even dire, portrait of the region, saying in its summary 
paragraph that the region is “experiencing unprecedented climate-driven 
extremes” that threaten key economic sectors and test “the health, 
well-being, and livelihood” of its residents.

The authors of the data-driven compendium, who note many of their 
forecasted outcomes with “very high confidence,” do little to sugarcoat 
their findings in the style of many government documents.

In their discussion of the impact of climate change on mental health, 
they describe the prominence of “eco-anxiety” among farmers and ranchers 
and point out that three of the region’s five states (Montana, Nebraska, 
North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming) are among the top 10 in highest 
suicide rates per capita in the nation. They don’t say which three, but 
online data from the Centers for Disease Control show that for 2021 it 
was actually four—Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and North Dakota, with 
Wyoming first in the nation and Montana second.

“Suicide rates are particularly high in rural and Indigenous 
populations, in part because of remoteness from care and the limited 
number of mental health professionals. Based on geographically 
broad-based studies, climate change is projected to amplify these 
risks,” they write.

They also describe an emotional malady called solastalgia—”the distress 
specifically caused by environmental change while still in a home 
environment”—and write that it is “most often associated with Indigenous 
communities, who share collective ancestral ties to the lands and 
natural resources where they live or previously lived and which are 
inextricably linked to their identities, cultures, and livelihoods, as 
well as their physical and spiritual well-being.” The authors add that 
“solastalgia can also affect others who are connected to the land, such 
as ranchers and farmers.”

The science presented on the accelerating nature of climate change is 
equally stark. The number of wildfires across the region’s grasslands 
increased by 213 percent, from 128 between 1985 and 1995 to 273 between 
2005 and 2014. And the number of wildfires and the length of the fire 
season from the 1970s to the 2000s increased by 889 percent and 85 days, 
respectively, in the forests of western Montana and Wyoming. Montana has 
the highest per capita rate of premature deaths attributable to wildfire 
smoke in the country.

Meanwhile, the largest increases in hail risk anywhere in the nation are 
taking place in the Northern Great Plains, where southeastern Wyoming 
and the southwestern part of the Nebraska Panhandle are located in what 
is called “hail alley.” In the region, hail size, the frequency of large 
hail events and the length of the hail season, are all projected to 
increase for the rest of the century, with one research scenario 
predicting a 302 percent increase in “very large hail days” (defined as 
having hail two inches or more in diameter) between 2071 and 2100.

Despite the severity of these projected increases and the “unprecedented 
climate-driven extremes, including severe drought, floods, and 
wildfires,” the authors also note that several states in the region are 
failing to link human activities to climate change in their K-12 science 
curricula.

“Acceptance of the human link to climate change is lower than the 
national average among adults in the Northern Great Plains region,” they 
write, “with particularly low acceptance among agricultural producers 
and agricultural interest groups. This lack of acceptance highlights 
barriers to collective understanding and climate change response in the 
region and is matched by a stronger evidence base for actions that 
emphasize adaptation and resilience rather than mitigation.”
*
Infrastructure, Agriculture at Risk in the Midwest*
The effects of climate change on the Midwest’s agriculture and 
infrastructure can have significant trickle-down effects on peoples and 
systems, and its resilience to climate change is critical for livelihood 
and economic sustainability in the region and beyond.

The Midwest drives a large agricultural economy, with three states in 
the region—Illinois, Indiana and Iowa—growing a third of the world’s 
corn and soybeans. “Climate-smart” practices like cover crops could 
mitigate some of the challenges in crop and animal agriculture posed by 
rapid swings in extreme wet and dry conditions, snowmelt timing and 
earlier spring rainfall.

Increasing amounts of rain are causing more intense floods, stressing 
the region’s infrastructure. The region’s complex system of 
transportation, movement of goods, energy generation and water 
infrastructure needs repair and is at greater risk of climate change 
than some other parts of the country. This is partly due to the 
infrastructure aging but also because of increasing flood exposure and 
fluctuating water levels in the region’s rivers and Great Lakes...
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“This is the first time the assessment has unpacked the true breadth of 
what we mean by infrastructure and the true criticality of that 
infrastructure,” Heidi Roop, director of the University of Minnesota’s 
Climate Adaptation Partnership and a contributing author of the 
assessment, told Inside Climate News.

Extreme heat and flooding are also causing costly disruptions in other 
systems, including ecosystems, emergency management and healthcare. They 
also pose risks to individual and community health with increased 
incidence of vector- and waterborne illnesses as well as worsening air 
quality.

Like in the rest of the country, communities of color are especially 
vulnerable to the wide-ranging effects of climate change due to systemic 
and historical biases. However, more research is needed to identify 
which specific rural and urban communities are disproportionately 
burdened by the health impacts of climate change and what system 
solutions could address those disparities, Roop said at a briefing on 
Wednesday.

Authors at the briefing also recognized that the region has made strides 
in investing in farming, infrastructure and emergency management to 
adapt and mitigate climate change impacts, but they said more is needed.

*Southwest Grapples With Drier, Hotter Climate, Collaborates on Water 
Issues*
The slow-moving ecosystems of the Southwest face rapid climate 
change–induced transformation, forcing communities to reckon with a 
cascade of risks as temperatures rise and the region undergoes 
aridification, with the impacts of climate change becoming “increasingly 
apparent and widespread” over the last five years, the report’s authors 
wrote.

The NCA makes one thing clear: Nearly every problem the Southwest faces, 
from the region’s rising temperatures to drought to wildfires to rising 
sea levels along the coast, is interconnected. ..
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Hotter temperatures caused by climate change are leading to record-low 
precipitation and making the atmosphere thirstier; water from soil and 
plants is being sucked up into the atmosphere via evapotranspiration. 
That’s led to reduced runoff in the Colorado River Basin and elsewhere 
even in wet years, affecting agricultural production. Those dryer soils, 
combined with long-standing policies of “fire suppression, widespread 
logging and livestock grazing, and elimination of Indigenous fire use,” 
have made wildfires bigger and deadlier than ever before.

“Our scientific understanding of climate impacts on these sectors has 
improved to the point where we’re now able to understand how the risks 
can cascade and how risks from one sector can translate into risks in 
other sectors,” said Dave White, the director of the Global Institute of 
Sustainability and Innovation at Arizona State University and a lead 
author of the chapter.

The region, like much of the country, is now transitioning away from 
planning for climate change to implementing solutions to address it, the 
chapter’s authors said, highlighting collaboration along the Colorado 
River Basin to address shortages in the system.

“We’re moving from incremental adaptation to transformative adaptation, 
from something that kind of just tides us over to something that really 
seeps through all these interconnections in our systems to deal with 
climate change,” said Elizabeth Koebele, an associate professor of 
political science at the University of Nevada, Reno and co-author of the 
chapter.

The nation’s two non-contiguous states have unique climate 
vulnerabilities, and in separate chapters on Alaska and Hawaii, the NCA 
explored how their risks are amplified due to isolation from the 
mainland, the struggles of their Indigenous peoples, and their deep 
reliance on a profoundly changing Pacific Ocean.

Together, the two states—one on the Arctic Circle and the other in the 
tropics—illustrate how warming is disrupting life across the full 
spectrum of climate conditions.

*Hellish Consequences in Hawaii, Dizzying Pace of Warming in Alaska*
Colder regions like Alaska will see some benefits, the report authors 
say, but the longer growing season and potential for more locally-grown 
food will be accompanied by increased pests, flooding and ground 
collapse from thawing permafrost. On the warm Hawaiian islands, the 
surrounding seas offer scant protection against droughts that are 
increasing in frequency, severity, and duration—with potential hellish 
consequences for the vacation paradise.

The wind-driven brush fires that exploded across drought-stricken Maui 
in early August—with 97 fatalities, the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more 
than 100 years—happened too recently to be included in the NCA. But even 
in the draft version of the report one year ago, the authors warned of 
increasing fire risk in Hawaii and the other U.S.-affiliated Pacific 
islands like Guam and Saipan, which they considered as a group. A 
greater percentage of land area is burned each year on these islands 
than in the western continental United States, and a proliferation of 
fire-prone and water-guzzling invasive species is increasing the risks.
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Meanwhile, the oceans that have been the backbone of Hawaii’s economy 
are now a threat. As soon as 2100, if emissions follow a medium 
trajectory, 3.2 feet of sea level rise above 2000 levels is expected, 
putting at risk 550 cultural sites, 38 miles of coastal road, 6,500 
structures and potentially displacing 20,000 residents, the report says.

Alaska’s largest revenue-producing industry, oil and gas, is being 
transformed by climate change in multiple ways. Companies now must make 
intensive efforts to keep the ground cold and solid to support roads, 
pipelines and buildings. And as operations become more costly, the 
industry’s future becomes more uncertain. The NCA said diversification 
of Alaska’s economy is key to a resilient future.

Because of its high latitude, Alaska is warming up to 2.6 times faster 
than the Lower 48 states, triggering a dizzying array of impacts. Just 
since the last NCA was published in 2018, the state has seen record low 
sea ice, the world’s highest rates of ocean acidification, and an 
atmospheric river in 2020 that broke all-time extreme 24-hour 
precipitation records.
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Daily temperatures in southern and interior Alaska spiked to more than 
20 degrees F above normal in a 2019 summer heatwave, blowing away 
predictions made in the last NCA. The climate assessment released during 
the Trump administration said that by the end of the century, even if 
emissions follow a high trajectory, the highest anticipated temperature 
would be 4 to 8 degrees F above normal. The new NCA projects the state’s 
average surface temperature rise in a high-emissions scenario would be 
14.2 degrees F (7.9 degrees C.)

Climate-related food supply chain disruptions are an especially dire 
threat in states, like Alaska, where residents already pay high prices 
because of reliance on imports from the mainland and elsewhere.

Especially vulnerable are members of the 21 distinct Indigenous peoples 
who make up one-fifth of the population of Alaska. King salmon 
contributes 64 percent of all protein to rural Yukon River communities, 
but since 2020, the river’s subsistence fishery has been closed for the 
first time ever, with no foreseeable plan to reopen. High water 
temperatures are believed to have contributed to the fishery’s collapse. 
The situation is “disastrous to Indigenous peoples’ physical, mental, 
cultural, and spiritual well-being,” the NCA authors wrote.

The NCA sees efforts to apply Indigenous knowledge—for example, reviving 
traditional farming, fishing and land-management practices—as a hopeful 
trend that could help build more resilient water and food systems. 
“Restoring Indigenous agroecology practices can support conservation, 
food security, and broader socio-cultural objectives in the face of 
shifting precipitation and [sea level rise]” in Hawaii and the Pacific 
Islands, the authors say.
*
Caribbean Faces “Permanent Inundation”*
Out of all the U.S. states and territories, perhaps none exemplify the 
ugly consequences of climate change more than Puerto Rico.

The United States’ largest territory received special attention in the 
Fifth National Climate Assessment. The latest iteration of the report, 
which was published Tuesday, dedicated a full chapter to the Caribbean 
region, which climate scientists have warned is especially vulnerable to 
the effects of global warming.

“In coastal areas, sea level rise threatens permanent inundation of 
infrastructure, including roadways, railways, ports, tunnels and 
bridges; water treatment facilities and power plants; and hospitals, 
schools and military bases,” the congressionally mandated report said. 
“More intense storms also disrupt critical services like access to 
medical care, as seen after Hurricanes Irma and Maria in the U.S. Virgin 
Islands and Puerto Rico.”

In 2017, Maria swept through Puerto Rico with Category 4 winds that 
heavily damaged  the island’s electrical grid and plunged nearly every 
resident’s home into darkness for days, with some areas going almost a 
year without power. Researchers would later estimate that nearly 3,000 
people died either directly or indirectly because of Maria.

Last year, nearly half of the homes in Puerto Rico lost power again 
after Hurricane Fiona dumped a record amount of rain on the island, 
undoing years of progress as flash floods toppled transmission lines and 
other recently installed infrastructure, including a temporary steel 
bridge that was meant to last for decades. Islands like Puerto Rico will 
only see worse flooding, climate scientists say, as sea levels rise and 
powerful Atlantic storms become more common.

The blackouts have now become so widespread and frequent in Puerto Rico 
that federal agencies have dedicated more than $20 billion in aid to 
help repair the tattered grid and other basic infrastructure on the island.

When it’s not harsh winds and floodwaters, it’s the heat. Puerto Rico 
has also seen a big uptick in severe summer heat waves in recent years, 
said Ruth Santiago, a co-author of Tuesday’s report and a resident of 
the island’s southern coastal city of Salinas. “We saw that just this 
year,” she said. “Starting in about April and May, we had a 
record-breaking heat wave for about six months.”
In June, areas of Puerto Rico got so hot—reaching a deadly 125 degrees 
Fahrenheit on the heat index—that it astonished some meteorologists who 
were watching the situation unfold.

Santiago, an environmental attorney who also sits on the White House 
Environmental Justice Advisory Council, said she was happy to see that 
the final version of the National Climate Assessment, which undergoes 
rigorous vetting by hundreds of experts from both the federal government 
and the private sector, retained all the key points that she and her 
co-author working group wanted to make about the reality of climate 
change in the Caribbean.

One was that most Puerto Ricans want to transition from a centralized 
fossil fuel-based power grid to a decentralized one powered 
predominantly by rooftop solar systems. The devastation of Maria 
compelled broad consensus among the island’s residents that clean energy 
paired with microgrids—a combination many energy experts say can better 
withstand extreme weather conditions—is the future for Puerto Rico. And 
in 2019, the territory passed a law requiring 100 percent clean energy 
by 2050.

But Puerto Rico is struggling to add enough renewable energy capacity to 
keep it in line with its climate law’s mandatory targets, frustrating 
local residents like Santiago who have worked tirelessly in recent years 
to get elected officials to act more urgently.

Tuesday’s report reflected that frustration, Santiago said. “This really 
large group of experts basically coincided with what our working group 
put forward in terms of decentralization—not just the decarbonization—of 
the electric system,” she said, and they noted community efforts to move 
“toward distributed renewable energy like rooftop solar.”

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16112023/fifth-national-climate-assessment-regional-impacts/



/[ Adam gives a difficult analysis of the upcoming COP meeting of civil 
political representatives ]/
*Climate Negotiation Crisis: Will COP28 be a giant mess?
*ClimateAdam
Nov 16, 2023  #ClimateChange #cop28 #climatecrisis
It's no secret that COP climate negotiations often disappoint. But the 
COP28 talks in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are off to a bad 
start... before they've even started. From fears about the location, to 
frustration of the appointment of oil man Sultan al Jaber as president, 
COP28 is off to a bad start before it's even started.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcrN17urybw



/[ Superb discussion with former oil CEO ]/
*Oil and Conflict | John Browne*
Planet: Critical
  Nov 15, 2023  #politicalcrisis #ecocrisis #greenwashing
Former BP boss on what Big Oil knew — from climate to Iraq.

John Browne, Chairman of BeyondNetZero, was CEO of BP from 1995 – 2007. 
In 1997, he broke ranks with the industry and delivered a landmark 
speech on the impact of burning fossil fuels on the climate. But this 
was two decades after Exxon had hired their own climate scientists and 
buried the results.

John explains what he and his executive team knew in the mid-nineties, 
insisting they began working solutions as soon as they understood the 
planet was heating up. However, as I point out, there are clues on BP’s 
website which suggest the company knew beforehand. We also discuss the 
impact of resources and particularly fossil fuels on conflict with John 
revealing he was invited to the Pentagon around the time of the Iraq war 
to estimate how much oil was in the Middle East nation.

    00:00 Introduction
    01:35 Guest Introduction: John Brown
    03:00 Supporting Planet Critical
    03:43 Conflicts Over Values, Trade, and Resources
    16:39 Oil and Gas Industry's Knowledge of Climate Change
    27:23 The Role of Consumers and Governments in Energy Transition
    43:21 The Impact of Government Policies on Climate Change
    45:06 Who would you like to platform?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8M_1WkNUVE



/[ My area - concern since this is drinking water - ]/
*Oregon Cascades, Western states losing glaciers, new analysis finds*
By Alex Baumhardt (Oregon Capital Chronicle)
Oct. 29, 2023
An updated inventory shows the area has more than 50 ice patches that no 
longer qualify as glaciers while several have disappeared entirely
Glacial melt from climate change is no longer just a problem at the poles.

Across the contiguous Western U.S., glaciers are slowly disappearing, 
according to a new analysis by researchers at Portland State University 
and the U.S. Geological Survey. The study was published in the journal 
Earth System Science Data on Sept. 15.

Without glaciers, people, plants and animals are more vulnerable to late 
summer drought. Glaciers play an important role in regulating waterways, 
acting as a frozen reservoir that provides cool water for streams in the 
driest, hottest parts of summer when seasonal snowpacks have already 
melted. They also indicate the health of snowpacks needed to supply 
municipal water systems.

“You have apple orchards and pear orchards that get their water from the 
Middle Fork of the Eliot River in the Hood River Basin, and that’s 
glacial, that’s like two-thirds glacial fed in late August and 
September,” said Andrew Fountain, a Portland State University geology 
professor who led the study.

“Now is that important to the orchards? Frankly, I don’t know. But that 
water is probably going to go away,” he added.

Scientists have long tracked glacial melt in the North and South poles 
but as the impact of climate change spread, they’re now watching that 
effect in the West.

Of the 612 federally listed glaciers in California, Colorado, Idaho, 
Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming, 50 are no longer considered 
glaciers given their size and condition, researchers found. Geologists 
consider glaciers to cover at least 25 acres. They’re made up of ice, 
snow, rock, sediment and exist in areas where the average temperatures 
are close to freezing, winter precipitation produces significant 
accumulations of snow or warmer temperatures the rest of the year don’t 
melt the previous winter’s snowpack, according to the U.S. Geological 
Survey.

Two glaciers, in Washington and Wyoming, have disappeared entirely. In 
the Cascade Range, 25 glaciers have been lost, including seven in Oregon.
Fountain said it’s possible that glaciers in the Oregon stretch of the 
range and any peaks south of Mount Hood could begin disappearing 
altogether in about 50 years.

“What this means is that our gorgeous summertime views of the mountains 
are going to become more like California, where they’re just kind of 
barren peaks,” he said.

*Mapping glaciers*
Fountain and his team outlined and identified glaciers using maps 
compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey over 40 years, from the 1940s to 
the 1980s. They overlaid satellite imagery of the same areas taken 
between 2013 and 2020, coming up with a comprehensive inventory of 1,331 
glaciers in the seven Western states, including the 612 federally listed 
glaciers. Most of the West’s glaciers are in Washington state: The 
glacial cover on Mount Rainier alone is larger than that of all the 
other states combined.

Of the eight glaciers that have disappeared in Oregon, six are now 
considered perennial snowfields, no longer moving and growing like a 
glacier. And two have gotten so small smaller than two football fields — 
that they can no longer be considered glaciers. Most are in the Three 
Sisters area, Fountain said. One, the Benson Glacier in the Wallowas, is 
considered a snowfield.

The only glacier in the West that appears to be growing is Crater 
Glacier on Mount St. Helens. It’s on the north-facing side of the crater 
left by the 1980 eruption of the volcano and rapidly accumulated snow, 
rocks and ice pack and is continuing to move downslope.

Related: Northwest glaciers are melting. What that means to Indigenous 
‘salmon people’

Fountain will soon release another study showing the volume and area 
changes of the federally listed glaciers during the last century. He and 
his team see themselves as the reporters of the high alpine.

“We’ll keep tracking the glaciers as they go along and just kind of see 
what happens in that sense,” Fountain said, adding that the only thing 
that will slow glacial loss would be slowing of emissions of greenhouse 
gases.

“Frankly, we’re all kind of on our own on this,” Fountain said. “There 
is no state agency that is particularly concerned with the glaciers. It 
kind of falls between geology and hydrology. You can’t manage glaciers 
per se. So in that way, the state doesn’t have any interest.”

This story was originally published by the Oregon Capital Chronicle. 
Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a network of news 
bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) 
public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial 
independence. Contact Editor Lynne Terry for questions: 
info at oregoncapitalchronicle.com. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on 
Facebook and X.
https://www.opb.org/article/2023/10/29/western-states-glacier-melting-research/



/[ The news archive - Inhofe often attained that position ]/
/*November 17, 2006 */
November 17, 2006: MSNBC's Keith Olbermann calls out Oklahoma Senator 
James Inhofe for simultaneously trafficking in climate denial and blasphemy:

    "But our winner, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who until January
    will remain the chairman of the Senate Committee on the Environment
    and Public Works.  This morning he declared that any global warming
    is owed to 'natural causes' and is 'due to the sun.'

    'God’s still up there,' he added.

    "So, Senator, you’re blaming global warming on God?

    "Senator James 'Is it just me or is it hot in here' Inhofe, Friday’s
    'Worst Person in the World.'"

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/15814614/ns/msnbc-countdown_with_keith_olbermann/t/worst-person-world-sen-james-inhofe/



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