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<font size="+1"><i>May 28, 2018</i></font><br>
<br>
[Devastating deluge again]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ellicott-city-maryland-floods-officials-assess-destruction-missing-man/">Man
missing after "1,000-year flood" ravages Ellicott City for 2nd
time in two years</a></b><br>
ELLICOTT CITY, Md. -- After flash floods sent cars floating down
Main Street in historic Ellicott City, Maryland, local officials
said they were heartbroken to see the community so severely damaged
again less than two years after a devastating flood killed two
people and caused millions in damages. CBS News correspondent Jeff
Pegues reports that Howard County officials confirm that there is
one person missing.<br>
<span class="moz-txt-link-freetext"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ellicott-city-maryland-floods-officials-assess-destruction-missing-man/">https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ellicott-city-maryland-floods-officials-assess-destruction-missing-man/</a></span><br>
- - -<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrro39JMsJo">Dramatic
video as flash flood strikes Ellicott City in Maryland</a></b><br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrro39JMsJo">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrro39JMsJo</a></font><br>
<br>
[Grace Satellite data trends]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldrpsq_L-wY">Severe Global
Water Cycle Shifts from Abrupt Climate Change</a></b><br>
Paul Beckwith - Published May 27, 2018<br>
Freshwater availability for drinking is being disrupted around
Earth. Same for irrigation water relied upon to grow many crops.
Soils are drying out and groundwater is being depleted much faster
than it can be recharged. Alpine glacier water storage in snow and
ice is collapsing, and extreme droughts in some places and
torrential rains with floods in other places is accelerating. I
discuss Terrestrial Water Storage (TWS) measurements from GRACE
satellites, and changes around Earth from 2002 to 2016, while the
satellites ran.<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldrpsq_L-wY">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldrpsq_L-wY</a></font><br>
<br>
<br>
[Snopes confirms fact]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.snopes.com/ap/2018/05/27/epa-emails-climate-change-denial/">Emails
Show Cooperation Between EPA and Climate-Change Deniers</a></b><br>
The newly-released emails reveal Environmental Protection Agency
officials have worked to organize events and hearings with
conservative groups such as the Heartland Institute. <br>
- - - - <br>
Follow-up emails show Konkus and the Heartland Institute mustering
scores of potential invitees known for rejecting scientific warnings
of man-made climate-change, including from groups like Plants Need
CO2, The Right Climate Stuff, and Junk Science.<br>
The emails underscore how Pruitt and senior agency officials have
sought to surround themselves with people who share their vision of
curbing environmental regulation and enforcement, leading to
complaints from environmentalists that he is ignoring the
conclusions of the majority of scientists in and out of his agency
especially when it comes to climate-changing carbon emissions...<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.snopes.com/ap/2018/05/27/epa-emails-climate-change-denial/https://www.snopes.com/ap/2018/05/27/epa-emails-climate-change-denial/">https://www.snopes.com/ap/2018/05/27/epa-emails-climate-change-denial/https://www.snopes.com/ap/2018/05/27/epa-emails-climate-change-denial/</a></font><br>
<br>
<br>
[video via Peter Sinclair]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://climatecrocks.com/2018/05/26/congress-leading-climate-denier-russian-tool-bigot-dana-rohrabacher-is-target-of-hilarious-ad/">Congress’
Leading Climate Denier, Russian Tool, Bigot – Dana Rohrabacher
is Target of Hilarious Ad</a></b> <br>
Rouda vs. Rohrabacher Debate: Moderated by Jason Alexander<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://youtu.be/9OHm1s7-2vg">https://youtu.be/9OHm1s7-2vg</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://climatecrocks.com/2018/05/26/congress-leading-climate-denier-russian-tool-bigot-dana-rohrabacher-is-target-of-hilarious-ad/">https://climatecrocks.com/2018/05/26/congress-leading-climate-denier-russian-tool-bigot-dana-rohrabacher-is-target-of-hilarious-ad/</a><br>
<br>
<br>
[Harsh news with positive bias]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-arnold-climate-change-resilience-20180527-story.html">Dear
media: We need more stories about resilience to climate change</a></b><br>
By Elizabeth Arnold - May 27, 2018 <br>
Overwhelmed by climate change? It's not your fault.<br>
Actually, you are to blame for climate change. But it's the media's
fault for making you feel completely hopeless about it.<br>
- - - -<br>
I'm not alone, apparently. A surprising number of scholars are
studying how the public responds to climate news. There's even a
Media and Climate Change Observatory that keeps daily track of
climate-related stories. In 2004, its founder, Max Boykoff, was
among the first to identify a trend of "false balance" in the early
reporting. That's the practice of pairing a contrarian view from an
organization skeptical of climate change to "balance" the view of a
reputable climate scientist. Several years later, Boykoff took
another look and found that most news organizations had
self-corrected. More recently, he called attention to a "trend of
daily fear, misery and doom" that leaves audiences feeling
powerless.<br>
This doesn't mean we should stop reporting the terrifying realities.
But it does mean we need to start telling stories about effective
responses: practical, replicable examples of how individuals,
businesses and governments are tackling climate change. It may smack
of advocacy, but what self-respecting public health reporter would
do a story about an epidemic without including information about an
available vaccine or how to avoid infection?<br>
Take Newtok, for example. That community is not waiting and watching
helplessly as homes are erased by the sea. Quite the opposite is
true: It's a place where indigenous people are adapting in order to
stay in a region where they've managed to weather wrenching
environmental and cultural change for thousands of years.<br>
- - - -<br>
If we journalists were able to self-correct for false balance,
surely we can self-correct for an overly narrow narrative that
amounts to a steady drip of catastrophic predictions. Newtok, a
community "doomed" by climate change, has figured out how to adapt —
one innovative idea, one grant, one barge load at a time. It will
not cease to exist. In fact, life might even be a little bit better
on higher, more solid ground and with fresh water. It's a story
worth telling.<br>
<font size="-1">Elizabeth Arnold is a Shorenstein fellow at
Harvard's Kennedy School and a journalism professor at University
of Alaska Anchorage. She was previously a correspondent for
National Public Radio.</font><br>
<font size="-1">more at: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-arnold-climate-change-resilience-20180527-story.html">http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-arnold-climate-change-resilience-20180527-story.html</a></font><br>
<br>
<br>
[Holy guacamole!]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://grist.org/article/whatll-we-eat-in-2050-california-farmers-are-placing-bets/">Are
avocados toast?</a></b><br>
What will we eat in 2050? California farmers are placing bets. <br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://grist.org/article/whatll-we-eat-in-2050-california-farmers-are-placing-bets/">https://grist.org/article/whatll-we-eat-in-2050-california-farmers-are-placing-bets/</a></font><br>
<br>
<br>
[Opinion - Chris Hedges economic doomieness]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/05/21/coming-collapse">The
Coming Collapse</a></b><br>
It is impossible for any doomed population to grasp how fragile the
decayed financial, social and political system is on the eve of
implosion.<br>
by Chris Hedges<br>
The Trump administration did not rise, prima facie, like Venus on a
half shell from the sea. Donald Trump is the result of a long
process of political, cultural and social decay. He is a product of
our failed democracy. The longer we perpetuate the fiction that we
live in a functioning democracy, that Trump and the political
mutations around him are somehow an aberrant deviation that can be
vanquished in the next election, the more we will hurtle toward
tyranny. The problem is not Trump. It is a political system,
dominated by corporate power and the mandarins of the two major
political parties, in which we don’t count. We will wrest back
political control by dismantling the corporate state, and this means
massive and sustained civil disobedience, like that demonstrated by
teachers around the country this year. If we do not stand up we will
enter a new dark age.<br>
The Democratic Party, which helped build our system of inverted
totalitarianism, is once again held up by many on the left as the
savior. Yet the party steadfastly refuses to address the social
inequality that led to the election of Trump and the insurgency by
Bernie Sanders. It is deaf, dumb and blind to the very real economic
suffering that plagues over half the country. It will not fight to
pay workers a living wage. It will not defy the pharmaceutical and
insurance industries to provide Medicare for all. It will not curb
the voracious appetite of the military that is disemboweling the
country and promoting the prosecution of futile and costly foreign
wars. It will not restore our lost civil liberties, including the
right to privacy, freedom from government surveillance, and due
process. It will not get corporate and dark money out of politics.
It will not demilitarize our police and reform a prison system that
has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners although the United States
has only 5 percent of the world’s population. It plays to the
margins, especially in election seasons, refusing to address
substantive political and social problems and instead focusing on
narrow cultural issues like gay rights, abortion and gun control in
our peculiar species of anti-politics.<br>
In an open and democratic political process, one not dominated by
party elites and corporate money, these people would not hold
political power. They know this. They would rather implode the
entire system than give up their positions of privilege.<br>
This is a doomed tactic, but one that is understandable. The
leadership of the party, the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer,
Tom Perez, are creations of corporate America. In an open and
democratic political process, one not dominated by party elites and
corporate money, these people would not hold political power. They
know this. They would rather implode the entire system than give up
their positions of privilege. And that, I fear, is what will happen.
The idea that the Democratic Party is in any way a bulwark against
despotism defies the last three decades of its political activity.
It is the guarantor of despotism.<br>
Trump has tapped into the hatred that huge segments of the American
public have for a political and economic system that has betrayed
them. He may be inept, degenerate, dishonest and a narcissist, but
he adeptly ridicules the system they despise. His cruel and
demeaning taunts directed at government agencies, laws and the
established elites resonate with people for whom these agencies,
laws and elites have become hostile forces. And for many who see no
shift in the political landscape to alleviate their suffering,
Trump’s cruelty and invective are at least cathartic.<br>
Trump, like all despots, has no ethical core. He chooses his allies
and appointees based on their personal loyalty and fawning
obsequiousness to him. He will sell anyone out. He is corrupt,
amassing money for himself—he made $40 million from his Washington,
D.C., hotel alone last year—and his corporate allies. He is
dismantling government institutions that once provided some
regulation and oversight. He is an enemy of the open society. This
makes him dangerous. His turbocharged assault on the last vestiges
of democratic institutions and norms means there will soon be
nothing, even in name, to protect us from corporate totalitarianism.<br>
But the warnings from the architects of our failed democracy against
creeping fascism, Madeleine Albright among them, are risible. They
show how disconnected the elites have become from the zeitgeist.
None of these elites have credibility. They built the edifice of
lies, deceit and corporate pillage that made Trump possible. And the
more Trump demeans these elites, and the more they cry out like
Cassandras, the more he salvages his disastrous presidency and
enables the kleptocrats pillaging the country as it swiftly
disintegrates.<br>
It refuses to critique or investigate the abuses by corporate power,
which has destroyed our democracy and economy and orchestrated the
largest transfer of wealth upward in American history.<br>
The press is one of the principal pillars of Trump’s despotism. It
chatters endlessly like 17th-century courtiers at the court of
Versailles about the foibles of the monarch while the peasants lack
bread. It drones on and on and on about empty topics such as Russian
meddling and a payoff to a porn actress that have nothing to do with
the daily hell that, for many, defines life in America. It refuses
to critique or investigate the abuses by corporate power, which has
destroyed our democracy and economy and orchestrated the largest
transfer of wealth upward in American history. The corporate press
is a decayed relic that, in exchange for money and access, committed
cultural suicide. And when Trump attacks it over “fake news,” he
expresses, once again, the deep hatred of all those the press
ignores. The press worships the idol of Mammon as slavishly as Trump
does. It loves the reality-show presidency. The press, especially
the cable news shows, keeps the lights on and the cameras rolling so
viewers will be glued to a 21st-century version of “The Cabinet of
Dr. Caligari.” It is good for ratings. It is good for profits. But
it accelerates the decline.<br>
All this will soon be compounded by financial collapse. Wall Street
banks have been handed $16 trillion in bailouts and other subsidies
by the Federal Reserve and Congress at nearly zero percent interest
since the 2008 financial collapse. They have used this money, as
well as the money saved through the huge tax cuts imposed last year,
to buy back their own stock, raising the compensation and bonuses of
their managers and thrusting the society deeper into untenable debt
peonage. Sheldon Adelson’s casino operations alone got a $670
million tax break under the 2017 legislation. The ratio of CEO to
worker pay now averages 339 to 1, with the highest gap approaching
5,000 to 1. This circular use of money to make and hoard money is
what Karl Marx called “fictitious capital.” The steady increase in
public debt, corporate debt, credit card debt and student loan debt
will ultimately lead, as Nomi Prins writes, to “a tipping point—when
money coming in to furnish that debt, or available to borrow, simply
won’t cover the interest payments. Then debt bubbles will pop,
beginning with higher yielding bonds.”<br>
An economy reliant on debt for its growth causes our interest rate
to jump to 28 percent when we are late on a credit card payment. It
is why our wages are stagnant or have declined in real terms—if we
earned a sustainable income we would not have to borrow money to
survive. It is why a university education, houses, medical bills and
utilities cost so much. The system is designed so we can never free
ourselves from debt.<br>
However, the next financial crash, as Prins points out in her book
“Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World,” won’t be like the
last one. This is because, as she says, “there is no Plan B.”
Interest rates can’t go any lower. There has been no growth in the
real economy. The next time, there will be no way out. Once the
economy crashes and the rage across the country explodes into a
firestorm, the political freaks will appear, ones that will make
Trump look sagacious and benign.<br>
And so, to quote Vladimir Lenin, what must be done?<br>
We must invest our energy in building parallel, popular institutions
to protect ourselves and to pit power against power. These parallel
institutions, including unions, community development organizations,
local currencies, alternative political parties and food
cooperatives, will have to be constructed town by town. The elites
in a time of distress will retreat to their gated compounds and
leave us to fend for ourselves. Basic services, from garbage
collection to public transportation, food distribution and health
care, will collapse. Massive unemployment and underemployment,
triggering social unrest, will be dealt with not through government
job creation but the brutality of militarized police and a complete
suspension of civil liberties. Critics of the system, already pushed
to the margins, will be silenced and attacked as enemies of the
state. The last vestiges of labor unions will be targeted for
abolition, a process that will soon be accelerated given the
expected ruling in a case before the Supreme Court that will cripple
the ability of public-sector unions to represent workers. The dollar
will stop being the world’s reserve currency, causing a steep
devaluation. Banks will close. Global warming will extract heavier
and heavier costs, especially on the coastal populations, farming
and the infrastructure, costs that the depleted state will be unable
to address. The corporate press, like the ruling elites, will go
from burlesque to absurdism, its rhetoric so patently fictitious it
will, as in all totalitarian states, be unmoored from reality. The
media outlets will all sound as fatuous as Trump. And, to quote W.H.
Auden, “the little children will die in the streets.”<br>
As a foreign correspondent I covered collapsed societies, including
the former Yugoslavia. It is impossible for any doomed population to
grasp how fragile the decayed financial, social and political system
is on the eve of implosion. All the harbingers of collapse are
visible: crumbling infrastructure; chronic underemployment and
unemployment; the indiscriminate use of lethal force by police;
political paralysis and stagnation; an economy built on the
scaffolding of debt; nihilistic mass shootings in schools,
universities, workplaces, malls, concert venues and movie theaters;
opioid overdoses that kill some 64,000 people a year; an epidemic of
suicides; unsustainable military expansion; gambling as a desperate
tool of economic development and government revenue; the capture of
power by a tiny, corrupt clique; censorship; the physical
diminishing of public institutions ranging from schools and
libraries to courts and medical facilities; the incessant
bombardment by electronic hallucinations to divert us from the
depressing sight that has become America and keep us trapped in
illusions. We suffer the usual pathologies of impending death. I
would be happy to be wrong. But I have seen this before. I know the
warning signs. All I can say is get ready.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/05/21/coming-collapse">https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/05/21/coming-collapse</a><br>
<br>
<br>
[Call your librarian]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.ozy.com/good-sht/7-novels-that-will-fire-you-up-about-climate-change/86076">7
Novels That Will Fire You Up About Climate Change</a></b><br>
It’s called cli-fi and it might be another way to help save the
planet.<br>
By Amy Brady - The Daily Dose - MAY 27 2018<br>
Scientists have been trying to warn us about climate change’s most
devastating effects for decades. Now fiction writers are helping
their cause, crafting stories that help readers imagine glacier
melt, sea level rise and other climate-related scenarios.<br>
Often called climate fiction, or cli-fi, the genre “helps writers
overcome some of the most profound communication challenges” that
the phenomenon presents, says Elizabeth Rush, visiting lecturer at
Brown University. Why? Because climate change is “slow-moving and
intensely place-based,” it can be difficult to notice in our
day-to-day lives, she explains — and with climate fiction, “you can
do just that. You can imagine being a person whom flood or drought
displaces, and with that imaginative stance can come radical
empathy.”<br>
<b>Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta</b><br>
Set in the near future in Scandinavia, this novel, Itäranta’s first,
is speculative fiction at its best. Climate change has ravaged the
planet, and in its wake, China has come to rule Europe, and wars are
waged over precious resources like water. Amid all this, 17-year-old
Noria Kaitio strives to be a “tea master” like her father and, in
doing so, has learned of a secret water source. When her father
dies, the national army begins watching her closely, and she must
decide whether to keep her secret and risk her safety or tell it and
risk betraying those closest to her.<br>
<b>The Lamentations of Zeno by Ilija Trojanow; translated by Philip
Boehm</b><br>
This literary work of climate fiction is written in a modernist
style that captures the fragmented thoughts of the protagonist, Zeno
Hintermeier, in streams of consciousness. Greatly disturbed by the
world’s rapidly declining glaciers, Hintermeier, a German scientist,
embarks on a plan to convince the world to pay more attention to how
humanity is destroying the planet. This plan comes at a time of
personal trouble for Zeno: Just as his marriage is falling apart,
he’s questioning how to keep his work relevant in a world that seems
completely oblivious to global warming. The book is often
despairing, but even its saddest parts are rendered in lovely,
lyrical prose. <br>
<b>The Carbon Diaries 2015 by Saci Lloyd</b><br>
Written in 2012, this young adult novel imagines an England in 2015
so deeply damaged by climate change that carbon rationing has begun.
It stars 16-year-old Laura, who spends her days going to school and
playing in a punk band. But her anxiety is growing over her parents’
pending divorce and an approaching hurricane that scientists predict
will be the strongest ever to hit England. The novel is structured
as the diary she keeps to make sense of her world as it grows more
chaotic. Such a structure might turn some adults off, but Lloyd’s
keen attention paid to real human emotion — in teenagers and adults
— makes the book relatable for almost anyone.<br>
<b>The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh</b><br>
Written by the author of The Great Derangement, a work of nonfiction
that addresses the world’s need for more climate fiction, this
ambitious literary novel combines lyricism with fast-paced action.
Set on an archipelago of tiny islands located just off the coast of
India, the novel follows Piya Roy, an American marine biologist of
Indian descent, who’s thrown from a boat into water teeming with
crocodiles. She’s saved by a local fisherman, with whom she learns
to engage with the help of a translator. As the trio ventures deeper
into the islands’ wilderness, they learn not only of the dangers of
the encroaching tide — but also of the political turmoil that wreaks
havoc on the islands’ people and land.<br>
More Cli-Fi Reading:<br>
<b>The World Without Us by Mireille Juchau</b><b><br>
</b><b>The End We Start From by Megan Hunter</b><b><br>
</b><b>Arctic Rising by Tobias S. Buckell</b><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.ozy.com/good-sht/7-novels-that-will-fire-you-up-about-climate-change/86076">https://www.ozy.com/good-sht/7-novels-that-will-fire-you-up-about-climate-change/86076</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<font size="+1"><b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/28/business/exxon-backs-groups-that-question-global-warming.html">This
Day in Climate History - May 28, 2003</a> - from D.R. Tucker</b></font><br>
May 28, 2003: The New York Times reports on ExxonMobil's crucial
role in the climate-denial industry.<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/28/business/exxon-backs-groups-that-question-global-warming.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/28/business/exxon-backs-groups-that-question-global-warming.html</a>
</font><br>
<br>
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