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<font size="+2"><i><b>September 6, 2021</b></i></font><br>
<br>
[nor is mass media ready]<br>
<b>Overlapping Disasters Expose Harsh Climate Reality: The U.S. Is
Not Ready</b><br>
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...<br>
- -<br>
The country faces two separate but interlaced problems, according to
climate and resilience experts.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
“We’re feeling all the effects of that deferred maintenance,” said
Kristina Dahl, a senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned
Scientists.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
“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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
- -<br>
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.<br>
- -<br>
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.<br>
<br>
The investments that protect against storm surge differ from those
that guard against extreme rain, Ms. Chester said.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Because New York has mostly been spared the type of severe rainfall
that occurred Wednesday, officials have made it less of a priority.<br>
<br>
Other countries have heeded the warnings of climate scientists and
acted.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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...<br>
- - <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/02/climate/new-york-rain-floods-climate-change.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/02/climate/new-york-rain-floods-climate-change.html</a><br>
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[Try to be color -free]<b><br>
</b><b>Blue Hydrogen. The greatest fossil fuel scam in history?</b><br>
Sep 5, 2021<br>
Just Have a Think<br>
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?<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EA4tDYwNYo">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EA4tDYwNYo</a><br>
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[Author reads from his book]<br>
<b>Kim Stanley Robinson: Remembering climate change ... a message
from the year 2071 | TED</b><br>
Aug 30, 2021<br>
TED<br>
Visit <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://TED.com">http://TED.com</a> to get our entire library of TED Talks,
transcripts, translations, personalized talk recommendations and
more.<br>
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.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzWRHi-Bmuk">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzWRHi-Bmuk</a><br>
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[Books - the New York Review ]<br>
<b>Conceiving the Future</b><br>
Anna Louie Sussman<br>
<b>The argument that reducing human populations will help curb
climate change has obvious appeal, but it overlooks several
inconvenient facts.</b><br>
September 23, 2021 issue<br>
Reviewed:<br>
<blockquote><u>Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World</u><br>
by Daniel Sherrell<br>
Penguin, 260 pp., $17.00 (paper)<br>
<br>
<u>On Infertile Ground: Population Control and Women’s Rights in
the Era of Climate Change</u><br>
by Jade S. Sasser<br>
New York University Press, 189 pp., $89.00; $27.00 (paper)<br>
<br>
<u>Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts,
Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and
Imperiling the Future of the Human Race</u><br>
by Shanna H. Swan with Stacey Colino<br>
Scribner, 292 pp., $28.00<br>
</blockquote>
- -<br>
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.”..<br>
- -<br>
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?”..<br>
- -<br>
<u>Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World</u> 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?”<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/09/23/climate-change-birth-conceiving-future/">https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/09/23/climate-change-birth-conceiving-future/</a><br>
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[Alarming worst-case explained with various data sources. ]<br>
<b>Climate change tracking worst-case scenario</b><br>
Sep 4, 2021<br>
Peter Carter<br>
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.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fliCxyAwBWU">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fliCxyAwBWU</a><br>
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[Today show video argument]<br>
<b>Experts Warn Of Financial Cost Of Inaction On Climate Change</b><br>
Sep 5, 2021<br>
TODAY<br>
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.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPTKX6nUqT0">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPTKX6nUqT0</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
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[weathering weather disasters]<br>
<b>Nearly 1 in 3 Americans experienced a weather disaster this
summer</b><br>
Climate change has turbocharged severe storms, fires, hurricanes,
coastal storms and floods — threatening millions<br>
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...<br>
- -<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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?”...<br>
- -<br>
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.<br>
<br>
“We’re so on our heels, we’re so burnt out, we’re so understaffed,”
he said.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
“It’s no longer, ‘We have a big event and then there’s time to
recover,’” Riggen said. “Disaster has become a chronic condition.”<br>
<br>
But the extent of damage wrought by climate change will be
determined by how the nation plans for it, and how the communities
rebuild.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.”...<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/09/04/climate-disaster-hurricane-ida/">https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/09/04/climate-disaster-hurricane-ida/</a><br>
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[The news archive - looking back]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming
September 6, 2012</b></font><br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/09/exclusive-audio-koch-brothers-seminar-tapes/">http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/09/exclusive-audio-koch-brothers-seminar-tapes/</a>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://youtu.be/7qLiEB4Ed_E">http://youtu.be/7qLiEB4Ed_E</a><br>
<br>
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